ABSTRACT

The impression of stagnation, decay and poverty alongside growth, innovation and prosperity combines with a more powerful sense of major disruption and discontinuity resulting from two world wars and world depression. The conventional economist’s definition of economic growth is the rate of change in Gross National Product per head. Calculating total output or GNP is complex and there are many problems which can only be solved in arbitrary ways. British productivity levels in 1913 were very high by international standards. German and French productivity was about two-thirds of the British level and Japanese was only one quarter. Lower-income groups gained from the increase in direct taxation of incomes and wealth which commenced during the Edwardian period and gained momentum from wartime needs and fiscal changes. The growing commercialisation of sport and leisure activity reflects a number of developments including higher disposable incomes, the shorter working week and the emergence of Saturday afternoon as a leisure period.