What the oldest British opinion polls can tell us

Just as interesting as politics are the glimpses of daily life, writes John Rentoul

September 1939: an enumerator distributing National Register forms explains how to fill one in (Getty)

One of my prized possessions is a two-volume, cloth-bound edition of The Gallup International Public Opinion Polls, Great Britain, 1937-1975. I can’t remember how I came by it, but it is a treasure trove of information about the earliest days of British opinion polling that isn’t easily available elsewhere. The polls are online in a subscription archive, and secondhand copies of the books now sell for $200 (£150) in the US.

Gallup started polling in Britain in January 1937, and the first question it asked – or, at least, the first in the book – was: “Do you consider that the grounds of divorce should be made easier?” Edward VIII had abdicated the month before so that he could marry Wallis Simpson, who was then in the middle of divorcing her second husband.

At the time in Britain, divorce was expensive; it was available to men on grounds of adultery, but women had to prove not only adultery but “unreasonable behaviour” as well. The public favoured making it easier, with 58 per cent replying “Yes” to this question and 42 per cent “No”.