Conference moira::naturism

45.0. "Rx prog re nuding in Britain in 20s and 30s" by RDGCSS::MURRAY () Fri Apr 22 1988 13:37

About a year or so ago I taped a program on radio 4. I dug it out a couple
of days ago and thought it might afford some small amusement so in the absence
of Decvoice here's a transcript. Remember its a radio prog and the voices
are not always identified.

		Nar: - Narrator
		VxM: - mans voice
		VxF: - womans voice
		VxM: (reading)  clearly quoting from newspaper or
				journal of the time

What you cant get of course are the voice clues but most of the contributors
seemed to be the right age to be nuding in the 20s/30s i.e. aged 60/70+
now.                

Some of the vox pop stuff I just could't get so I've ... left it out plus
the ... ums and ... aahhs, and (me: sometimes I've added what I think would
have made sense).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Carry on up the shrubbery"

The  story of Britains pioneering Nudists in the '20s.  and 30 as Narrated by
Harry Thompson. 

Nar:  In the late 20s, those long hot summers started in Britain and all at
once they they were, the Nudists. It was like they'd been a fifth column all up
and down England, and in the summer the sea-side post-cards were suddenly full
of bare pink people. 

FX:   Music - "The sun has got his hat on"

     VxM:   The skin is the largest organ of the body ... and the
     more top-flight physical tone we can get in our skin the
     better for us... 

FX:   Music

     VxM:   Now I've got no objections, as I've said many times
     about people showing their breasts and bosoms and genitalia
     to one another - good luck to them. But for heavens sake go
     somewhere where its a little more private. 

FX:   Music

Nar:   The fellowship of the naked trust - that's how it all started in England
in the 1890s for the sake of health, decency, beauty they said. But like beauty
it didn't last. Modern nudity really started in Germany about 1900, the youth
leagues. And in 1903 the worlds first nudist park opened on a lake near
Hamburgh. It was all cold water and Gymnastics, and German nudism was like
that, organised, purposeful. And huge. Like Wagner done in a bath-house. And
one nude professor had this plan for an entirely nude nation. And when the
Nazis squashed the movement in 1933 there were 3 million practising nudists in
Germany. In Britain, organised nudism took of in the '20s. And it found what it
seemed like the whole country ready, willing and able. 

FX:   Music

     VxM:   I'd taken to cycling, youth hostelling ... West wales
     and get onto the beaches down there And it gradually got to
     the state where ... we didn't bother about a costume. 

     VxM:   My parents and I lived in Norwich and ..we  had a boat
     on the broads. at that time it was perfectly possible and
     indeed common for people to bathe naked and as I enjoyed
     going naked and sunbathing I soon got into the habit of
     taking our boat out and stripping off and that's how it all
     started. 

     VxF:   .. the place to go hiking was the Yorkshire moors, and
     we carried  the minimum of things and a bathing costume was
     never included. And we used to swim in xxx reservoir and walk
     over the moors in the sunshine and the air ... and it was
     wonderful. 

FX:   music - "I'm happy when I'm hiking"

Nar:   In the '20s if you were poor life could be as exciting as paddling in a 
sink full of dirty dishwater, so people made their own pleasures .. crystal 
sets ... pigeons ... and their allotment but first and foremost a proportion 
took to the road "I'm happy when I'm hiking" and you got away into the fields, 
picking things in season, hops, potatoes and strawberries. There was a sort of 
innocence in it. But when you took off your clothes you took off the town as 
well. Norman T... remembers those early days.

     VxM:   My impression is that particular generation was much
     less prudish than .. the present generation - that nudity was
     much more generally accepted than it is at the present time -
     that many people you would expect to be prudish were not in
     the least. ... my own father and mother weren't concerned in
     the least that I should go about naked on the broads. It was
     a perfectly natural thing to do. 

