Not Just Beer and Bingo! a Social History of Working Men's Clubs

Not Just Beer and Bingo!

A Social History of Working Men’s Clubs

Ruth Cherrington

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© 2012 by Ruth Cherrington. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 07/20/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3184-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3185-2 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter One Establishing The Early Clubs

Chapter Two Taking The Traditions Into The 20Th Century

Chapter Three Bringing The Kids Along: Clubs As Family Places

Chapter Four Taking Their Turns: Entertainment

Chapter Five No Ladies Allowed? Women Finding Their Space For Pleasure

Chapter Six Games, Sports And Gambling

Chapter Seven Working Women And Entertaining Ladies

Chapter Eight Dealing With Diversity

Chapter Nine Where Have All The Members Gone?

Chapter Ten Survival, Revival And The Future

Notes

Bibliography

About The Author

This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents:

John ‘Jack’ Cherrington and Freda May Cherrington

 (nee Bucknall) 

They loved their club and I loved going there with them!

Acknowledgements

Many people have helped me with this book in many different ways. Some I know very well indeed such as family members and friends, who all put up with my ‘clubs stuff’ for more years than I care to mention! You are all thanked and yes, it’s probably my round at the bar. Others were strangers to begin with but once we got talking about clubs, they soon became friends. Many have offered me their interesting, funny, sad and sometimes unprintable club stories and experiences. I have visited many clubs where I was made welcome and shown around. I want to express my gratitude to everyone for their help and the occasional half of lager! Practical advice and support came from former Club and Institute Union General Secretary Kevin Smyth, who first made available for me over 100 years of Club Journals. Geoff Booker suggested I needed a website dedicated to club history and then kindly set one up for me which has gone from strength to strength. I gained a lot of useful and interesting information through www.clubhistorians.co.uk and have made more club friends. Clubs may struggle these days but I have been privileged to meet those who are trying their best to keep their clubs open for their members. You are all remembered and thanked here.

Introduction

Working men’s clubs (WMCs) had been in existence for almost a hundred years by the time I was taken into one as a toddler in the late 1950s. Our club, the Canley Social in Coventry, was situated just across the street and was like an extension of our living room. Most family gatherings and celebrations took place there, as did those of many local families. It felt like the centre of our community and the place to be.

On a typical weekend the club would be so busy that dad would have to get there early to save some seats. The usual tactics involved putting coats on chairs and pens on the table in readiness for bingo. Most club members made their territorial claims in the same way.

Even though our club was so near, it was a still a treat to be taken there for a night out: as there were seven of us, we had to take it turns. Once there we were sure to be both entertained and to find ways to entertain ourselves, never too far from our parents or our bottles of pop.

During the heyday of WMCs in the early 1970s, the crowded, smoke-filled rooms of the Canley Social were typical of over 4000 others up and down the country. They made up a thriving national network, overseen by the Club and Institute Union (CIU).¹ There were as many as four million club members in the boom years with thousands more on waiting lists to join. Taken together, they constituted one of the largest voluntary organisations in the world.

The late John Reynolds, a long term Warwickshire CIU official, told me how club life was simply ‘unique within itself. You could almost say they were the social side of the city.’ Clubs were not only central to their member’s leisure time but played many important community roles.

Whether well established in inner city areas or relatively new on council estates like ours, a club was a shared social space with familiar activities that made a night out both predictable and yet special. Clubs claimed a place at the heart of working class communities. It didn’t matter whether a club was in Nottingham or Notting Hill, Doncaster or Lancaster, there was always a variety of similar communal activities on offer.

Club life was instilled in us from an early age with its annual calendar of Christmas parties, Easter bonnet parades and summer outings, as well as the weekly routine of concerts, raffles, games nights, glamorous granny contests and talent shows. A club was much more than its bricks and mortar. More often than not clubs were paid for, even built by the founder members. Going to the club was a regular feature of everyday life. Warwickshire CIU official Regan Blount put it this way:

A bloke clocked out at half past four or if he did over-time at 5.00. He walked through the front door, dinner was brought out, by his wife. You sit down and eat it. Half hour in the chair with his newspaper. Showered, well, washed and changed and gone up to the club for 7 o’ clock till 9 o’clock. Then go back home and put the kids to bed and gone to bed himself at 10 o’clock. He went out for his two or three pints. It wasn’t binge drinking or anything like that.

