Are We Rich Yet?: The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain [1 ed.] 0520385462, 9780520385467

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Are We Rich Yet?

Berkeley Series in British Studies Edited by James Vernon 1. The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain, edited by Simon Gunn and James Vernon 2. Dilemmas of Decline: British Intellectuals and World Politics, 1945–1975, by Ian Hall 3. The Savage Visit: New World People and Popular Imperial Culture in Britain, 1710–1795, by Kate Fullagar 4. The Afterlife of Empire, by Jordanna Bailkin 5. Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide, and the Birth of the Middle East, by Michelle Tusan 6. Pathological Bodies: Medicine and Political Culture, by Corinna Wagner 7. A Problem of Great Importance: Population, Race, and Power in the British Empire, 1918–1973, by Karl Ittmann 8. Liberalism in Empire: An Alternative History, by Andrew Sartori 9. Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern, by James Vernon 10. Edmund Burke and the Conservative Logic of Empire, by Daniel I. O’Neill 11. Governing Systems: Modernity and the Making of Public Health in England, 1830–1910, by Tom Crook 12. Barbed-­Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1976–1903, by Aidan Forth 13. Aging in Twentieth-­Century Britain, by Charlotte Greenhalgh 14. Thinking Black: Britain, 1964–1985, by Rob Waters 15. Black Handsworth: Race in 1980s Britain, by Kieran Connell 16. Last Weapons: Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British Empire, 1890–1948, by Kevin Grant 17. Serving a Wired World: London’s Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capital, by Katie Hindmarch-­Watson 18. Imperial Encore: The Cultural Project of the Late British Empire, by Caroline Ritter 19. Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire, by Emily Baughan 20. Cooperative Rule: Community Development in Britain’s Late Empire, by Aaron Windel 21. Are We Rich Yet? The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain, by Amy Edwards

Are We Rich Yet? The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain

Amy Edwards

University of California Press

University of California Press Oakland, California © 2022 by Amy Edwards Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Edwards, Amy, 1989- author. Title: Are we rich yet? : the rise of mass investment culture in contemporary Britain / Amy Edwards. Other titles: Berkeley series in British studies ; 21. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2022] | Series: Berkeley series in british studies ; 21 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2021056651 (print) | lccn 2021056652 (ebook) | isbn 9780520385467 (cloth) | isbn 9780520385474 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Investments—Great Britain—20th century. | Finance—Great Britain—20th century. | Capitalism—Great Britain—20th century. | Financial institutions—Great Britain— 20th century. | Great Britain—Economic conditions—20th century. | BISAC: HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / 20th Century | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Corporate & Business History Classification: lcc hg5432 .e39 2022 (print) | lcc hg5432 (ebook) | ddc 332.60941—dc23/eng/20220107 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056651 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056652 [Manufactured in the United States of America] 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For mum and dad, because the eighties made you.

Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction

ix xi xvii

1

1. “A Wonderful Growth”: Investment Culture from 1840 to 1980

22

2. Over the Counter: Speculation and the Small Investor

55

3. Shopping for Shares: The Rise of Financial Consumerism

94

4. “The Moneymen’s Sunday Sermon”: The Making of a Mass-­Market Financial Advice Industry

136

5. Yuppies: Finance and Investment in Popular Culture

173

6. Are We Rich Yet? Investment Clubs and Investor Activism

209

Conclusion

241

Notes Bibliography Index

247 313 343

Illustrations

Figures 1. Lloyds Bank High Interest Cheque Account advertisement, c. October 1987  /  2 2. Percentage of total market value of UK quoted shares by sector of beneficial owner, 1963 to 2010  /  8 3. Single-­capacity trading  /  60 4. Dual-­capacity trading  /  61 5. Cartoon, “Beware of the high risks,” The Times, April 1986  /  72 6. Halifax Instant Xtra advertisement, c. December 1987  /  118 7. Drawing by David Fernandez, Daily Mail, February 1987  /  120 8. Drawing by Peter Maddocks, Daily Telegraph, September 1985  /  121 9. Lloyds Bank High Interest Cheque Account advertisement, c. October 1986  /  125

ix

x  |  Illustrations

10. Lloyds Bank Sharedeal advertisement, c. December 1986  /  126 11. and 12.  Lloyds Bank Unit Trust Regular Savings Scheme advertisement, c. November 1987  /  128 13. Halifax Instant Extra advertisement, c. October 1987  /  129 14. Abbey National Building Society advertisement, c. October 1987  /  130 15. Cover of Tony Levene’s The Shares Game: How to Buy and Sell Stocks and Shares / 162 16. Cover of Harold Baldwin’s Shares: A Beginners’ Guide to Making Money / 163 17. Drawing by Kipper Williams, Daily Telegraph, January 1988  /  170 18. Drawing by Christine Ellingham, Daily Mail, August 1987  /  215

Map 1. Locations of licensed dealers c. 1984  /  70

Acknowledgments

Are We Rich Yet? started life as an MA dissertation ten years ago. It morphed into a PhD thesis, before becoming a very crude book proposal, and then, finally, an actual book. A decade is a long time, and I can’t really begin to wrap my head around all the ways that this project, my life, and the world has changed since I started down this path (a decision that came thanks mainly to the encouragement of Chris Grocott, my undergraduate dissertation supervisor). Both this book’s journey and my own have been shaped by so many big favors and small acts of kindness, missed opportunities, strange coincidences, lucky breaks, chance encounters, and everything else in between. There are too many people to thank, so many experiences I am grateful for, and I wish I were a more poetic writer so that I could do this next bit more justice. But here goes . . . Some poor souls found themselves more wrapped up in this book project than others. The first two that come to mind are my former PhD supervisors Matthew Hilton and Gavin Schaffer. Between them they offered the perfect balance of moral support, academic critique, and intellectual encouragement. They taught me how to be xi

xii  |  Acknowledgments

a historian (along with who Dylan Thomas and Gordon the Gopher were), figured out before I did the value of the phrase financial consumerism, and helped me to find my politics. For both this book and my career I owe them everything. I should also probably mention the painful football matches that they watched with me (along with Matthew “Wolves ay we” Francis), showing their support for more than just my academic life. I would also like to thank Stephen Brooke who, along with Chris Moores, had the dubious task of examining my thesis. Their generous comments at that time helped me transform a typo-­ridden PhD into something that could pass muster as the basis of an academic monograph. The other person without whom this book would not have been possible is James Vernon, my editor at UCP. As I made the transition out of my PhD and into the ominous category of ECR, I realized that I had no idea how to turn my thesis into a monograph. Not many people get to have an editor who is so willing to read work and step into the role of mentor. James was unfailing in his patience when drafts were overdue, encouragement when it felt like progress was taking forever, and excitement when I hit various milestones. I cannot think of a better first experience of publishing a book, and that is entirely down to James and his team at UCP, including Naja Pulliam Collins, Niels Hooper, Kate Warne, Teresa Iafolla, Katryce Lassle, Jon Dertien, and Gary J. Hamel. I am also hugely indebted to the two reviewers who agreed to read the work during a global pandemic. Although I am thankful to both in equal measure, because she identified herself, I am able to mention Helen McCarthy by name. I found a home in two History Departments over the last ten years. During my time as a PhD student at the University of Birmingham, I was able to get involved with the exciting task of growing the Centre for Modern British Studies with brilliant friends and colleagues like Daisy Payling, Saima Nasar, Eliana Hadjisavvas, Matthew Francis, Chris Moores, Kieran Connell, Kate Smith, Jamie Perry, Kevin O’Sullivan, Matt Houlbrook and many more besides. Thanks for the invaluable conversations, book loans, Orchard Learning Centre

Acknowledgments  |  xiii

library marathons, 1980s-­ based facts, pub-­ based reading groups, and general comradery that got me through the PhD. Thanks also to the wonderful Nik Funke and Ruth Atherton for patiently sharing an office space with me during my year as a Teaching Fellow. My time as an undergraduate, MA, and PhD student in Birmingham left an indelible mark on me as well as on the research that forms the foundation of this book. I love the city and so many of the people that I met there during eight years of my life that proved foundational in countless ways. Likewise, I have been fortunate enough to work alongside a fantastic group of colleagues since I joined the History Department at the University of Bristol almost six years ago. Josie McLellan stepped into the role of informal mentor after being part of the panel of people who gave me a job in the first place. Hugh Pemberton (who also bears some of the blame for my being hired) has proved an invaluable sounding board for ideas old and new, particularly given his expertise in all things Thatcher and finance. During the first two years I spent commuting to the city, Marianna Dudley, Grace Huxford, John Morgan, Hannah Charnock, James Freeman, Jane Freeland, Brendan, and Gizmo all kindly hosted me in spare rooms and on sofa beds so that I could avoid 5 a.m. starts. Most of them were also subjected to draft bits of this book, along with Andy Flack, Julio Decker, Will Pooley, Cat Rutter Pooley (who cast her expert eye over a full draft of the thing while pregnant!), Sim Koole and James Thompson. Their immeasurable talent as writers, researchers, and historians undoubtedly changed this book for the better. Indeed, one of the very great things about being a historian is the opportunity to meet so many people whose way of seeing the world entirely changes your own. Particular mention should go to Sam Wetherell and Sarah Stoller. I shared with them a very strange and surprisingly formative few days at a 2015 conference in Vegas, and they have stretched my thinking ever since. Both kindly took on the labor of helping me to improve drafts of the work and I am a better historian for having met them. More generally, I am indebted to the work of fellow scholars of modern Britain and financial capitalism,

xiv  |  Acknowledgments

many of whom have become good friends over the course of various workshops, conference panels, and terrifying pep talks about how to “make it” in academia. Given the great generosity I have received from colleagues in my field, I couldn’t possibly hope to name everyone who has contributed to the intellectual development of this book. However, I would like to mention Brooke Harrington, whom I have not had the pleasure of meeting, but whose research on investment clubs informed chapter 6, and whose cover image for Pop Finance inspired the title Are We Rich Yet? Many of the ideas in this book were also put under the microscope by successive classes of Bristol students who took my “Greed is Good” unit and completed dissertations with me. The many seminar discussions we had and their curiosity about the late ­twentieth century pushed my own interests in new directions. I also had the pleasure of co-­ supervising Will Awad’s fantastic MPhil on race and entrepreneurialism in Thatcher’s Britain with Erika Hanna. I learned a hell of a lot from them both. Likewise, working alongside ­Robert Bickers, Gemma O’Neil, Jon Lawrence, and Matt Beebee has expanded my chronological, geographical, and conceptual frameworks in unexpected and rewarding ways. This project was made possible by the ESRC, which funded my Masters and PhD research. I also benefited from an AHRC International Placement Scheme scholarship and time spent at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where I was supported by Mary Lou Reker, Travis Hensley, and the other IPS fellows (most notably Anthony Stewart and Gemma Scott). The College of Arts and Law at Birmingham and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Bristol provided funding to cover conferences, research trips, and permissions fees. I am also especially grateful for the assistance provided by the staff of the Barclays Group Archives, BBC Written Archives Centre, BFI National Archives, British Gas Archives, British Library, British Telecom Archives, Churchill Archives Centre, Conservative Party Archives, Cumbria Archives and Local Study Centre, Glasgow Women’s Library, Lloyds Banking Group Archives, London School of Economics Library, and the

Acknowledgments  |  xv

National Archives. Their expertise and hard work made this research possible. I am similarly indebted to several individuals, including representatives of the UK Shareholders Association, who were willing to take time out of their busy working lives to share with me their stories of the 1980s. This includes a small number of colleagues (thanks Rob!), who, like many of the people in this book, found themselves entangled with the world of finance. Hearing so many friends’ and family members’ memories of privatizations, Filofaxes, and life in the eighties has been one of the great joys of this project, as have the trinkets they recovered from lofts and garages to donate to my growing personal archive. Last, but by no means least, come my friends and family. They have kept me going, listened to me moan, and suffered through far too many one-­sided conversations about modern British history. Most importantly they remembered not to ask too often how the book was going. Top of this list are my mum and dad, Cindy and Malcolm Edwards. Without exception they have supported me in all my pursuits, academic and otherwise. Their lives as young adults inspired my curiosity about what it was like to live in Thatcher’s Britain. For everything, past and present, I cannot begin to thank you enough: I am me because of you. I was also temporarily adopted by a number of other families during the course this research: the Commanes hosted me during several months researching in London, while the Davies family (including Samantha, Nigel, Maddy, Sam, Tilly, Tsar, Cid and Pog) gracefully put up with my presence as a semipermanent house guest through much of the past seven years. To my brilliant friends the girds (Aoife Commane, Jazz Elder, Josette Pearmine, Ronnie Sadler); my long-­ suffering former housemates Carly Brown, Chelsey Miller-­Brown, Mel and co; my sounding board in life Layla Salter; and fellow film and book enthusiast Jack Stevens—thanks for the much-­needed distraction and relief from the many hours spent at my desk. I should also add to that list my Cotham Hill comrades Hannah, John R., and Andy; my climbing buddies Ben, Sophie R., and John L.; the Ashton Gate regulars Julio, Mark, and Adrian; my fellow badger

xvi  |  Acknowledgments

Eliana; and all-­round good eggs, Daisy, Saima, Grace, Sarah J, and James F. Finally, I want to thank Gemma Davies, who bore with me through all the ups and downs of this process and reminded me when I needed it most that there’s more to life than history. I hope that this book stands as an artifact of the incredible journey we went on together.

Abbreviations

AGM AIC AIM ALDS BA BBC BES BIDS BMB BT BZW CA CBI CREST DIS

Annual General Meeting Association of Investment Clubs Alternative Investment Market Association of Licensed Dealers in Securities British Airways British Broadcasting Company Business Expansion Scheme British Institute of Dealers in Securities Barclays Merchant Bank British Telecom Barclays de Zoete Wedd Consumers’ Association Confederation of British Industry Certificateless Registry for Electronic Shares Transfer Debenhams Investment Services

xvii

xviii  |  Abbreviations

DTI Department of Trade and Industry FIMBRA Financial Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Regulatory Association FT Financial Times FTSE Financial Times Stock Exchange FX Forex LIFFE London International Financial Futures Exchange NAIC National Association of Investment Clubs NASDAQ National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations NASDIM National Association of Securities Dealers and Investment Managers OFT Office of Fair Trading OTC Over the Counter Market PEP Personal Equity Plan SIB Securities and Investment Board SRO Self-­Regulatory Organisation TAURUS Transfer and Automated Registration of Uncertified Stock TSB Trustee Savings Bank UKSA United Kingdom Shareholders’ Association USM Unlisted Securities Market WSOC Wider Share Ownership Council

Introduction I am not a yuppie. I never have been one. And I swear I’ll never turn into one. . . . I know I certainly got called a few names the time I first suggested to Maggie (my wife) that we buy shares in British Telecom. She was dead set against it. What did I know about the Stock Market? Eventually . . . I took the plunge. Of course, the overnight success made me unbearably smug about the whole thing. . . . And slowly, I realised that I was getting hooked. . . . If I wanted to invest in something all I had to do was ring up the bank and tell them. I didn’t have to write cheques or fill in forms. They took care of everything. . . . I must confess, though, I’m still only a part-­time, fair-­weather investor. Most of the time I lie back and do nothing.