Nar:   and for good scientific reasons. Consumption which we now call T.B. was 
rife then - it haunted the smoggy towns and I knew two families completely 
wiped out by it. The Sanatoria in Switzerland and France were right outside 
ordinary people pockets. And then about 1920 it dawned on somebody that natures 
own cure rose daily in the east and set in the west and occasionally shone on 
England.
Heliotherapy, as they called it, was born. Sun and Air bathing became the main 
... of the nudist movement. Jack Grey was in the vanguard of early nudism, and 
his house is crammed with photographs, mementoes and magazines.

     VxM:   In volume 1 number 1 of Sun Air and Beauty .. the Sun
     society .. illustrated we have Sunlight and health... ...
     extract by Dr Kathleen ... famous gynaecologist who served
     many years in India and was horrified at the deaths of babies
     to Indian women .. kept indoors and never saw the sun. She
     was one of the original people who promulgated nude
     sunbathing ... without light there is no life. 

Nar:   That's not quite true - look under a stone. But Jack Grays Sunbathing
review was soon joined by a rash of little magazines, Gymnos, Dawn, Verity and
Sunlight, they sound like air fresheners . But the propaganda powerhouse of
European Nudism was Germany 

     VxM:   My conversion to .. organised nudism came about by
     reading a book "man and Sunlight" by Captain  Hans Soran? a
     German major who was subsequently dismissed from the German
     army  for advocating nudism amongst his ranks. The gallant
     major's idea was that if you all stripped off naked we should
     be healthier as a result and the cultivation of the body
     beautiful would lead to a more healthy approach to living and
     indeed a healthier mind. 

Nar:   Nudism was finding its leaders. And England made one in particular. He
wanted Nudism to emulate the militancy of the suffragettes. And apart from
advocating the desirability of shooting all non-nudists he wanted to lead a
nude march through Hyde Park. He was a source of acute embarrassment to
everybody. Captain H.H.Vincent 

     VxM:  (reading) A new school has arisen amongst us which
     holds that clothing is the mark of the beast. And that
     complete nudity is the sign and seal of the higher
     civilisation. The leader of this school is Captain
     H.H.Vincent B.A. B.Sc.. He holds that the tailor is as it
     were the enemy of the Human race. Captain Vincents object is
     to save humanity by making it go naked. He's a very serious
     man. And one of the leading spirits of the Sun Ray Club. He
     asks "what is this much vaunted socialisation, this
     Frankenstein monster usurping our youth  , this hell-begat
     curse known as civilisation . The answer appears to be -
     trousers. Captain Vincent wants us ultimately to abandon them
     . A movement that will lead us back to complete nudity will
     be , as he says , good for morality. Zulus , he argues , go
     naked and their standards of decency and morality are higher
     than ours. 

Nar:   Captain Vincent and Hans Soran? were both ex-soldiers who took to the
woods and early nudism tended to be dominated not by the nut-cutlet and sandal-
shod brigade but by soldiers and clergymen, like the reverend Clarence Norwood.
In 1933 he became another nudist guru with a slim volume "Nudism in England" 

     VxM:   I became interested and quite frankly I was tormented
     as a lot of young fellows are by curiosity about the female
     body. I felt that Christian basis of it would be that no part
     of the human body could be indecent. And while in the Bible
     nudity is a symbol for ... depravity ... there is a saying of
     Christ to the effect that the body is more than raiment. Why
     are you worried about clothes? God will provide them ... that
     was the sort of theological basis ... 

Nar:   curiosity regarding the human form is not a rare phenomenon confined to
a few perverts ... but is a natural thing. And in 1928 nature herself came to
the rescue of British Nudism with a massive shot in the arm. The Summer of 28
was a scorcher and all Britain sizzled. And that heatwave summer started an
outdoor cult that spread over the whole decade of the 30s 

FX:  Music

Nar:   These are the league of health and beauty days ... on the sea front ,
Lidos in every city and the new-fangled motor caravan bouncing along the
highway. We hiked and biked and youth hostelled and nudism came rolling in over
Britain on a wave of muscle toners, Sloanes liniment, suntan oil and calamine
lotion. And by 1939 an estimated 40,000 nudists would be roaming the hills and
dales of rural England, and Kath Hall was one of them. 

