Panorama - Bank Holiday - 1964

On the day after Whitsun bank holiday, 'Panorama' takes a look at how crowds and traffic are increasing year on year and tries to predict what the future holds for bank holiday leisure activities. The programme follows two families as they travel to Southend to spend the day on a solidly packed beach. Back in the studio, Richard Dimbleby and Dr Peter Kelly discuss potential solutions to the problem, such as more roads, a wider selection of places to visit and staggered holidays.
Presenter: Richard Dimbleby

Originally transmitted: 18 May 1964

This film footage is from the Archive Collection held by the Alexandra Palace Television Society.

http://www.apts.org.uk

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[4bawbees]

got that wrong! by 1984 more british people would know st tropez than southend . who goes there now unless they need to?

[RobinCarmody]

One other comment springs to mind: when people like me say that reality TV isn't truly democratic, its apologists always wrongly say we think this era of TV *was* ... the truth is that neither the Dimbleby Years nor the Bazalgette Years are democratic. The era in TV that *was* was the time in between, the heyday of This Week and World in Action - the BBC's current affairs output took a long time to let the people speak, but when it did, later, it was still more truly democratic than modern TV.

[RobinCarmody]

Four day week, ha bloody ha ... but the consensus at this point was generally that we would have to work less and less, and also that the role of the state would if anything increase - few could see the privatising counter-revolution coming (note Dimbleby's slight disapproval of the post-war settlement near the end).

[RobinCarmody]

I think it was all for the best, in some ways, that Richard Dimbleby died when he did - that paternalistic approach would have been seriously questioned almost immediately after his death. Just the fact that the East End family aren't interviewed is in itself telling, and wholly removed from today ... Peter Hall is so much more a "modern" figure, culturally recognisable now, by comparison.