www.travel-university.org

Young and old

Leisure is becoming an increasing preoccupation in a country where, apart from the unemployed - whose leisure is enforced -numbers of people are accepting redundancy payments and virtual retirement, or early retirement pensions. More people of pensionable age are living to enjoy their retirement, and the number of centenarians increased from 271 in 1951 to 2410 in 1981.

There have, however, been significant changes over recent years in many of England's inner cities. Here, despite the national drop in population, there are growing numbers of teenagers and young adults - a factor in recent civil disturbances and a pattern that could persist into the 1990s. Many of the younger children have been born to parents of Pakistani or New Commonwealth (that is, excluding Canada, Australia and New Zealand) origins, of whom only 40 per cent were themselves born in Britain.

In inner LONDON alone the number of children 4 years old or less increased by 21 per cent between 1981 and 1984, and was thought to be due to a high birthrate among the capital's Asian communities. In 1984 more than half the children born in four London boroughs were to mothers from overseas -64 per cent in one borough, Brent. Outside the capital the figures for Slough were 41 percent, Leicester 36 per cent and BIRMINGHAM 30 per cent. Even in declining areas such as Accrington, Burnley and Nelson, in Lancashire, with large Asian communities, birthrates were high.

In general, the more entrepreneurial Asians have prospered, while people of African and West Indian origins have found life difficult in an era of low employment prospects, and during the 1980s their frustrations erupted in serious rioting in London, LIVERPOOL, Birmingham and Bristol.

However, rioting has become almost a way of life among a violent - and largely white -minority. Soccer hooligans have driven millions away from the grandstands and terraces of Britain's traditional winter game. Yet the British almost invented modern spectator sports. The Football Association was formed in England in 1853; lawn tennis was first played in England in 1873-4 and the first Wimbledon championships were held in 1877. Golf is generally accepted as having originated in Scotland, and rugby began at RUGBY School, in Warwickshire, in the 19th century. Squash originated at Harrow School in 1850, and the first organized track and field athletics of modern times took place in London in 1850. The origins of cricket - most English of games and the great national summer sport -are obscure, but it is probably 400 years old.

Cricket continues to draw good crowds, but rugby union is losing spectators. Tennis, golf, horse racing, motor racing and athletics remain popular, and television coverage has made darts and snooker major interests. Sports such as jogging and distance running, surfing, sailing, hang-gliding and climbing are also increasingly popular. Leisure pursuits of a less athletic nature are influenced by television watching, in which the British indulge themselves for an average 21 hours a week. Listening to the radio, records or tapes is popular, along with working on home improvements, gardening, visiting the countryside and museums, and walking the numerous public footpaths.

These paths - some of them rights of way and drovers' roads trodden since prehistoric times - are jealously guarded by numerous conservation societies and organizations such as the National Trust, which has acquired large areas of land and scores of fine historic houses and buildings for public benefit, The efforts of' the Trust have taken on a wider significance with the growth of tourism, which has become a major industry, employing more than 1.3 million persons in 1985, Fifteen million visitors came to Britain in that year.

Next: Tourists