It’s hard to imagine having to vote for the right to see a film on the sabbath. But back in 1947, that’s precisely what the people of Sunderland were required to do.
The town’s first Sunday cinema shows had taken place three years before, when Gary Cooper and David Niven could be seen at the Havelock on Fawcett Street, and Ronald Reagan at the Ritz, Holmeside. But that was under wartime regulations and they would shortly be coming to an end. If the existing arrangements were to continue, they would have to be ratified at a public meeting.
Opponents of those arrangements – Christian Nonconformists in the main – lost no time in stating their case. The Lord’s Day must be respected come what may, they argued, and if film shows were to be permitted on Sundays, other pastimes, such as football matches, would have to be permitted too. In a letter to the Sunderland Echo, Reverend Hugh Brook, a minister from the Ewesley Road Methodist Church, wrote: ‘It is ridiculous to suppose that people cannot be happy for one day in the week without the entertainment provided in the cinemas.’ Yet the paper’s own film critic disagreed. ‘Sunday cinemas are not the Root of all Evil,’ he said, ‘as certain gentlemen in the Church would have us believe.’
The public meeting took place on Thursday, 23 January 1947, at the old Town Hall in Sunderland, just up from the Havelock cinema. Six hundred people packed into the auditorium there, but the Mayor, Alderman Miles Walton, refused to allow anything more than a few short speeches to be made.
A resounding cry
Ralph Miller, the councillor for Pallion ward, said,
“I have never been to a cinema on a Sunday night, but that doesn’t give me the right to interfere with the enjoyment and the pleasure of others.”
While in response, Frederick Bromiley, another Methodist, from the Mission on Sans Street, predicted that what he called ‘the secularization of Sunday’ would cause ‘serious consequences in the moral life of the community.’
It was Reverend Bromiley’s words that caught the mood of the meeting. And when the Mayor asked those present “Are you in favour of Sunday cinemas?” all but a handful rose to their feet with a resounding cry of “No!” and then started singing the 17th century hymn ‘Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow’.
But that was never going to be the end of the story. Whatever the result of the public meeting, the law decreed that a poll of the entire town would have to be held if a mere 100 voters requested it. And when the time came, the cinema owners were able to muster not 100, but fully 6,000 voters.
‘It’s what we fought for’
They will have been confident of their chances of success. In South Shields, a majority against Sunday cinemas at the public meeting had been turned into a huge majority in favour of them at the poll. Gateshead and Blaydon had also come out in favour. And after Middlesbrough did the same, the first sabbath film shows held there attracted large crowds. Beyond the North East, meanwhile, voters had returned huge ‘Yes’ votes everywhere from Carlisle and Leeds to Canterbury and Torquay.
Back in Sunderland, the council began making arrangements for the poll, at a cost equivalent to more than £40,000 today. And the rival campaigns each placed advertisements in the Echo. ‘Citizens of Sunderland, Beware!’ the cinema owners’ ad began, while the Methodists’ said, ‘For the sake of the children, defend the Christian Sunday!’
The newspaper continued to reflect local opinion. ‘It’s what we have fought for,’ two ex-corporals, Bill and Alf Taylor, wrote, ‘to do as we wish and not what a lot of fussy old men and women think we should do.’ And EV Bradley of Southwick asked, ‘Why close the cinemas now we are no longer afraid of the Nazis? Is it because we still have some of them in our midst?’
Then, the Church of England weighed in. The Rural Dean of Wearmouth, the Reverend Edgar Jackson, was keen to stress that the Church didn’t tell its members what to do. But he went on to say, ‘Sunday observance is a Christian duty, and if we call ourselves Christians, we must keep Sunday for worship.’
From house to house
At his church on Ewesley Road, Reverend Brook held a special prayer meeting, while children queueing for Saturday morning cartoons at the Ritz were handed pamphlets setting out the proprietor’s point of view.
The poll took place on Thursday, 13 February, which was a cold and frosty day, with snow in the air. Canvassers still went from house to house, however, as if this were a Parliamentary election, and loudspeaker vans toured the streets, urging people to vote for Sunday opening.
Counting began immediately the polls closed, and it didn’t take long, for while more than 100 polling stations had been open in 18 wards across the town, less than a fifth of the electorate had bothered to turn out. The result came through well before midnight, with only a few people waiting beneath the Town Hall balcony to hear it. Of those who had turned out, the Mayor announced, more than 15,000 voted in favour of Sunday opening, with barely 6,000 against.
Before long, Parliament in Westminster had granted Sunderland the power to permit Sunday cinemas, and the Town’s council had done precisely that. Wallsend, Whitley Bay and West Hartlepool followed suit, as did Newcastle, albeit not for another five years. But on the first Sunday of 1948, just after the great change took effect, people queueing to see Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman at the Ritz seemed to have forgotten that they had once had to vote for it.
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