This tale of a fictional investor appeared across the British press in October 1987. It was part of a Lloyds Bank advertisement for its high-­interest checking account and linked Sharedeal facilities. Running under the strapline of “Some days I speculate. Other days I just accumulate,” the lengthy confessional was accompanied by an image of a man lounging next to a lake in a hammock, newspaper shading his face (figure 1). It gave readers a snapshot of the “good life” in late twentieth-­century Britain. For historians, it unveils a culture of investment that on the face of it came to life almost overnight in the mid-­1980s. Before the privatization of British Telecom (BT) in 1984 only around 3.5 percent of the adult population owned shares.1 Just four years later, that number had risen to 21 percent.2 Some put this figure even higher, indicating that nearly a third of 1

2  |  Introduction

Figure 1. Lloyds Bank High Interest Cheque Account advertisement, c. October 1987. Courtesy Lloyds Banking Group Archives.

adults owned shares by 1989.3 The early privatizations of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government thus gave many Britons a first taste for the thrills and spills of stock market investment, even if only vicariously through a daily diet of news stories that accompanied the “sale of the century.”4 During the six months leading up to the 1984 privatization of BT, there was a 50 percent increase in the number of people expressing an interest in investing shares.5 It appeared as though a new era in the relationship between finance, investment and the individual—­sometimes referred to as neoliberal financialization—had been born.6 But explaining how the public got the shareholding “bug” in the 1980s requires looking beyond this burst of activity to a more protracted and complex expansion of investment culture across the preceding century.7 In many respects this transformation was the climactic moment in a series of developments that began with the railway speculation boom of the mid-­1800s. Buttressed by their role in

Introduction  |  3

colonial expansion, London’s “gentlemanly” financiers cemented the city’s position as a major financial center across the second half of the nineteenth century.8 In the 1880s the arrival of “New Financial Journalism” from America marked the start of a financial press interested not only in reporting prices, but in providing advice and gossip from the City. Meanwhile, technological innovations such as the telegram created markets made up of increasingly disparate investors. Between them these developments pioneered the steady emergence of an investing public that included many skilled workers and women.9 Yet, across the twentieth century, investment was still far from a feature of everyday life for most people. Only 2.2 percent of the population were investors in 1913.10 By the 1960s this figure rose to somewhere between 3.3 and 4.1 percent, a range that remained fairly consistent up until the mid-­1980s.11 What emerges, therefore, is a picture of gradual and then very sudden change. The focus of Are We Rich Yet? is how we explain this without falling into the trap of assuming the inevitability and immutability of right-­wing political reform under the Thatcher governments after 1979. That the late twentieth century was substantially determined by the growing prevalence of financial markets, institutions, and services is clear to see. The credit industry fundamentally reshaped postwar British society by facilitating a political economy that prioritized personal consumption and individual choice in relation to both private and public services.12 By the 1980s and 1990s the transfer of public assets and services into private ownership had become a central ambition of government policy. This, too, relied upon financial services in almost all cases—from the privatization of industry and the sale of housing stock, to the rise of personal portable pension schemes.13 Meanwhile, Conservative Party visions of the dutiful citizen clearly imagined this to be someone who accumulated goods, property, and capital assets to avoid reliance on taxpayer-­funded welfare services.14 Reflecting in 1989 on the Party’s policy of selling council houses to tenants, a Bow Group Research Paper intimated that the “Right to Buy” enabled people to “take on responsibilities which they were previously denied, and thereby share the normal

4  |  Introduction

experiences of their fellow citizens.”15 In the latter half of the twentieth century, the lives and fortunes of Britons were increasingly tied to the credit, insurance, pension, and mortgage industries as they replaced the work previously done by state-­run support systems. Today we find ourselves living in a society in which the ownership and tactical management of appreciating financial assets has become a major determinant of class position. By purchasing shares, homes, and pensions, we are invited to feel as though we have a stake in the present socioeconomic order.16 It is time, then, that we treat the financial reforms of late twentieth-­ century Britain as more than mere economic backdrop to the sociopolitical upheaval of the period. The financialization of British society has a history of its own and Are We Rich Yet? tells it. It argues that financialization was driven by particular kinds of cultural transformation and the evolution of new types of social relations. It thus sets about identifying the historical forces that produced them: a search not best begun in the corridors of Whitehall or at political party conferences, but in the pages of the daily press, the programming of weekly television schedules, and the product ranges of high street banks. Here an array of actors, from brokers, banks, and traders to company promoters, goods manufacturers, marketing departments, production companies, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women shaped the terrain upon which political and economic reform occurred. We must grapple with the interactions between these groups—between structural and institutional reform, and the rhythms of daily life—if we are to understand the ascendancy of neoliberalism as something other than the inescapable outcome of a carefully orchestrated right-­wing political revolution.17 Indeed, although government privatization opened the floodgates in the 1980s, this sudden and significant rise in share ownership was made possible by three parallel longer-­term developments from beyond the political sphere. These were: the emergence of a mass investment culture that offered experiences of investment (both real and vicarious) to the British public; the growth of a heavily institutionalized form of financial consumption; and the forging of financialized subjectivities.

Introduction  |  5

The following chapters trace these developments through the stories of the historical actors that drove them. In the rivalry that existed between banks and building societies, the quest for increased readerships by financial journalists, and the pursuit of a hit gameshow by production companies we can begin to see just how far institutional action reshaped social relations and cultural practices in ways that molded financialization as an economic process.

A Mass Culture of Investment British investment culture expanded far beyond the scope of political marketing. Encouraging more people to become investors was ­neither limited to the Conservative Party nor to the 1980s. Long before Thatcher’s first privatization advertisements hit the nation’s television sets, an established financial press had spent most of the postwar period courting readerships of small investors. Just as significantly, large financial institutions eager to divert the nation’s savings into equities after the inflation of the 1970s and 1980s, shrewdly pounced upon the opportunity presented by privatization to secure their already tightening grip on domestic retail markets. They repurposed phrases that had originated earlier in the century like “property-­owning democracy” and used them to sell self-­serving visions of popular investment to the British public. Their focus was on converting one-­off encounters with privatization and big-­name flotations into a steady stream of regular business. Joining banks, brokers, and building societies in this endeavor was a vast industry of financial advisers, investment gurus, and no small number of fraudsters. They, too, saw that there was money to be made by producing a widespread body of investors. These companies, institutions, and individuals championed the cause of popular investment, fighting over the status that came with leading the apparent democratization of access to capital. They sought to be seen as the face of a more inclusive market, adeptly serving the needs of all types of customers. In doing so, institutions of various kinds added to an emerging mythology that investing was

6  |  Introduction

for everyone, even while it predominantly remained the purview of the white middle classes and an institutionalized financial elite. Of course, what each group meant by “wider share ownership” varied enormously. Their reasons for championing higher levels of share ownership also differed. The purveyors of popular investment were driven by ideology, political pragmatism, profit margins, or the desire to stay one step ahead of competitors. Often their motivations were a complex mix of all four. The result was a series of novel responses to age-­old questions about who should and could become investors. As the protagonist in Lloyds’ 1987 ad suggested in his mildly horrified denial of being a “yuppie,” the investment culture cultivated by financial institutions in 1980s and 1990s Britain was overseen by, but not exclusively targeted at financiers, businessmen, and white-­collar professionals. Rather, financial institutions— particularly those that constituted Britain’s rapidly expanding retail investment market—explicitly courted a mass-­market audience of “ordinary” men and women. For Britons unable to participate in the buying and selling of shares, an immense period of cultural production in the 1980s and 1990s provided other ways of engaging with the world of stocks and shares. Television programming contained dramas, soap story lines, and even gameshows based on the highs and lows of the market. Meanwhile families chose to spend their Sunday afternoons playing fun financial board games together. Perhaps most significantly, the City and its workers became icons of British cultural life. The dress, style, and accessories associated with “City Slickers” or “yuppies” filled fashion magazines, pop music videos, and high street clothing stores. Even beloved sitcom characters like Del Boy Trotter of the BBC’s hit show, Only Fools and Horses, could be seen adopting the Filofaxes, pinstriped shirts, and red suspenders of stock market ­traders. For those looking for it, goods, information, and entertainment associated with the world of investment were everywhere. For those who were not, they could still be hard to avoid. In sum, British investment culture came to incorporate more people than simply those whose names appeared on share registers.

Introduction  |  7

Britain’s mass investment culture consisted of both a vastly expanded number of people with assets held in shares and a widespread cultural engagement with the stock market by investors and non-­ investors alike. This cultural fascination with the market legitimized and cemented the growing prevalence of financial institutions in Britain’s political economy.

Financial Consumerism The changing nature of investment culture in 1980s Britain was not only a question of scale. As the number of people engaging with investment practices grew, the character of their interactions with financial institutions also altered. The big story at the heart of Are We Rich Yet? is the well-­documented rise of institutional investors in Britain’s equity markets. The argument that follows stresses the importance of what I have termed the rise of financial consumerism to this process by highlighting the reimagination of financial services and products as part of wider consumer society in this period. By 1990 Britain contained more individual shareowners than ever before, it is true. But collectively they owned proportionately less than they had done only thirty years earlier. In 1963 individual shareholdings in British companies equated to some 54 percent of available equity. This declined to 38 percent in 1975 and con­ tinued to fall, arriving at 20 percent by 1990.18 By comparison, UK insurance companies and pension funds between them accounted for approximately half of all UK shares at that time.19 Meanwhile, the internationalization of the London Stock Exchange drove a stark rise in the number of overseas investors (figure 2). Britain’s mass investment culture did not, in other words, equate to a diverse population of investors with extensive portfolios. Some 55 percent of Britain’s eleven million shareowners in 1989 owned only one shareholding.20 The public’s apparent appetite for buying and selling company shares in the mid-­1980s also quickly stalled before falling into decline. As of 2009, 15 percent of the British population owned equities or investment funds. By comparison, in the United States that percentage

8  |  Introduction 60

Rest of the world Insurance companies Pension funds Individuals Unit trusts Banks

50

Percentage

40

30

20

10

0 1963

1970

1977

1991

1984

1998

2005

Year Figure 2. Percentage of total market value of UK quoted shares by sector of beneficial owner, 1963 to 2010. Data Source: Office for National Statistics, “Owner­ ship of UK Quoted Shares: 2016,” 29 November 2017, https://​www​.ons​.gov​.uk​ /economy​/investmentspensionsandtrusts​/bulletins​/ownershipofukquotedshares​/2016 [accessed: 30/06/2021].

sat at around 21 percent. And yet, the number of British households with a stake in the market remained high. In 2006, 46 percent of the population held shares indirectly as pension fund members.21 In America too, the percentage of households owning stock (either directly or indirectly) rose from 19 percent in 1983 to 50.3 percent in 2005.22 As early as 1995, the London Stock Exchange seemingly acknowledged the shifting nature of share ownership when a committee led by Prudential chief executive and “life assurance supremo” Sir Mark Weinberg, changed its definition of the term to include “unit trusts, life assurance and pension policies as well as direct shareholdings.”23 In short, more people than ever had some kind of investment in the stock market in both Britain and America. How they made these investments, however, had changed considerably.

Introduction  |  9

A 2012 government review of the United Kingdom’s equities markets—the Kay Review—labeled the shift in popular investment practices from direct equity investment to saving and investing via pension funds, unit trusts, and life insurance policies as the “explosion of intermediation.” This phrase aptly described an increasing gap between investors and the companies in which their money was invested: a space occupied by “registrars, nominees, custodians, asset managers, managers who allocate funds to specialist asset managers, trustees, investment consultants, agents who ‘wrap’ products, retail platforms, distributors and independent financial advisers.” The Kay Review outlined the negative impacts of this situation as including: rising costs, a loss of information and control for savers, and incongruities between savers’ interests and those of the fund managers in charge of their assets.24 Aled Davies, meanwhile, rightly describes this rise of institutional investment as having undermined the foundations of the postwar social democratic settlement.25 The analysis in Are We Rich Yet? fleshes out this story by explaining how institutional investors carved out their domain and established such a stronghold over domestic capital markets. Specifically, it shows that financial institutions’ construction of an inclusive vision of investment-­as-­consumption was essential to this process.26 Financial services institutions had long since depicted their products as a way for individuals to purchase traditional consumer goods (e.g., through credit, hire purchase, and loans). But from the mid-­twentieth century they also began to sell investment products as consumer commodities in their own right—something with which to impress friends over dinner and to serve as an identity marker. Brokers, clearing banks, and building societies keen to divert growing levels of affluence and material aspiration into credit agreements, savings, and investments thus made consumer narratives a central feature of production, promotion, and distribution processes. The mounting contest over domestic retail markets climaxed in the mid-­1980s following the Financial Services Act, the Building Societies Act, and the introduction of computerized trading in the “Big Bang” of 1986. Each accelerated the disintegration of traditional barriers

10  |  Introduction

between saving and investment, further pushing building societies, merchant and investment banks, stockbrokers, and mortgage lenders into direct competition for the business of retail customers. No longer happy to rely on a clientele of well-­informed and wealthy private investors, financial institutions aggressively courted the cautious and largely uninformed everyman (and increasingly woman). This was the kind of customer who would just as soon “lie back and do nothing” as sit around reading company prospectuses. Even without the references to yuppies and privatization, Lloyds’ 1987 ad could hardly have come from any period other than the 1980s and 1990s. The mass-­market-­oriented package on sale was typical of the time, as Britons turning on their televisions or opening the pages of their daily newspaper found themselves inundated with advertisements for catchily named investment services like Barclayshare and ShareCall, many of which cost as little as £20 a month. Financial institutions not only began to experiment with standardized, consumer-­oriented products, but also new spaces in which to consume them. Investment in the 1980s moved out of the wood-­paneled offices of London’s Square Mile, and onto Britain’s high streets. Retail banks transformed themselves into financial supermarkets, willing to cross-­sell an array of branded products to customers walking into their local branch. Traditional stockbrokers launched new phone-­dealing services and set up share shops. Meanwhile, companies better known as consumer goods retailers, such as Marks and Spencer and Sainsbury’s, began to offer savings and investment services. People out buying perfume, furniture, or clothes could even wander up to salespeople at the shares and investment counter of their nearest Debenhams. In reality, many of these new products and services directed Britain’s financial consumers toward managed funds and away from direct stock market investment. Being part of an institutionalized investment culture meant less, not more, access to the market for many investors. But the small profit margins in private-­client business made the production of standardized mass-­ market mutual funds a far more appealing prospect for large financial institutions. It gave them greater control over investment decisions, and a steadier

Introduction  |  11

revenue stream. The rise of financial consumerism thus contributed to the institutionalization of British investment culture, all while giving investment the appearance of being democratized.

Financial Subjectivities The reorganization of Britain’s political economy around financial markets required its citizens to adopt new ways of being. In this respect, investment culture was but a strand of a much wider sociocultural endorsement of the logic and language of business, enterprise, and the free market in late twentieth-­century Britain.27 Across this period Britons were expected to be ready, willing, and able to participate in markets of all kinds. Their increasingly frequent encounters with financial products, services, and institutions were one way that they developed the intellectual and calculative tools to do just this. Precisely because of the assortment of actors involved, the discourses and practices associated with investment in late twentieth-­ century Britain were as contradictory as they were complementary. Like Lloyds’ protagonist, many Britons found themselves “getting hooked” to a hobby that took on the appearance of middle-­class gambling and promised an exciting pursuit of quick riches. For others, investing entailed a more serious process of personal capital asset management. Many approached investment with nervousness as they plunged into an incomprehensible world of financial risk and unpredictability. For yet more people, preexisting socioeconomic hierarchies of race, gender, and class meant that financial markets were one more area of contemporary life from which to be excluded.28 The result was the emergence of a number of coexisting and competing models of the “investor subject.” These were: the investor-­ citizen, the investor-­shopper, and the investment-­oriented subject. All were financialized subjects to the extent that they were shaped by the logics of capital market investment and the institutions that constituted them. However, the different relationships that people developed with Britain’s mass investment culture produced these different variants.

