spring mo bulletin

7/31/2019 Spring MO Bulletin

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Spring 2012 Issue 10

In this issue:

• Mass Observation is 75!

• 12th May day diaries

• Find out about how MassObservation recorded theCoronation in 1953

• Quotes from recentDirectives

• New publication

Keep in touch!Visit: www.massobs.org.uk Join our email list:[email protected] Follow us on Twitter:http://twitter.com/MassObsArchive

In 1937 Tom Harrisson, HumphreyJennings and Charles Madge

wrote to the New Statesman toinvite volunteers to co-operate in anew research project, called MassObservation. Mass Observation,they declared, would be

“anthropology at home”, recordingthe experiences, lives and activitiesof ‘ordinary’ people in Britain. Thisyear the Mass Observation Archiveis celebrating seventy ve years ofthis activity.

Welcome to the Spring Bulletin –the rst of 2012, the year in whichwe celebrate 75 years since thefoundation of Mass Observation!

This edition of the Bulletinbring you news about the MassObservation anniversary conference(page three). This three dayconference will take place at the

University of Sussex from 4th July2012. Visit our website www.massobs.org.uk/conference tosee the full conference programmeand to register. The programme isstarting to shape up very nicely!

You will also nd information

about some of the material in theMass Observation Archive. Turnto page two for a report abouthow Mass Observation recordedthe Coronation of Queen ElizabethII and on page four you will ndquotes from a Mass ObservationProject Directive on the recent riots.

Finally, make sure you don’t miss

the chance to write a day diary forMass Observation! We are callingfor day diaries written on Saturday12th May 2012. You will nd allthe details on page three of theBulletin.

Jessica Scantlebury, Bulletin editor

The First 75 Years’ Work

Mass Observation was prolicduring the Second World War.The founders recruited a team ofinvestigators to use ethnographictechniques to report on all aspectsof British society, including pubs,religion, the home and moraleduring wartime.

A panel of volunteer writers werealso recruited. These writersrecorded their lives in personaldiaries and responses to openended questionnaires; known as‘Directives’. Between 1937 and the1960s, nearly 3000 people senttheir diaries or Directive responses

to Mass Observation’s ofce. Itis this personal writing that hasbeen the most enduring aspectof Mass Observation. In 1981,after the establishment of theMass Observation Archive at theUniversity of Sussex, the writingproject was re-launched as theMass Observation Project. Over4000 people have taken part inthe modern Project, and like theoriginal Panel, the writers comefrom all around the country,representing all ages and manyoccupations.

Article continues on the next page

“...The function of Mass-Observation is to get writtendown the unwritten lawsand to make the invisibleforces visible...”First’s Year’s Work by Mass Observation(1938) Charles Madge and Tom Harrisson



The First 75 Years’ Workcontinued...

In the years since the launch ofthe Mass Observation Project, theArchive has engaged in numerousprojects to encourage widerparticipation in Mass Observationand greater access to the archivalmaterial. Most recently the Archivehas been involved in two JISCfunded projects.

The rst of these was MassObservation Communities Online(MOCO). This project expandedon Mass Observation’s traditionsby inviting community groupsthroughout the UK to developan online archive space whichreected life in 21st century

Britain. The MOCO archivecan now be accessed online:www.mocoproject.org.uk

The Archive is now working withacademics from the Universityof Sussex on ‘Observing the1980s’. The project will makeselected material collected byMass Observation during the1980s, together with oral historyinterviews from the British Library,

available through an OpenEducation Resource. A new bloghas been set up to record theproject’s progress. To read theblog visit:http://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/ observingthe80s/about

To mark seventy ve years of theMass Observation movement, theArchive will be hosting a numberof public envents this year. Turn

to page 3 for more informationabout these events.

Theatre Jukebox

We are pleased to report thatthe art collective ‘Stand + Stare’have been awarded Arts Councilfunding to develop an MO TheatreJukebox. Theatre Jukebox is anarcade-style cabinet that uses

RFID technology to allow usersto explore archival collections.The Jukebox will premier atthe FutureEverything Festival.For more information visit:www.standandstare.com

Mass Observation & RoyaltyThis year it is 60 years since theaccession of Queen Elizabeth II.In this article, Owen Emmerson takes a look through the

Archive to discover how MassObservation has recorded the

Queen’s reign.

