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60 years ago, an extraordinary
national festival captured

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the imagination of the country.

You saw the future,
you saw the future.

Our impression was, you know,
this is a wonderful place.

The place was alive
with excitement and promise.

The 1951 Festival of Britain
was a celebration designed to show

how a country battered by war,
debt and austerity,

could carve out a new future,

through science, design
and innovation,

whilst still having fun.

The Festival of Britain
was a very nice thing to do

to just get the people together,
and be happy.

It was a very happy place,
beautiful atmosphere.

This was a completely radical,
new vision

of what Britain could look like.

We thought we were making
something new and indeed we were.

We were building the future.

It was a new beginning,
absolutely new beginning.

Told by the people who made it
happen, this is the story of how

one summer, and one extraordinary
festival, changed Britain forever.

On May 7th 1945, there came at last
an end to the war,

which for almost six harsh
years had conditioned the lives
and the aims of the British people.

The British joined in a wild
celebration of victory.

But as the lights went on once more,
the British soberly realised

that if one struggle was ended,
another was just beginning.

Britain had spent all its
resources on this sort
of great crusade to beat Nazism.

So for people in Britain, they've
been living through not just the
great depression in the 1930s

and the Second World War
but they've just lived through

six years of drab,
bombed out, exhausted,

financially bankrupt Britain.

It was harsh.
It was kind of bleak.

There was a bleak atmosphere.

But compared to the Air Force
it was most charming really.

Well, it was still grey
and miserable.

I remember all the stone buildings
were black in those days

because we all had coal fires.

There hadn't been any building worth
a damn for the last six years...

or more. There were still bomb holes
all over the place.

London was full of bombsites
with wild flowers growing
on them everywhere.

It was shabby, shabby, broken,

patched up really, most of it.

And it was colourless.
Colourless, shabby, dull.

The colours were grey and the colours
were camouflage colours really.

No buildings had been painted
externally for ten years I suppose.

It was really depressing,
but one just got used to it.

I think anyone coming from abroad
was astonished how gloomy
and rundown it all was.

About that time
they had the Great Freeze

when the snow came down
and didn't go away.

'Austerity now had quite
a new meaning,

'and for hundreds of thousands
of people,

'the effort to keep warm
was priority number one.'

And as if that wasn't bad enough,

the whole of the country was still
subject to stringent rationing.

Rationing was actually in some cases
worse after the war,

than it had been during the war,
and we'd bread rationing, potato
rationing after the war.

In 1950, a working adult was allowed
seven ounces of butter or margarine,

one egg, half a pound of sugar,

ten pence worth of meat,
two rashers of bacon,

and two ounces of tea... a week.

Yeah, it was all rationed, tea was
rationed, butter was rationed,

milk was rationed,
bread was rationed.

Can't think what
wasn't rationed actually.

'What's much more serious
is the cut in the meat ration,
which was already pretty small.

'It remains to be seen whether this
negative policy will get results,

'or have the old standards
gone forever?'

I can remember coming in from work
one evening and mum said,

"I've got some meat
and it's whale meat."

And I thought,
"Ooh, you know, flipping heck."

I remember whale meat vividly.
It was indescribably revolting.

It was blobs
of this gelatinous material,

which had a very ominous shine
to it.

And it was this very worrying sort
of grey colour. It was ghastly.

It tasted even worse than it looked.

Sweets were rationed.

Sweets were on coupons
so you didn't get a lot of sweets.

And I can also remember
eating a lemon

and it was sharp as anything

but it was the first thing that I had
after the war - was a lemon!

Did you know what a lemon was?

No. No I knew it was sour.

Six years on from the end of the war,

people felt that things had not
really changed that they...

In fact rationing had got worse,
things seemed terribly grey and

dreary and threadbare and tired,

and I think that's why the festival
really struck a chord because

it represented a sort of escapism
and a welcome dash of colour

in what was hitherto
a very kind of grey, grey scene.

The 1951 Festival of Britain
was originally planned

to commemorate the centenary
of the Great Exhibition of 1851.

But as nobody knew what we could
afford, or what it should contain,

a committee, led by former
newspaper editor Gerald Barry,

was set up to design
and build the event.

He was a man of enormous energy
and commitment.

He really believed in modernism,
he really believed in planning.

But he knew what
the possibilities were.

So it was his vision really
that was created on the South Bank
and Barry's...

