This chapter builds upon the budgeting practices described in the previous chapter to understand attitudes towards money management and affluence in post-war Scotland.
Attention is paid to the influence of gender, class, and ideas about respectability and analysis focuses on how these intersect to form attitudes to the developing affluent material lifestyle contemporary to the period. In particular, this chapter focuses on attitudes towards the role of credit in facilitating working-class participation in ‘affluence’. Section 6.2 explores how respectability shaped testimony relating to budgeting. Section 6.3 builds upon this analysis to consider how the application of thrift to the use of credit could mitigate potential loss of respectable status. Section 6.4 then considers home-ownership as a particular example of how class shapes attitudes towards budgeting, consumption and respectability.
Criticisms such as failure to live within one’s means, inability to make rational economic decisions and refusal to delay gratification for longer-term security have been levelled at the working-class. The working-class housewife and mother has been a particular target of scorn if she was considered to mismanage her household budget. In the post-war period, attention focussed on how growing materialism and rising expectations affected working-class attitudes towards money management. By the 1960s, Cohen argues that thrift had ‘lost its predominance over the national lifestyle’.1
Attention focussed on the potential corrosive effect the improved material conditions of affluence may have on traditional working-class practices and values such as thrift. As outlined in the introduction to this thesis,
‘embourgeoisiement’ emerged as a theory which sought to describe convergence between middle- and working-class lifestyles.2 Affluence, Avner Offer argues, had the power to ‘displace and devalue the stock of pre-existing possessions, virtues, relations, and values’.3
Concern was particularly focussed on the uptake of credit, seen as incompatible with thrift, by working-class families to fund new aspects of an affluent lifestyle. Gelpi and Julien-
1 Martin Cohen, The Eclipse of the “Elegant Economy”: The impact of the Second World War on attitudes to
personal finance in Britain (Surrey: Ashgate, 2012), p. 221.
2 See pp. 4-6.
3 Avner Offer, The Challenge of Affluence: self-control and well-being in the United States and Britain since 1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 1.
Labruyere, argue that credit facilitated working-class participation in the modernising project of post-war affluence: ‘The idea of hire purchase was not to ease a difficult or even a dire situation, but to project the consumer into the future with new domestic appliances’.4
In the post-war period, rising standards of living were considered by some to reflect growing materialism among the working class and a shift away from ‘traditional’ working-class culture.5
These were not new concerns, however, as there is a long history of commentators, from religious leaders to welfare reformers, levelling attacks on both creditors and debtors.
Criticisms were led ‘as much by moral and ethical standards as a simple cost-benefit analysis based on financial or economic criteria’.6
In the late nineteenth century Margot Finn argues there was an ‘obsession with the moral implications of the credit-drapery trade’ and that hostility had been growing since the seventeenth century.7 Pawnbrokers have also been a particular target since the eighteenth century. Hoppit notes that anti-Semitic prejudice often formed part of the castigation of pawnbrokers and moneylenders.8
More broadly, however, discourse focussed on ‘the common middle-class complaint that the poor were feckless and never looked more than a few days ahead’.9 Economic psychology has been influenced significantly by individualism. Financial problems have long been considered to reveal weak and corrupt character traits: ‘traditional stereotypes describe the debtor as self-indulgent, reckless and impatient’.10 Moral judgements blamed individuals and not structural problems of poverty or unemployment. For example, O’Connell argues that ‘The costs she [working-class housewives] incurred in buying on credit, and having collectors come to her door, were viewed by critics as an unthrifty working-class attribute rather than an outcome of economic inequality.’11
An example of such attitudes was given by Helen Bosanquet, a leader in the Charity Organisation Society and contributor to the Majority
4 Rosa-Maria Gelpi and Francois Julien-Labruyere, The History of Consumer Credit: Doctrines and practices (London: Macmillan, 2000), p. 95.
5
See Richard Hoggart, The uses of Literacy: Aspects of working-class Life, with special references to
publications and entertainments (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957) and Introduction.
6
Julian Hoppit, ‘Attitudes to Credit in Britain, 1680-1790’, The Historical Journal, 33, (1990: 2), p. 306. 7
Margot Finn, ‘Working-class women and the Contest for Consumer Control in Victorian County Courts’, Past
and Present, 161 (1998: November), p. 142.
8 Hoppit, ‘Attitudes to Credit in Britain’, pp. 313-4. 9
Johnson, Saving and Spending, p. 4.
10 Peter K. Lunt and Sonia M. Livingstone, Mass Consumption and Personal Identity: Everyday economic
experience (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992), p. 54.
11
Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress 1905-09.