     VxF:   I'd got one child and was expecting another. In those
     days of course you didn't get holidays with pay. and my
     husband saw a naturist magazine and he thought oh that would
     be a jolly good idea for a holiday for Kath. I was absolutely
     astonished when he brought it home. I'd no idea that anything
     organised existed. 

Nar:   But exist it did. The British formed clubs as only the British know how.
There was the Sun Bathing Society, and the National Sun and Air Association.
And the Gymnosophist Society. Gymnosophist is Greek and means naked
philosopher, and they were prone to quote Plato and Aristotle and they opened
Britains first ever nudist park in Essex in 1927. The rush towards nakedness
might have been just a craze, as temporary as hula hoops and skate boards, but
it kept going because it was fuelled by extraordinary events and missionary
zeal. The missionary zeal was supplied by Charles McCasky? a hairy Scot who
used every penny he'd got to buy a wood in Hertforshire. He called it
Speilplatz, play place in German, and it was to become the only nudist village
in England. Mccasky stood 6'2" in his socks and he was a character. As his
daughter Isolte remembers. 

     VxF:   Once he became an adult he never ever wore trousers.
     He always wore a kilt.  Even that he wouldn't wear unless he
     was going out somewhere and had to. We acme to live here in
     1929 and by 1930 he was getting enquiries asking as he'd got
     a piece of ground of his own would he rent them plots for a
     chalet or a tent for holiday use. And my parents were very
     pleased to do that, because they were on their own and nudism
     wasn't known greatly in this country. So he thought well why
     not? If other people want to share my ideal why not? .. he
     had 12 acres of ground 

Nar:   Spielplatz flourished from the start. Its still flourishing today. A
Medley of trees, little painted chalets, a touch of crazy paving, a sort of
toytown in  the trees, only half an hour from central London. During the war it
became a haven for bombed out Londoners. And its been a haven for 30 or so
families ever since. 

Spielplatz was hidden in the trees. But in June 1930 a very public event 
brought nudism into the headlines. Just off the North Circular Road there's the 
Welsh Harp reservoir. Today its mostly deserted apart from the occasional 
dingy. But in June 1930 it was the scene of a riot. an enraged mob 200 strong 
attacked a party of sunbathers. The sunbathers were mostly unemployed men, too 
poor to afford bathing costumes and indeed any other pleasures, and they were 
joined by members of the Sun Ray Club, led by captain H.H.Vincent B.A. B.Sc. 
again, and they started to sunbathe on the grass. Captain Vincent chalked up 
notices - sunbathing ground, keep away!. And next day a number of nude women 
bathers joined the men. Word spread and crowds of the righteous gathered from 
far and near to witness this depravity.

     VxM:  (reading) Since the news first appeared in the
     newspapers about the sunbathers people have come from all
     parts of London to see them. There is also an extraordinary
     increase in the number of women bringing dogs to the waters
     edge. married women come with their babies in perambulators.
     having to negotiate barbed wire in order to get there. Girls
     of various ages, chiefly in twos come every day. And last
     week at Hendon a man received news that his wife had been
     seen watching the sunbathers since 9:  30 a.m., it then being
     about 6:  30 p.m. 

FX:  Music

Nar:   The Welsh Harp was better than the Lord Mayors show. It wasn't long
before a descendant of Mrs Grundy Appeared. 

     VxM:  (reading) mr.F.G.Biddle of Bell lane Hendon,
     accompanied by a large crowd of sympathisers, advanced
     towards some nude sunbathers and a half clothed woman. "not
     even cannibals would lie about in that condition" shouted
     Mr.Biddle. The sunbathers were surrounded by a seething mass
     of men and women. Captain Vincent broke through the crowd and
     ordered his followers to dress. Two bathers rushed away on
     bicycles to call the police. meanwhile women screamed as they
     were edged into the water by the crowd. Men were pushed to
     the ground. Kicked and beaten as the crowd shouted "drive
     them out of Hendon". 