12  |  Introduction

Images of the investor-­citizen could most frequently be located in Conservative Party rhetoric. Here visions of people dutifully accumulating financial assets underpinned political ambitions for national economic prosperity. The investor-­citizen was thus assumed to invest knowingly, and even patriotically, taking an active interest in British businesses in order to support the nation’s economy.29 This figure was an outgrowth of the ideologies of late nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century liberal social reformers. They had imagined property ownership as a transformative experience for people: as something that could turn the unruly working classes into respectable citizens. Such ideas emerged at a time when relatively small numbers of middle-­and upper-­class private investors owned a large percentage of British industrial equity. As a result, it made sense that dutiful investors should be knowledgeable about, and directly involved in the companies whose shares they owned. The ideological basis of Thatcherite “popular capitalism” rested on the idea that this mid-­ century model of capital ownership could be scaled up and used to enfranchise new constituencies. British investment culture in the 1980s and 1990s certainly provided the tools for anyone wishing to fulfill the role of investor-­ citizen. Educative materials advising individuals how to “read” price movements and market indexes came in all shapes and sizes: from self-­ help books and correspondence courses to investment clubs where members could share their knowledge over a pint at the local pub. However, idealized notions of investor-­citizens rested on two flawed assumptions: that access to knowledge about capital markets was evenly distributed in society; and that those with fewer resources could or would adopt similar investment practices to Britain’s upper-­ middle class (or indeed that classist visions of sage gentleman investors reflected reality in the first place). In practice, very few people had the time, contacts, or capital to fulfil the role of investor-­citizen. Expert advice and subscriptions to information services were out of reach for all but a privileged few. Even then, substantial discrepancies remained between the networks of information and capital

Introduction  |  13

available to individual investors and those available to large financial institutions. In short, a mismatch existed between politicized notions of the active investor-­citizen and the fact that Britain’s mass-­market, consumer-­ oriented investment products fostered a figure better described as the “investor-­shopper.”30 In many instances, becoming an investor in 1980s Britain required little more than the completion of an application form found in a national newspaper, something that hardly constituted an education in the process of buying and selling shares. The rise of financial consumerism disincentivized financial services customers from actively participating in the process of investment. Instead, financial institutions encouraged Britons to browse for the cheapest management fees and interest rates. For first-­time (and often risk-­averse) investors the safest and easiest option seemed to be to stick with a familiar brand name like Lloyds and the promise that someone else would “take care of everything.” The result was that investor-­ shoppers were invited to adopt a significant level of passivity after the initial process of product selection, ending up reliant on institutionalized systems of decision-­making.31 But as indicated above, participation in Britain’s mass investment culture went beyond those able (or desirous) to invest either directly or indirectly in shares. Its abundant cultural ephemera presented a number of opportunities to vicariously experience the market. Newspaper editors, novelists, playwrights, musicians, television producers, and filmmakers keen to capitalize, or at least comment, on growing public fascination with the world of stocks and shares blurred the distinction between asset management and social interaction, l­ eisure, and entertainment. As a consequence, financial calculations, measurements, phraseology, and imagery became part and parcel of everyday existence. The figure of the investment-­oriented subject emerged from this collapse in the distinction between the personal and the financial.32 Although not necessarily an investor in the sense of owning investment products or equity, this type of investor-­subject was someone

14  |  Introduction

enculturated in a society saturated with images of the market. This figure’s models of success came from romanticized rags-­ to-­ riches tales of socially mobile yuppie and celebrity CEOs like Alan Sugar and Anita Roddick. The former was an East London–born entrepreneur who left school at sixteen to found electronics company Amstrad in 1968, before becoming a television personality thanks to his role on the reality show The Apprentice. Roddick, meanwhile, became the face of women’s business success and ethical capitalism due to her role in founding British cosmetics company The Body Shop. For those inspired by such individuals, life’s decisions entailed forecasting likely dividends against various investments in economic, social, cultural, and personal capital assets. While the investor-­citizen remained front and center in politicized discourses of wider investment, it was rooted in an older investment culture centered on high levels of ownership among an upper-­middle-­ class elite. Ultimately, it was the figures of the investor-­shopper and investment-­oriented subject that came to dominate Britain’s newly transformed investment culture in the 1980s, specifically because of its mass-­market and consumer-­oriented nature. The process of financialization in Britain reshaped society in uneven ways. On the one hand, the institutionalization of investment concentrated resources among a financial elite. Access to the market was governed, as ever it had been, by Britain’s racialized, gendered, and class-­based socioeconomic system. On the other hand, the proliferation of images and information about financial markets across the world of news, goods, and entertainment generated secondhand, discursive experiences of financial inclusion. This masked, and even legitimized, the growing power of financial institutional interests that proved a hallmark of financialization. The history of late twentieth-­ century Britain thus requires us to develop new approaches to the history of finance that account for the sociocultural processes and diversity of actors that shaped political and legislative reform. Doing so also encourages us to rethink metanarratives of change and continuity in contemporary Britain, particularly those associated with

Introduction  |  15

Thatcherism and her associated political credo of deindustrialization, privatization, and deregulation.

New Histories of Finance Much that has been written specifically about financial services in Britain is specialist literature. Located in business and marketing journals, this scholarship deals with contemporaneous developments in different financial sectors, such as retail banking or insurance provision.33 In building a technical understanding of financial markets, this work is invaluable, but there is little interest in placing institutional evolution alongside other social, economic, and political processes. Where historians of modern Britain have contributed to the field, research on the financial sector has often been limited to a tight focus on the City, the relationship between financial institutions and the state, or in-­depth histories of particular institutions.34 It has, therefore, been left to geographers, economic sociologists, and cultural theorists to develop frameworks for understanding the relationship between financial institutions and the individuals who engage with them.35 It is within these fields that our understanding of financialization as it pertains to everyday life has most fruitfully developed.36 Largely inspired by Foucauldian analyses of discourse, knowledge, and power, this body of work pioneered understandings of financial subjectivities and the social meaning of money.37 However what it delivered in theoretical verve, it often lacked in grounded empirical evidence. It is in the gaps between these disciplinary approaches that we can find a more historically rooted understanding of when and how financialization occurred. Following in the footsteps of more recent scholarship from the field of “Economic Humanities”—specifically that which focuses on the “investor-­subject”—Are We Rich Yet? specifies the location and features of financialization’s discursive formations as they evolved over time through a systematic study of the historical archival record.38 New histories of American capitalism

16  |  Introduction

have also provided a roadmap for the research contained in the following pages. This scholarship reinvigorated the historical study of economic life by capturing “the lived experience of people and groups as they assimilate—and reshape—the political economy.”39 More specifically, historians working in this field have traced the connections that exist between American consumers, producers, sources of capital and labor, and those who organized means of economic exchange.40 The result has been a renewed recognition that financiers, industrialists, and managers were more than economic agents: they also influenced change in political, ideological, and cultural spheres.41 It is high time that we place the rise of mass investment culture, its associated actors, and the business and financial practices generated through them at the heart of analyses of twentieth-­and twenty-­first century Britain. Taking seriously the culture associated with financial markets, including from where (and whom) it came, allows us to see the steady erosion of the boundaries between economic, material, and cultural life. This unique characteristic of the contemporary period requires that we apply the tools of the social and cultural historian to the history of financial services and the economy. Just as capital, markets, and financial institutions moved into new domains in the late twentieth century, we as historians must also cut across those boundaries that demarcate a study of the political and economic on the one hand and the social and cultural on the other.

Decentering Thatcherism Adopting a new approach to British financial history also pushes us to reevaluate our understanding of the actors that drove economic reform. Histories of contemporary Britain largely center their narrative on the fall of postwar social democracy at the hands of an emerging neoliberal consensus. The latter, historians have argued, was forged by a new Thatcherite settlement that involved the reconfiguration of existing ideological discourses.42 However, more recent research has shown the benefit of decentering the figure of Thatcher

Introduction  |  17

and avoiding an account of late twentieth-­century Britain overly determined by party politics and ideology.43 Much of this scholarship has focused on opposition to Thatcherism, drawing on a well-­established historiography of postwar social activism and left-­ wing organization.44 Academics are also beginning to explore if, how, and why individuals might have “bought in” to aspects of Thatcherism. Publications by Chris Moores and Amy Whipple have shown the mechanics of individual mobilization in support of a neoliberal political economy through a study of its expression in grassroots Conservative activism.45 However, it remains to be seen how individuals saw themselves in society beyond more consciously political activity. Are We Rich Yet? focuses our attention yet further still from the world of party politics, demonstrating that sociocultural processes fostered forms of public acquiescence with the New Right’s neoliberal project.46 In doing so, it follows the fortunes of a seemingly disconnected cast of historical actors from across the worlds of finance, extra-­parliamentary politics, and popular culture, many of whom shared little in common with the Conservative Party’s agenda. In chapters 2 and 3 the protagonists are financial institutions, both big and small. Along with an adjunct financial advice industry (which forms the basis of chapter 4) these institutions forged a highly institutionalized investment environment that was geared toward a mass market of financial consumers. Chapter 5 turns its focus to the world of consumer goods and entertainment to explain the cultural pervasiveness of investment in British daily life. As chapter 6 demonstrates, it is also important to remember that individual savers and investors were no mere dupes. Their desire for risk aversion, financial security, and social inclusion drove them to demand different avenues through which to enter the marketplaces of the 1980s and 1990s. Just as elsewhere in consumer society, consumer agency had an important role to play in both complying with and resisting the machinations of service providers. In short, the transfer of public assets and services to private ownership was neither seamlessly imposed from above nor simplistically embraced from below. Following the path set by Jamie Peck in his

18  |  Introduction

work on “neoliberalization,” the approach taken here sees financialization as a process carried out by situated social actors, as opposed to something “bloodless [and] semi-­automatic.”47 Are We Rich Yet? thus contributes to our understanding of neoliberal-­inspired reform in Britain by demonstrating the mediating role of institutional actors and individual agency. It avoids reducing the process of financialization to a single group of collaborators. Instead, it delineates a patchwork of colliding interests that twisted and shaped investment into something new. In so doing they diverted, challenged, and shaped the terrain upon which political intervention unfolded. Their actions often superseded ideological intention, or indeed, created a space for it. Focusing on these institutions and individuals highlights the limitations of the Thatcherite challenge, while nonetheless illuminating the considerable transformations that occurred in the closing decades of the twentieth century.

Periodization Reconsidering the assumed drivers of change in the 1980s also pushes us to resituate the decade in a longer durée. After all, British investment culture developed over the course of a century or more. It would be naive to think that its most long-­standing and deep-­seated features were entirely washed away in just a few years. The path of political transformation in 1980s and 1990s Britain was at least partially determined by existing institutional structures and discourses that grew out of Victorian speculation, postwar individualism, mass communication, affluence, and consumption.48 The challenge, therefore, is to identify where and why continuity occurred, even as we acknowledge the extent of disruption. Precisely because the 1980s was a climactic moment of transition, aspects of the investment culture that emerged in this period were, indeed, transitory. More extreme manifestations of the British public’s new fascination with the market were only fleeting: experimental new services failed, imitations of popular City fashions came and went,

Introduction  |  19

and many people who invested in shares for the first time never did so again. Financial institutions’, politicians’, and journalists’ efforts to forge a mass investing public thus eventually produced something less spectacular than the intense activity of the 1980s first suggested. As the figures above indicate, the influx of new investors in the 1980s did not survive the 1990s. Investment fervor wore thin as people got a taste of financial loss in a series of crashes and downturns. City scandals, leveraged buyouts, and big-­name flotations also ceded some of their novelty due to their frequency. And while the dot​.com revolution of the 1990s once more rehearsed the well-­worn mythology of free market meritocracy—this time in the guise of million-­pound tech companies started in the garages of high school kids—the apparent glamour of stock market speculation dulled with the more mundane character that financial asset management assumed. In turning investment into an everyday form of consumption, financial institutions stripped it of some of its allure. When transactions could occur over the phone, online, or in a local bank, the social prestige of enlisting the services of a broker began to fade. The late twentieth century did not, therefore, witness the transformation of the British public into a nation of Thatcherite capitalists. Rather, it produced a more subtle reconciliation with the position and power of financial institutions and markets in society. And yet, the expectations placed on individuals remain, even though the political promises of popular capitalism and the cultural verve of the yuppie are long gone. Individuals today are supposed to be financially literate (or at least to be able to afford the services of someone who is), making wise investments in industry, property, and pensions as a way of securing personal financial security and national economic prosperity. With technology placing the means to invest in the palm of our hands, people can and do choose to invest with phone apps with names like Robinhood, Wealthify, and Acorn. These promise, just as Lloyds Bank did in the 1980s, to “democratise investing” by offering a service free of “complicated jargon” where users “don’t have to work out what investments to buy and sell [because] we do all that for you.”49

20  |  Introduction

National Histories of Global Processes Finally, the analysis that follows can be used as a starting point for exploring similar patterns of reform in other countries. After all, the story told here is by no means an exclusively British one. Since the 1970s, from Reaganomics in the United States and Rogernomics in New Zealand, to the deregulated markets of Asia and the parties now ruling in the former Communist states of Eastern Europe and Latin America, governments with remarkably distinct political economies made financial markets central to their visions of national economic security.50 The consequences of their having done so included a significant growth in income inequality, rising levels of national and individual debt, and patent disparities in who could extract wealth from global financial market infrastructures.51 As Catherine Hall and Priya Satia rightly remind us, the grand narrative of capitalism has always been simultaneously local and global in nature.52 By tracing the historically distinctive practices of exchange, social interaction, and cultural production that characterized financialization in Britain, Are We Rich Yet? localizes a global phenomenon. It anchors seemingly abstract and faceless processes to the activities of specific institutions, and the lived experiences of the people who engaged with them. •

•

•

All in all, over a very short period of time Britons found themselves embracing new relationships with financial institutions and capital markets. These were both direct and indirect. They inevitably involved personal economic investments, but they also required emotional, social, cultural, and sometimes political investments too. Are We Rich Yet? traces the interactions between individuals, ideologies, and institutions across the late twentieth century to explain when and how financial markets came to occupy such a significant position in British society, not only politically and economically, but socially and culturally, too.

Introduction  |  21

The remaking of British investment culture was by no means a straightforward process. Preexisting institutions, structures, and relationships were reformed in light of the shifting political and legislative climate of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. New financial products, services, and service providers competed with those of old. Institutions introduced new management structures, client relations, and workplace practices all while long-­standing habits and hierarchies continued to exist. But however uneven the transformation, there was a discernible shift. Much that seemed familiar from the early twen­ tieth century—banks, brokers, and building societies with household names, an authoritative financial press, and a well-­established body of middle-­class investors—began to interact in novel ways and perform new functions. By the turn of the twenty-­first century, British investment culture was more consumer-­oriented, institutionalized, and widespread than ever before. This transformation did not precipitate a downward redistribution of wealth. Instead, individuals experienced a steady process of disempowerment at the hands of financial infrastructures between the late 1950s and early 2000s. A history of investment culture thus shows us that the promise of mass democratic ownership in business and industry has always been something of a sales pitch. Britain’s mass investment culture offered real and vicarious interactions with financial markets to a vastly expanded portion of the population, all while legitimizing huge inequalities in access to flows of information, resources, and capital.

Chapter 1

“A Wonderful Growth” Investment Culture from 1840 to 1980

The processes through which financial markets became embedded in modern and contemporary life were long and multifarious. Nonetheless, it is possible to identify a number of key periods—certain historical conjunctures—during which something akin to popular investment emerged and expanded along broadly similar pathways. In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, and again in the years following the Second World War, social, economic, and political developments coalesced to expand public interest in investment. At each moment new groups were pulled into contact with markets and new ideas about who could invest via what channels. Tracing this longer history of popular investment practices highlights recurrent arenas of action, notably: the affordability and availability of shares; the accessibility of knowledge about them; and the number, variety, and influence of institutions willing to service small investors. We will see, for example, the role played by a financial press keen to facilitate the construction of an investing public. Growth in incomes, an abundance of new share issues, and changing forms of social acceptability also invariably drove the expansion of popular 22

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  23

investment practices. At the same time, changing technological and legislative environments pushed institutions to compete for control over access to the market. Contemporaries often viewed these kinds of transformation as fraught with danger. Every time the market appeared to open up to new constituencies, a battle ensued to define what signified legitimate practice and who had the necessary economic and social capital to count as legitimate investors. Politicians and an emerging financial elite worried over the problem of investor ignorance and the suitability of different socioeconomic groups for capital ownership. By the mid-­twentieth century these concerns had evolved into an idealized image of the investor-­citizen. In many respects this figure was modeled on the supposed moral fortitude, cultural sophistication, and calculating objectivity of the “gentlemanly” financier. Just how many people could or should adopt this role in the context of mass democracy remained unresolved, however. None of this means to say that investment culture looked identical in the 1840s, 1880s, 1960s, and 1980s. Layered over these seemingly parallel developments were other historically contingent processes. New discursive and institutional formations built upon enduring foundations or the fragmentary remains of decaying systems. Prevailing tropes, networks, and actors reconfigured in new ways, even though the intellectual and cultural resources they drew upon had often been around for a century or more. Situating late twentieth-­century investment culture in a longer historical framework thus helps to avoid the potential pitfall of characterizing more recent developments as a direct product of Thatcherism. Neoliberal-­inspired political reform attached itself to existing structures. It was, therefore, constrained by some conditions and abetted by others. The phenomena that produced heavily institutionalized forms of financial consumerism in the 1980s and 1990s had their roots in postwar mass affluence, early twentieth-­century speculation, and late nineteenth-­century “gentlemanly capitalism.” Even elements of Thatcher’s preferred language, such as property-­owning democracy and popular capitalism, had histories that stretched back to the 1920s and 1950s respectively.

