NCC 85th Anniversary Special PDF FINAL - Flipbook - Page 5
A LOOK BACK THROUGH THE DECADES
The Caravan Magazine
Editor and NCC founder
Bill Whiteman
(pictured right)
while acting
as a judge at
a Caravan
Club rally
S
UMN 2019
hen we look back to 1939
we might assume people
weren’t thinking about
caravans because attention was
focussed on a certain Chancellor in
Germany who was threatening the
stability of the world, writes Candy
Evans.
But in many ways life was still
going on in the UK. Archaeologists
began to brush away layers of sand
at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk to reveal
an incredible Anglo-Saxon burial
chamber, and in the August of that
year cinema-goers were transported
to rural Kansas and beyond in The
Wizard of Oz.
W
Birth of the NCC
It was also the year William Meredith
Whiteman (Bill, as he was known)
initiated the formation of the
National Caravan Council (NCC). Bill
was a Cambridge Classics graduate
who went into journalism and by
1938 he had taken the helm at The
Caravan Magazine. At the time the
magazine’s publisher, Link House
Publications, agreed to sponsor the
Caravan Club, as the Caravan and
Motorhome Club was then
known, and Bill was promptly
appointed Honorary Secretary
and Director of that organisation.
Within a year he’d seen
the need for a trade association to
represent the caravan industry to
the wider world. In 1960 Bill wrote
his own account of the birth of the
organisation in the June 1960 issue of
The Caravan. Perhaps unsurprisingly,
one of its first activities was a report
examining the potential uses of
caravans in any future war: “The
Council had been formed on May
18, and in June half a dozen men
forming a sub-committee started
meetings at The Caravan offices,
from which the NCC was then
operating, to examine urgently what
contribution caravans could make if
Britain were involved. The report was
ready about a month before the war
started.”
Caravan production almost
stopped during the war years, but
the NCC was ready to support its
members as the trade opened
up again afterwards. By 1949, 215
manufacturers were producing
The Caravan Magazine reports on the
May 18 formation of the National Caravan
Council in its June 1939 issue
about 3,000 caravans a year to meet
the growing demand for holiday
accommodation.
First Earls Court Show
Ten years later, in 1959, the NCC came
of age with its first caravan show. It
was held at Earls Court and you can
see a lovely short film from the show
at British Pathé online at
bit.ly/1959CaravanShow. In his cut
glass accent, the announcer stated:
“The caravan used to be something
you could tow behind the family
car, but some of the mobile homes
on show at the Caravan Exhibition
at Earls Court are more home than
mobile. They have everything,
including the kitchen stove.”
At this time, about 250,000 people
in the UK had a holiday caravan
as their main residence (more >
NCC ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
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