Whit Monday

As war looms on the horizon, with Germany annexing Austria in March 1938, Christian denominations unite, no doubt in prayers for peace, at the Whitsun festival; while just a few months later, in September, children are being kitted out with gas masks. But between the sobriety of the large processions and the sombre process of fitting respirators, children and adults alike enjoy the fun of a typical summer’s gala in the West Yorkshire village of Clayton.

This is one of a collection of films made by Eric Green of his family and events in Clayton over a 20 year period from 1935. Whit Monday 1938 would have been 6th June, then a national holiday. Whitsun was originally the founding of the Christian church, so it is fitting that the different churches should unite on this occasion – one that has declined considerably since the 1960s. The doom laden newspaper headlines near the end of the film follows Prime Minister Chamberlain’s radio broadcast of the previous evening declaring, “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.”