Nar:   But the bathers were on private ground, they'd chalked up keep away
notices and when they arrived the re-faced bobbies found themselves obliged to
guard the bathers, according to the law of the land. The Welsh Harp incident
gave British nudism more publicity in 48 hours than all its little magazines
had done in 20 years. The public were sympathetic, and "remember the welsh
harp" became a nudist rallying cry. many future stalwarts of the movement were
tempered in the fires of Hendon. And they weren't eccentrics or weirdos but
ordinary middle of the road people who today would be jogging or doing aerobics 

     VxM:   It was an extension of my wanting to keep fit you see
     ... I'd always been interested in keeping fit. My father was
     a first class cricketer and he was also a champion table
     tennis player and it was in the family anyway.m I always had
     this great thing about the human body and I quote here at the
     risk of being shot down "the body is the temple of the human
     spirit" ... St. Paul. And I started on the body-building
     thing and that led on to sunbathing in the nude in the woods
     near our home and I eventually joined the national sun and
     air association in 1934 at the age of 18 

FX: music

Nar:   the welsh harp riot spawned various organisations including the national
sun and air association now the n.s.a.a.a saw itself as a ginger group. it was
London based, part of 'being progressive'. It attracted Fabians, Oxford
groupies, vegetarians, and it went hell for leather for publicity with a string
of nude conferences, begun in the arcadian surrounding of - Finchley 

     VxM: (reading)  The chairman mr hugh fraser stood nude under
     a giant fir tree in the center of the garden and rapped on a
     table for silence. among those present were clergymen,
     solicitors, doctors, teachers and other professional men and
     women. There was also a one legged man. The chairman spoke of
     the prejudices that existed against nudism. and a cry of here
     here came from a tanned man who wore nothing but a monocle. 

Nar:   London nudists had their conferences outdoors but they also had a
metropolitan speciality. Indoor nudism. The indoor bunch were the bright young
things - they adored parties one of which employed a nude conjurer. and they
danced - everything from country to tap. and were very health conscious. Norman
Tillet became a member of the Gymnic Club. 

     VxM:   and I arrived at this big house in Kensington where
     the Gymnic club met and I was instructed to take all my
     clothes off on the ground floor and ascend the grand
     staircase of this house with nothing on. They didn't get up
     to anything very desperate but there was a games room where
     you play table tennis and other similar innocent games and in
     this same room keep fit class were arranged. There was a
     resident German instructress. A very attractive girl called
     Irene who conducted keep fit classes and right at the top of
     the house in the attics there was an old fashioned sun lamp
     where you could top up your tan if you felt so inclined. 

Nar:   And all over the nation tans were being topped up, out of doors. Outdoor
(me:   clubs flourished and took exotic names) One club called itself Diogenes,
and nudists had Gymnic names. Munilla, treefrog, Piske, and Hazlemere nudists
presented a play - xxx - about a Greek nymph who was unplaced in a beauty
contest with a bunch of goddesses. Unfortunately the hero at Hazlemere was a
fairly lanky youth wearing a girdle of nasturtiums and I'm not surprised that
the goddesses who were buxom ladies wearing frigian caps and nothing else
looked rather puzzled. On the other hand mightn't you be puzzled if you found
yourself in similar circumstances in Hazlemere. However not all outdoor clubs
had such charm and delicacy. 

FX:  music - teddy bears picnic

     VxM:   I remember how shocked I was at my first visit at one
     of the societies which still exists actually in the Bishop
     wood area of St Albans. I was invited there by a member of
     the Gymnic club who warned me in advance that things were a
     bit rough and ready but I certainly wasn't prepared for what
     turned out to be something like a rural slum. there was a
     sort of muddy track - led to a rough entrance gate. A
     tumbledown shack which they grandly called the pavilion but
     it was just a rough and ready affair. Couple of Elsan toilets
     standing nakedly outside where people could use them and
     there were a couple of rather dreary men digging ditches to
     take the sewage away. It was all very scruffy indeed. 