This changed only slightly once the weekend came round:

You got to Friday night with the games and the wife and child went out with him. And Saturday you went as a family unit again because there was entertainment on or bingo. The wife could play bingo and the kid had got something there as well. Normally the kids would have to behave themselves with a bottle of pop and a packet of crisps.

There were strong links to personal and family histories, as with my own family, as well as to histories of whole communities. People socialised with those they lived near to, worked with, went to school with, perhaps would marry and have a family with. Clubs slotted into the post-war Welfare State ideal of offering something from the cradle to the grave which is probably why many Labour run councils were supportive of them in that era.

Wedding receptions, christenings and 21st birthday parties were held in clubs. On the more sad occasions such as after funerals, family and friends of deceased members would gather respectfully to commemorate their lives with beer and sandwiches. This is exactly what happened after first my father and then my mother passed away. Their send-offs had to be in their favourite room in the club they had been members of since it opened more than 50 years before.

It was a Sunday morning tradition to hold a minute’s silence for any member who had passed away that week. Everyone stood up for another old—timer as ‘Abide with Me’ was played in all rooms. Whenever I hear that refrain now, I still think about all those Sunday mornings when everyone stopped what they were doing, even at the bar.

The passing of an older member meant that everyone’s number would automatically move up when subscriptions (‘subs’) were due, with the more senior ones getting ever nearer to the ‘coveted honour’ of being Number One—the first on the register. This often signified that they were one of the founder members of the club and was something special.

Clubs were widely seen as safe spaces, close to home. A survey in the mid 1980s found that almost 50% of members normally walked to their main club and the four main attractions were ‘sociability, entertainment, games and drink.’² Nearly a quarter of those questioned liked clubs because of the live entertainment with a similar proportion welcoming lower drink prices in a place they would be sure to bump into someone they knew.

This social factor was and remains a key part of the pleasure of club life as being in friendly company and meeting people are highly valued. Chris Smith, a sprightly 89 year old when I spoke with her in 2010, had this to say about a club night out in her home town of Newcastle.

Well, you went in there, you’re all sitting around having a good old chat. The Geordies are ever so sociable, they mix in with anybody, and we went and had a game of bingo. When the bingo finished, the dance started and we all got up and had a good old dance, you know. The band were proper old timers. It’s like waltzes and foxtrots and all the likes of that. We stayed till the club finished, must be about 11, half past 11. They chucked us out then! And we were all merry when we came home.

Her story is typical of what people did in their different clubs across the UK. At the Intake Club in Doncaster, senior member Ralph spoke of the camaraderie of clubs that ‘you don’t often find in pubs and there’s always games to play.’ He jokingly added that ‘you can get away from wife quite easy!’ His club mates sitting around the table reminded him that he couldn’t get too far away, as she was a regular as well at this club that had served the community through good times and bad.

Each club has distinctive characteristics, some being not much bigger than a living room. Others might have large rooms with extensive facilities and those with land could have football pitches and bowling greens. Some allowed children in from their early years whilst others didn’t. There were different rules about ‘lady’ members but restricted access and rights were common until the CIU finally voted in favour of full equality in 2007.

Some clubs retained the early CIU educational ideals, with reading rooms and lectures, for longer than others whilst others found different ways to offer ‘self-improvement’ to their members. Displays of art created by members, visits by theatre groups or keep-fit classes for pensioners, are all examples here.

Despite the many differences, the many shared features of clubs make it easy for members of one to feel very much at home in another, with a form of club tourism going on across the country. In previous decades men on holiday with their families would look for the trusted CIU sign outside a club, knowing they could go in and find something like they had in their club back home. It was one of their clubs, part of the ‘Union.’

Clubs were ‘private members’ institutions so only fully paid up members and signed-in guests could use them. This was the law and clubs allowing in non-members could face prosecution. Most had a doorman (never a door woman!) who sat near the entrance with all the regulations to hand, the visitor’s book, and a newspaper to read. His reward was usually a few pints while he sat in that draughty space, keeping an eye on who was coming and going.

Forming and joining clubs may seem something peculiarly English to do. Victorian gentlemen had their private members clubs and working men wanted something similar, a place where they could read the papers, chat with fellow members and play a game of something. They sought an alternative to the pub, which though often at the centre of social life, was ultimately about making money for the proprietor. Clubs would be owned and managed by members, with all the social life of the pub but minus the profit motive.

