Vacations for All: The Leisure Question in the Era of the Popular Front

Abstract

One of the ironies of the 1930s was the democratization of the summer vacation in Europe. While neither the forty-hour week nor other proposals for economic security were successful, holiday-with-pay won nearly universal acceptance. The vacation was not merely mass escapism as Europe prepared for war; rather the paid holiday was a deeply felt social need which, after the war, became one of the most valued entitlements in Europe. The mass vacation appealed to both the cultural Right and the Left. The holiday-with-pay reflected a consensus that modern work required compensatory leisure in the form of extended periods of time to 'recover' lost values of family and community. Both the fascist dopo lavoro and the nazi Kraft durch Freude shared with the French Popular Front a common functional language of leisure: patriotism would emerge from touring historical sites and meeting fellow countrymen in different regions and walks of life; popular sports and the return to nature would renew national energies; vacations would give 'dignity' and 'joy' to the worker. Is this consensus a reflection of 'deep structures' which transcend politics? In one sense such a view is surely wrong. The political contest was still the animating factor in leisure policy; agreement was primarily over recognition of the growing cultural centrality of leisure as the terrain for the struggle over control of popular opinion. Especially after the first world war, when the eight-hour working-day became nearly universal, elites of both the Left and Right realized the potential political significance of organizing leisure time. For the French Popular Front, the holiday movement was an attempt (perhaps belatedly) to create an alternative to bourgeois or fascist control of leisure.