E126: [TEASER] Fireside Chat - How we won the weekend

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Hi, and welcome back to the Working Class History Podcast.
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bonus podcast episodes, and a couple of exclusive discussion podcast series.
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fireside chats, and radical reads. So here is a little
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preview of our latest episode for our patrons. You can
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join us, help support our work, and listen to the
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Link in the show notes.
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But so in terms of like informal resistance around like
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the working week, what did that look like?
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This is one of my kind of favorite examples of
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informal workers' resistance. So workers came up with a concept
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and a tradition called Saint Monday. So it was like
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a religious holiday, you know, like St. George's Day or
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what have you. So they would say that they're observing
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Saint Monday, which is not a real thing. So what
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that basically meant, this is especially in the early half
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of the 1800s now, workers would just bunk off on Mondays. Now, often, really,
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they were just hung over from getting drunk on Sunday.
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Yeah, yeah.
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I actually found a poem the other day, like an
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18th century folk poem or folk song from Sheffield.
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And it's about St.
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Monday, basically.
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Can you sing it?
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If you sing it now, and what I can suggest
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we do, we auto-tune it to the tune of a
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weekend song. And we make it the theme tune for
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this episode. Okay, I'm going to just be quiet and listen.
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I mean, I'm just going to recite it.
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We'll auto-tune it later. We'll auto-tune it later. Okay, right, brilliant.
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So it's called The Jovial Cutler, and it goes, Brother workman,
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cease your labour, lay your files and hammers by. Listen
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while a brother neighbour sings a cutler's destiny. How upon
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a good Saint Monday, sitting by the smithy fire, we
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tell what's been done on Sunday, and in cheerful mirth conspire.
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And it's just great, you know, this idea that like, yeah,
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everyone stop working.
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And then, you know, on St.
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Monday, we'll all like meet up and we'll just chat
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about all the mad stuff that we got up to
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on Sunday. You know, and that's from the 18th century
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in Sheffield in the north of England.
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Yeah, that's very cool.
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And while you were performing that, I did Google what
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a Cutler was because I know it's one of those
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occupational things. names and words, but I actually didn't know
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what it was. But for anyone else who didn't know,
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it's someone who makes.
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Or repairs cutlery. There we go. Yeah.
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Yeah.
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No, exactly.
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So this was a thing which workers had just made
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up and they observed. And it was so widespread that
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a lot of kind of capitalist industries started making money
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on these Mondays. So workers would sleep off hangovers. They
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would take day trips. Popular things were going to botanical
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gardens or going to theaters, music halls, or engaging in
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what authorities at the time thought were more unsavory activities
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like drinking in ale houses or watching cockfighting, things like that,
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which was seen as unruly behaviors by workers, which those
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in power were very unhappy with at the time. But
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things like theaters and music halls were making money off
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this and train companies as well from people taking day trips.
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So some businesses were already seeing that this leisure time
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was something that they could make money from. But yeah,
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this tradition of St. Monday was, it was very powerful
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and widespread, but it was something which authorities and employers
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were very unhappy with. And reformers and things like religious
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groups also saw this as an opportunity to kind of
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trade off this unruliness and this disobedience, traded off against
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agreed time off in a more civil kind of fashion.
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So reformers and religious groups started pushing for workers to
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get half days off And things like early trade unions
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and workers organizations who wanted some level of respectability. They
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wanted workers to be respectable.
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Yeah.
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I mean, you get a lot of trade unionists who
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are also kind of involved in like the teetotal movement,
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basically just trying to get everyone to abstain from drinking alcohol.
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So that's all kind of linked in there. Exactly.
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And I think it's also worth thinking, this is also
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the time soon after the world's first modern police force
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had been introduced in London. 1829, the Metropolitan Police. And
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so there was a big obsession with order and with
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suppressing this working class general unruliness.
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The mob. Yeah, the fear of the mob.