FX:  music  tbp

     VxM:   I thought quite frankly that these early members were
     a pretty unprepossessing lot. They were mostly families,
     hoards of unruly children racing about the place. They were
     nearly all middle aged ... very poor in appearance ..
     paunches in both sexes were pretty prevalent an what shocked
     me more than anything was they were chain smokers. Now
     smoking was of course at that time much commoner than it is
     now, but everybody was puffing away madly at a cigarette and
     some of the men used to wander about ... you know ...
     completely pointlessly .. carrying their gaspers in their
     hand and lighting up one cigarette after another. and that's
     all they did! The whole place had a feeling of aimlessness
     about it. Here were a lot of people who'd arrived on the
     spot, taken off all their clothes and hadn't a clue what to
     do next. 

Nar:   So what pleasure did await you when you got your clothes off? Rounders
... quoits ... you hit a bit of stick with another bit of stick. One club had
this gigantic gymnastic apparatus. history does not recall what they did with
it and from time to tome as in the house of commons the woodlands rang with the
cry I spy strangers and the men would don towels and rush off to route a
peeping tom but the very first thing you did in a nudist camp  was pick up an
axe 

     VxM:  In the early days a lot of it was work about the club.
     If you wanted an area to play games ... It was Summer the
     bracken was six foot high ... and a lot of the time certain
     people, I remember one fellow , his regular job was scything
     you would often see him out therewith a scythe keeping the
     bracken down It was the Spartan life 

Nar:  And I wonder did anyone ever become a nudist just for the lark. It must
have been like running a Pentathlon in cold country farm land with all those
hungry little creatures that throng the English outback waiting for bare flesh. 

     VxM:    we used to have something we called bracken fly. they
     were a little black fly and if they got you they'd fetch a
     lump up  as big as a wasp sting they were nasty things. And
     in the old days they used citronella - people smelt -
     terrible sometimes with the different concoctions they
     thought up 

FX:    tbp

     VxM:    if you attended the societies grounds you took your
     clothe off whatever the weather was like so if you went in
     the middle of the winter - January - you'd to take your
     clothes off. and there's at least one club I know in the
     Lancashire area that still has this rule. 

     VxM:    we had a very steep path with dead bracken each side
     but we used to toboggan in the nude every Thursday afternoon.
     The main thing very often was to keep a pair of boots and
     socks on. - you didn't go out in bare feet very often. 

     VxM:    I've actually seen nudists walking about in just a
     pair of Wellington boots in pouring rain and freezing
     temperatures. (pause) He is dead now. 

Nar:    as the 3-s went on clubs sprouted. The western sun folk club. the east
riding sun society the Midlands sun club and over the border they went into
bonnie scotland. but the Scottish clubs soon got into hot water. they
frightened the stags moaned a deer forest owner whose sport was completely
spoilt. but no matter where your club was once you had segregated Elsan, a hut
and a swimming hole you'd arrived. the swimming hole was a must. if you could
swim it was your introduction to the club. and it helped haul Kath over that
first awkward moment when you had to reveal all. 

     VxF:    we went downstairs and out into the grounds and I
     went to the bottom of the grounds where the swimming pool
     was. I stood there longing to go in but nor quite daring to
     take my dressing gown off. then a gentleman in the middle of
     the pool said - come on now - I'll catch you. And the old ...
     entered my head . I just dropped my dressing gown and I dived
     in and straight between his legs and swum to the end of the
     pool ... so he said oh - so he dived down and shot me up in
     the air and all at once - oh crikey I've got nothing on and
     I'm sat on a mans shoulders 

FX:  music (Gracie Fields)  "what can you buy a nudist on his birthday"