24  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

Over the course of a hundred or so years the lives of a growing number of “ordinary” people slowly but surely became entangled with stock market investment. This chapter looks at the actors, practices, and mechanisms of reform that underpinned the evolution of British investment culture into its mass-­market late twentieth-­ century form. Doing so demonstrates that the broad terrain of popular investment had already been well mapped out by the 1980s. Although the pace and scale of transformation in the closing decades of the twentieth century was exceptional, it was necessarily uneven. It preserved as well as altered aspects of the deeply ingrained investment culture from which it stemmed.

Investing in the Long Nineteenth Century From the repeal of the Bubble Act in 1825 to the First World War, levels of public investment in stocks and shares in Britain experienced an extended (although inconsistent) period of growth. The rapid expansion of joint-­stock companies and the railway mania of the 1840s stand out as obvious causal factors. The latter proved fundamental to the shape of modern financial markets. Shareholdings in British railways grew from £246 million in 1850, to £1,335 million by 1912.1 Just as the privatizations of the 1980s created well-­ publicized new issues for people to get their hands on, the railway boom flooded the market (and the investors who inhabited it) with new opportunities. It particularly encouraged smaller investors from across different regions to participate, with some staking as little as £1 each.2 While public interest in railway investment receded after its initial boom, similar types of infrastructure companies—gas, water, electricity, telegraphs—established a prominent place on stock exchanges throughout the nineteenth century.3 Thus, from the 1850s onward legal, economic, and social conditions ensured that the “investing public” produced by this original burst of activity remained a permanent feature of British financial capitalism. Of course, the base ingredient for Britain’s nascent culture of popular investment was individual or familial access to capital. Rising

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  25

real incomes and the expansion of salaried, white-­collar, and professional employment in the late nineteenth century spurred practices of saving and investment among new sections of the population. A higher proportion of disposable incomes meant a wider potential pool of investors.4 This included significant numbers of women who featured as shareowners in both public and private companies across the nineteenth century. Spinsters and widows were legally entitled to hold shares with equal rights to men, while the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882 further enabled women of different kinds to participate in financial markets as rentiers, speculators, and members of family companies. Consequently, it was not unusual for between 20–30 percent of a company’s stock to be held by women in certain sectors. Indeed, women were able to vote at company annual general meetings (AGMs) long before they gained the right to cast their votes in national political elections.5 But it was not only domestic economic and social developments that created the conditions for the advent of an investing public. Britain’s imperial exploits in this period underpinned the creation of a rentier class.6 As British enterprises extracted wealth from different areas of the globe, new networks of capital evolved to facilitate them. This included a London-­based financial service sector that raised billions of pounds for British companies operating in the colonies. The class of elite financiers at the heart of this emergent financial center significantly shaped political and social developments. Between them they drove an orthodox free-­trade cosmopolitanism that rested upon their “invisible empire” of finance.7 However, Britain’s “invisible empire” consisted of more than a metropolitan elite of gentlemanly capitalists. It was also fueled by the creation of a copiously investing middle class whose savings funded the expansion of railway networks, industrialization, and resource extraction abroad. The mining booms of South America, India, and Australia, for example, led to a spate of opportunities for the aspiring speculator: between 1886 and 1887, five hundred new companies were formed in just Australia.8 The expansion of public share ownership was not only driven by the number of investing opportunities, however. They also needed

26  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

to be the right kind. New investors were enticed by “safer” options as much as they were the promise of spectacular wealth. From the mid-­nineteenth century onward, shares became cheaper, at the same time as financiers designed new types of lower-­risk securities like preference shares, debenture stocks, government-­issued consolidated annuities, and investment trusts.9 These investment vehicles, reflected the kind of risk aversion one might expect amongst those with more limited disposable wealth. Changing legal conditions further reduced the risk of investing for small investors. Particularly notable on this front was the Limited Liability Act of 1855 and Companies Acts of 1856 and 1862. These Acts overturned legislation that had previously set the minimum shares value at £10, a prohibitive amount for the vast majority of people. More significantly, limited liability meant that investors were no longer accountable for a company’s potential losses to the point of their own bankruptcy. The only loss suffered was the value of the original investment and associated fees.10 This made investing less hazardous and more economically viable for greater numbers of people. The mere capability to invest described above cannot entirely account for the willingness of large numbers of people from geographically and socially diverse backgrounds to actually do so. Of course, the potential for personal economic gain was a component, but the popularity of investment has always relied upon its social acceptability and desirability. It is significant, therefore, that late-­ nineteenth-­century brokers, financiers, and journalists articulated the virtues of investment for a public audience. In many ways this was a self-­serving exercise, designed to secure the legitimacy of investment as a profession. It nonetheless connected the practice of investment to social status. Novelists, too, popularized the market by making booms, busts, and speculation the backdrop of many works of literature. Although not always positive, such works contemplated the possible social and moral benefits, as well as pitfalls, of widespread participation in financial markets.11 Taken together this corpus constructed an elite, masculine, and patriotic agent as the driving force of British financial capitalism. This was someone with an active

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  27

disposition and characterized by consideration and attentiveness. Through them, investing was portrayed as a means to care for the well-­being of one’s family, for men to fulfil their desires, to secure the national economic interest, and as vehicle for class harmony.12 Adopting a paternalistic position, social reformers of the period likewise argued that the removal of unlimited liability would expand Britain’s shareholding constituency and transform working men into “tranquil and conservative citizen[s].”13 Debates about limited liability thus marked the emergence of a political belief in the power of share ownership to produce dutiful investor-­citizens: people well informed about and with a direct stake in the financial capitalist system. Ownership in this understanding obliged individuals to reform themselves in the image of the gentlemanly financier with his clear moral judgment and wise investments in British business. In reality, however, the difference between “amateur” investors and “professionals” continued to be drawn along lines of wealth rather than proven expertise.14 Accordingly, the arrival of limited liability did not presage a complete shift in attitudes toward investors of “moderate means.” Instead, debates about the likely impact of the 1855 Act rehearsed class-­based anxieties that would become a mainstay of British investment culture right through to the twenty-­ first century. Public and political concern particularly centered on the diminishing “quality” of shareholder constituencies as their quantity expanded. In the mid-­1800s, banks and politicians felt reassured that only very wealthy and influential figures would be willing to take on unlimited liability. They expressed a clear preference for the assumed social and cultural capital of the upper-­class gentlemanly financier, and remained wholly unconvinced about the capabilities of a broader investing public. To cite just one example, an 1854 Royal Commission expressed the belief that the ownership of capital necessitated skills that working-­class men simply did not have.15 Critics of widespread participation in financial markets also often conflated working-­class investment practices with the assumed social disorder of gambling.16 The history of bucket shops provides a particular case in point.17 The term bucket shop actually referred

28  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

to a range of practices that subsisted largely without government interference from the 1880s to the 1930s. This included legitimate outside broking houses, bookmaking, and also share-­pushing. The latter was the remit of conmen who used the prestige of the London Stock Exchange (and lack of legal regulatory oversight) to sell stocks and shares from locations in the vicinity of the Square Mile. Meanwhile, the increasing affordability of stock tickers made betting on share prices a viable commercial opportunity for bookmakers. Their services provided a facsimile of stock market speculation for the working classes. Along with account trading, bucket shops in all their forms indicated the arrival of broad public participation in new kinds of financial entertainment.18 The term bucket shop quickly became a pejorative one, however, conjuring images of illicit places where punters eagerly engaged in risky or illegal activity.19 In fact, among the more dishonest manifestations of off-­exchange or speculative risk-taking, many outside houses acted as perfectly legitimate entry points into the market for small and first-­time investors. For officials keen to cement the political, and economic standing of the London Stock Exchange, however, tarnishing all off-­exchange trading practices with the intentionally vague term bucket shops served a dual purpose. Firstly, it allowed them to retain their dominant position in speculative trading by excluding competition. Secondly, City figures feared the implications for their professional reputation if the public came to realize that “the same acquisitive drive and addictive thrill lay behind both speculation and gambling.”20 Although legal definitions reinforced the legality of speculation and illegality of gambling, discursive distinctions between the two remained blurred.21 The likes of brokers thus portrayed their own activities as the purview of honorable merchants supporting the economic growth of the nation, all while castigating the dubious character of off-­exchange traders and their clientele.22 In short, although working-­and middle-­class investors enjoyed new opportunities in the nineteenth-­century, their encounters with the market continued to be framed within existing socioeconomic hierarchies. Institutional attempts to control the discourses attached to

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  29

different routes to the market remained a persistent feature of British investment culture. Perhaps the most significant factor driving the emergence of popular investment in the late nineteenth century was the arrival of formal systems for the creation and dissemination of knowledge about markets. This process necessitated material networks—of railways, telegraph and telephone lines—to transmit price information.23 The introduction of the ticker tape machine from 1872 and the integration of the telephone into the workings of the exchange between 1882 and 1889, for example, meant that information could be instantly communicated from the trading floor to interested parties outside.24 That a far greater quantity of financial information could circulate over longer distances and at faster speeds also fueled the expansion of the financial press.25 Papers like the Morning Chronicle and London Times had regularly commented on City culture since the 1820s. The great railway speculation of the 1840s further increased the volume of financial supplements, advice manuals, and brochures addressed to the public.26 Even so, prior to the late 1800s, David Kynaston describes the situation as one where potential investors “found only limited succour and advice from the Fourth Estate.” This, he continues, “left deans, widows and others badly placed, and considerably mitigated against the natural attraction of holding shares.”27 The 1870s and 1880s can thus reasonably be seen as the birth of the modern financial press. It certainly expanded rapidly in this period. The British and Irish Press Guide for 1874 listed just 19 publications under the title “Finance and Investment.” By 1894 the number was 50, and by 1914 it was 109.28 More significant than its sheer quantity was the changing character of this output. Both the Financial News (1884) and Financial Times (1888) were founded with the intention of popularizing financial journalism. In the words of Ellis Powell, editor of the Financial News, their self-­appointed task was to court “the modern investing public . . . numbered by hundreds of thousands, and representing every class in society except the absolutely destitute.”29 To this end, rather than simply reporting prices with little or no editorial content, the Financial Times and

30  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

the Financial News developed a more multifaceted offering characterized by outspoken opinion, share tips, and forthright reportage on fraud. This “new financial journalism” was something of an American import. Journalist Henry Marks, for instance, spent some ten years making a name for himself in New York before returning to London to launch the Financial News.30 Under his tutelage the paper aimed to directly interact with its readership. Its regular features included a letters section titled “The Voice of the Public,” and also “Answers to Correspondents” for those with specific investment queries. Such items invited readers to play an active role as investors, both by informing themselves and shaping coverage through their responses to news items and requests for advice.31 With the help of this public-­ facing financial press, companies similarly sharpened their means of interacting with potential investors. Company promoters—men whose job it was to create interest in upcoming share issues to ensure successful flotations—developed ever more sophisticated marketing techniques. This included buying investors’ contact details from mail order firms who plundered the Registrar of Companies’ annually updated shareholder lists.32 Promoters also frequently collaborated with journalists to write puff pieces that disguised share issue advertisements as regular commentary. James Taylor describes financial journalism in this period as a “powerful but problematic source of information,” highlighting the conflicting motivations of a press keen to maintain its reputation as serving the public interest, but also beholden to revenue derived from company promotion and advertising brokers’ services.33 The functioning of Britain’s financial markets certainly came to rely upon complex networks of overlapping interests between journalists, companies, and financial institutions, each of whom had reason to cultivate public interest in investment. Perhaps even more significant than its attempts to appeal to new readerships, the financial press facilitated the standardization and abstraction of the market. That is to say, it introduced greater numbers of people to new ways of assessing the worth of different kinds of assets. The publication and circulation of price lists transformed

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  31

the market from a physical location into an object of analysis. Meanwhile journalists’ descriptions of investing as a “science” governed by laws served to naturalize the market, rendering it knowable if not always safe. These processes complemented financial institutions’ attempts to shore up distinctions between the “irrationality” of luck-­based gambling and the “rationality” of speculation. They also encouraged similar sets of responses and behaviors among investors: unconnected people could increasingly be expected to pursue standard paths of action despite operating under different specific conditions (even if those paths of action included erratic attempts to chase price highs and lows).34 We should, therefore, be as concerned with the diffusion of this system of knowledge as we are with how many people had the necessary capital to put it to use directly. The relative, although far from complete, stability that came from increasingly consistent patterns of thought, measurement, and practice were the building blocks of modern financial markets. From this basis sprung a sense of order, even as markets expanded beyond those physically present on the floor and began to respond to national rather than local supply and demand.35 We should, of course, be cautious about overstating the pace and extent of change. The abstraction of the market, described by James Vernon as central to the emergence of modern Britain, was a gradual one.36 Share ownership retained much of its local character. Companies tended to be small with only a short register of shareholders, most of whom had direct links with the company owners (whether through local business and trading relationships, or family connections).37 Railway speculation broke this mold to a certain degree, if for no other reason than railway lines ran across territories, meaning that people from different regions began to invest in the same companies. But even then, investors bought shares in their local line, and markets in stocks and commodities remained tied to particular places where personal relationships and localized knowledge were important. Stock exchanges did not often find themselves in direct competition: government debt and large corporate bonds were usually the only stocks traded internationally.38

32  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

Nor should contemporaneous claims about the “democratization” of share ownership be taken entirely at face value. Statistical analysis suggests that growth in private share ownership in this period came mostly as a result of the already wealthy expanding their portfolios.39 Limited liability confirmed rather than undermined the distinction between capital and labor, while the institutional and political will to expand investment beyond a demographic of wealthy men was minimal at best.40 Notably there remained a disdain within the British financial establishment toward the notion of “amateur” investors.41 The typical private investor thus remained a person of considerable means, likely subject to income tax.42 Even so, while scholars continue to dispute the extent of the democratization of share ownership between 1870 and 1914, contempor­ aries operated on the belief that this process was, in fact, underway.43 And indeed, the late nineteenth century witnessed important strides in the development of a national and popular form of investment, no matter how small and middle-­class. The conditions outlined above help to explain why growing numbers of people were drawn to the idea of financial investment. Some were attracted by the entertainment value of novel forms of speculation. Others were drawn to the apparent safety of investing in a knowable and rational system that had been explicated to them by analysts and journalists. As it was, by 1911 some 2.4 per cent of the population (approximately 1.1 million people) were shareholders.44 This dispersion of share ownership raised new challenges for the market, its institutions, participants, and regulators. Meanwhile, the idea of an “investing public” remained a core feature of British markets for the following hundred years as “Gentlemen, solicitors, and peers of the realm” found themselves investing alongside a small but growing minority of “retailers, professional men, skilled workers” and a significant number of women.45

Investing in Interwar Britain After the First World War direct investment opportunities stagnated, although the war itself boosted certain practices of saving

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  33

and investment. The sale of government bonds in support of the war effort, for instance, gradually embedded an “investor mind set” among greater numbers of Britons. So too did the sale of war savings certificates. Between 1916 and 1918 around 140 million certificates were sold, and by 1919 there were more than 40,000 war savings associations dispersed across workplaces and schools. Both phenomena no doubt reflected the unprecedented government-­led advertising campaign and education program that accompanied the scheme. This provided a layer of legitimacy to wide-­scale public participation in capital markets by linking certain forms of financial management to patriotism.46 As the Sunday Express reported, “War loans . . . have proved the finest advertisement the Stock Exchange has ever had.”47 They certainly indicated the potentially transformative role of government endorsement in the expansion of investment. After the temporary closure of the stock market in the early years of the conflict, it reopened to the delight of the financial press. National papers like the Daily Express, Daily Mirror, and Daily Mail picked up where they left off before the war, all too happy to promote a wave of new issues that followed the cessation of the conflict. And although financial news remained niche, it was nonetheless an important stream of revenue for newspaper proprietors who came to rely on advertising placed by Britain’s consolidating corporate sector.48 The result was that public interest in investing held fast. A 1920 study of investors by the Financial News’s Ellis Powell included an analysis of Selfridge’s share registers. This revealed that “a cabinet maker, a gas collector, a clerk, a nurse, a school mistress, and a housekeeper” were all to be found among the company’s most recent investors.49 As this list indicated, women continued to figure prominently among the names on shareholder registers of the early 1900s. In fact, women proved an increasingly appealing target market for company share promoters who sought to exploit women’s primary position in Britain’s emergent consumer economy. Shareholders could, after all, be entreated to buy products from companies on the promise that it would help to ensure the health of their investments. Loyal