In my view, Barry's great
achievement was not simply

as a leader, an innovator, but he
had the talent to put around him

a team of young people
who were equally adventurous.

He was not afraid of employing
the younger generation of talents

and letting them have their head.

Charles Plouviez
worked in the main office.

On my floor I was in an office next
to the Director of Exhibitions,

I had Hugh Casson
just across the passage

and Laurie Lee in the next office
down the passage.

You met a lot of interesting people

and they were all youngish,
and keen.

I mean we thought we were making
something new and indeed we were.

It was terrific fun. Coming down
from university it was like being
let into an enormous toy shop.

You had this huge organisation
to play with and there were things
going on, exciting things going on.

I knew it was quite exciting
because in the contracts department

I'd had to complete a contract
for a life-size unicorn.

So it was that sort of a place.

But the first problem
was to find a site.

There were few accessible places
in London which could house
an exhibition of this size.

After much wrangling,
the choice fell

on a badly bombed industrial area

on the south bank
of the River Thames.

It's now been decided to hold
a Festival of Britain in 1951,

and a site has been selected
on the south bank of the Thames.

This is a very blitzed area
and quite apart from the exhibition,
it's proposed to make

the south side of the river here
as imposing as the opposite bank.

It was a dying area.
It was a mess.

There was nothing there
except wasteland.

It was industrial wasteland
that we cleared

and turned into this fantasy land.

'Although final plans
are not yet complete,

'you can get an idea from this
sketch of what London's festival
city of 1951 will look like.

'Permanent features
are to be a concert hall
and eventually a National Theatre

'in what is described
as London's culture centre.'

The South Bank
was to be the centrepiece,

designed to boost morale
and enrich the British way of life.

It was a genuine attempt
to show the brighter side

of what we could
do after the war,

and to show ourselves really
what we were capable of, I think.

And of course a chance
for architects and designers

to show what they could do in the
way of building and design.

It was the first real showcase
they had.

It was a new beginning,
absolutely new beginning.

Clifford Hatts
had recently graduated from
the Royal College of Art.

We weren't interested in what
was behind us.

We were only interested
what was in the front.

And it was... everybody
was given the chance

to use their skills in a new
and interesting way.

There was nothing in a sense
old hat about it.

Everything was brand new.
It was a brave new world in fact.

The young festival designers
and architects were radical.

They wanted to bring the best ideas
of European modernism to Britain.

We were modern, yes, we wanted
to bring the new to England.

We felt that the influence
of the environment

and of buildings on people was huge.

And that if it were changed, people
would have a much happier life.

So we felt this was
an opportunity to show
what the future might be like.

And we were building the future.

It was new, it was different,
experimental and it was brave.

You know, it was shot in the arm
it was really like waking up
from a deep sleep.

But in 1950, not everyone supported
the idea of a Festival of Britain.

It was hated by the Daily Express.

And the Daily Express in those days
was a bit like the Sun today,

it had an enormous circulation,

it was the leading mass newspaper
in the country.

And Beaverbrook just hated
the festival

and he was a close chum of
Churchill's and he hated it too.

And in a time of great austerity
could the country really afford it?

The key thing of course was that
Britain was financially in terrible
trouble in the late 1940s.

We'd had to have this loan from
America, we'd had to devalue
the pound, there was a sense

that the coffers were bare
and a lot of people complained,

particularly on the right,
the Festival was this great state
sponsored jamboree

at a time when we
couldn't afford it.

Tax was running at 19 and six in the
pound on the very high income groups

at the time so they just
didn't like the idea.

There was quite a lot of serious
people saying,

"You shouldn't be doing this,
there's a war on in Korea."

But despite the war on in Korea,
despite the rationing,

despite the sweet ration, despite the
clothing, the festival had to happen,

to sustain the spirit of the future,

to sustain the look ahead,

to turn our backs on the past.

It was a must, it had to happen.

Building the future
was not without its problems.

At the site, management and unions
were frequently at loggerheads.

One of the reasons why the
management was so bad is that
they were mostly ex-military.

They had spent six years saying,
"Do that," and someone did it.

Their management style
was military discipline.

By the same token those who had been
the foot soldiers resented that,

there was tension all the time.

I mean there were
stoppages every other day.

There was this famous phrase
throughout the festival

that everybody had a great time
and a half. I mean the money

was being soaked up
and the strikes were very frequent.

And that was not the only problem.

The rain fell and fell and fell.

The weather was a real problem,
the weather was ghastly.

