Style: John Clarke

Abstract

The subcultural styles with which we have been primarily concerned in this volume are not limited to the sphere of leisure, but it is centrally in this domain that they have become most visible. This may seem obvious, but in fact it requires explanation. Leisure is often represented as ‘free time’, an area of ‘free choice’. In fact working class leisure time is neither free nor unconstrained by structural and cultural determinants. Yet there is a sense in which leisure represents (and has historically represented, at least since modern working class culture took shape in the latter half of the nineteenth century) an area of relative freedom. We would argue that this is primarily because the tight discipline of work, maintained through technical organisation and managerial supervision, as well as by the physical structure of tasks and co-ordination between tasks, cannot be maintained in the same way outside the workplace. It also derives from the fact that the relation of the working class to leisure is ‘disciplined’ by a cash relation. Working class leisure is limited by the amount of the weekly budget which can be devoted to recreation: but working class consumers have the power to withhold what cash they have from the providers of leisure services, and consequently have a relative freedom to choose between a variety of alternatives. This is particularly so in relation to those who provide services exclusively to a working class clientele (small shopkeepers, pub landlords, etc.). Foster (1974), in his study of mid-nineteenth century Oldham, calls this the power of ‘exclusive dealing’: the threat to withdraw custom was actually used to persuade shopkeepers who failed to vote for Radical candidates in the 1837 election. In addition to these ‘customary rights’ of a working class clientele over services mainly provided by someone else, there are the leisure facilities provided by the working class community itself – societies, clubs, associations, most particularly the Working Men’s Clubs (taken over by the clientele from industrial finance in 1884). An instance somewhere between the two is the case of football which, despite its non-working class financial and management structure, has, since the 1880’s, been massively shaped by its supporters.