34  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

consumers of a company brand, meanwhile, might well be convinced to become shareholders if capital funds needed to be raised.50 In terms of a working-­class investing constituency, employee share ownership was the main area of development in interwar Britain. The concept arose as a particular point of interest within Conservative and Liberal circles. The Representation of the People Act of 1918 enfranchised all male voters over twenty-­one and removed property qualifications from suffrage. For the Conservatives this meant developing new policies that could win support from a new electorate. The “property-­owning democracy”—a phrase that became synonymous with Margaret Thatcher at the end of the century—first surfaced in this context.51 Unionist MP Noel Skelton coined the term in 1923. In his usage it referred to profit sharing in industry as opposed to widespread public participation in share ownership.52 His concern was to curb industrial tensions in the face of the “near revolutionary militancy” that had plagued British industry in the early 1920s. The purpose of this form of share ownership was to protect against strike action, with no fewer than sixty-­two schemes started in 1919, and a further fifty-­eight in 1920.53 Companies’ eager uptake of the idea was certainly more than mere altruism. Company owners and politicians alike feared the consequences of issuing too many shares to employees in a way that might shift the balance of power in company management. Consequently, employee share owners often had their rights curbed, through being issued shares, for example, that did not allow them to attend AGMs.54 Profit sharing in this manner was nonetheless articulated by its Liberal and Conservative supporters as an inherent social good. Echoing the paternalism of social reformers in the 1850s, advocates of employee share ownership held that the extension of private property would change individual wage-­earners into “responsible human being[s].”55 Tory Democrats in the 1920s and 1930s connected their support of the property-­owning democracy to their belief in laissez fair government and Smilesian notions of self-­help.56 Theirs was a vision of society where the “test of legislation should be its effect on character and its aim at helping the individual to help himself.”57

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  35

On balance, though, resistance rather than encouragement characterized elite institutional responses to the expansion of investment beyond certain socially and culturally acceptable limits. Aside from a booming investment trust industry, financial institutions displayed limited interest in attracting a lower-­middle-­or working-­class clientele. An increasingly dominant London Stock Exchange continued to prioritize protection of its members and thus remained largely indifferent to the idea of developing a robust system of protection for small investors.58 Coupled with politicians’ adoption of what Kieran Heinemann describes as a “deliberately . . . conservative stance on popular capitalism,” this lack of institutional will curbed any possibility of a large intake of new investors from less affluent backgrounds.59 The stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Second World War reinscribed, rather than disrupted this situation. Although British investors suffered comparatively less than US investors during the crash, “the days when everybody had been a potential investor,” if ever they existed, had long gone.60 Indeed, the United States served as a cautionary tale, with millions of dollars’ worth of small savings lost. This seemed to vindicate those who had long since spoken out against working-­and lower-­middle-­class participation in stock markets.61 It wasn’t until 1932 that the market saw a significant up-­turn, and only after 1934 did the London Stock Exchange reach pre-­1929 figures. During this time investors continued to suffer in a system with next to no governmental regulation. Share-­pushing was rampant as brokers sought to entice small investors back to a bear market. And despite mounting public pressure, it was not until the 1939 Prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act that small investors were offered any recourse to legal action against those who swindled them.62 Even then, the arrival of legislation in 1939 was not an unmitigated success for small investors. It was this legislation that essentially restricted the activities of Britain’s bucket shops. Although investors benefitted from greater protection and a clamp down on share-­pushers, the Act also suppressed many activities undertaken by legitimate outside broking houses. In the interwar years, the London Stock Exchange had already achieved a “virtual monopoly”

36  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

within Britain’s domestic securities market. The Prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act formalized this process by curbing an emerging retail market for the working-­and middle-­classes.63 The overarching trend in interwar Britain was, therefore, toward government-­backed centralization. This process was facilitated by a system of informal but powerful links between a socially homogenous and geographically concentrated financial and political elite.64 The London Stock Exchange’s dominance was also buttressed by an extended phase of mergers and acquisitions among British businesses. Large joint-­stock companies emerged as the engines of national production and distribution in the early twentieth century. And in the course of expansion, they frequently absorbed local businesses. Consequently, the availability of the small investor’s favored local company stocks declined. By comparison, institutional investors (such as insurance companies and mutual funds) demonstrated a distinct preference for shares in big companies that could be more easily bought and sold in large volumes.65 The Financial News reported in 1933 that institutional investors held a total of £1.7 billion in equities, generating approximately one-­fifth of the Stock Exchange’s turnover.66 As these companies professionalized, they offered increasingly diverse portfolio options to potential customers, and their influence (and capital assets) grew accordingly.67 Although the individual investor remained “king,” joint-­stock banks, insurance companies, and investment trusts played an increasingly important role in feeding the nation’s savings into stocks and shares. Thus began a steady decline in the relative power of the small investor, even as their numbers expanded in the years following the Second World War. All in all, there were clear limitations on early twentieth-­century visions of a property-­owning democracy. Between 1914 and 1939 few major strides in widespread public investment occurred, not least because financial institutions and governments lacked the will to expand practices of investment to new constituencies. Working-­ and middle-­class investors had placed more money in savings banks, joined employee share schemes, and purchased more government bonds and houses than ever before. This certainly tied them in new

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  37

ways to financial institutions and markets. However, contemporaneous claims that “We have seen a remarkably widespread diffusion of money, and a wonderful growth in the habit of investment, among classes of the population to whom both are a novelty” only went so far.68 The culture of investment that had emerged in the late nineteenth century, remained fairly stable in the early twentieth, although the growing power of institutional investors portended a postwar investment culture that would become increasingly dominated by them. In short, interwar Britain witnessed a democratization of saving and certain forms of ownership, yes. But a democratization of investing? Not really.69

Investing in Postwar Britain It was not until the 1950s, as the controls of the Second World War and immediate post-­war austerity receded, that the foundations of a mass investment culture emerged.70 As we have already seen, the key conditions for an expansion of popular investment included personal economic opportunity (i.e., high income levels), access to the market (i.e., suitable and appealing investment vehicles for small investors), information (characterized by an expansive financial press), and the presentation of investment as a socially and culturally appealing practice (discursive acceptance as opposed to stigmatization). The role or necessity of a robust regulatory system to ensure investor protection was more ambiguous. In postwar Britain many, if not all, of these conditions were met. First and foremost, Britain entered a period of economic growth in the 1950s. After years of postwar austerity, the country began to maximize exports via domestic production in an attempt to keep pace with a global economic boom. Encouraged by Labour’s Keynesian-­inspired demand-­side political economy, years of near full employment followed. They were accompanied by changing patterns of occupation and rising incomes. One consequence was a surge in demand for goods previously seen as luxury items.71 Just as white goods, homes, and cars became more affordable to greater numbers

38  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

of Britons, so too did the prospect of share ownership. Financial institutions well understood this, and they began competing head-­to-­ head with more traditional luxury goods markets for the savings and spare cash of newly prosperous workers.72 The retail banking market in particular introduced new and transformed services such as check trading, personal bank loans, hire purchase, and credit cards in an attempt to meet customers’ desires to participate in Britain’s consumer economy.73 The same enthusiasm did not typify financial institutions’ attitude to stock market investment, however. Despite growing scrutiny of its monopolistic position in domestic markets, the London Stock Exchange failed to provide a “user-­friendly” environment for the private investor.74 In 1960 the Sunday Times commented: “The process of putting the new investor in touch with a stockbroker by writing to the Secretary of the Stock Exchange . . . is not one calculated to encourage the number or the enthusiasm of small investors.”75 More generally, the Stock Exchange focused, as ever it had, on representing the collective interests of its membership. Consequently, it was riven by division on the issue of wider share ownership across the postwar period, pulled in two by the desires of its Council on the one hand (itself often responding to political demand rather than self-­interest), and the activities of its member firms on the other.76 A rebellion ensued, for instance, when the Stock Exchange Council attempted to encourage the business of small investors by decreasing rates and lifting its ban on advertising by members. For smaller and regional firms the problem with such moves was their own inability to justify dealing expenses in the case of small transactions. Larger London-­based banks and insurance companies, meanwhile, were unwilling to subsidize private-­investor transactions by paying higher charges.77 In a 1971 Financial Times article, journalist Kenneth Gooding highlighted the irony of a situation in which “the activities of the London Stock Exchange’s publicity department . . . are all likely to produce the kind of business which many brokers admit is loss-­ making.” He claimed that around half of the Stock Exchange member

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  39

broking firms were reluctant to even make their names available to small investors.78 If the City as a whole was still reluctant to engage with the small investor, there were important areas in which it was warming up to the idea. Chairman of the London Stock Exchange from 1949 to 1959, Sir John Braithwaite, broadly supported the notion of wider share ownership. He opened up the Exchange’s visitors’ gallery to the public, oversaw the launch of a compensation fund for members’ clients, and regularly spoke in favor of the reduction of transfer stamp duty.79 In a 1956 address to the Institute of Bankers, Braithwaite indicated his desire to see the approximately “two million people in this country who . . . own stocks or shares multiplied . . . two or three times.”80 Lord Ritchie of Dundee, who succeeded Braithwaite as chairman, similarly intimated: “We feel we have a duty to provide a fair and adequate service to anyone wishing to invest £50 or £100 or more in stocks and shares. . . . Nothing could be better than a large number of small investors.”81 Neither chairman was straightforward in their support of wider share ownership, however. At the very least both appeared to exclude working-­class speculation from their vision of an expanded investing public, instead imagining a constituency of respectable middle-­class investor-­citizens engaged in long-­term investment. Even so, Braithwaite’s and Ritchie’s actions hint that the tide was beginning to turn in the City when it came to attitudes toward a widespread investing public.82 In 1958 the plight of shareholder democratization acquired a formal organizational champion for the first time. The aptly named Wider Share Ownership Council (WSOC) was formed by a collection of City figures and politicians keen to enfranchise the public in Britain’s economic life.83 It was well-­embedded in the City’s network of interest groups, and the list of influential WSOC members was a long one. The WSOC’s chairman, Edgar Palamountain, was also chairman of the M&G group from 1977, and of the Unit Trust ­Association between 1977 and 1979. John Harvey-­Jones, who replaced him as chairman at his death, was also onetime chairman of

40  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

Imperial Chemical Industries (one of the first companies to launch an employee share scheme). Other members included Anthony Hornby of brokers Cazenove & Co, jobber Esmond Durlacher, and merchant banker Siegmund Warburg.84 Although this kind of social network did not equate to an extensive City coalition in favor of mass participation in the stock market, the Council could always rely on the help of a “few kind friends” to further its ambitions.85 Notable contributions came from Barclays Bank Trust, which became the Council’s “largest single financial contributor” in the late 1970s and provided its secretariat.86 Following in the footsteps of Noel Skelton, a key strand of the WSOC’s vision centered on employee share ownership, industrial democracy, and workplace efficiency. Like Tory Democrats and Unionists in the 1920s, the Council viewed share ownership as a means of combatting the appeal of socialism to working men.87 In a discussion paper entitled The Crisis of Capitalism in Britain and Corporate Governance, for example, the WSOC argued that “the amount of direct experience of shareholding by adults in Britain is too small to prevent capitalism from receiving heavy social punishment at the behest of the majority.” Its proposed solution was to “manufacture” “new capitalists” by educating people in the processes of capital ownership.88 The Council employed a number of arguments that characterized investing as a way to encourage “a new and increased sense of personal responsibility” among e­ mployees. This in turn, it suggested, would help workers “to develop ‘the ­owner’s eye’ . . . [and] begin to think like owners.”89 Such arguments clearly viewed property as a transformative experience for “those who have no capital.”90 For the WSOC, then, increasing the number of long-­term direct share owners in Britain was not only an end, but a desirable means to an “enlightened” capitalist society populated by discerning and diligent investor-­citizens. The ideological tenor of the WSOC reflected a more widespread political exploration regarding the possibilities of property ownership in Britain. In fact, all three of Britain’s major political parties were hosting debates about the issue during the mid-­century. The

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  41

Liberal Party, for instance, contained a group of “revolutionary liberals” who imagined a kind of “third way” alternative to both capitalism and socialism. Their policy proposals were based on a “liberty-­promoting, dispersive approach to property.”91 Revisionist socialists within the Labour Party also spent the 1950s exploring egalitarian versions of property ownership in an attempt to move beyond the parameters of a Keynesian welfare state. Specific policy options included establishing a national unit trust scheme for small savers via the Post Office or Trustee Savings Bank and assisting people on low incomes to purchase their own homes.92 The WSOC’s particular stance on share ownership was most significantly influenced by internal policy debates within the Conservative Party, however. This was largely due to the political makeup of the Council’s membership. Although formed on an all-­Party basis, it was predominantly Conservative with a strong Liberal contingent. Noteworthy Conservative members included Maurice Macmillan and Sir Toby Low.93 Low was simultaneously a member of the Conservative Party’s Policy Committee on Share Ownership, along with fellow WSOC member, Edward du Cann, who went on to become Conservative Party chairman in 1965. On the Liberal side, the WSOC boasted members such as MP Harry Ball-­Wilson (who was heavily involved in the Trade Union movement and chairman of the Institute of Management Services), MP Richard Wainwright, Lady Seear, and Lord Falkland. In the years preceding the WSOC’s creation, the Conservative Party was on the hunt for something that might seduce an electorate that had demonstrated its commitment (albeit a wavering one) to Labour Party values in the 1950 general election.94 Rejuvenating the idea of the property-­owning democracy appeared to offer one possible solution. Conservative Party policy exploration of the issue was also marked by declinist concerns about poor industrial management, a weak investment rate, and Britain’s slow growth compared to its major European competitors. In this context, political advocates of wider share ownership saw the situation as such: the government could either encourage the public to undertake the

42  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

socially responsible, moral, and rational act of investing in industry or it could let them frivolously spend their surplus income on consumer goods and fritter it away on gambling.95 Ultimately, it was housing not shares that became the property-­ owning democracy’s public face in the hands of consecutive Conservative governments during the mid-­century. In the aftermath of the Second World War and with the specter of a postwar housing deficit, presenting home ownership as an “attractive alternative to municipal ownership” gave an electoral edge to the Conservative Party.96 Their efforts were supported by a building industry and Building Society Movement that had long since eagerly marketed home ownership to the masses.97 In this guise, the property-­owning democracy provided a language with which to promote market principles and tax concessions for rentiers rather than wage earners.98 Even so, broad political interest in the socially reformative and psephological possibilities of wider ownership helped to change the terrain of debate over popular participation in the stock market. This dovetailed with a belief among political and financial elites that transferring the nation’s savings into investment capital could have substantial economic benefits. To some extent, at least, the long-­ standing disinterest of the City and resistance to legislate on behalf of government gave way to a curiosity about the potential of the small investor. Sensing an opportunity for profit, financial institutions of different kinds began to court small investors more consistently and aggressively in mid-­century Britain. Mutual fund business certainly boomed in the postwar years. Despite initial difficulties attracting City backing, the launch of Edward du Cann’s Unicorn Trust in 1957 marked the reinvigoration of the unit trust industry. Meanwhile, investment trusts began splitting shares into more easily marketable units and scrapping share registration. On the retail banking side, a Daily Express article with the tagline “Now all the world loves the small investor,” highlighted the launch of a new “investment advice service” by Lloyds Bank.99 Reflecting further on these new kinds of service, a journalist for The Stock Exchange Gazette mused:

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  43

“Now that the banks offer investment management services there will be thousands of investors who will welcome the opportunity of a friendly chat with their bank manager. . . . My only fear is that there are not enough investment experts to go round.100 Circumstantial evidence did indeed seem to suggest a steady increase in the numbers of people interested in investment. In January of 1960, the Sunday Times reported that 1,100 new investors had written to the Stock Exchange requesting a list of brokers prepared to undertake their business. Only 170 such requests had been received the previous January.101 No shortage of tensions arose, however, about the implications of this “social revolution” as du Cann described it.102 The role of mutual funds in the expansion of Britain’s shareholding constituency proved particularly contentious. In many respects, they appeared the most obvious and suitable route for first-­time investors, who might otherwise be swindled by speculators. Margot Naylor of the Observer noted in 1965: “Just as it is silly to buy unit trusts until one has a nest egg . . . it is foolish to buy an individual share until one has a unit trust holding . . . an adequate spread of risk ought to be achieved before plumping for a single counter.”103 Both unit and investment trusts represented a mediated form of investment: they allowed investors to indirectly “buy into” an underlying portfolio run by a fund manager and thus achieve a greater spread of risk than investing directly in companies themselves.104 Yet, for some advocates of popular investment, the mediating role of fund managers was no great cause for celebration, despite the risk reduction that mutuals offered. The WSOC, for one, argued that managed mutual funds undermined the purpose of share ownership, providing no direct experience of, or education in, the processes of investment. For those keen to “manufacture capitalists,” the appeal of managed investment funds to those with “neither the cash, nor the knowledge” to invest on their own, became a major source of disappointment.105 This fault line—between direct and indirect, and active and passive investment practices—was a defining feature of postwar British investment culture.