But the combination of one
of the wettest winters
that we had ever known,

plus the tensions
between management and labour,

it was a miracle the festival
actually took place when it
was supposed to take place.

This was to be a Festival of
Britain, for the whole of Britain.

On May 3rd 1951 the King
launched two days of opening
celebrations at St Paul's Cathedral.

This Festival of Britain

has been planned as a visible sign of
national achievement and confidence.

I declare
the Festival of Britain open

and wish it a universal success.

FANFARE SOUNDS

That evening, a new concert hall,

the Royal Festival Hall,
was opened by the King.

Jean Symons, who had worked
on the site was a special guest.

Oh, it was sensational. I mean I
personally had never seen anything
like it that I could remember.

The Royal Family were ushered
up in the goods lift to get up

to the ceremonial box
and we and other dignitaries

went up in the another lift.

And after it had gone
a few feet it stuck

because it was overloaded.

Jean found herself trapped with
the Festival Director, Gerald Barry,

Chairman of the Council, General
Ismay, and the Lord Mayor of London,
his wife and his mace bearer.

Ultimately, the Lord Mayor
was saying, "Well, they won't
be able to start with you...

"without you, Gerald, you'll have to
be there" and at this particular
point in time I said,

"Well, I think I can hear
the National Anthem."

NATIONAL ANTHEM PLAYS

And after a little while they
did believe that there were

some people missing, and they put,

I think it was one of Robin Day's
chairs from the restaurant,

down into the lift
and we all got out.

I've still got the programme.

And my ticket untorn because
no-one tore it,

and it probably is one of the few
remaining tickets

to the opening night
of Festival Hall.

That night work continued feverishly
to get the South Bank

exhibition site ready for its
formal opening next morning.

We were all there the night before,
working all through the night,

because we wanted to get
everything spick and span.

You couldn't leave it,
we'd been at it for two years

and you could not...
you could not walk away from it.

And then suddenly the cleaners came
in, the commercial cleaners came in
with all their Hoovers and we were

pushed out with their
brooms so to speak.
The women came along saying,

"Get out, get out,"
five o'clock in the morning.

And by that time it was wet.

And all those designers,
all those great and the good

designers, all the knights, and the
Misha Blacks and the Hugh Cassons,

in this damp miserable wet dawn
were standing on the steps
in our raincoats, collars turned up,

half of them in tears practically
because we were thrown out.

There was nothing we could do.

None of us were invited
to the opening at all, none
of the architects and designers.

We were... hadn't been to bed,
unshaven and so on.

And we watched the opening ceremony
through a hedge, as I remember it.

I found a view point in the dry,

clutching my little 9.5 cine camera
on which I had two minutes of film,

under the Dome of Discovery
and filmed what I could see.

Which was mostly, mostly...
mostly rain.

# The Festival of Britain is here

# People are welcome from everywhere

# The Festival of Britain is here

# People are welcome from everywhere

# Can you imagine what it will be

# It is another page
in British history

# One of the cleverest
ideas that ever planned

# In the history of Great Britain

# We shall be singing

# Britain forever, true in every way

# For you are welcome
to the Festival

# That is what the Britishers say

# For more than two years
I understand

# The Government
been making preparation

# They have succeeded
I have been told

# By building the largest concert
hall in the world

# And for the visitors' use of course

# They have erected the bridge
leading to Charing Cross

# They have also completed
beautifully

# The Dome of Discovery

# We shall be singing

# Britain forever,
true in every way

# For you are welcome
to the Festival

# That is what the Britishers say

# The Government really
done their best

# I am sure the event
will be a success

# And we must thank Mr Morrison

# For his amazing admonition

# And after these numerous activities

# We expect to have dollars
in quantities

# It will help
the financial situation

# In this country of Great Britain

# We shall be singing

# Britain forever,
true in every way

# For you are welcome to the Festival

# That is what the Britishers say. #

You saw the future,
you saw the future.

It was like walking into
an outer space city really,

you were seeing something that

had never been experienced before,
and I have never encountered anyone

who experienced the festival who
came away without anything except

a huge feeling of excitement.

The place was alive
with excitement and promise...

..and to go inside the Dome,
was like entering a great sparkling

celebration of the British
way of life, in a way.

It was wonderful.

'How to show the essence of Britain?

'Here beneath the Dome of Discovery,
vast as a city square,

'appears the story of the great
researches, of man's probing
into mysteries,

'of his revelations
of the hidden worlds,

'his mastery of unknown things,
his harnessing of secret forces.'

