Faber & Faber

I simply could not be a historian of the first half of the 20th century without the resources of Mass Observation - nor, I suspect, could many others. I first became fully aware of the riches of the archive way back in 1990 when I was starting the research for a book about the GIs in Britain. Since then I have made extensive use of every sort of material the organisation produced: day surveys, reports, diaries and published books. I have looked at the early idiosyncratic surveys of such wonderfully intrusive subjects as what people had on their mantelpieces, and moved from those to the wealth of material contained in the diaries and that produced by Mass Observation for the Ministry of Information during the war, monitoring and reporting on that elusive thing called ‘morale’.

The value of M-O must surely be their interest in the whole panorama of human experience - their intention was not be statisticians engaged on ‘scientific’ research, but rather, as their name indicates, observers, listeners. They recognised that what people said and the way they said it - even where they said it - was the only way that the real essence of British society at a particular time could be captured, its diversity appreciated, its prejudices and misapprehensions recognised for the insights they too provided.

And so much of the riches that M-O netted was distilled in the series of books that Faber are now republishing. For finding out ‘how it was’ in wartime, I would particularly single out War Begins at Home which exactly captures the mood of uncertainty in the early days, and is properly critical of the gap still between the leaders and the lead, and War Factory - a perfect example of what M-O did so brilliantly. It provides a compelling picture of the lived experience of munitions work largely for women - in effect how the Minister of Labour, Ernie Bevin’s policies really worked on the ground.

For my most recent book, a portrait of the 1930s to be published in February 2010, I again, of course, turned to M-O to answer so many questions of ‘what it was like’. There were day surveys, and a few diaries, but it was the published books I found invaluable, records of those early days catching the zeitgeist in ‘Worktown’ (Bolton), absorbing the atmosphere of ‘Holidaytown’ (Blackpool), probing the psyche of ‘Metrop’(Fulham). There was First Year’s Work - a lot about what M-O was all about as well as about smoking, doing the Pools etc. May the Twelfth is a fascinating record of one day, the coronation of George VI, an event far more momentous than the usual royal occasion since it followed the abdication of Edward VIII - itself part of the reason that M-O was brought into existence since it was obvious that those ‘in charge’ had very little idea what the rest of the population was thinking. The Pub and the People turns out to be a rich portrait of Britain at ease in an area hard hit by unemployment in the thirties, full of the complex nuances and rituals of class and gender that M-O excelled at divining.

Finally, though Puzzled People was published after the war, it uniquely drew on a long span examination of religious beliefs and attitudes and the part these played in people’s lives, atheism as well as belief, spiritualism as well as church attendance.

In short, Mass Observation books provide readers today with an unparalleled narrative of Britain, a ‘people’s history’ that is peerless in its authenticity, its vividness - and its warmth.

Juliet Gardiner is an historian and former editor of History Today magazine. She is the author of several books including Wartime: Britain 1939-45 and Over Here: GIs in Britain During the Second World War. Her latest book Sitting on a Jigsaw: Britain in the Thirties was published in May [more].