Nar:    that was our gracie outlining a problem she had with her brother. and
there are problems connected with nudism that don't change with time. The
central council for British naturism publishes a handbook with questions at the
back for instance - is it advisable for people with less than perfect figures
to join a sun club? "very few people are perfect. some bodies are very
imperfect indeed. it isn't the least important though. people accept you for
what you are not for what you look like" is it likely my wife will be
improperly approached in the sun club? "not at all. clubs are careful about
their choice of members and anyone who misbehaves is shown the door" And hers a
very coy one - on the subject of men becoming visibly embarrassed 

     VxM:    I think that most men before they take all their
     clothes off in public are seriously worried about what you
     might call making an exhibition of themselves. and I had this
     fear in the early days. very much so in fact - in fact I was
     very concerned before taking off my clothes particularly in
     front of women because I thought the results might be
     disastrous. I made a particular point of asking Rob Martin in
     the early days about this and what I could do to control it.
     And his attitude was one of laughter. he said - well you're
     worrying about nothing because it never happens. and he was
     quite right. in all my prolonged experience of mixing in
     communal nudist society I have never seen a man with an
     erection and I have never experienced any sexual arousal
     myself 

Nar:    British nudism has always been above all else cautious. from the
beginning its been for families. The 30s had annual nudist conferences and
these were always tugs of war and sack racing and jolly hockey sticks. good
healthy fun. and they were designed specifically for young people and families.
rules were severe. anonymity was total. One group of early members consisted of
chong, flang, gart, lorelei, luana, oonella, fweng, tob and zex. and nobody
knew anybodies right name. alcohol was banned . dogs were banned for obvious
reasons. you weren't allowed to photograph,paint, sketch and above all else
dress regulations were stricter than the armies, but different. 

     VxF:    Dress is optional BUT a garment which only covers the
     sex organs and therefore attracts attention to what it covers
     up is not allowed. 

     VxM:    some people associate nudity with sex. The sexual
     side of the thing didn't come into it. I mean I have known
     someone ... when a knock came at the secretaries door - he'd
     got this address from somewhere and he started asking about
     the club ... what it cost to join and how do we go on for sex
     up there. see that's the sort of idea some people have. well
     he was dead out!! 

Nar:    British nudism has always been neurotically careful about recruiting
its membership . their system of vetting sounds more daunting than the body
search by the airport police. 

     VxM:    the early clubs were extremely careful about who they
     admitted. and therefore to become a member of an early club
     was like the camel and the needle story it was extremely
     difficult. the general thing to do once you had put in your
     application was an interview at a neutral place where the
     secretary of the club would size you up and get some idea of
     what kind of person you were. then you would have to answer a
     complicated questionnaire, particularly on your moral
     standing to be quite sure you were a respectable kind of
     person. if you were divorced you hadn't a hope of getting in.
     if you were a single man you had very little hope of getting
     in because they wanted to keep the balance of the sexes more
     or less equal. but if you were a respectable married man and
     you could bring your wife and children along with you, you
     had a pretty good chance. 

     VxM:    it was like getting into fort knox really. the
     secretary wrote to us and said he and his wife would like to
     see us. and then invited to meet the committee. because the
     committee had the final say. the event was very frightening.
     I'd got (me:    hold of the wrong ideas like many others. The
     story was that if you apply to join a sun club the person
     being interviewed is confronted by a naked lady - to see
     whether there's any reaction. and this was totally false -
     but of   course me not knowing this I was very nervous and
     wondering what was going to happen. but it was a
     straightforward interview. 

Nar:    clubs used all sorts of ways. one lady secretary used a dowsing rod to
assess the baser instincts of gentlemen applicants. however clubs opened and
continued to open, pulling in the new roadhouse and lido generation of who one
was hazel. hazel was a supple lass who used to dance leotard clad on a flat
roof overlooked by my bedroom window. hazel called it eurythmics. neighbours
called it a scandal. it was in fact a kind of Grecian music and movement (cut)
... who the hell were they?. but hazel was typical of the new people who
brought new ideas into nudism and new words into the language. Eurythmics
joined Eugenics and gymnosophy an Heliotherapy. the focus of all this
progressive thought was the nudist magazine. 

