The female consumer and the politics of consumption in twentieth-century Britain

Historical Journal

Volumn 45, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 103-128

  Hilton, Matthew ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84937377519     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X01002266     Document Type: Article

References (154)

1. B. Mandeville, The fable of the bees, or private vices, public benefits (1714; New York, 1962)
2. T. Veblen, The theory of the leisure class (1899; Harmondsworth, 1979)
3. E. Zola, The ladies' paradise [Au bonheur des dames], trans. B. Nelson (Oxford, 1998).
4. T. Billington-Greig, The consumer in revolt (London, 1912),p. 19.
5. The consumer in revolt., p. 57.
6. The consumer in revolt., p. 61.
7. J. Habermas, The structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, trans. T. Burger (Oxford, 1992).
8. B. Harrison, Prudent revolutionaries: portraits of British feminists between the wars (Oxford, 1987), p. 50.
9. For useful introductions, see C. Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the public sphere (London, 1992), pp. 1–48
10. J. Breuilly, ‘Civil society and the public sphere in Hamburg, Lyon and Manchester, 1815–1850’, in H. Koopman and M. Lauster, eds., Vormärzliteratur in europäischer perspektiv I (Bielefeld, 1996), pp. 15–39.
11. For the best account of these developments see the introductory essays by de Grazia in V. de Grazia and E. Furlough, eds., The sex of things: gender and consumption in historical perspective (London, 1996).
12. The phrase ‘subaltern counterpublic’ has been borrowed from N. Fraser, ‘Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy’, Social Text, 25/6 (1990), pp. 56–80.
13. N. Fraser, ‘Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy’, in Calhoun, ed., Habermas, pp. 109–142.
14. L. Tiersten, ‘Redefining consumer culture: recent literature on consumption and the bourgeoisie in western Europe’, Radical History Review, 57 (1993), p. 139.
15. For some good examples of this type of research and for the most up-to-date bibliographies see S. Strasser, C. McGovern, and M. Judt, eds., Getting and spending: European and American consumer societies in the twentieth century (Cambridge, 1998)
16. L. B. Glickman, ed., Consumer society in American history: a reader (Ithaca, 1999).
17. Billington-Greig, Consumer in revolt, p. 91.
18. On the details of Billington-Greig's life and the reception of The consumer in revolt, see Harrison, Prudent revolutionaries, ch. 2, ‘Woman of ideas: Teresa Billington-Greig’, pp. 45–72
19. E. Crawford, The women's suffrage movement: a reference guide, 1866–1928 (London, 1999), entry for Teresa Billington-Greig, pp. 54–56.
20. On the relationship between hegemony and the public sphere see G. Eley, ‘Nations, publics and political cultures: placing Habermas in the nineteenth century’, in Calhoun, ed., Habermas, pp. 289–339.
21. On semi-luxuries see M. Berg, ‘New commodities, luxuries and their consumers in eighteenth-century England’, in M. Berg and H. Clifford, eds., Consumers and luxury: consumer culture in Europe, 1650–1850 (Manchester, 1999), pp. 63–85.
22. On ‘comforts’ see A. Marshall, Principles of economics (1890; London, 1961), p. 67.
23. E. P. Thompson, ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, Past and Present, 50 (1971),pp. 76–136
24. idem, Customs in common (London, 1991).
25. For the most recent discussions of the ‘moral economy’ see A.J. Randall and A. Charlesworth, eds., Markets, market culture and popular protest in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland (Liverpool, 1996)
26. A. Randall and A. Charlesworth, eds., The moral economy and popular protest: crowds, conflict and authority (Basingstoke, 1999).
27. K. Davies, ‘ A moral purchase: femininity, commerce, abolition, 1788–1792 ’, in E. Eger and C. Grant, eds., Women and the public sphere: writing and representation, 1660–1800 (Cambridge, 2000)
28. C. Midgley, Women against slavery: the British campaigns, 1780–1870 (London, 1992)
29. C. Sussmann, ‘Women and the politics of sugar, 1792’, Representations, 48 (1994), pp. 48–69
30. D. Coleman, ‘ Conspicuous consumption: white abolitionism and English women's protest writing in the 1790s’, English Literary History, 61 (1994), pp. 341–362
31. E.J. Yeo, ‘Introduction: some paradoxes of empowerment’, in E.J. Yeo, ed., Radical femininity: women's self-representation in the public sphere (Manchester, 1998), p. 2.
