You might want to find some stuff on the big bang or pull attack on the bankers out too from chapter 1. It provides symmetry in form of chapters.
From chapt 3 (now deleted).
New Towns: New Consumerism
The interwar housing projects that had such a significant impact on domestic consumption were renewed in powerful new ways after the Second World War. The welfare state and sustained growth after the Second World War helped to make people feel more comfortable about taking on increased levels of debt. Covering such areas as health, education and housing, state programs replaced and secularized the Victorian charitable movements that had operated on an independent and adhoc basis. The implementation of national health care, unemployment benefits, and national pensions, saw the money once socked away for emergencies freed up. Steady work, rising incomes, and rising numbers of women entering full employment changed attitudes towards debt and consumption. The relative security and affluence people enjoyed saw a shifting of funds into hire purchases and rising levels of debt (167). The expansion of new furniture and white goods purchased on time into homes speaks to the growing power of the cult of domesticity 168.
The expense war was vast. Weekly government expenditures in September 1939 were £23,6000,000; by December 1941, they had increased to £102,900,00. [i] To meet these costs, the entire productive output of the country was turned towards the war effort, twice in the first half of the 20th century. The state also strongly encouraged the public to turn their thrift ethos towards the war effort, and they did. ‘Every man, woman and child bought savings securities to the average of nearly L3000 per capita. More than 40,000 war savings associations flourished and it is estimated that as a result of these efforts, £1,250,000,000 came from the pockets of the very poor, a considerable percentage of who had not saved before 192. Frugality was turned over to the service of patriotism. Finally, to prevent the high levels of inflation that took place after the First World War, the state nationalized the banks in 1946 during the Second World War. For the generation who experienced the war, years of rationing, saving, and community togetherness instilled by external threat may well have contributed to the shaping of a unique attitude towards personal finance and consumption.
Higher purchase rates with rates varying between 7 to 12% in 1955, was a relatively expensive form of credit, 15% higher than bank overdrafts and building society mortgages (Bain, 1966: 124) (390). The development of hire purchase remained slow through the 1950s and was ‘still far short of its relative importance in the United States, especially with respect to new automobile sales.)[ii] ‘Car ownership, for example, rose 250 percent between 1951 and 1961. In the 1960s more automobiles were purchased than at any other moment in history, with £42 million owed on cars 470[iii] By 1966, 48.7 per cent of skilled manual working class households in England and Wales owned a car, compared with 26.5 per cent of semi skilled and unskilled workers’ homes (352)[iv] Aspirations and expectations kept up with the growing affluence, and demand for goods and services the had been the preserve of the wealthy increased across the social spectrum. Still, in 1955 more electric washing and clothes drying machines sold than automobiles (cars 505,000/700,000) bicycles 1,200,000. [v] In 1956 there were three people for every car in the US compared to 12 persons per car in Britain. The removal of controls prevented the access to cars and durable goods lead to a sharp and immediate purchase of new cars and other durable consumer goods. (Silberston, 1963: 39-40). By the 1960s roughly 60% of new car purchases were made on credit.[vi] Still, Britons bought 2.5 times more used cars to new, although has been estimated that 40-45% of used cars were purchased on hire purchase (Silberston, 1963: 36).
The New Towns Act of 1946 created a ring of new towns beyond the London Greenbelt allowing more working class people to own a home[vii]. As Kalliney points out, the state played a role in circumscribing a particular lifestyle configuration that pattenered consumption. Living arrangements were subscribed in ‘the popular urban terrace house arrangement that consisted typically of four rooms: two bedrooms in the upper part of the home, and a kitchen and parlour on the lower—two up, two down. This housing style became the standard and as Kalliney notes: ‘Irrespective of the size of the floor area of the house, the organization of space followed the same pattern. (Kalliney, 2001: 110)’ These homes had a considerable impact on older patterns of domesticity. While the size of the family reduced in the mid-nineteenth century, small families of two children became the norm in the post-war.
Clapson found in his research that women in the New Towns refocused their attention from the street, which he claims was a central site for social interaction in working class neighbourhoods, to concentrate on the privacy of their homes. So too were the new arrangements of idealization of domesticity, as W.L. Burn reminds us, distinctive to the older aristocratic arrangements where ‘the home was less a place of cultivating the family affections than a base for action, where policies could be worked out and influence obtained by means of hospitality.’ The Age of Equipoise (London, 1967), 217.[viii] The pleasures of family life and consumption increasingly augmented the more extended networks of interaction of 19th century communities. Extended kinship networks and community relations knitted through the practice of keeping lodgers continued much longer in Britain than the US. For example, into the 1970s for example ‘some 25 percent of households are living with relatives’ compared with 9 per cent in the Unites States.’ Nevertheless, the new homes favoured small family groupings. Middle class British women were thought to view their homes differently from American women. The romanticism of the home as a sanctuary privileged the home as a private and more formal space in which entertainment was planned rather than people simply dropping by. While one reading of this change might lead to a concern about the demise of authentic working class communities, Clapson found that the majority of working-class women who moved to new suburban housing estates reported contentment and a sense of pleasure in their new homes and higher standards of living. Moving to the new towns brought ‘many luxury recreational goods and labour-saving devices which rendered the working-class home a more comfortable place of relaxation, and television sets, record players, and functional electrical appliances, grew extensively in working class homes from the mid 1950s.[ix]
Davies (1994) notes, at least in principle, in the 1950s, ‘going into debt for purchases other than houses’ remained an aversion, however, financial practices did not follow this moral position. After years of austerity, in the context of relative affluence, new justifications emerged that enabled people to feel better about acquiring durable goods. It seemed increasingly silly not to wait to enjoy a fridge or carpet, when the payments were so easily made—how was this a sin? A comfortable home was deemed important, in the eyes of friends, family, neighbours, creating sound property values. With more women working, household appliances were increasingly reclassified from a luxury to a necessity.