There was a science section,
there was an outer-space section,

there was an exploration section,

all to do with British achievements,
in discovery... Dome of Discovery.

And our job was to celebrate
the achievements of the
great British scientists.

This is Newton, this is what he did.

The centre of the display
that I did was a celebration

of Frank Whittle's invention of the
jet engine in the 1930s

and that was our centre piece, so
it really went from the 17th century
right up to modern times.

In the 1950s,
Britain was truly at the cutting
edge of technology in electronics,

aviation and atomic energy

And the most striking symbol
of Britain's engineering prowess
was the Skylon.

A towering, 300 foot tall structure

of steel and aluminium.

At the time of course, most
people had never seen these
kind of modernist designs.

The Skylon, you know, floating
there in the sky, that seemed to be
the space age, the new atomic age.

This was a completely radical,
new vision of what Britain
could look like.

It was like a rocket. It just soared
away up into the heavens.

And it seemed to quiver ever
so slightly with the wind.

It was almost alive...

..it was extraordinary.

James Gowan is one of the last
surviving members of the design
team that built the Skylon.

He's one of Britain's
leading architects.

But the original concept
was nothing like the structure
that was eventually built.

Hidalgo Moya's first idea,
was a cigar shaped horizontal.

It was going to be filled with
helium and that was apparently
terribly expensive

and it would move about
in the wind, like a balloon.

It was never really going to work

because you needed a big beefy
thing to get the lift,

not a little slender thing,
you needed a big beefy thing.

And Moya came up with this other
idea, the one that was developed.

It was an astonishing and elegant
example of British engineering.

The joke was,
like Britain's economy,
it had no visible means of support.

I remember people wandering around
the Skylon, saying,

"Well, it can't... it can't be,
there must be you know there must be
something that we're not seeing.

"How does it stand up,
how does it remain rigid?"

So there was a sort
of amazement of that.

Oh, I think one knew it
was going to be striking.

But in fact the scale comes into it,
and all the guy ropes

and the huge cables become much
lighter, in fact they disappear.

It was very uplifting,
and it did dovetail

into this notion
of a brave new world.

I think the Festival of Britain looks
like a signpost to the 60s with
its modernist look and the Skylon,

and the Dome, and its interest
in science and the space age.

Those things are big themes
of the 1960s.

So I think the Festival
is of its time but it's also ahead
of its time in other ways.

The festival was certainly
modern and innovative.

The Telecinema showed films
in 3D with stereophonic sound.

The toilets had soft toilet paper,

the first time it had been
introduced to the public in Britain.

There were outdoor cafes.

And in the evenings,
something special.

I remember as a teenager, you know,
you went dancing.

Oh, I liked dancing, cinema,

boys, of course.

The first time I knew about the
Festival of Britain,

a friend of mine said, "There's
open air dancing at the festival.

"Will you come?"

It was crowded with people,

lots of people and some boys
behind us, young men,

and we started talking to them
and one thing and another.

It was a really nice atmosphere,
everyone was happy.

We danced till it finished.

It had a sort of fairy-tale look

and the whole place
was lit up and illuminated.

And one has to remember not long
before we'd been living in darkness,

we'd been living in the blackout.

The architects had put little pea
lights, for the first time ever,
into concrete.

You'd never seen that
before in your life.

And we would dance and if it was
wet we put our raincoats on.

With everything illuminated,
and all the things moving,

and colour everywhere,
and the Dome sparkling away.

It was a really lovely night.

I remember that night,
it was a very, very nice night.

I think it was a happy time with,
you know, relief from the war,
and it was a nice thing they done.

It was quite new and liberating.
It was so exciting.

One was feeling one was living again.

There was something more
to life than just existing.

Dancing, in the evening.

How about that?

We enjoyed that.

The chief impact of the festival
for me, and I think for a lot
of my contemporaries

this feeling of openness,
feeling of space.

In 1951 Barry Turner,
was 13 years old.

He was just one of the eight
and a half million people who
visited the festival that summer.

People my age, we were bought up
in an authoritarian regime,

we were directed to do things...

do this, do that, don't cross there,
don't do that, walk in line,

queue here, queue here, yes.

There was always a retired sergeant
outside the cinema saying, "Queue
there, everybody in line, you know."

In the festival you didn't feel
any of that at all. You could go
anywhere, you could just walk.

And there was this feeling
of openness.