     VxM:    Eugenics and sunbathing, sunbathing in Germany,
     clothes and the growing girl. we also have the British
     section of the world league for sexual reform - to hold a
     meting in the London school of hygiene, chapel St. London
     w.c. when A.S.Neil m.a the international known founder of the
     free school will speak on masturbation and other auto-erotic
     phenomena. chairman Dr Norman hare. 

FX: music -   "whose been polishing the sun"

Nar:    hoards of the famous leapt onto the bandwagon by advocating sunbathing
in a letter to the Times. George Bernard Shaw wrote about excessive clothing.
professor C.A.M.Joad addressed the sunbathing society. Vera Britton, Julian
Huxley, Naomi Michison and Beverley Nichols all gave voice and the professional
holiday mongers joined in. "sun  bathing holidays to the continent for 5
shillings and 3 pence a day". Sunbathers yodelling in the Tyrol, sailing down
the Rhine. 

     VxM:    I remember once on a tramping holiday five of us
     bathed in the infant Rhone, a few miles below the glacier and
     a little square of bright sunlight set in an infinity of
     mist. there intoxicated by the cold water and the morning
     sunshine we ran naked in an ecstasy of delight, only to meet
     emerging from the mist a string of Cooks tourists
     inexpressibly shocked. 

Nar:    But it was easy to be inexpressibly shocked. Body shyness in 30s
Britain was quite insane. When I first saw photographs of Greek statues I felt
like the little boy in the museum. Mummy when I'm a man shall I grow a leaf?.
It looked like when you grew whiskers you grew a leaf too. Health and
Efficiency the most famous athletic magazine showed ladies not with leaves but
with blurs. these are the airbrush years and nonsense like that went on all the
time. Chemists daren't print negatives which showed the revealing details.
Angry citizens attacked nude statues, usually Epsteins. it never stopped. But
why were people so fond then of altering other people the way we alter cats
now? Will of course they were scared. and they panicked. 

     VxM:    Brighton is a major resort. An international resort.
     And if brighton crumbles in this respect - we capitulate -
     then it will only be a matter of time before they turn their
     attention to public parks and gardens. and when you look at
     it logically that's precisely what they will do. I shall be
     the first one on the beach and the first one to make a test
     case by asking someone there whose unclothed to put on their
     clothes and if they do not do so then I shall summon (me:
     a constable) 

     VxM:    Many nudists are far too frightened of the law.
     because there is no law that says nakedness is illegal. it is
     still technically perfectly legal to go naked in public but
     what you must not do is to behave in an indecent manner.
     There are several ways in which the laws can get at
     naturists. Theres the old common law offence of indecent
     exposure. there you simply had to prove that a person was
     seen naked in a public place. then there was a rather horrid
     little act called the vagrancy act of 1824 which makes it an
     offence to strip with the intent of insulting any female.
     Only men can commit this offence. Apparently women can expose
     themselves with what insult they like to a man and they cant
     be prosecuted under it. And the other point to be born in
     mind is it does mean the front and not the back. I I choose
     to expose my bare backside to a lady in public I cant be
     prosecuted but if I turn round and expose myself in front
     then clearly that is an offence and that's what the vagrancy
     act sets out to do. There are one or two other acts like the
     Crown police clauses act... 

Nar:    But the big one in Norman Tillets list is the public order act, passed
in 1936 to curb Sir Oswald Moselys British Union of Fascists and control
riotous behaviour in public. Its under this law that streakers are prosecuted
which does seem a classical example of using a hammer to crack a nut. 

     VxM:    But what I think worries naturists more than anything
     else or should if they ever think about it are the bye-laws.
     Every local authority in this country has the right to make
     its own little local bye-laws. many of these bye-laws are
     ridiculously old fashioned. there are some I believe still in
     existence with maritime authorities which compel both men and
     women bathing costumes on the beach extending from neck to
     knee. If this were enforced I think the results would be very
     peculiar indeed. 

