ROBERTSON, Nicole (2014). The business of leisure: sport, labour and co-operation in post-war Britain. Labor History, 55 (5), 638-653.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Compared with the activities of its European counterparts, the sporting and recreational pursuits of the British labour movement are less well known. Yet the co-operative movement organised an impressive range of sports clubs, competitions and events. Whereas previous studies have examined the relationship between the labour movement and working-class leisure during the interwar years, this article considers the interactions of the co-operative moment with popular discourses on recreation in Britain from the 1950s to the 1970s. In so doing, it challenges assumptions about the Left’s disconnection from sporting culture. The Co-op used sport to create a collective co-operative identity amongst its employees. Examining the social and political context of these activities in post-war Britain can inform debates on the construction of female identity through sport, the use of recreation for business advantage and the extent to which the co-operative movement shaped working-class leisure patterns. Although the article highlights that co-op sport formed a source of tension between the retail and wholesale sections of the movement and could be adversely affected by popular affluence, it argues that a reappraisal of the cooperative movement’s recreational activities contributes to a broader understanding of post-war working-class culture.
Item Type: | Article |
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Research Institute, Centre or Group - Does NOT include content added after October 2018: | Humanities Research Centre |
Departments - Does NOT include content added after October 2018: | Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities > Department of Humanities |
Identification Number: | https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2014.961762 |
Page Range: | 638-653 |
Depositing User: | Nicole Robertson |
Date Deposited: | 26 Jan 2017 12:50 |
Last Modified: | 18 Mar 2021 17:31 |
URI: | https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/14824 |
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