The new towns’ young aspiring populations assumed the lion’s share of hire purchase. Homes were the entrée into the consumer economy, linking up land speculators and builders, along with manufacturers of consumer durables. (Hoyt 1966, 412). ‘..once people start paying for their homes instalments, the next step—was to start buying durable goods the same way—is not such a drastic change. ‘Hire purchase specialist charges rates similar to banks made the necessary arrangements for retailers who were happy to sell their goods without the hassles of financing. And the working classes were increasingly able to ‘take care’ of their families’ material needs. In 1940 the average weekly earnings of a man over 21 were 8.30 pounds a week. A decade later they had almost doubled to 15.25 pounds. State welfare provisions provided a social safety net absent in the 19th century. Pre-war hire purchase increased ten fold by 1950. [x]
New lifestyles supported by credit
These new lifestyles dealt a devastating blow to the older systems of lending, which were all ready in decline. According to Taylor, traditional systems of local credit began to fade during the Edwardian period, as levels of prosperity, changing patterns in consumption and knowledge and use of new forms of credit occurred. Old working class families found themselves in new neighbourhood situations, because of slum clearance and movement to new towns after the wars. (Taylor 2002: 166) Many commentators have highlighted the changing neighbourhood sense of community. As Blumer noted, ‘Most neighbourhoods today do not constrain their inhabitants into strong bonding relationships with one another’.[xi] People no longer had to rely on one another in the same way. People no longer looked to the street lender, or butcher for a loan. Friendly societies were no longer required in the same way. New expectations or privacy combined with women’s increased presence in the workforce made it difficult for tallymen and street lenders to access their clients. According to Taylor younger generations resisted the old credit firms of their parents (2002, 36). The fate of the pawnshop demonstrates this decline. The number of pawnshops reached their peak at the break of the First World War, when 5087 pawnshops were in operation. By 1949 only 1654 pawnshops were still in business. In 1987 Lohr[xii] reported 175 pawnshops operating in Britain.
People increasingly turned to building societies and the hire purchase and credit arrangements of larger retailers became the standard for conducting financial affairs. The young distinguished themselves through use of credit instruments that they considered more modern like hire purchase. Affluence enabled people to assess professionals to undertake work and enjoy a wider division of labour. Where once people had turned to one another to help with chores, people now accessed professionals to undertake this work. The younger generations after the war began to reject the old credit firms their parents had dealt with (Taylor, 2002, 36 More women entered the workforce, spending increased of time with their colleagues and less time with neighbours. With women working, the tallyman and street lenders did not have as ready access to clients. Old working class families found themselves in new neighbourhood situations, because of slum clearance and movement to new towns after the war. (Taylor 2002: 166) ‘Most neighbourhoods today do not constrain their inhabitants into strong bonding relationships with one another’.[xiii]
Hire purchase shifted the focus from the local and personal lender to distant and abstract institutions of credit transactions. The character of financial exchange was altered. Lenders once new those who they lent to intimately, by name, by face and vice versa. They met face to face in the home, on the street, in the pub. It was perhaps within this milieu that the British working class forged their great propensity for paying debts. Chinn felt that the urban poor felt a social obligation to pay back debts, particularly those owed to members of their own communities. The pressure must have been increased when the borrower did not look on the transaction as a ‘loan but as money ‘borrowed from a neighbour (Taylor 2002 50). On one level it is possible to conclude that women were pressured unduly into taking up the services exactly because it was offered in a personalized form. As, Taylor pointed out it is wrong to look upon the older systems of lending as warmly communal: ‘There is often an instrumental element involved in the solidaristic relationships that existed within the working class (Taylor, 2002, 35) The ability to say no was perhaps difficult when the person offering the service was a member of the community, who you wanted to help with their own Christmas hamper. Within modern financial institutions people were confronted with and assessed by abstract, rational credit systems that assessed an individual not by who they were, but by calculating their credit rating.
Hire purchase and the expansion of durable goods
The expansion of modern credit instruments was also advanced through legal changes that protected consumers from lenders. Until the Credit Act of 1938, there was one very large loophole in hire purchase that was in favour of the lender. The transaction was secured heavily on the value of the object, therefore, if an individual missed a payment, even if it were at a time when the good was almost paid off, the retailer could collect the good and the person had nothing to show for the value they had invested into the good. There was not legal recourse against a retailer simply collecting a good when it was almost paid. (Coffin, 1994 755). Laws in the post war period sought to balance the rights of retailers and consumers.
Hire purchase created a bridge upon which big-ticket durable goods and furniture entered the home. Scott finds it ‘no surprise’ that the new towns coincided with the expansion of material goods ‘such as vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, and televisions. The furnishing of the home played a major role in the politics of hire purchase.[xiv] Still, maintaining a modern lifestyle with heat, light and transportation was costly. As family sizes dropped the social aspiration attached to children grew. The social advancement and contentment of ones children augmented older definitions of community respectability.[xv] Children increasingly motivated consumption. For example many of the new commodities in the home were purchased under the pretext of ‘gifts to the children’. It was common for mothers to give children clothes and shoes for the birthdays. Although not always appreciated by eight year olds, they were also given expensive durable goods such as fridges and cookers. In short, the cultural impulse of providing a leg up for ones children, and older notions of inheritance served to break down the barriers of thrift. 36