Credit and Community: Working-Class Debt in the UK since 1880

by Sean O'Connell

Overview

Credit and Community examines the history of consumer credit and debt in working class communities. Concentrating on forms of credit that were traditionally very dependent on personal relationships and social networks, such as mail-order catalogues and co-operatives, it demonstrates how community-based arrangements declined as more impersonal forms of borrowing emerged during the twentieth century.

Tallymen and check traders moved into doorstep money-lending during the 1960s, but in subsequent decades the loss of their best working class customers, owing to increased spending power and the emergence of a broader range of credit alternatives, forced them to focus on the 'financially excluded'. This 'sub-prime' market was open for exploitation by unlicensed lenders, and Sean O'Connell offers the first detailed historical investigation of illegal money-lending in the UK, encompassing the 'she usurers' of Edwardian Liverpool and the violent loan sharks of Blair's Britain.

O'Connell contrasts such commercial forms of credit with formal and informal co-operative alternatives, such as "diddlum clubs," "partners," and mutuality clubs. He provides the first history of the UK credit unions, revealing the importance of Irish and Caribbean immigrant volunteers, and explains the relative failure of the movement compared with Ireland.

Drawing on a wide range of neglected sources, including the archives of consumer credit companies, the records of the co-operative and credit union movements, and government papers, Credit and Community makes a strong contribution to historical understandings of credit and debt. Oral history testimony from both sides of the credit divide is used to telling effect, offering key insights into the complex nature of the relationship between borrowers and lenders.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199263318
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/15/2009
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Sean O'Connell's first monograph, The car in British Society: Class, Gender and Motoring (Manchester University Press, 1998) was part of the shift in British social and cultural history away from the study of production towards the analysis of consumption and consumers. His more recent projects have continued this interest. Among topics he has analyzed have been the history of men's consumer magazines, and the history of "joyriding." He has published his work in journals such as Economic History Review, Twentieth Century British History, and the British Journal of Criminology. His research has been supported by grants from the ESRC, the Leverhulme Trust, and the AHRC. His interest in the issue of consumer credit began with his co-authorship (with Dilwyn Porter and Richard Coopey) of Mail Order Retailing in Britain: A Business and Social History (Oxford University Press, 2005) and culminates with this monograph on working class experiences of consumer credit since 1880.

Table of Contents

Introduction. On easy terms? Borrowing and lending in the working class community1. Credit on the doorstep: the tallymen2. The rise of the Provident system: check trading3. Retail capitalism in the parlour: mail order catalogues4. The moneylender unmasked5. Doorstep moneylending since the 1950s6. Formal and informal co-operative credit7. Renewed hope for mutuality: credit unionsConclusion. Easy terms remain elusive

Editorial Reviews

"An important contribution to antipoverty discussions and antidebt debates. O Connell has written a socially engaged and timely book that should be of particular interest to students of twentieth-century social, cultural, and business history and the social sciences and, indeed, is of broader relevance to anyone concerned with the worsening financial struggles of the poor and the widening gap between rich and poor in contemporary Britain."—Journal of British Studies

From the Publisher