44  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

As we have already seen, in the 1880s the founding of the Financial Times and Financial News was both a response to and a condition of, growing public interest in shares. So too were postwar evolutions in the content and delivery of financial news. In the 1960s City editors stimulated the emergence of mass-­market-­oriented investment practices and discourses through their development of what I have termed “money pages.”106 While City and Investment pages remained the well-­established face of financial reporting, the money pages of the popular press pioneered a new genre of financial advice. Usually situated at the back of the paper among articles on betting, television, and lifestyle shopping (often with little or no obvious separation), money pages reconstructed investment as part and parcel of family financial management, utilizing similar formats to consumer advice columns and entertainment features to entice a non-­expert readership. The origins of the money page can be found in a number of postwar developments concerning the relationship between Britain’s national press and consumer society. First and foremost, market conditions after 1945 pushed papers away from radical ideological commitments and toward maximizing sales as papers fought to secure lucrative advertising revenue.107 The Daily Mirror, for example, shifted to the center-­ground in the face of declining circulation during the long period of Conservative government in the 1950s. Although its commitment to the Labour Party remained, the nature of its journalism softened. The paper sought to capture a young and upwardly mobile readership, rather than prioritizing a rhetoric of “us” and “them.” The Sun similarly repositioned itself for a general audience in the 1960s by expanding entertainment coverage and human-­interest ­stories at the expense of public affairs. Its language was radical while its opinions were Conservative, moralistic, yet hedonistic.108 The name of the game, in other words, was to court mass-­market readerships associated with high levels of material consumption. Consequently, the immediate postwar decades witnessed a rapid growth in consumer journalism such that by the 1960s the majority of newspapers were writing consumer columns.109 Come the closing decades of the

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  45

twentieth century, readers of the Sun and the Mirror numbered somewhere between twenty and twenty-­five million active consumers, a number that represented more than 50 percent of Britain’s population in areas such as car ownership, color television ownership, and holiday takers. This was clearly reflected in the growing presence of advertisements in their pages. Between 1968 and 1992, the Sun’s total number of advertising column inches increased by 238 percent. For the Mirror, a 152 percent increase.110 It is within this context that appealing to small investors became a priority for the press. As Kenneth Fleet, City editor in chief of the Daily Express, reflected in 1983, “Valuable, even vital, advertising revenue might be at stake” should papers miss out on this readership.111 Indeed, by the end of the 1950s, the Mirror, which had previously refrained from providing City coverage, appointed a City editor to write about shares on a weekly basis.112 In 1964 the first stand-­alone business section appeared in the Sunday Times, where readers who “liked stories about money—making it as well as spending or saving it”—could find a mixture of news items and features designed to pique their curiosity.113 More generally, between 1946 and 1976 finance sections maintained or even grew in size across the board, despite the declining popularity of public affairs and the priority editors were giving to entertainment and sport.114 The most significant development in the creation of mass-­market investment advice came at the hands of two City editors: Frederick Ellis of the Daily Express and Patrick Sergeant of the Daily Mail.115 Under the direction of the latter, the Mail launched a new format of financial journalism aimed at the readers of middle-­and low-­brow papers such as his own. Sergeant called this segment “Money Mail.” It avoided the jargon and price lists usually found in City and Investment sections. Instead, his money pages used quizzes, games, question-­ and-­answer sections, and human-­interest stories to introduce readers to ideas about investment. They advised readers what financial products to buy, what deals were good, and how to save money. The move proved to be a sound one for the Mail, which experienced a concurrent rise in circulation and advertising revenue.116 Given this

46  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

success, competition for readerships and advertising revenue quickly pushed even those papers that had previously distanced themselves from the small investor to court them “with enthusiasm.”117 Britain’s emerging mass-­market financial advice industry formulated a vision of popular investment premised on the decompartmentalization of economic and cultural life. The money pages of the daily press drove popular discourses that saw investment as parallel to a form of consumption, a source of entertainment, and as a close cousin of the pools, races, and other forms of betting. It thus helped to normalize and legitimize investing as both sensible family financial management, and a potentially lucrative hobby.118 Even if only a minority of people could afford to purchase shares, access to information about financial markets became far more commonplace in spaces where it might be encountered by working-­and lower-­middle-­class people. In short, mass-­market financial advice signaled the arrival of a more consumer-­oriented investment discourse whereby financial management became part of daily life in a mass consumer society. Indicative of the public’s changing relationship with the market in light of these wider shifts was the arrival of investment clubs in Britain. Like many aspects of British investment culture, these were essentially an American import. In the 1940s an unemployed Texan, Frederick C. Russell, set up America’s first investment club as a way to accumulate the capital he required to buy a small business.119 Russell’s club was based on three basic concepts: it would invest every month; it would reinvest all dividends; and it would buy growth companies. According to George A. Nicholson Jr. of the American National Association of Investors Corporation, the logic behind investment clubs was that pooling people’s resources and knowledge could “add up to a formidable investing force.” Clubs also had the benefit of providing individual investors with a unique opportunity to “learn by doing,” to make money over a long period of time, and to have fun along the way.120 By December 1957 the New York Stock Exchange published statistics suggesting that there were around 8,100 clubs in existence. Between them, they represented 120,000 individual members and the total value of their holdings was over $50 million.121

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  47

It was around this time that the investment club concept made the trip across the Atlantic, although the details of precisely how and when are a little hazy. Accounts in the press credit two almost simultaneously formed clubs in 1958: the London-­based “First Investment Club of Great Britain,” and the Merseyside-­based “Wirral Investment Club.”122 Both groups of investment enthusiasts went on to form investment club associations later that same year—the similarly named National Association of Investment Clubs (NAIC) in London, and the Association of Investment Clubs Ltd. (AIC) in Liverpool.123 However, it seems likely that a number of clubs existed even before 1958.124 Whoever can truly claim to have founded Britain’s first investment clubs is still not clear. What is clear, however, is that they represented a fairly organic popular investment practice as an outcome of the enthusiasms of small and amateur investors. Perhaps as a result, nobody, not even the organizational bodies of the NAIC or the AIC, seemed to know exactly how many investment clubs were in existence at any one time. Nonetheless, a rough picture of their early expansion can be deciphered from news reports. Just a year after the NAIC and AIC were founded, the Financial Times estimated the existence of some 200 clubs, collectively investing approximately £10,000 a month.125 By 1960, The Times suggested that between them the two organizations represented over 400 affiliated clubs with funds totaling over £313,000.126 Just one year later reports indicated that the NAIC represented that number of affiliated clubs on its own.127 And by 1964, the Daily Mail placed the overall number of clubs, both affiliated and unaffiliated, at around 2,100 (representing about 50,000 investors). It also claimed that new ones were “being formed at the rate of three or four a day.”128 The early success of this investment model can be accounted for by the ways clubs functioned and what they offered to members.129 A key selling point, at least for their champions in the press, was that clubs encouraged a certain type of enthusiastic and committed investor—something that looked remarkably like emerging political ideals of the investor-­citizen. Due to legal requirements clubs were generally very small. Most averaged between fifteen and twenty

48  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

members, making it unlikely that clubs could afford to carry inactive or disinterested participants.130 Individuals contributed a set monthly amount that was invested when funds had built appropriately. The selection of stock was made by vote, and each month different members investigated certain sectors or companies. A report on the phenomenon in The Times seemed particularly impressed by the fact that club members produced their own company reports, quoting one member as stating “We don’t follow the Sunday papers’ tipster, we prefer to do our own investigations.”131 By their very nature, then, investment clubs encouraged long-­term investment and high levels of engagement with the actual process of investing. They were certainly unable to respond dynamically to rapid rises and falls in price changes. As a 1960 NAIC survey of members concluded, the vast majority of affiliated clubs built their portfolios on high-­quality ordinary shares with proven growth records. They did not tend to speculate in venture capital or penny shares.132 Investment clubs did not prove to be especially successful, however. In its 1960 survey the NAIC found that, of the 121 clubs that replied with complete data, 51 percent were taking a loss.133 Even so, supporters of investment clubs remained unfazed: they portrayed clubs’ investment performance as almost inconsequential.134 The Daily Mail, for example, reassured its readers that, “Sometimes a club makes a loss, sometimes a spectacular gain. The great point is that our members are active participants with no great sums of money individually involved.”135 Somewhat unsurprisingly, the idea of an enthusiastic section of the public gaining investment experience in this manner also appealed to the WSOC. During an interview with the Daily Mail in 1968, President Lord Shawcross commented: “The advantage of Investment Clubs over Unit Trusts is that they give people an interest in shares, and keep them, perhaps, in closer touch with industry.”136 Advocates of wider share ownership valued investment clubs not for their profit-­making potential, but because they acted as a kind of nursery slope for the development of investor-­citizens. But what of the members themselves? Who were they and why did they join? Many people were no doubt drawn to the idea because

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  49

of an existing occupation in the City as accountants, stockbrokers, lawyers, and so forth. However, investment clubs also enfranchised groups who might otherwise have found themselves economically excluded from direct investment and the upper-­class male-­dominated City.137 The monthly payment structure meant that there was no need for a large lump sum. Meanwhile pooled resources enabled greater portfolio diversity and risk reduction. Consequently, many investment clubs were made up of blue-­collar workers. The “Longbridge Moonrakers” Investment Club, slightly mysteriously, was set up by nightshift workers at a Bromsgrove car factory. Elsewhere, typesetters of the Daily Mirror, the night workers of Pressed Steel, and workers on the Ford assembly line in Dagenham also set up clubs.138 Housewives, too, were not uncommon in the ranks of investment clubs, accounting for 5.47 percent of members according to the NAIC’s 1960 survey. There were a number of women-­only investment clubs and the NAIC’s findings suggested an overall average of 13.62 percent women investors.139 Although women had long since figured among Britain’s investing public, attitudes toward women-­ only investment clubs were generally dismissive. At best, there was an occasional puzzlement when these clubs outperformed their male counterparts. More generally, women’s participation in such activities was disregarded as part of the “housewives” daily training”; a bit of frivolous and harmless fun.140 Particularly telling on this front was a comment in The Times that “The Claughton Ladies Investment Club is thriving in spite of the amusement provoked by having held it’s meetings at the ‘Chatterbox Café’ in Birkenhead for the past three years.”141 Investment club members were people trying to articulate the newfound social aspirations of the period. Clubs furnished investing and financial literacy training with all the trappings of middle-­class leisure activity. In claiming possession of an investment portfolio, members could hope to gain a sense of status and an ability to discuss financial matters at other social gatherings. Clubs were thus a manifestation of individual responses to mass affluence, and they provide an early indication of the entanglement between investment,

50  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

consumption, and leisure that would come to dominate investment culture in the 1980s. As the examples above suggest, very few clubs were set up in a contrived way with members being interviewed or selected for specific skills or know-­how. Rather, they were made up of groups of friends, neighbors, relations, and coworkers, drawing on immediate social bonds. Their social quality is indicated by the locations of meetings—pubs, cafés, hotels, or in members’ homes— which could, according to the Spectator, “make for new friendships, sometimes cemented over the odd drink after.”142 It is for this reason that investment clubs are perhaps best understood as a form of associational life.143 But investment clubs also reflected the anxieties as much as the hopes of small investors as they entered a marketplace increasingly dominated by powerful financial institutions. Writing to the Financial Times in 1958, founder and president of the NAIC, David Moate, stated, “This country is in need of methods whereby the small investors can have their share in the equity capital of the country so that they can be ‘in with the gang’ instead of seemingly forgotten ‘outsiders.’ ”144 Elsewhere, he criticized the government and London Stock Exchange for failing to take concrete steps to promote wider share ownership and a healthy circulation of daily information about trading.145 The London Stock Exchange, responded by rallying against investment clubs, mobilizing familiar arguments about “amateur” investing and the dangers it presented to the respectable workings of the City. The largely unofficial nature of investment clubs was a particular point of contention. The Stock Exchange called for greater regulation and minimum standards of administration with Deputy Chairman, R.  F.  M. Wilkinson, reportedly stating “It would seem right” that that the treasurer for each club “should be a professional man or woman of some standing.”146 In an attempt to stay one step ahead of City regulators, the NAIC introduced an annual registration scheme to secure minimum standards for auditing accounts, constitutions, and holding securities.147 This did not prove to be enough, however. The arrival of a new Finance Bill in 1965 levied capital gains tax on club funds and required the preparation of tax

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  51

assessments for each individual member.148 The latter imposition was an undoubtedly laborious process that the NAIC described as “so impossible as to be farcical.” The organization almost immediately reported several disbanding clubs, with the bill likely putting off all but the most keenly interested investors.149 In such circumstances, competition from the unit trust industry also became a significant issue. Financial Editor of the Guardian, William Davis, commented in 1966 that although unit trusts “may not offer social activity” they did offer “a way of pooling money— and they demand a lot less attention.”150 Already in the 1960s it was therefore apparent that low-­risk, low-­maintenance investment services had the potential to undermine the creation of an active investing public and collective cultures of investment. In the case of investment clubs, the problem was further compounded by a number of internal disputes at the NAIC, leading to the resignation of the entire council in 1965. But the final nail in the coffin came in the form of a stock market crash in 1966 that burned the fingers of many remaining devotees. As it was, Davis noted that “the investment club movement . . . has run out of steam. . . . The great investment club boom is almost certainly over.”151 His prediction was justified. In August 1967, the Financial Times reported that numbers had fallen from a peak of near 3,000 clubs in 1964, to only 1,200.152 On the one hand, then, the 1950s and 1960s witnessed the first signs of something that might be called a mass investment culture. Investing itself remained the purview of a middle-­and upper-­class minority. But when it came to financial services more generally (including adjunct industries like financial advice), working-­and middle-­class people were afforded more access to the market. The British public came into closer contact with financial institutions, even if for most people this engagement took the form of a mortgage, credit card, insurance, or pension. On the other hand, the period witnessed the start of a precipitous fall in the levels of direct individual ownership in UK quoted shares. In 1963 individuals owned some 54 percent of the stock market’s total value, a number that fell to 37.5 percent by 1975.153 Writing in 1977, Harold Wilson described

52  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

the growing dominance of the pension fund in Britain’s equity markets as “the biggest revolution in the financial scene this century.”154 As we will see in the following chapters, popular discourses of investment that celebrated links between share ownership and working-­ and middle-­class spending practices (centered on goods consumption and betting) reinforced and accelerated rather than undermined this process.