32. P. A. Pickering and A. Tyrell, The people's bread: a history of the Anti-Corn Law League (London, 2000)
33. D. Thompson, The Chartists (London, 1984), p. 137
34. L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850 (London, 1987), p. 448
35. J. Vernon, Politics and the people: a study in English political culture, c. 1815–1867 (Cambridge, 1993), p. 378
36. A. Clark, The struggle for the breeches: gender and the making of the British working class (Berkeley, 1995), p. 228.
37. Quoted in Thompson, Chartists, p. 137.
38. M. van der Linden, ‘Working-class consumer power’, International Labour and Working-Class History, 46 (1994), pp. 109–121.
39. M. Finn, ‘Women, consumption and coverture in England, c. 1760–1860’, Historical Journal, 39 (1996), pp. 703–722.
40. See also M. Finn, ‘Working-class women and the contest for consumer control in Victorian county courts’, Past and Present, 161 (1998), pp. 116–154
41. E. Rappaport, ‘ “ A husband and his wife's dresses ”: consumer credit and the debtor family in England, 1864–1914’, in de Grazia and Furlough, eds., The sex of things, pp. 163–187
42. R.J. Morris, ‘Men, women, and property: the reform of the Married Women's Property Act 1870’, in F. M. L. Thompson, ed., Landowners, capitalists and entrepreneurs: essays for Sir John Habakkuk (Oxford, 1994), pp. 171–191.
43. A. Gray, ‘Jobs for the girls: women, consumption and the enterprising self’, paper presented to Cultural Studies and Sociology Seminar, University of Birmingham, November 1999.
44. For the co-operative movement generally see P. Gurney, Co-operative culture and the politics of consumption in England, c. 1870–1930 (Manchester, 1996).
45. Internationally, see E. Furlough and C. Strikwerda, eds., Consumers against capitalism? Consumer co-operation in Europe, North America and Japan, 1840–1990 (Oxford, 1999).
46. G. Scott, Feminism and the politics of working women: the Women's Co-operative Guild, 1880s to the Second World War (London, 1998)
47. C. Webb, The woman with the basket: the history of the Women's Co-operative Guild (Manchester, 1927)
48. M. L. Davies, Women as organised consumers (Manchester, 1921)
49. idem, Guild work in relation to educational committees of co-operative societies (London, 1898).
50. G. Scott, ‘ “As a war-horse to the beat of drums ”: representations of working-class femininity in the Women's Co-operative Guild, 1880s to the Second World War’, in Yeo, ed., Radical femininity, p. 199.
51. Consumers' League prospectus (London, 1887).
52. Greig, Consumer in revolt, p. 93
53. K. K. Sklar, ‘The consumer's White Label Campaign of the National Consumer's League, 1898–1918’, in Strasser et al., eds., Getting and spending, pp. 17–35
54. W. Breckman, ‘Disciplining consumption: the debate on luxury in Wilhelmine Germany, 1890–1914’, Journal of Social History, 24 (1991), pp. 485–505.
55. K. Hunt, Socialist women (forthcoming)
56. K. Hunt, ‘Negotiating the boundaries of the domestic: British socialist women and the politics of consumption’, Women's History Review, 9 (2000), pp. 389–410.
57. F. Trentmann, ‘Bread, milk and democracy: consumption and citizenship in Britain, c. 1903–1951’, in M. Hilton and M. Daunton, eds., The politics of consumption: material culture and citizenship in Europe and America (Oxford, 2001).
58. On food disturbances in other national contexts see B. J. Davis, Home fires burning: food, politics and everyday life in World War I Berlin (Chapel Hill, 2000)
59. D. Frank, ‘ Housewives, socialists, and the politics of food: the 1917 New York cost-of-living protests’, Feminist Studies, 11 (1985), pp. 255–285
60. J. Smart, ‘Feminists, food and the fair price: the cost of living demonstrations in Melbourne, August-September 1917’, Labour History, 50 (1986), pp. 113–131.
61. Davis, Home fires, p. 48.
62. On the general background to the Consumers' Council and the Ministry of Food see W. H. Beveridge, British food control (London, 1928)
63. H. W. Clemesha, Food control in the North-West Division (Manchester, 1922)
64. A.J. Philip, Rations, rationing, and food control (London, 1918)
65. L. M. Barnett, British food policy during the First World War (London, 1985)
66. F. Coller, A state trading adventure (Oxford, 1925).
67. On the Workers' Emergency Committee see J. M. Winter, Socialism and the challenge of war: ideas and politics in Britain, 1912–1918 (London, 1974), ch. 7
68. B. Waites, ‘The government of the Home Front and the “moral economy” of the working class’, in P. H. Liddle, ed., Home fires and foreign fields: British social and military experience in the First World War (London, 1985)
69. War Emergency: Workers' National Committee, Report, August 1914 to March 1916 (London, 1916).
70. Consumers' Council archive, Marion Phillips papers, Manchester Labour History Archive (hereafter CC) CP 94/3: Report on the constitution and work of the Consumers' Council, pp. 1–2. Many of the papers of the Consumers' Council held in the Public Record Office have been destroyed by fire, but the papers of Marion Phillips, a member of the Council, provide a reasonable level of detail on the Council's activities.