Nar:     All this hysteria in the law and elsewhere hinged on the  idea  that
the body is a vessel of sin. In the garden of Eden after the snake bit Adam and
Eve made  themselves  breeches  of  leaves  and it has been the natural
instinct of authority ever since to keep us all wearing them 

     VxM: (reading)    Nudism - a social menace.  the relaxation
     of normal restraints.  the  de- thronement of decency.  is a
     warning symptom of moral disintegration and decay. Licensed
     nudity would give way to passions  of  unfettered  scope  and
     to  the foulest  degeneracy.  Organised  nudity  would  open
     the door to a hundred vile perversions while closing it  to
     the  most  precious  safeguards  of  innocent childhood and
     unspoilt youth. 

Nar:     and if you accepted that from a popular newspaper of the 30s  then
you'd have  to  accept  nudism  as  evil.  and  prejudice  did  surface  in
the most inappropriate of places. 

     VxM:    a devout couple were at the club and they wanted to
     go to church this particular Sunday. they dressed up and went
     to this village and the vicar for some reason must have
     questioned them - strangers whether they were suntanned I
     don't know - the vicar must have questioned had they come
     from the club. and they admitted hat was perfectly true. and
     at that point he denied then the sacrament. and they were
     very upset. I was only a child but I couldn't see what was
     wrong with naturism and why these people should be denied the
     sacrament. 

Nar:    So what made them do it? with all the difficulties, aggravation, risk,
the fear of publicity, the bracken fly, the vagaries of chemical toilets and
the English climate. what did make nudists go nude in the 30s. 

     VxM:    They were getting a tremendous kick out of doing
     something which had to be kept confidential and secret from
     everybody else. It was like freemasonry in a sense. Something
     that you cant tell anybody because you're bound under an oath
     of secrecy. And I'm sure that these people did get tremendous
     fun out of just going naked and just doing something they
     just didn't dare tell their friends about 

Nar:    the type of person who became a nudist in the 30s had tended to be from
the professions. the Gymnic club boasted a conservative party agent and a
Shakespearian actor and there were doctors nurses soldiers and clergymen
galore. Significantly those who wore uniforms of any kind wanted most urgently
to get out of them. but there is I think another reason. Although nudist clubs
have always been a barroom giggle, for the people who worked in them and played
in them the could as ... Richardson found be islands of tolerance. 

     VxF:    we had a gentleman member for many many years who had
     on leg completely amputated and he used to come along and sit
     beside the pool and unstrap the leg leave there lying there
     all day. He got his crutches and he'd go up to the clubhouse
     on his crutches - he'd get around very nimbly and swap like a
     fish - he said where else can I go - where can I spend all
     day like this in complete freedom and take off my leg and
     leave it lying around and nobody gives a jot. nobody would
     stare even. 

     VxF:    Naturists are very very human in this respect. if you
     get one or two who are slightly incapacitated with an arm ..
     leg .. its accepted we don't .. think that it is strange. 

Nar:    one of the first nudist clubs to be formed in Britain, the sun bathing
society, shut up shop at the end of the 30s, so intense had the nudist craze
become it thought its evangelical work was done. but after 1939, the call-up,
the blackout, petrol rationing and travel restrictions closed most clubs. After
the war nudism revived everywhere but 30s nudism was worlds away from the cost
efficient product which spatters the map of Europe nowadays like high gloss
paint. In the 30s in Britain anyway nudism was human sized. 

FX:    sun hat on

     VxF:    the number of people that have come when they were in
     trouble or say they'd lost a close relative - wife or... or
     had a tragedy in their home or a tragedy, pressure at work.
     they could come here and just for a few hours just completely
     forget it. And its far far more important than jut taking
     your man made clothes off. You just take your worries off
     with them. 

FX:    music - fade out