Conclusion The discursive and institutional networks that underpinned investment culture in the 1980s and 1990s took shape over the course of a century or more. That is not to say the path of change was pre-­ determined. Rather, the terrain upon which financial services reform took place had already formed by the time Margaret Thatcher took office in 1979. The Conservative Party’s extensive efforts to sell a vision of privatization, deregulation, and a financial service economy to the public were likely an easier task than we might otherwise imagine. Talking to Britons about share ownership in the 1980s did not involve starting from scratch.155 The kinds of informal, and sometimes illegal, off-­exchange speculation that emerged in the late nineteenth century indicate that there has long since been an appetite for shares in Britain. This was true even in a situation where access to formal channels of investment remained out of reach for the vast majority. The position established by the financial press from the 1880s (although its content, form, and delivery evolved over time) similarly stands as a testament to the long history of popular investment in Britain. With more effective and consistent tools for calculating the worth of companies and disseminating information, people could, and did, trade with buyers and sellers they’d never met, in companies they’d never visited. It was in this context that Britain’s “investing public” first emerged. But the path of “democratization” in share ownership has always been substantially curtailed by those with privileged access to the market. As national financial markets formed around networks of

“A Wonderful Growth”  |  53

regional exchanges, financial institutions recognized the need to master new technological systems, establish cultural authority, and maintain a hold over legal and business environments.156 They constantly fought to control the speed and spread of information and to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate practices of investment. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, financial institutions, the elite figures that ran them, and their counterparts in government lacked the will to foster a welcoming environment for small investors of “moderate means.” When it did countenance the idea of an “investing public,” the brokers and council members of the London Stock Exchange envisaged it in their own image: as white, male, and well resourced. That being said, as the twentieth century progressed, social reformers consistently advocated for a broader basis of share ownership in Britain. If appropriately administered, they argued, wider share ownership might just foster a working-­class invested in the fortunes of the companies where they worked, and supportive of the capitalist system that relied upon their labor. In the decades that followed the Second World War, this idea of an idealized investor-­ citizen began to move toward the mainstream of party-­political debates. But it remained unclear what forms of share ownership would most appropriately achieve this aim, and whether people could really be trusted to avoid the temptation to recklessly speculate. The trajectory of investment culture in 1980s and 1990s Britain was also particularly indebted to a postwar history of mass affluence and mass consumption. It seems hardly a coincidence that many of the developments discussed in the following chapters (investment clubs, a proliferating financial advice industry, and mass-­marketed investment products) can all be traced back to the late-­1950s and early-­1960s. It was in this period that we can begin to see the role financial institutions would come to play in driving an agenda for wider share ownership. While the City was by no means unified on the issue of popular investment, a number of individuals and firms began to recognize the potential benefits of servicing private investor markets and shaping them to particular ends.

54  |  “A Wonderful Growth”

In short, certain practices of investment, ideas about the market, and accepted wisdom about the people who populated it, became a feature of British life over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What occurred in the closing decades of the latter was an unprecedented acceleration and embedding of these processes. Institutions that had previously been indifferent to the plight of small investors led the charge, bolstered by a legislative environment that opened up new possibilities. Their activities soon increased the availability of investment vehicles designed for and marketed at small investors; improved accessibility to information and advice about the processes of investment; and produced new forms of sociocultural acceptability. The result was that huge numbers of individuals took the plunge and invested their money in stock markets for the first time. Even those who chose not to invest (or indeed who could not afford to) found new ways to live with and within a society increasingly beholden to the vagaries of international capital markets.

Chapter 2

Over the Counter Speculation and the Small Investor

The story of British financial services reform in the 1980s is fairly well established.1 An extended period of upheaval in the City was hastened by mounting political pressure over issues of regulation and competition. This was first reified by a 1979 Labour Government Office of Fair Trading (OFT) inquiry into the practices of the London Stock Exchange, but political resolve to reform the City was crystallized by the arrival later that same year of an anti-­monopoly Conservative government eager to cement London’s financial global standing.2 Meanwhile, innovation in telecommunications allowed traders to access of-­the-­moment price lists and to communicate directly with one another, effectively bypassing the stock exchange floor. In the face of such challenges the London Stock Exchange brokered a deal with the government in the summer of 1983, committing to end its “closed shop” nature. In return, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) agreed to suspend the OFT case and allow any new system of statutory regulation to retain self-­regulation as a basic premise. On 27 October 1986, a day that came to be known as the “Big Bang,” the London Stock Exchange became a private limited 55

56  |  Over the Counter

company. It ceased fix-­rate commissions and single-­capacity trading and established an automated price quotation system. Just a matter of weeks later the Financial Services Act of 1986 was given royal assent. Along with the Building Societies Act of earlier that year, it effectively dismantled the legal barriers between building societies, banking, investment, pensions, and life assurance. This package of reforms also formalized a new regulatory system overseen by several self-­regulatory organizations (SROs), whose authority came courtesy of a new quasi-­governmental body, the Securities and Investment Board (SIB). In just a matter of years the disparate activities of different City institutions were thus formally constituted as a largely integrated “financial services sector.” Secretary of State for Trade and Industry from 1983 to 1985, Norman Tebbit, described the whole issue of deregulation as having “heaved a massive brick in the once tranquil waters of the City.”3 It certainly had ramifications for the nature of British investment culture. The process of reestablishing the rules of engagement in the City determined who was able to invest, what services they could use, and to what kinds of formal authority they were beholden. However, the precipitous political interventions of the 1980s have overshadowed a longer history of attempts by politicians and competing institutions to liberalize the London Stock Exchange. A major feature of this history was the production of rival claims about the needs of Britain’s investing public and industry, often made by groups of institutional actors that existed on the fringes of Britain’s financial markets. This chapter focuses on two such groups: licensed dealers and financial bookmakers. The story that follows tracks their attempts before, during, and after deregulation to carve out a space for trading practices that existed beyond the systems of authority of the London Stock Exchange. Licensed dealers oversaw the activities of Britain’s over-­the-­counter markets (OTC) where unlisted securities—a kind of high-­risk venture capital often referred to as penny shares—drew in a clientele of speculators and small investors. Financial bookmakers, by comparison, invited customers to bet on the movements of stock markets without investing directly in shares at all. By tracing the

Over the Counter  |  57

history of the OTC and financial bookmaking, this chapter reveals how material institutional competition diverted the course of financial services reform in the 1980s. It also highlights the importance of institutionally based discourses of wider share ownership to this process. There is much to gain by turning our attention away from the political decision-­ making and state-­ City relationships that led to “Big Bang.” If nothing else, it reminds us that the City, as a term, is often as distracting as it is useful: it implies a coherency that simply did not exist among the many institutions that provided financial services in the late twentieth century. Britain’s financial sector has always been made up of a complex web of interlinking but never perfectly overlapping interests and there was certainly a lack of cohesion among financial institutions when it came to the issue of wider share ownership. Debates about the suitability of the “general public” for investment that had built up over the preceding decades reached a climax in the turmoil of the 1980s. Concerns over what democratization of the market should look like and by whom it should be overseen took on renewed significance during the overhaul of Britain’s financial system. In such uncertain times, the figure of the small investor became a politically expedient device around which claims of various kinds could be made. In the case of the OTC and financial bookmakers, this meant constructing self-­serving visions of stock market investment that challenged the cultural authority and business interests of the London Stock Exchange. The licensed dealers of the OTC set out to be seen as agents of reform, demystifying the stock market and bringing the joys of speculation to the man and woman on the street. Meanwhile financial bookmakers drew upon established cultures of gambling to sell a vicarious form of speculation on the movement of market indices. By contrast, the London Stock Exchange’s survival necessitated meeting the needs of anyone who might wish to utilize its markets. We are more familiar with the Exchange’s attempts to stave off the incursions of foreign exchanges and international competition in the

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late twentieth century.4 But it also spent the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s courting domestic markets and maintaining its hold over the business of small investors. More specifically, the London Stock Exchange tried to absorb, undercut, and otherwise dispose of competition by mobilizing its well-­ established regulatory authority. Ultimately it was able to capture the business being generated by these alternative sources of trading. But to do so it had to embrace the fusion of popular share ownership and gambling culture that underpinned them. The result was the construction of a more managed investment environment as large financial institutions tightened their grip over channels of access to the market, all while propagating the powerfully seductive notion that investment was in the process of being democratized.

Over-­t he-­C ounter Cowboys: The Rise and Fall of the OTC Under the Prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act 1958, stockbrokers and dealers who were not members of a recognized stock exchange were required to obtain a license from the DTI. Between them, a number of these licensed dealers made up what came to be known as the over-­the-­counter market by trading in unlisted securities. In the United States this form of trading was much more common and was often referred to as “off-­exchange trading.” There it had roots in decentralized networks of dealers that developed in the late eighteenth century. Although falling by the wayside with the formation of organized exchanges, in the 1930s over-­ the-­ counter markets reemerged as a key feature of the American investment landscape. In 1971 they were formalized with the launch of the world’s first electronic stock market: the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations market (NASDAQ).5 Initially just a quotation system for over-­the-­counter securities, NASDAQ proved a huge success and became a more significant vehicle for institutional investors. In 1979 the volume of shares traded there was less than half of that of the New York Stock Exchange. Just fifteen years

Over the Counter  |  59

later, in 1994, NASDAQ’s share volume exceeded the latter’s for the first time.6 In Britain OTC markets in equities took a different form and were not as well integrated into traditional financial infrastructures of the City. Although institutional investors often traded in debt and futures over the counter, for a short while, Britain also maintained an OTC that dealt predominantly in equities among individual investors. The only full account of this niche area of the UK securities markets comes from one of its own most provocative and notorious figures, Tom Wilmot, who was chairman of a leading licensed dealer named Harvard Securities Limited.7 Reconstructing the history of Britain’s private-­client OTC market in equities is thus something of a challenge. However, through records of official attempts to regulate it, contemporaneous academic appraisals of its value, and the reporting of the financial press, it is possible to build a picture of this controversial market and its tumultuous, short-­lived history. Although licensed dealers had existed in Britain since the late 1950s, the OTC established itself more formally in 1972. At this time, licensed dealer, M. J. H. Nightingale & Co. (later to become Granville & Co.), began offering a “controlled” over-­the-­counter market. Here dealers would match buyers and sellers, making money by charging both parties a commission but never directly overseeing the transfer of shares.8 The rationale for such a market was that it allowed smaller companies to raise capital in instances where they were unable (or unwilling) to meet the listing requirements of the London Stock Exchange.9 Even in this fairly limited format, the OTC came under close scrutiny from the City establishment. In 1978, M. J. H. Nightingale himself wrote a scathing letter to the Economist to “correct some inaccuracies and the misleading tone” of an article titled “Nightingale’s Nest Eggs” published earlier that month.10 The article had highlighted conflicts of interest in the structure of Nightingale’s operation, noting that it was not strictly under the control of the DTI.11 Echoing the experiences of Victorian bucket shops, from its very beginnings the OTC existed outside of the formal structures of the London Stock Exchange and faced criticism for doing so.

60  |  Over the Counter Single-capacity trading Each agent can only act in a single capacity (i.e., as either a broker or a market maker). Client E.g., an institution or private individual. Seeks to buy and/or sell securities. Needs to go through a broker to do so.

Pre-Big Bang Stockbroker Acts as mediator between clients and jobbers. Places buy or sell orders on behalf of clients. Cannot trade on their own account. Makes money through charging a commission for the deals made.

Stock Jobber Makes markets for securities by trading shares. Independent dealer purchases shares on their own account. Does not deal directly with clients. Buys and sells only to members of the stock exchange, e.g., stockbrokers. Makes (or loses) money from the price differences in the securities they trade.

Figure 3. Single-­capacity trading.

M. J. H Nightingale & Co. was quickly joined by Tom Wilmot’s Harvard Securities Limited in 1973. Harvard sought to create a different version of OTC trading—known by some as the free market— by acting as a dual capacity dealer. Until deregulation in 1986, the London Stock Exchange only permitted single capacity trading on its markets (figures 3 and 4). In this system, those entering the market did so either as a stockbroker or a stockjobber. Brokers bought and sold shares only on behalf of clients (either members of the public or institutions), while jobbers made markets trading on their own accounts and matching up the buy and sell orders of brokers. By comparison, Harvard Securities acted as both a broker and a market maker, trading on its own account to make a profit as well as dealing on behalf of clients. It was thus able to oversee and conduct entire shares transactions. Several other companies quickly followed Harvard’s lead. In December 1985, the Bank of England estimated that there were in the region of fifteen main market makers on the “free market” OTC. This included a number of firms—Afcor, Chartwell, and Fox Milton—­set

Over the Counter  |  61 Dual-capacity trading Agent can act in a dual capacity (i.e., both as a broker and a market maker). Client E.g., an institution or private individual.

Licenced Dealer/Post-Big Bang Stockbroker

Seeks to buy and/or sell securities.

Can act as both a principal and an agent, transacting shares either on their own account or on behalf of clients (matching buy and sell orders).

Can deal directly with licensed dealer or broker.

Makes markets for securities by buying and trading.

Makes (or loses) money from the price differences in the securities they trade and commissions on deals made on behalf of clients.

Figure 4. Dual-­capacity trading.

up by former Harvard employees.12 Between them Britain’s OTC dealers quoted shares in around 150 companies whose total value was approximately £500 million.13 In terms of clientele, licensed dealers largely relied on small investors: Harvard alone claimed to have approximately 45,000 non-­discretionary private clients on its books.14 At its peak Afcor Investment Limited, had around 4,000.15 Despite the OTC’s apparent popularity, the lack of separation between the roles of broker and jobber raised concerns among regulators. In a dual capacity system, traders could have vested interests in driving certain share prices up or down based on their own position in the market. This fact was used to ostracize the OTC and characterize it as a fraudulent market (even as the London Stock Exchange prepared to move to dual-­capacity trading itself). The Stock Exchange similarly voiced rational concerns about investors: it argued that inexperienced investors might misunderstand the inherent risks of buying shares in untested companies via dealers working outside of its regulatory system. The Stock Exchange’s concern was more than mere altruism, however. It also targeted the OTC because of the competitive threat the latter posed to the Exchange’s precarious monopoly over trading in small businesses. Accordingly, the OTC’s history was characterized by a series of public set-­tos with

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the London Stock Exchange. A closer look at the nature of these confrontations reveals how financial institutions used competing visions of popular share ownership to legitimize strategic competitive maneuvers, which in turn transformed the parameters of British investment culture. Harvard Security’s Tom Wilmot proved a particularly vocal rival for the London Stock Exchange across the 1970s and 1980s. As political pressure mounted on the Stock Exchange regarding its monopoly position, he identified an opportunity for advancing his own agenda. In 1982, before the Stock Exchange had negotiated with the government to drop its antitrust law investigation, Wilmot sued the Stock Exchange for £2 million compensation. This he alleged was for lost earnings caused by the Exchange’s restrictive practices.16 The matter was settled out of court and the Stock Exchange abolished rule 211 which lay at the heart of the claim. Despite his success, the Daily Mail dismissed Wilmot’s action as “laughable,” musing that the Stock Exchange’s concession was merely one of convenience because the “restrictive rule may not look too good when they come before the Office of Fair Trading.”17 Wilmot again became a thorn in the side of the London Stock Exchange in 1985 at which time he chose to publish his own account of the OTC in the form of a book titled Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market. An intriguing document by all accounts, Wilmot’s book aimed to defend against the OTC’s reputation as a den of scandal and fraud and to justify its role in the long-­term future of the City. To this end, he stressed the competitive necessity of the OTC in a regulatory framework operated by a monopolistic London Stock Exchange. In Wilmot’s telling, the Stock Exchange’s homogenized and highly safe-­ guarded markets deprived smaller companies of much-­needed capital. This in turn left the British economy unable to secure growth, as it was effectively functioning with one hand tied behind its back.18 Claiming to support small businesses was a politically expedient move on Wilmot’s part. On the one hand, it enabled licensed dealers to court the backing of key organizations in business and industry. For instance, John Owens, the deputy director general of the

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Confederation of British Industry, spoke at an OTC conference in 1984, stating: “We welcome in principle the development of the over the counter markets in the UK, which . . . are providing a rapidly expanding means of bringing together willing buyers and sellers of existing shares in smaller . . . companies.”19 More generally, small enterprise emerged as a cornerstone of Conservative Party policy making and rhetoric in the 1970s and 1980s.20 Wilmot situated his business firmly within this prevailing political mood by claiming that the OTC filled an equity gap and satisfied a “real demand . . . stimulating opportunity and employment.”21 Fellow licensed dealer, Ravendale Securities, even went so far as to actively promote the Conservative Party during the 1983 general election. It took out an ad in The Times with the bold title “Cut Unemployment,” imploring readers not to “stay at home tomorrow,” but rather to vote for a candidate who supported pro–small business legislation.22 The legislation Ravendale Securities had in mind, as it reminded Britons that “it is your business to vote,” was the Business Expansion Scheme (BES).23 Originally introduced in 1981 as the Business Start-­Up Scheme, the BES was relaunched under the 1983 Finance Act. It allowed individuals to claim income tax relief for any capital invested in unquoted UK trading companies, thus reducing the cost of high-­risk equity investment in small businesses.24 The scheme certainly provided a “major shot in the arm for the OTC.”25 In the BES’s first year alone, the Inland Revenue estimated that £80 million pounds of investment was made in qualifying companies.26 Fueled by this success (along with public “investment euphoria”), monthly dealing on the OTC rose from £600,000 in December 1982 to £10 million in January 1984.27 In other words, aligning themselves with a pro–small business Conservative Party agenda was expedient for the OTC. Doing so not only positioned licensed dealers as a necessary feature of Britain’s capital markets but also allowed them to claim a degree of legitimacy. After all, BES-­qualifying schemes had to be directly approved by the Inland Revenue. To the untrained eye this gave BES funds the appearance of sound (or at least genuine) investment prospects. In