The club idea was supported by aristocrats and clergymen such as the teetotal Reverend Henry Solly who founded the (WM)CIU in June 1862. Social reformers saw the potential of clubs for improving the leisure time of working men by getting them out the pub going habit. They intended to provide practical and financial help and even Queen Victoria made a donation!

As a child, I knew nothing of this long history. I was unaware of the parallels between what went on in our club across the street and those 19th century clubs, whose members were much poorer both in terms of time and money. I had little idea that Coventry was known in the post-war period as the ‘queen of club cities’ because of its vibrant club scene.

The centrality of clubs in working class leisure might surprise non-club goers with few complete accounts of club life. This can mean WMCs are sometimes viewed in stereotypical ways with flat caps, ferrets, pints of beer, dominoes, bingo and meat pies all part of the image. The Leicester Square Theatre put all of these on the publicity flyer for its Working Men’s Club event, which included a meat raffle, darts, a quick game of bingo and stand up comedians.³ The intention was not to send up clubs but pay tribute to their important role in leisure and live entertainment.

The Wheeltappers and Shunters Club, set somewhere ‘up north’ was a popular TV version of a club broadcast in the 1960s to 1970s.⁴ There were turns on stage, an entertainment secretary calling the audience to order and tables overflowing with pints. Phoenix Nights, hosted by comedian Peter Kay, was another club-based sitcom.⁵ Some real life clubs closely resembled these fictional versions but offered more than what viewers saw in these shows in terms of community spirit.

I was fortunate to have been part of the generation that experienced the heyday of club when it seemed that the good times would never end. But since the mid-1970s more than 2000 have called ‘last orders’ for the final time. Clubs look to be in sorry state now with small memberships and large debts and scenes of members queuing to get in are a distant memory. This is partly a reflection of the loss of ‘working men’ and the industries that employed them which were often the backbone of communities where clubs thrived.

The decline is noticeable in the empty rooms that were once packed and the lack of younger faces amongst the remaining members. It’s easy to draw the conclusion that WMCs are disappearing for good. The closure in August 2008 of Coventry WMC, one of the oldest, was more than the loss of another club but ‘a tragedy’ according to its secretary Graham Shields. ‘Years of history have disappeared at the stroke of a pen. Finance is more important than history it seems.’⁶

Finance was a key element in the club’s demise but the decline is more generally linked to the far-ranging social and cultural changes of the past few decades. These have affected not only patterns of work but also what people do in their time off. In the early 1970s, the peak of the club movement, only body-builders went to the gym—it was not the popular leisure time pursuit it has now become.

Computers, DVDs and the Internet were either not invented or yet to establish themselves as part of popular culture. Cinemas, once thought to be on the edge of the abyss in the 1970s, have reinvented themselves and multiplexes now attract millions each week. Eating out in the early 1970s was a special treat and the take-away phenomenon just getting going. The first J.D. Wetherspoon’s pub⁷ offering competitively priced drinks and food had yet to open and the supermarkets were not selling alcohol as a loss leader. People could still smoke just about anywhere they wanted to without the threat of prosecution.

The death of my father in 2003 was a wake-up call as I realised that his generation of club builders and goers was fast disappearing. They had stories to tell of ordinary people enjoying club life and these needed documenting before it was too late. My own personal experiences were a suitable starting place but I soon ventured far beyond the Canley Club. This book is the result of a journey that has seen me digging into the past and taking a peek into the future, one that has taken me literally around the country and virtually across the globe thanks to the Internet.

I have interviewed scores of club users, officials and entertainers. There have been some funny, fascinating and poignant stories shared as well as a common enthusiasm for club life, especially for how it used to be. I received a good deal of encouragement for my research as clearly very few others outside the club movement have shown much interest.⁸ Clubs are not without their critics either and some of their points are also included in this books.

Whether or not clubs have had their day is a matter of debate: those involved in trying to revive them will make a strong case in their favour. Are they merely clinging on nostalgically to bygone times or is there something about clubs that should be kept alive?

The volunteer ethos of clubs with people chipping in and doing what they can remains a strong characteristic. This has always been a key part of club life along with the charity work and fund raising and fits well into the ‘Big Society’ concept. Volunteering and community work have been flagged up as activities we should all be doing to help fix ‘broken Britain’ in economically challenging times.⁹ Clubs had these ideals long before the ‘Big Society’ idea came along and were not-for-profit institutions before the term had been thought up.