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And if you see any cartoons from newspapers at this
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time that depicted workers, especially late 18th, early 19th century,
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you can see how working class people were depicted as
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very unruly, kind of dirty, gross, badly behaved people.
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Yeah, they're very telling.
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So all these organizations start pushing for workers to get
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half day off on Saturday in return for basically actually
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going to work on Mondays. And religious groups got involved
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in this as well because they thought, well, if people
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could still have fun on Saturday afternoons, people might be
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more likely to actually go to church on Sunday instead
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of just getting pissed. So as the 1800s progressed, we
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get into the latter half, the late 1800s. This starts
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being more and more widely adopted. So work is being
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given Saturday afternoons off. And at the same time, you
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then see capitalist industries starting making more money from these
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kinds of Saturday or weekend activities. You also, at this time,
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start seeing things like the word weekend as a verb
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becoming a thing like, oh, to weekend, meaning to weekend
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away or what have you. So these industries like weekends away,
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train companies, Theatres and music halls start moving their performances
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from Mondays to Saturdays. And workers also started putting on
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football matches on Saturday afternoons. So Saturday afternoons start filling
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with all of these kind of activities.
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And when is this more or less?
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Where we are now, this is like the late 1800s.
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Right, okay. So it was kind of gradual, but say 1870, 1880,
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that kind of time.
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Because that's the period, particularly the 1880s, is a period
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where a lot of the first football clubs are being
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founded and you're starting to get this idea of like
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football on a Saturday at 3 p.m.
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I guess it's all, that's part.
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Of the thing about if you have half day on
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a Saturday and then in the afternoon you go.
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Off to watch the football.
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Exactly.
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So work would typically finish at 1 p.m. and most
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of the early football teams were started by workers. So famously,
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your team, the Gooners.
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Yeah.
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Gunners.
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Yeah, yeah. Yeah, have to mention that every time. Do
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you know, apparently, Osama Bin Laden is a big fan
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of them.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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I heard that somewhere on a podcast.
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It's definitely true as well. That's the best thing about it.
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Yeah, so full founded by workers at Woolwich Arsenal.
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Yeah, Man United, I think, was started by rail workers.
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I think Celtic was started by East Glasgow Soup.
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Kitchen workers, some of that. But then you also had
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lots of church-based football teams as well.
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I think Man City was set up by a church
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group in Manchester. So that was still pretty common around then.
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And I guess churches were also involved in this, like
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you say, religious groups also involved in this push for
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short working on Saturdays.
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Yeah.
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So around this time period, the late 1800s, there's a
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real step up in terms of workers' formal struggles for
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short working weeks. So the weekend as it is now
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in most Western countries, day off on Sunday and a
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half day on Saturday, the weekend then stays a pretty
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stable institution for the next sort of 50 years up
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until we get to the 1920s, which is then the
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next phase of this kind of story.
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Yeah, okay.
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You know, like you say, there's this move in the
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late 19th century to these struggles around the eight hour day.
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And I wonder, was this all part of the same
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thing or was the demand for a shorter, well, shorter
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working week, but actually like fewer working days in the week,
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was that a separate demand alongside the eight hour working
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day or were they.
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Kind of all sort of lumped in together in some way?
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And this is an interesting question because I think basically
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it depends. I think for the most part, The next
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phase of the story with the weekend is more about
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the general struggle for shorter hours. But it does depend
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on the context. So for example, in Azerbaijan, there was
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no weekend at all. The main capitalist industry was the
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oil industry and workers there worked seven days a week.
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So they worked about 360 days a year. So for them,
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a day off was the most important thing. So in
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1904 in Azerbaijan, workers launched a general strike. demanding a
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day off a week with no reduction in pay. And
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they were successful in getting that. So they kind of
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created themselves a weekend there through a very deliberate measure.
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That brings us to the end of this episode preview.
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Hope you enjoyed it. To listen to the full thing
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Catch you next time.