71. CC CP 3/5: letter from J. R. Clynes, Chairman of the Food Control Committee, to Lord Rhondda, Chairman of the Consumers' Council, 3 Oct. 1918.
72. CC CP 94/3: Report on the constitution and work of the Consumers' Council, p. 6.
73. Report on the constitution and work of the Consumers' Council., pp. 20–21.
74. CC CP 3172/5: Notes by Mr Uthwatt: Profiteering Act 1919, 3 Nov. 1919.
75. CC CP 94/3, p. 9.
76. CP., p. 10.
77. CC CP 289: Report of the work of the Consumers' Council, p. 6.
78. CC CP 94/3: Appendix A: Report of Sub-Committee on Reforms appointed by the Consumers' Council on 28 January 1919, p. 23.
79. See also CC CP 289, p. 21.
80. The growing division between the consumer and trader interest can be seen in CC CP 47: Letter from Birmingham and Midland Counties' Grocers' Protection and Benevolent Association, 13 Nov. 1919.
81. CC CP 94/3: Appendix C: Report of the Sub-Committee on Reforms, 28 May, 1919, p. 29.
82. However, the co-operative members of the Council differed from their labour movement colleagues, favouring a return to free trade instead: CC CP 83/1: Memorandum as to the position of the Ministry of Food and the Consumers' Council, 5 Jan. 1920.
83. See also Trentmann, ‘Bread, milk and democracy’.
84. CC CP 126/2: Consumers' Council Conference, 19th February 1920: report of the proceedings, p. 3.
85. B. Taylor, Eve and the new Jerusalem: socialism and feminism in the nineteenth century (London, 1983).
86. For a response to Taylor arguing that women could still play an important role within popular radicalism, despite the absence of a clear feminist agenda, see M. de Larrabeiti, ‘Conspicuous before the world: the political rhetoric of the Chartist movement’, in Yeo, ed., Radical femininity, pp. 106–126.
87. CC CP 126/2: Conference, p. 5.
88. Conference., p. 20.
89. CC CP 292: Report of the work of the Consumers' Council, 5 Nov. 1920.
90. CC CP 316/1: The Consumers' Council: statement on their resignation from Ministry of Food, 12 Jan. 1921.
91. Scott, Feminism and the politics of working women. For a less pessimistic account of the WCG in the inter-war years than that provided by Scott see M. Pugh, Women and the women's movement in Britain, 1914–1959 (Basingstoke, 1992).
92. See the 1944 film, Advance democracy, re-released by the National Co-operative Film Archive
93. M. L. Davies, Women as organised consumers (London, 1921)
94. P. Redfern, The consumers' place in society (Manchester, 1920)
95. L. Woolf, The way of peace (London, 1928)
96. H. Laski, The recovery of citizenship (London, 1928).
97. Many of these pamphlets were published in a series collected together as P. Redfern, ed., Self and society: social and economic problems from the hitherto neglected point of view of the consumer (London, 1930).
98. B. Webb, The discovery of the consumer (London, 1928)
99. M. Bondfield, The meaning of trade (London, 1928).
100. E. Sharp, Daily bread (London, 1928), pp. 10–11.
101. Daniel Miller has placed a similar emphasis on the power of the housewife in today's society, proclaiming that she acts as the bridge between the western consumer and the third world producer: ‘Consumption as the vanguard of history: a polemic by way of an introduction’, in D. Miller, ed., Acknowledging consumption: a review of new studies (London, 1995), pp. 1–57.
102. Parliamentary Papers (hereafter PP), First report of the Royal Commission on Food Prices, Cmd. 2390 (London, 1925)
103. M. French and J. Phillips, Cheated not poisoned? Food regulation in the United Kingdom, 1875–1938 (Manchester, 2000), p. 143.
104. R. A. Bayliss, ‘The Consumers’ Council, 1918–1921 ’, Journal of Consumer Studies and Home Economics, 3 (1979), pp. 37–45
105. idem, ‘The Consumers’ Councils Bills 1929–1939’, Journal of Consumer Studies and Home Economics, 4 (1980), pp. 115–123.
106. C. Beaumont, ‘Women and citizenship: a study of non-feminist women's societies and the women's movement in England, 1928–1950’ (PhD thesis, Warwick, 1996).