There were round 2000 CIU clubs still open for business in mid—2012 when the CIU celebrated their 150th anniversary. Some clubs have been put on firmer footing by taking a more business-like approach, rethinking what they offer and how they operate. Those that cannot adapt to a rapidly changing world are going under.

This book brings together the key aspects of club life and offers the first comprehensive social history of this once popular and much loved social institution. Historical context and key facts are woven into the experiences, memories and opinions of respondents, as well as some of my own. The club story begins in Victorian times with music halls, social reformers and temperance ministers all competing for the hearts, minds and leisure time of working men. It comes right to the present challenging period with a glimpse at the future prospects.

The focus of this work is on WMCs and other clubs that didn’t have ‘working men’s’ in their title but were affiliated to the CIU. Some clubs had allegiances elsewhere such as Miners Welfare and the Royal British Legion, which could affiliate to the CIU if they wished to. They had many similar features and much their history and development parallels the WMCs including the current situation of decline. The sweep of this work, therefore, goes beyond the CIU’s own clubs.

The CIU’s own history is drawn upon but that is detailed very well in George Tremlett’s Clubmen: the History of the Working Men’s Club and Institute Union.¹⁰ This book does discuss how the CIU worked with and behalf of clubs since its establishment in 1862, noting its achievements as well as the more dubious decisions it took.

Writing about a national movement was at times an overwhelming prospect with so many clubs involved and the many aspects of what they offer. Each chapter could have been a book in itself and for the reader’s sake, some events and activities have been introduced only briefly. It’s impossible to cover every club but those included here provide illustrative examples of the social, recreational and community roles that clubs played right across the country. Coventry might figure prominently but other cities take centre stage as well.

The main message is simply the one found in the book’s title, that clubs were always about much more than beer and bingo and this remains the case today. The need for people to ‘club together’ for pleasure, mutual support and practical help is perhaps even more vital today than ever before.

Chapter One

Establishing the Early Clubs

Working men in the late 19th century wanted their own clubs and members of the upper class thought that these would be better places than pubs. Clubs fitted into the perspective of the rational recreation movement that aimed at halting a perceived moral decline in society. The focus was on the ‘problem’ of leisure, particularly excessive drinking. A key mover and shaker was the temperance minister Reverend Solly, who believed clubs would address the social ills of ‘intemperance, ignorance, improvidence, and religious indifference.’ He recruited wealthy supporters to help working men set up their clubs even if they didn’t always agree on what clubs should offer.

Why were clubs needed?

Right across the centuries, men and women have socialised in some form of tavern, ale or public house: having a drink in the company of others appears a very natural thing to do. Pubs have been popular venues right across the class divide, very often at the centre of leisure time activities as well of local communities.

For poorer people, they offered ‘an escape from bleak, overcrowded lodgings to warmth and light, talk and perhaps a song, all for few a few pennies. A half-pint, carefully nursed, could last all evening, and on payday more liquor bought blessed oblivion for some from pressing problems, crying children and an uncertain future.’¹ Beer washed away the problems for a while even if it did little to change their overall situation.

There was a patronizing tone in much of the writing about the drink-obsessed working classes that was not matched by condemnation of the habits of their social superiors. They were seen to possess a higher level of civilization and better equipped to resist the temptations of the ‘demon drink.’

WMCs, which began to appear from the mid-19th century onwards were intended by the likes of CIU founder Henry Solly to offer an alternative to the pub, free of intoxicating liquor and with opportunities for learning and self-improvement. He thought the term ‘club’ was preferable to ‘college,’ as that put too much emphasis on education. But what exactly is a ‘club’? The late Vic Butler, a prominent councillor and club supporter in post-war Haringey (London) defined it in this way:

When two or three are gathered together in my name, there is my church, or Club some might say. In short, a Club is a coming together of like—minded individuals for common purposes, be they social, educational, recreational or political.²

WMCs would include all of these features in varying degrees depending on the ideals of their founding members. They were to offer the companionship and sociability of a good pub, possibly some entertainment and educational activities but with no profit for breweries and publicans. That for some supporters meant they would serve light refreshments only. For others, that included being able to buy beer that hadn’t been adulterated to boost the profit of unscrupulous landlords.

Some employers saw the value of clubs as healthy alternatives to pubs. This may have been Dorset landowner Horlock Bastard’s thinking when he set up a village club in