If I use the word liberation
it may sound I'm exaggerating,
not an exaggeration at all.

There was a liberating
feel about it.

But it was in architecture
and design that the Festival
of Britain made its biggest impact.

The Festival of Britain really
mattered to British design history

because there was that moment
of and explosion of real joy

and pleasure in design
after the Second World War.

The Festival of Britain was an
attempt, this tonic to the nation,

to bring design and day to day life
back into full living colour.

The designs and the look
of it was terribly exciting
because it was so novel

because of course, they lived at
the time in a world, you know, they
didn't have televisions, most people,

they weren't open to the great
flood of images that we have now
in 21st century culture.

So the festival, it was like
opening a door into another world
I think for a lot of people,

and that's one of the reasons why
it was so influential in terms
of design in the years that followed.

The homes and gardens pavilion
attracted people
for a pretty obvious reason.

Most peoples' homes at the time
were petty dowdy. Most people in
Britain had very little furniture,

and to see all these wonderful
new things, including designs
by Robin and Lucienne Day...

It was the first time they'd
ever seen things like this
and they thought...

"I just want that,
I want a home like that."

Light, clean, easy to use
and a pleasure to look at.

The festival does give people
a sense of taste, if you like.

It defines this is style,
this is what style is going

to be in the 1950s and 1960s.

This is what you have to aspire to.

In some ways that's the ancestor
of today's very materialistic,
very consumer driven,

keeping-up with the Joneses society,
but of course at the time, that kind
of world seemed terribly liberating

to people who had felt they had been
shoved into conformity for
the last, you know, decade or so.

And there were whole other areas
where the Festival of Britain

made a lasting impression
on British culture.

I was very musical because
my father had seven brothers

and all of them were musicians.

Sterling Betancourt grew up
in Trinidad.

In the late 1940s there were intense
conflicts and rivalries

between local steel bands
on the island.

They used to stone the police.

They used to be stoning them
and the police have to...

down the hill they have to run,

so they used to leave those people
on the hills alone to...

to play their band on the street,
without permission.

To calm the situation
and unite the musicians

it was decided to send one band
from the whole of Trinidad,

the Trinidad All Steel
Percussion Orchestra,
to the Festival of Britain.

We knew nothing about the Festival
of Britain and it's only that

they say, "Well, we're going
to the Festival of Britain",
and we say, "OK."

But then they said, "Listen,
we going to collect money
from the people of Trinidad",

and everyone donated
and they call it Operation Britain.

We went on a banana boat actually,
called the San Mateo.

# London is the place for me

# London, this lovely city

# You can go to France or America

# India, Asia or Australia

# But you must come back
to London city. #

Imagine you're coming from
a small island, you know.

You haven't got traffic light, you
haven't got anything, you know?

And you see these red buses going
all over the place, you know.

My God! How I'm going to find
my way around this place,
you know, it's so enormous.

Our impression was, you know,
this is a wonderful place.

# At night when you have
nothing to do

# You can take a walk down
Shaftesbury Avenue

# There you'll laugh and talk
and enjoy the breeze

# And admire the beautiful
scenery... #

This is at the Festival Hall

and you see the people there,
they are standing around.

This is Nathaniel Griffith,
the band master.

And this one is me here.

Well, that day it was very funny
because we purposely did not
paint the drums.

They leave it all rusty and well
looking like dustbin you know.

And we set up, you know, and people
start to laugh - they giggling!

What these black men
going to do with the old dustbins?

When we start up, everybody was
shocked, they were looking to see

where the music coming from, and
saying, "Wow, this is black magic."

And we had the West Indians
who were there, they were dancing,

and it was very nice.

And when we finished playing
they want to know

where the music coming from.

Have they got a recording below
there or something like that?

And it was fantastic.

You can see it's young and old
and they were clapping

and, you know,
we got a good reception.

It was very nice.

How much steel pan music had been
heard in Britain before you came?

None, none.

Nobody never knew nothing
about steel bands.

No they didn't know
anything about that.

That really opened up the art form
of coloured people in Britain,

so it was worthwhile, the Festival.

And I hear they have it
every hundred years, huh?

# 60 years ago

# I want the whole world to know

# In 1951 for the Festival
of Britain

# The steel band association
said a steel band must go

# After many suggestions
they name our steel band Taspo

# So Trinidad All
Steel Percussion Orchestra

# That is the sound that make me
remember

# I said Trinidad All
Steel Percussion Orchestra

# That is the sound
that remains forever and ever. #

Away from the South Bank,

a "Living Exhibition
of Architecture" was established
in Poplar,

a part of East London that had
been heavily bombed in the war.