In 1953, Mass Observationcollected a vast array of materialrelating to the Coronation ofElizabeth II. From informationabout Coronation street parties,to assorted ephemera, suchas, a paper ‘Oxo’ crown anda commemorative ‘Smiths’Coronation crisp packet; no detail

was too small. Mass Observation’sdedication to recording theCoronation has resulted in 17boxes of archived material, eachproviding a unique insight into theeveryday activities surrounding theCoronation across Britain.

Diaries written by school childrenmake up a signicant proportionof the collection, with over 560diaries collected. A 13 year oldschool girl from Middlesbroughbelieved that “...rather alot of money is being spent unneccerserally (sic). The Queentold the public to spend as less onit as possible and so far nothingmuch has been done about it .” A 14 year old from London lamentedthat the bus journey to hergrandfather’s house had made herso sick that she had been unable

to watch the ceremony on hisnewly purchased television, butwas very much looking forwardto “...going to see ‘A Queen isCrowned’ at the Tudor on 26th June.”

With the rm belief that ‘publicopinion’ had been misrepresentedduring the Abdication of theuncrowned Edward VIII, and

subsequently playing a key rolewithin the formation of the rstphase of Mass Observation, royalevents have continued to featurethroughout its history.

Twenty ve years on from theCoronation, the Silver Jubilee

celebrations of Elizabeth II in 1977proved to be another such keymoment. With Tom Harrisson’sdeath in 1976, Philip Ziegler, DavidPocock and Dorothy Sheridanconsulted a small panel to recordthe reactions to the Jubilee. Thearchived collection is containedin 23 boxes, with press cuttings,assorted ephemera, descriptionsof street parties and the panels’reactions to the events. Manyof Ziegler’s recruits went on tobecome members of the MassObservation Project which waslaunched in the summer of 1981.The project continues to solicitpanel members’ opinions of royalevents, the most recent being thewedding of Prince William andCatherine Middleton in 2011.



12th May 2012...Record this date for posterity

In 1937, Mass Observation called for people from all parts of the UK to record everything they did fromwhen they woke up in the morning to when they went to sleep at night on 12th May. This was the dayof George VI’s Coronation.

75 years since this orginial call, the Mass Observation Archive is appealing for day diaries written onMay 12th this year. The call is open to everybody. For more information, and to nd out how to submityour diary visit: www.massobs.org.uk/12may

MO Anniverary LectureSeries draws to a close

Since the last edition of theBulletin, three lectures have takenplace.

Virginia Nicholson’s lecture inearly December focused on hermother’s (Anne Olivier Bell) privatecorrespondence with GrahamBell (no relation) who had beenan artist-in-residence duringthe earliest days of the MassObservation’s ‘Worktown’ project.The lecture provided a uniqueinsight into the history of the‘Worktown’ project.

In January, the director, Kevin

Macdonald entertained a full-house with an exploration of hisMass Observation inspired lm LifeIn A Day ( 2011). Whilst, in March,David Kynaston used material fromthe Mass Observation Archive togive a thought-provoking lectureabout Britain immediately afterthe end of the Second World War.

The fnal lecture in the series will

be given by Joe Moran on 10thMay...

Joe Moran is a Reader in CulturalHistory at Liverpool John MooresUniversity and he also writesregularly for The Guardian,The Financial Times and othernewspapers and magazines. Thelecture, entitled ‘Mass Observationand the History of Everyday Life’,will be given on the 10th May at

the University of Sussex at 6.30pm.To book a place on the lecturevisit:www.massobs.org.uk/events

Mass Observation AnniversariesConference

Seventy ve years of Mass ObservationThirty years of the Mass Observation Project

University of Sussex

4-6 July 2012

Confrmed Speakers:

James Hinton (Warwick)

Nick Hubble(Brunel)

Laura Marcus (Oxford)