Bosanquet championed self-help and limited government intervention to counter poverty and focussed on individual rather than structural causes of poverty. Bosanquet singled out
pawnbrokers for particular scorn in an article published in 1896: ‘…on Monday morning the way to the pawnbroker’s shop will be thronged with women, eager to leave their bundles and get home before the rent collector comes…really it is only an indication of the habit of mind which will go on shirking the burden and pushing it off indefinitely into the future for ever’.12
Rowntree also criticised households in ‘secondary poverty’ which he defined as households where earnings would keep a household out of poverty, where it not for imprudent
expenditure for example, on alcohol.13 Zweig explored this further in Labour, Life and
Poverty and claimed that imprudence would continue to condemn many among the working-
class to poverty, despite post-war economic improvements.14
As well as moral principles of frugality and thrift, criticism focussed on the presumed
economic illiteracy of the working classes. Scott identifies a long-standing paternalism based on the working classes presumed ignorance of economic and financial matters. As Scott notes, this paternalism encompassed ‘those deemed unable to understand the implications of the contracts they entered into – a view ascribed to a large proportion of the working class’.15 Contracts, interest rates and best value were often considered beyond working-class
comprehension, leaving them particularly susceptible to exploitation in matters of credit. Tebbutt argues that this assumption underpinned many of the recommendations of the Crowther Committee on credit in 1971: ‘its essential emphasis…was upon the free market and the belief that the customer had only to be made aware of the real cost of credit to start shopping around for the best bargain’.16
The morality and the economic rationale of credit continued to be interrogated during the twentieth century. O’Connell notes that not until 1979 did survey evidence find a significant change in public perceptions which accepted the use of credit and revealed a weakening of the belief that credit was wrong in principle.17
12
Helen Bosanquet, ‘The Burden of Small Debts’, The Economic Journal, 6, (1896: 22), p. 219. 13
B. Seebhom Rowntree, Poverty: A study of town life, preface by Jonathan Bradshaw,(Bristol: Policy Press, 2000, 4th Ed.), p. vii.
14
Ferdynand Zweig, Labour, Life and Poverty (London: Gollancz, 1948).
15 Peter Scott, ‘The Twilight World of Interwar British Hire Purchase’, Past and Present, 177, (2002), p. 219. 16 Tebbutt, Pawnbroking, p. 202.
17
This chapter brings together evidence which shows that principles of hard work, saving and caution shaped working-class attitudes towards budgeting. Furthermore, ‘credit’ was not synonymous with debt – testimony revealed that credit could be integrated into these principles without loss of respectability. ‘Debt’, however, was considered to reflect poor judgement and ineffective budgeting skills. As O’Connell states, debt, is distinct morally from credit and ‘deemed to signify a failure in rational household management’.18
6.1.1 Budgeting and Composure
In general, the topic of money and household finances can be difficult subjects to explore via oral history, as chapter two has detailed. In particular, credit was often a sensitive topic, given its connections with financial hardship and the ways in which it could compromise
respectability. When questioned, participants talked freely about views towards credit
although some did not discuss experiences of it quite as openly. Sean O’Connell notes that he faced a similar predicament during his research in Belfast: ‘there was a widespread
familiarity with many of the forms of consumer credit…even if there was often a reluctance to acknowledge it’.19
Acknowledging awareness of credit whilst refuting personal experience of it was popular. I asked Ellen Murray, born in Glasgow, 1932, ‘did they [local shops] give any credit or anything like that?’; ‘Aye they did. [pause] I mean, I never needed to ask for it, but I did see people that, [pause] they would pay it off at the end of the week, they got credit.’20
Discussing credit and debt could trigger discomposure in participants’ narratives, typified by pauses, stilted answers and nervous laughter. Penny Summerfield defines composure with a double meaning: participants create, or compose, a narrative and seek to do this whilst achieving a sense of composure by presenting ‘a version of the self that the teller can live with in relative psychic ease’.21
The process of oral history, especially in the form of life- narrative, asks participants to reflect on experiences which are vitally important for the ongoing understanding of self, such as their experience of marriage and having children. As Lynn Abrams states, ‘the production of a self via narrative is a project which requires much
18 O’Connell, Credit and Community, p. 15. 19
Ibid., p. 6.
20 Interview with Mrs Ellen Murray, born 1932, Glasgow (August 2012).
21 Penny Summerfield, ‘Culture and Composure: Creating Narratives of the Gendered Self in Oral History Interviews’, Cultural and Social History, 1, (2004), p. 69.
sifting and selection, omission as well as inclusion, in order to achieve a self with which one feels comfortable’.22
Discomposure can signal ‘that the topic under discussion is one in which there may be a
mismatch between individual experience and popular discourse’.23
By asking questions about credit, I was implicitly probing the success of a marriage partnership – questioning the
breadwinner’s ability to provide and the household manager’s ability to manage. These themes were important in all types of interview – couples and individuals alike were keen to portray images of themselves and their marriages as successful partnerships. For example I asked Hugh and Jessie Benson, married in 1958 in Alloa, if there was a pawn shop in the town they lived in:
JB Oh no! [laughs] No... HB No, never did that. [pause] HC Was there one? In the town? HB No here, in Alloa...