107. I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain: rationing, controls and consumption, 1939–1955 (Oxford, 2000).
108. Pugh, Women and the women's movement, especially chs. 9 and 10
109. J. Hinton, ‘Voluntarism and the welfare/warfare state: Women's Voluntary Services in the 1940s’, Twentieth Century British History, 9 (1998), pp. 274–305.
110. On the debate over the influence of the British Housewives' League on the electoral politics see I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Bread rationing in Britain, July 1946 -July 1948 ’, Twentieth Century British History, 4 (1993), pp. 57–85
111. J. Hinton, ‘Militant housewives: the British Housewives’ League and the Attlee government’, History Workshop Journal, 38 (1994), pp. 129–156.
112. BSI, The history of the Women's Advisory Committee of the British Standards Institution (BSI unpublished manuscript, 1970s).
113. Board of Trade (hereafter BT) 258/879: Committee on Consumer Protection (hereafter CCP) 12: Submission by Women's Advisory Committee.
114. BT 258/879: CCP 4: BSI, Speaking for the consumer: third annual report of the Advisory Council on Standards for Consumer Goods, 1957–1958.
115. BT 258/879: CCP 13: Submission by the CAC of the BSI.
116. PP, Final report of the committee on Consumer Protection, Cmnd. 1781 (London, 1962).
117. I discuss the Molony Committee more generally and at greater length in ‘Consumer politics in post-war Britain’, in Hilton and Daunton, eds., The politics of consumption
118. PP, Final report, p. ii
119. BT 258/879: CCP 6: Terms of reference and minutes of appointment.
120. House of Commons Debates (hereafter HC Deb.), 610, 27 July 1959, cols. 73–4.
121. HC Deb., 610, 27 July 1959, col. 65.
122. See also the complaints from other members of the Labour and Co-operative consumer lobby (Elaine Burton, Norman Dodds, Herbert Morrison, and A. E. Oram): HC Deb., 608, 9 July 1959, col. 1560; 609, 16 July 1959, cols. 571–2, 43.
123. HC Deb., 610, 27 July 1959, col. 48.
124. HC Deb., 610, 27 July 1959, col. 76.
125. PP, Final report, p. iii.
126. Final report., Appendix B, pp. 317–321.
127. H. Mercer, Constructing a competitive order: the hidden history of British anti-trust policy (Cambridge, 1995).
128. HC Deb., 602, 26 Mar. 1959, col. 1610; 604, 23 Apr. 1959, cols. 585–6.
129. E. Burton, The battle of the consumer (London, 1954), p. 7.
130. HC Deb., 602, 20 Mar. 1959, col. 858.
131. CCP 12: Submission by WAC
132. CCP 13: Submission by CAC
133. CCP 91: Submission of the National Council of Women of Great Britain
134. CCP 92: Submission by the Women's Group on Public Welfare
135. CCP 93: Submission by the Women's Co-operative Guild.
136. PP, Final report, p. 122
137. Y. Gabriel and T. Lang, The unmanageable consumer: contemporary consumption and its fragmentation (London, 1995).
138. HC Deb., 678, 20 May 1963, col. 136.
139. For a similar development in the US see L. Cohen, ‘Citizens and consumers in the century of mass consumption’
140. M. Hilton, ‘ Post-war consumer politics’, in Hilton and Daunton, eds., Politics of consumption.
141. Association of Scientific Workers, Spotlight on shopping: consumer research (London, 1951), pp. 24–27
142. M. Baynes, Advertising on trial: the case for the consumer (London, 1956), p. 2
143. P. Goodhart, M. Bemrose, J. Douglas, I. MacArthur, P. McLaughlin, and J. B. Wood, Choice: a report on consumer protection (London, 1961)
144. P. Goodhart, A nation of consumers (London, 1965).
145. C. D. Harbury, Efficiency and the consumer (London, 1958).
146. R. Millar, The affluent sheep: a profile of the British consumer (London, 1963), p. 196.
147. A. Aldridge, ‘The construction of rational consumption in Which? magazine: the more blobs the better’, Sociology, 28 (1994), pp. 899–912.
148. PP, Final report, p. 292.
149. Consumer Council, Information for consumer education (London, 1965).
150. HC Deb., 674, 26 Mar. 1963,col. 139.
151. PP, Final report, pp. 281–290.
152. HC Deb., 678, 20 May 1963, col. 36.
153. See also ‘A correspondent’, ‘The helpless consumer’, Socialist Commentary, June 1965, pp. 19–21.
154. See Consumer Council's Annualreports, 1963–70 (London: HMSO, 1964–1971).