Dorothy Sheridan

(Sussex)Murray Goot

(Macquarie University)

The conferenceprogramme can be

viewed:www.massobs.org.uk/

conference

Delegates rates

Booking now open!Visit www.massobs.org.uk/conference to book

• Full conference fee including gala dinner: £126• Full conference fee without gala dinner:£100• Conference fee for MO friends including gala dinner: £116• Conference fee for MO friends without gala dinner: £90• PG student conference fee including gala dinner: £76• PG student conference fee without gala dinner: £50



The Mass Observation Archive specialises in material about everyday life in Britain. It contains papers generated by the original Mass Observationsocial research organisation (1937 to early 1960s), and newer material collected continuously since 1981. The Archive is in the care of the University

of Sussex and is housed in the Library in the Special Collections department. The Mass Observation Archive is a registered charitable trust (no 270218)and is recognised by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council as having outstanding national and international importanceunder the Designation Scheme.

The MO Bulletin is edited by Jessica Scantlebury. It is distributed to Mass Observers and members of the Friends of the Archivescheme. Why not join our Friends scheme - not only will you be kept up to date with the latest MO related news, but you will alsohelp to support Mass Observation’s activities.See our website for further details: www.massobs.org.uk or email [email protected]

A Dragon Triptych: Childhood Worlds After The Warby Jamie Bruce Lockhart and Alan Macfarlane

The period of the later 1940s and rst half of the 1950s was a watershed

between wartime austerity and the new post-war afuence of laterdecades. It was when the largest Empire the world has ever knowncame to a rapid end. With its very different material, medical, social andideological conditions, those years are familiar yet strange. It is hard toexperience that foreign country of the past. One aspect of life at thattime which is particularly difcult to enter is the world of childhood. Thisis because memoirs and autobiographies are usually written many yearslater, from memory, and with all the distortions of adult hindsight.

In this trilogy, Jamie Bruce Lockhart (former diplomat) and AlanMacfarlane (anthropologist, historian and former Trustee of the MassObservation Archive) have reconstructed a contemporary vision of growing up through those years. They use

over three hundred letters written by and to them (and by Jamie’s younger brother Sandy, later Baron BruceLockhart) when they were boarders together at the Dragon preparatory school in North Oxford. They analysetheir experiences at school and at home through the use of contemporary sources, not only written accountsbut also numerous photographs, drawings and paintings. This is an anthropological and historical evocationof British life. It is also an analysis of one of the most interesting schools of the period, as seen through theeyes of three children who experienced that half-foreign country.

The publications: Dragon Days (by Jamie Bruce Lockhart & Alan Macfarlane), Different Days (by Jamie BruceLockhart) and Dorset Days (by Alan Macfarlane) can be ordered on Amazon.co.uk

Current Mass Observersvisit the Archive....

The Mass Observation Archivewelcomed current contributors to theMass Observation Project to an openday in December 2011.

The Observers looked at selected

material from both phases of MassObservation and had a guided tourof the University of Sussex’s SpecialCollection archive store. It was a veryenjoyable afternoon, which we hopeto repeat again in the near future.

Civil disobedienceAutumn 2011 Directive

“I am convinced that a good proportion of civil disobedience comesdown from family life, or the lack of it .” (G3655, male, Tyne and Wear).

“I thought then- and still think- that it is a great thing to live in acountry like ours, where protest can be made without being violently crushed, where speech is free and where injustice can be overcome inmost cases.” (F309, female, Nottingham).

“For all of the negative and depressing images of the [recent riots],there were positive and encouraging aspects, the sight of lots of people getting together and working as a community to clean up and repair damage.” (P4287, male, Wigan).

“The treatment of rioters is a bit of a joke. Give them a term in prison?There are not enough prison places to take them and they know it.”(T2741, male, Peacehaven).

“I think I could distinguish the Occupy protest from the London Riots by saying that the former is driven by people who have a relatively peace-ful passion for a cause, but the latter is driven by anarchy and isn’t directed by a mass cause (excepting anarchy) as much as feral instincts.”(H4906, male, Edinburgh)

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