'They're building in Poplar
to replace the nearly 10,000 homes
destroyed in the Blitz.

In the Lansbury neighbourhood
a self-contained community
is rising that will feature

in the Festival of Britain
Live Architecture Exhibition.

Complete villages will be built
with blocks of flats,

houses, schools, shopping centres,
markets pubs and parks.

The work's going ahead fast.

I used to pass it on the bus.
They had flags up,

and I used to look out on these
flats right on the front

that had been built specially
for the festival.

And I used to look out
and think, "Oh, they were so nice",

plus they was all new
and I just liked them and thought
you know they were nice.

The exhibition was to demonstrate
how practical modern architecture,

on a human scale, could help
build strong and viable communities.

In many ways the most interesting
bit of the festival I think

is not the big stuff on the
South Bank that everybody remembers

but it's what happens
at the Poplar Estate,

which is going to be a kind of
laboratory of a new way of living.

Here you have an outpost of the new
Jerusalem, built from the ashes

of this kind of battered old world.

That battered old world
was all too real for Betty Scott.

In 1951 she was living in North
London with her husband, mother and
two children in three small rooms.

Conditions were very basic.

We just had a little black stove,
I don't know what you called them.

And a kettle or a pail or a bath
put on it, and the bath was the old
tin bath which you put by the fire.

'The kitchens are cramped and dark,

'and have to serve as laundry
and bathroom too,

'with tin baths that have to be
filled and emptied by hand.'

And your feet hung outside and then
you put the rest of yourself in!

'And now Francis Noel-Baker
interviews one of the inhabitants.'

Do you live here Mrs Kinnock? Yes.
What's the house like?

Well, it's in a bad way.

Wants pulling down
and pulling up again.

You're hoping to move sometime?
Well, I hope so.

When do you think it'll be?
God knows.

I don't know. All we get
is promises, that's all.

Don't get nothing else.

The toilet was down
on the ground floor.

There was a toilet in the basement,

but the ground floor did for
the first floor, second floor,
and the third floor, yeah.

Six of us.

Six of us because the two old ladies
lived in the basement.

Betty's family were among the first
tenants into the Lansbury Estate.

'Poplar's new Lansbury
neighbourhood,

'which will be a complete
little town when ready,

'welcomes the first tenant.'

Well, it was brand new

and it had got a smashing
bathroom, and basin,

and a toilet all on its own,
and hot water.

"Ooh, lovely!", you know?

To be able to put your whole
body in a bath, imagine it,

and you didn't have to carry
all the water and that,

three flights of stairs
from the basement.

Got a garden!

Fantastic for the two kids.

And it was so spacious, you know?

It was just marvellous after you'd
lived in two or three rooms

all the lot of you, you know, you
got plenty of room, sort of thing.

Fantastic.

The idea was to shape an ideal
London village of the future,

with shops, markets, schools,
churches, pubs.

There was a pub called the Festival.

It was a real piece of England,
a piece of London.

This was something that the planners
behind the festival

poured enormous amount
of energy into.

They saw this, in many ways, I think,

as the crowning point
of the festival.

This was the new Britain.

We were geared to the idea that we
could make life better for people

and almost all the planning
philosophers of the time

were like that.

They really believed they could plan
people into better ways of life

and, to some extent, they succeeded.

'In time there'll be neighbourhoods
like Lansbury.

'It's the dawn of a new era
for London's East End.'

We all came from different
parts of London

and it was marvellous!

We all got on so famously together,
I'm not kidding,

and we always laughed and chatted
to the people next door.

I'm not kidding,
got on real famously,

didn't matter who you were,
and that.

At the time, the Lansbury Estate

was the largest collection
of modernist buildings in Britain.

The Lansbury Estate was like
a city village

built in a gentle,
relaxed modern style.

It was innovative, it was friendly,
it was charming,

but it couldn't and didn't meet
the demand for new housing in London

or in other British cities, and what
replaced it very soon afterwards

was the great, infamous,
concrete estates,

with the high density,
massive towers and brutal concrete.

But I think, since then,
we've started to look back a little

and started to think architecture,
city planning,

needs a bit of joy in it.

Cities should be enjoyable and the
Festival of Britain did show
how that was possible.

But not all of the festival
activities in London

were geared to education
and progress.