JB Smellie and Weirs it was called, it was a shop but it was also a pawn shop but no, we never, got as bad as that! [laughs]
HC But there was one...
HB Oh there was yeah, in Stirling too, people had to use it. None of my family, my mum and dad, nope.24
Although it did not result in a tense atmosphere, this stilted segment of testimony makes clear how important it was for Hugh and Jessie to distance themselves from using the pawnbroker. A similar exchange is recorded in the testimony given to SWOHP. Participant B4, born in 1924, experiences discomposure when asked about pawn shops:
Q. Can you remember a pawn shop in the area?
A. I could see where it was but I never had to frequent them.
22
Lynn Abrams, ‘Liberating the Female Self: Epiphanies, conflict and coherence in the life stories of post-war British women’, Social History, 39, (2014: 1), p. 19.
23
Corinna Peniston-Bird, ‘“All in it Together and Backs to the Wall”: Relating patriotism and the people's war in the 21st century’, Oral History, (2012: Autumn), p. 71.
24 Interview with Mr Hugh Benson, born 1934, and Mrs Jessie Benson, born 1938, Clackmannanshire (December 2012).
Q. I'm not asking if you used one, I'm just asking if you can remember a pawn shop?
A. No really I never bothered. No, I never bothered about them. I never had nothing to pawn. <laughs>25
The interview with Mary Fuller [MF], Margaret King [MK] and Josie Wallace [JW] was a particularly revealing example of how credit could trigger discomposure. Although friends, the women were hesitant to reveal personal information relating to finances. The women echoed some of the curt answers observed in SWOHP testimony when I asked them about local shops and tick:
JW Well I never, I don’t know anything about that. MF I never did it but I think they might have done.
MK I think they might have done, I would imagine so aye.26
Unprompted, Mary then said ‘Sure, you're, when you needed a few bob you took something down to the pawn.’ The following extract highlights how the theme of credit can disrupt otherwise confident and composed narratives:
HC That was something else I was interested in.
MK Every Monday morning I went to the pawn, 12s and 6d for his shoes and a pound for his suit [laughs] and every Friday I went back and I had to get brown paper, so my mammy had to give me tuppence for a sheet of paper so that nobody would see it, but everybody knew! [laughs]
HC Was everybody doing it? JW No I didn’t, I never have. MF Everybody done it.
MK I didn’t, my mother did. Oh no, my mother did. I never did, but I think my man did right enough.
JW I'm saying that, but I don’t know, I don’t remember my mammy ever going, although she was a widow so...
25 Interviewee B4, born 1924, married 1945, SWOHP, p. 1509.
26 Interview with Mrs Mary Fuller, born 1932, Mrs Margaret King, born 1936 and Mrs Josie Wallace, born 1941, Glasgow (August 2012).
MK Oh no mine did, as my mother said, ‘you're better with a good bundle than going to your next door neighbour and borrowing it’ that was her attitude. HC Mary did you say you’d been?
MF No.
HC Your mum?
MF No. We were kind of fortunate that we didn’t. But I do know folk that went every, in one day and came out at the end of the week, whatever it was. MK That's right, and if you couldn’t afford to take it out, I think you were allowed
three months, a ticket, and then you had to go, I believe that you could renew your ticket after three months so that the pawn could keep it for you, but you had to pay money for that, to renew the ticket, say maybe two shillings, I can’t remember.27
Although Mary introduced pawnbroking to the conversation and claimed that ‘everybody done it’ she denies personal experience when directly questioned. Margaret is the only woman to relate direct personal engagement, although she makes clear that she was acting on behalf of her mother. Her description of the procedure for reclaiming pledged goods conveys a tension between displaying knowledge and a fear of revealing too much. Josie asserts her inexperience of both tick and the pawn and is distanced from the discussion. Following Margaret’s recollection of going to the pawn for her mother, Josie reflects on her own upbringing and acknowledges that although she cannot remember her mother pledging, she would have been justified in doing so due to her status as a widow. This addition re-
established Josie in the discussion and serves to minimise the distance created between her and the other women by her earlier comments.
It was, therefore, made clear that financial matters, such as budgeting and credit, could be sensitive topics for participants. The desire to project an image of a respectable self could mean tensions in acknowledging experiences which undermined this. The following section considers the importance of respectability in more detail.
Thinking about intersubjectivity is also important here. As noted in the introduction to this thesis, my affiliation with the University of Glasgow may have been taken to reflect a middle-class identity in the minds of participants. Olsen and Shopes discuss how
27 Interview with Mrs Mary Fuller, born 1932, Mrs Margaret King, born 1936 and Mrs Josie Wallace, born 1941, Glasgow (August 2012).