Up the river in Battersea,

the Festival Pleasure Gardens
had one sole purpose - fun.

I think the festival represented
a kind of escapism,

it was a fantastic day out,
basically.

I mean, that's what people wanted,
they wanted a day out,

they wanted the chance
to celebrate Britain,

a chance to feel good
about themselves

and a chance to feel good
about their future.

To look at the Britain
that was coming

and the Festival offered
all those things to people.

In September 1951, the Gowlland
family from Croydon in Surrey

set out on a visit to the Festival
Pleasure Gardens in Battersea.

Well, we went by car

because my father didn't really
understand trains

and he never used them if he
could possibly avoid it.

So, the five of us went
in the Rover.

In those days there was so little
traffic on the road

that a journey from Croydon to
Battersea would have been nothing.

Their day out was recorded
on colour film

by their father,
Geoffrey Gowlland.

It was fun, it was colourful,
it was bright, it was different

and everybody did seem
very happy there.

It was a complete antidote
to the austere world

in which we had grown up.

If you look at the cine films
of it,

almost everyone's walking around
with a silly grin on their face.

It was a very happy place,
beautiful atmosphere.

It was like a boardwalk effect
that it ran on,

it made a tremendous noise.

That was good fun.

It seemed to be going at tremendous
speed but of course it wasn't.

Entertainments like that
had almost died out,

there was very little of it
during the war years

and the years
immediately afterwards.

Everybody loved the Emmet railway.

I certainly remember the Emmet
railway, that's my main memory
of Battersea Pleasure Gardens.

Emmet was very popular.

He was a cartoonist who produced
these wonderfully detailed pictures

of decrepit old engines
and we all loved them,

they were very, very popular.

If you ask a dozen people
who went to Battersea,

probably at least ten of them would
name that as their favourite thing.

Things like the railway at Battersea
do look very whimsical and almost
a bit silly,

but I think those are very
important because they

A, testify to a kind of deep love
of comedy and silliness

in our national character,

and secondly, I think, they come
out of something very important,

which is that in the war,
in the Second World War,

celebrating British whimsy,
and a British sense of humour,

and a kind of native silliness,
had been very important.

People had picked on that
and they'd said,

"That's something that differentiates
us from the Nazis.

"The Nazis think they're serious
with their jackboots, marches
and their stupid rallies.

We just like sitting around
with pipes and eating cakes
and having fun.

And I think the festival
celebrated that.

It is saying we are an introverted,
domesticated,
slightly frivolous people

and that's what makes us special,

and we should be proud
and not deny it.

Battersea was the perfect antidote

to the grey days
of the preceding decade.

It was a lovely atmosphere.

It was a very happy time
for everybody there

and you came away from
it feeling energised

and at peace with the world.
It was lovely, never forget it.

Jean Blurton was 19 years old
when she met Tommy Miller
for the first time.

He sort of took to me
and that was it.

Didn't think we'd ever see each
other any more,

but he asked me, then, to go out
with him the following week

to the fun fair that the festival
had put on...

..and that's when we went
to Battersea.

Had a wonderful time there,
it was lovely.

We went on the, erm... Caterpillar
that closes over

and that's when he kissed me,
in the caterpillar.

We were young, innocent...

..that's how it all began.

Oh, I think it was lovely.
Well, it certainly found us two.

Outside of London,

two travelling exhibitions took the
festival's vision of the future
around the country.

The Land Travelling Exhibition

visited four cities in the heart
of England over the summer of 1951.

Dorrit Dekk, an artist
and refugee from the Nazis,

got the job designing
the sports section

after meeting its director,
Dick Levin.

Dick asked me, "Have you done
murals?", I said, "Yes, of course,"

but he was such a fool he didn't
ask to see any.

Dorrit had never painted
a mural before in her life.

I didn't know anything about cricket

and I didn't know anything about
football, or fishing,

but when I brought in the rough
for the mural,

he said, "It's fine, would you
like to do the whole stand?"

Oh, it was hugely loved and visited.

I think it was definitely a success.
I mean, it earned its keep.

The festival even took
to the high seas.

'Visiting ten major British ports
this summer

'is the former escort
carrier Campania,

'with an interesting story aboard.
More than 350,000 people

'have already passed through
the turnstiles to see it

'and she has not yet completed
half her voyage.

'The story she tells is about
Britain and her people.

'The Navy has loaned the ship
to carry the sea-travel exhibition
of the Festival of Britain,

'which, on a small scale, develops
the theme in a similar manner,

'to the exhibition on the South Bank
of the Thames.'

That summer, the Campania was
visited by more than 800,000 people.

'And out of London too

'there was much to show that it was
the Festival of Britain.'

All across the country

there were thousands of local
Festival of Britain celebrations.

Don't forget, if you've had six years
of war, six years of austerity

and you give people the chance
to have a party, they will take it.

And I think people
all over the country

genuinely seized this opportunity
and got very excited about it.

People did put on, you know, some of
them quite silly carnivals and fetes,

I think because they were desperate
to have the opportunity

to enjoy themselves

and to have a day of self
congratulation to an extent.'

I think that really meant
something to people.

That is all the events,

all the things that happened
everywhere in the country
in festival year,

from major music
and drama festivals,

down to bus shelters
and telephone kiosks.

It's the lot.

It was supposed to embrace
everybody's spare time

and everybody's getting together and
building things in their villages

and holding pageants.
And they did!

And it's staggering,
I've never counted
but there were thousands.

This was a precursor
of the big society.

'Since the Festival of Britain was
declared open by the King last May,

'its centrepiece, the exhibition
on the South Bank,

'has proved a big attraction
to people of Britain
and visitors from overseas.

'Nearly 8.5 million people
had passed through
the South Bank turnstiles

'in the five months before
it closed down.

'Impressive figures marking
the widespread interest

'aroused by the exhibition
at home and abroad.

'The last hours included a number
of ceremonies and farewells.

'Tens of thousands were present
and the people sang.'

SONG: "Jerusalem"

# Till we have built Jerusalem

# In England's green
and pleasant land. #

'The official closing of the gardens
by the Lord Mayor of London,
Sir Dennis Lowson,

'was clearly unpopular.'

It is now my duty...

to declare the Festival Gardens
closed for the year 1951.

CROWD BOOS

Thank you all for your wonderful
cheerfulness tonight.

'Battersea Gardens had undoubtedly
been a great success.'

I cried on the way back

because it was all over suddenly,
suddenly I was just nobody.

And I think we were all very sad
when it was taken down.

It seemed a loss but it did its job.

I think it was well worth
every penny.

It was very sad.

We had hoped that we would be able
to wind it up in a graceful fashion.

Labour lost the election
and the Tories wanted it dismantled

and forgotten as quickly
as possible.

So they sold it up, gave it away.

Cleared the site of everything
expect the Festival Hall.

There was a sense of disappointment,
if not anger,

because they could have let it fade
away in a natural sort of way,

but they got the bulldozers in.

Parts of the Skylon
and the Dome of Discovery

ended up as souvenir
paper knives.

Casson said, "If you cement bricks
together to last for six months,

"they'll last for 60 years,"

and most of those buildings would
have survived to this day I think.

I think you really can see
the Festival of Britain
as a turning point.

I think it's a turning point from,
like an old kind of cramped
collective Britain

to a much more new, and open,
and mobile consumerist one.

Many of the sort of promises of
the festival have now been realised.

We do live in a world where we take
art and design more seriously.

We live in an age that's been
transformed by science and technology

and there's a scientific optimism
to the festival

that I think was hugely important in
the second half of the 20th century

and in many ways I think you can see
the festival as a preview of that.

It's completely ahead of its time
in anticipating so much to come.

I think the festival
did change Britain.

People now are beginning to realise
the 50s was far more innovative

than we gave it credit it for
at the time,

but I think, looking back now,

you can see a lot of what happened
in Britain in the 60s and 70s

that had its origins
in the Festival of Britain.

Well, I think it's a little bit
of history.

I thought the Festival of Britain
was a very nice thing to do,

to just get the people together
and be happy,

and that's how I remember it.
It was very nice.

I loved it, I had such
a gorgeous time there

and I still believe in a lot
of the things that it produced.

I think clean-lined furniture
and architecture

is a good thing and it was
tremendous, it was...

it was the most exciting
job I've ever had.

I couldn't have enjoyed it more.

It was such an interesting
innovation

and it was such a great time
for young designers

that I look back on it
with great pleasure.

It was indeed enough for one
lifetime, I can tell you!

# The Festival of Britain
will always be

# As an evergreen in your memory

# The Festival of Britain
will always be

# As an evergreen in your memory

# After 100 years passed and gone

# Keeps on again 1951

# So the whole world
came in to see... #

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