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reality, the matter was more complex. As a 1983 Times article titled “Misleading Schemes” pointed out, the Inland Revenue only ascertained whether schemes qualified for tax relief; it made no assessment about the viability of the companies as investment prospects. Reporting on a number of false claims made by Ravendale Securities, the paper went on to lament, “No one . . . is looking at the information given to investors. Perhaps the Department of Trade should.”28 Although a cloud of suspicion continued to hang over the heads of licensed dealers, their attempts to appropriate Conservative Party rhetoric created a problem for the London Stock Exchange. With political concern about Britain’s lack of industrial dynamism bubbling under the surface, licensed dealers offered a vision of investment in Britain that excluded the presence of a monopolistic City elite. More to the point, the OTC drew attention to the Stock Exchange’s supposedly poor record in supporting venture capital by providing its own market for shares in start-­ups. For example, in 1979 The Times suggested that M. J. H. Nightingale & Co. had “gobbled up some useful pieces of potential business” at a time when the new issue market had been “dead for too long.”29 So, although the OTC’s trading practices clearly skated the lines of legitimacy, its vision of a free market in high-­risk equities nonetheless necessitated a response from the London Stock Exchange. The Stock Exchange’s chosen path of action was to provide a high-­risk equity market of its own. Before the arrival of the OTC in 1972, unlisted securities had been dealt under the Stock Exchange’s Rule 163(2). This allowed trading in small UK companies unable to obtain a listing on the Stock Exchange’s main markets. However, each deal was subject to specific approval from the London Stock Exchange, making it an unrealistic model for a large-­scale and active marketplace. Political scrutiny only exacerbated this issue. In 1975, James Callaghan’s Labour Party initiated a review on the workings of financial institutions. Its final report in 1980 called for an improvement to market mechanisms for dealing in unlisted securities and implied that Rule 163(2) should be expanded to facilitate the growth of an American-­style over-­the-­counter market.30 The Stock Exchange

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thus began to explore new ways of increasing its capacity to trade in small and medium-­sized companies. After some back-­and-­forth on the issue in the late 1970s, its Council announced a set of proposals for an Unlisted Securities Market (USM) in 1980.31 To contemporaries, the Stock Exchange’s motivations appeared to be more than mere political appeasement. They saw the arrival of the USM as a competitive maneuver designed to oust the OTC. The Times, for example, noted that the growth of the OTC had left the Stock Exchange unable to “take any other view at the moment,” even though it “would undoubtedly have preferred to avoid such fraying at the edges.”32 The Economist similarly remarked that “A year ago such a novel set of proposals from this hitherto conservative body would have been almost unthinkable.”33 Academic studies, both at the time and later, echoed such sentiments.34 Having launched the USM under the watchful eye of its critics, the Stock Exchange was no doubt relieved when it proved an almost immediate success. By the end of September 1985 a total of 406 firms had entered the USM, where only 342 had entered the London Stock Exchange’s main markets, causing the Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin to praise the former for providing an “active, relatively liquid market for the equity of small companies.”35 But although it provided a space for trading in smaller companies, the USM was still a “formal market with rule and regulation.”36 This meant that any company hoping to secure a listing had to meet relatively onerous legal requirements, including evidencing several years’ worth of accounts. For critics, the Stock Exchange continued to fall short in terms of catering to Britain’s start-­ups. In 1985 The Times asked readers to “spare a thought for the array of companies which . . . have been denied membership [to the USM],” calling for the Stock Exchange to “meet the needs of British industry more aggressively by changing some of its own silly rules.”37 Accordingly, the OTC persisted in competing with the London Stock Exchange in areas on the fringes of the mainstream of the securities markets. It even benefitted from the USM’s arrival, as companies like Harvard began dealing in USM shares.38 More importantly, licensed dealers happily

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continued to create markets in companies whose associated risks simply could not be tolerated by the regulatory regime of the London Stock Exchange. By doing so, they argued, their services played a necessary role in Britain’s market structures. The competition for business between the London Stock Exchange and the OTC, was not just about commissions on trading in small businesses, however. In fact, as the 1980s progressed, the two organizations ended up fighting most publicly over the issue of the small investor. As discussed in chapter 1, the London Stock Exchange had a somewhat complicated history when it came to servicing small private clients. By comparison, ever the public relations–minded businessman, Tom Wilmot eagerly proclaimed that the OTC was a natural home for them. “Competition between dealers in the market,” he suggested “will mean . . . a free flow of good-­quality information” to investors, “as well as removing some of the mystique extended by the Stock Exchange.”39 Identifying what was already a sore spot for the London Stock Exchange, he further condemned the current mainstream of financial services for abandoning private client business in favor of large institutions. According to Wilmot, small investors were left in a “vacuum” unless they had “£25,000 to £1 million to place in a discretionary managed account.”40 He concluded that the OTC was an ally of the small investor, standing against the “gentleman’s club” of the London Stock Exchange which “tends to act in favor of members and against the interests of the general public.”41 Nor was Wilmot alone in making such claims. Fellow licensed dealer, Afcor, pitted its clients against the powers that be in a 1985 ad promoting its services: “In learning to assess and accept the higher risks associated with backing young companies via the Over The Counter market, small private investors are now sharing the higher rewards which were formerly the domain of merchant banks and other institutions providing ground-­floor investment.”42 Elsewhere it claimed that it could provide a “personal service which you may not find with larger financial institutions” because Afcor catered “exclusively for private investors.”43 The OTC thus offered to serve small

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investors with only limited resources by conducting what came to be known as “discount broking.” This involved buying large blocks of shares at a reduction, and then selling them in smaller lots at prices below the official market level. Most licensed dealers provided this service for no commission at all.44 Instead they earned their money through the differences in prices quoted for buying and selling shares. In the words of financial journalist Michael Walters, the OTC made it possible for small investors to buy shares “wholesale.”45 By throwing their weight behind the plight of the small investor, the OTC again claimed to be facilitating the current government’s desire for a more entrepreneurial political economy. To offer just one example of this enterprise culture rhetoric in action, Margaret Thatcher heaped praised on the “sheer risk-­taking courage” of business owners in a 1979 speech to a Conservative rally. It was they, she argued, who created “factories and offices providing genuine jobs.”46 Such language depicted risk as a burden, assumed by selfless and courageous citizens to ensure the prosperity of others. The high-­risks attendant with investing (or indeed speculating) on OTC equities could thus be justified and even celebrated by the likes of Harvard and Afcor. Like the job-­creating entrepreneurs their trading financed, Wilmot claimed that licensed dealers and their clientele supported Britain’s economic future at great personal risk. In this light he cast the latter as intrepid and dutiful investor-­citizens, not greedy, self-­ interested, or foolish profiteers. More to the point, Wilmot claimed that the OTC provided Britons with the kind of market access they needed to gain direct experiences of dealing. He stressed, for example, that “the OTC model for dealing in stocks and shares over the phone . . . will become the standard way of buying and selling securities. The investing public . . . will, as a result, become more adept at and attuned to dealing directly with a market maker on the telephone and being quoted a two-­way price for dealing.”47 Here he sought to further fuel the desires of ideologues within the Conservative Party and groups like the Wider Share Ownership Council, who were eager to create a public of well-­informed capitalists. In Wilmot’s narrative, the OTC

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emerged as a last bastion of the small investor, providing them with unmediated market access, training in the process of investing, and a rare chance to get in on the ground floor. This appeared a stark contrast to the unfavorable “thoroughness with which the pension funds and life insurance companies have elbowed the private investor out of the market.”48 In light of the OTC’s attempts to curry favor, the Stock Exchange took steps to remedy a situation that had become politically inconvenient at best, and could mean missing out on new private client business at worst. It staged its own attempts to act as a political advocate for small investors, stressing its status as a trustworthy service provider. The Stock Exchange Council began calling for tax equality in investment between institutions and individuals and displayed a firm commitment to investor education.49 In 1987 it even set up a Stock Exchange Investors Club where it provided a “forum” for discussions with “investors and potential investors alike.”50 Such efforts clearly reflected the recommendations of a 1985 report by the Stock Exchange’s Retail Development Advisory Committee, which highlighted the need to enlist more small investors through “(a) Advertising. (b) More accessibility of Stock Exchange Firms. (c) ‘Demystification’ of the Stock Exchange. (d) Reduction of the cost of small bargains.”51 Perhaps more telling was the Stock Exchange’s decision to launch a “Wider Share Ownership Unit” in June 1986. This was overseen by Stuart Valentine, head of the London Stock Exchange’s Public Affairs Department. The very name of the unit mirrored Conservative Party policy commitments relating to the property-­owning democracy. And by its own admission, the Stock Exchange created the unit to encourage, “through the Stock Exchange, wider share ownership and to help member firms market themselves effectively” (emphasis mine).52 The Council clearly intended to direct the course of political reform in ways that would be most beneficial to its own interests, rather than boosting business for its competitors. And yet, the OTC continued to present a threat to both the business interests and the moral authority of the London Stock Exchange. While risk-­averse investors may have been more likely to opt for

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the “near . . . rock-­solid guarantee of fair play” associated with a traditional broker, Wilmot and his peers openly appealed to speculators in search of high-­risk investment “where both substantial profits and substantial losses can be made.”53 Drawing on century-­old associations between investment and gambling, they preempted the popular currency of the yuppie and promised a version of popular investment that foregrounded individualism, wealth-­accumulation, and exhilaration. Roger Baden-­Powell, chairman of a self-­regulatory body for licensed dealers—the British Institute of Dealers in Securities (BIDS)—characterized the OTC as a market for “members of the public who are bored with building societies and unit trusts.”54 Even critics of the OTC in the national press recognized that the market was “here to stay and growth should be rapid” precisely because OTC “companies are exciting.”55 Licensed dealers thus offered small investors an alternative to the apparent disinterest and restrictive practices of the Stock Exchange’s member firms. They were aided and abetted in this pursuit by a financial press that was otherwise quick to criticize them. Newspaper editors were all too happy to take money from licensed dealers seeking to promote their services. Granville & Co. (formerly M. J. H. Nightingale) regularly published its prices in the Financial Times, while advertisements for the likes of Harvard, Ravendale, and Afcor appeared in a number of national dailies. The press also generated plenty of column inches on the topic of licensed dealers, no doubt introducing many readers to the OTC for the first time. Intentionally or not, journalists created mythologies around rampant price rises of penny shares like Polly Peck, adding an element of realism to the OTCs promises of rapid riches.56 Books advising readers how to “make a killing” on financial markets added further fuel to the fire. Authors warned readers of the “crooks and cheats” who inhabited the murky world of the OTC, but they also gave readers a “glimpse of the possibilities [for profit] if you get it right.” The overriding message seemed to be that “trading on the OTC is not all bad, just very high-­risk.”57 Because of the OTCs reputation as a “gray market” licensed dealers tried to manufacture legitimacy in the eyes of potential clients,

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St. Luke's Chartwell Securities Shoreditch

Farringdon Barbican

Afcor Investments

Finsbury Prior Harwin

Holborn Fox Milton & Co. Covent Garden

Temple

Whitechapel

Hill Woolgar

City of London

Blackfriars River Thames

Granville & Co.

Harvard Securities South Bank

Afcor Investments

Hill Woolgar

Harvard Securities

Prior Harwin

Granville & Co.

Chartwell Securities

Fox Milton & Co.

Map 1, Locations of licensed dealers c. 1984. Data Source: Mike Allen, “USM and OTC Appeal Continues Despite Risks of Failure and Thin Markets,” The Times, 14 April 1984, 27.

even as they sold them a fantasy of high-­risk shares trading. Dealers capitalized on the allure of the City, clearly hoping to exploit public misconceptions about its different types of shares, traders, and markets. For example, dealers appropriated the respectability that came with the traditional geographical bounds of the Square Mile. They located their offices in and around the area even though all their transactions were conducted by telephone. Harvard’s offices, for instance, were located just south of the Thames, on Dolban Street, no more than a twenty-­five-­minute walk from the Bank of England (map 1). Meanwhile, some firms allegedly played tape recordings of a trading room floor in the background “to give clients an impression of a busy dealing room.”58 Dealers also tried to secure trust

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and potential business by making markets in shares that were well-­ known among the general public. The Prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act 1958 and the Licensed Dealers (Conduct of Business) Rules 1960 prohibited cold calls and advertising share-­dealing services via television or radio. However, once a client was already on the books, dealers were free to contact them with information about other securities. Licensed dealers thus flooded the press with ads for markets in popular privatizations shares like BT or British Gas that were likely to drum up initial business and points of contact. These ads were specifically designed to appeal to small investors, inviting them to “welcome an occasional call regarding [the] latest recommendations on new and existing OTC issues as well as USM and fully quoted stocks.”59 Such tactics for securing the business of small investors provoked disdain from the political and City establishment. Harvard was described by contemporaries as “the kingpin of a group of licensed securities dealers whose sales forces persuaded clients to buy . . . highly speculative” shares.60 The OTC’s hard-­sell approach certainly exploited gaps in public understanding in ethically ambiguous ways. On the surface, at least, the City’s issue with the OTC was a matter of integrity, and commentators stressed the damage being done to the good name of investment by the scandalous activities of the OTC. As Christopher Grey notes, regulation in financial services relies upon “particular representations of ‘the other,’ ” generally designating unwanted elements as “cowboys” or “rogues.”61 Precisely this form of discursive expulsion from the ranks of the City was used in relation to the OTC.62 For example, a 1986 Times article discussing licensed dealers’ attempts to clean up their repute was accompanied by a cartoon of a traditional City gentleman looking disparagingly over his shoulder at an unshaved man wearing cowboy boots. The caption read: “It looks like the OTC is trying to become respectable” (figure 5). This kind of imagery allowed the OTC to be passed off as outsiders who acted in a way that violated the standards set by the more well-­established Stock Exchange, thus firming up the latter’s own regulatory authority and good standing.

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Figure 5. Cartoon, “Beware of the high risks,” The Times, 19 April 1986, 25. © The Times/News Licensing.

Of course, judgments about who was or wasn’t a cowboy were often determined by preexisting social and institutional hierarchies. In this instance, the City establishment used class-­based discourses as a means of policing its interests. Licensed dealers were frequently dismissed by the press as “losers” and little more than “salesmen . . . peddling shares” and “touting for business” with “sales patter.”63 This language framed dealing as a low-­status occupation, far removed from the gentlemanly world of City investment. Commentators similarly expressed anxieties about the character of licensed dealers’ clientele. In an exposé of the OTC, ex-­dealer Alexander Davidson cast OTC investors in the role of addicts, describing them as “hooked . . .

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like gamblers to the roulette table.”64 Elsewhere, journalists continued to question the suitability of the general public for share ownership, anxious that they lacked the knowledge and willpower to resist the temptation toward misguided or self-­interested speculation. Such attitudes reflected a more general concern in the upper echelons of the City in the face of a period of expansion in both its workforce and its investors. Between 1981 and 1991, the number of people employed in financial services in Greater London rose by 15 percent. People employed in financial and related auxiliary services accounted for almost a fifth of employees in the region.65 A similar national image emerges. Between 1971 and 1986 the total number of individuals working in banking, finance, insurance, and business services nearly doubled from 1.33 million to 2.2 million.66 Contemporaries framed the emergence of a new cohort of working-­and lower-­middle-­class traders and investors in this expansion as a battle between an upper-­class gentleman’s culture of old and a Thatcherite-­induced entrepreneurial culture of new. In 1988 crossbencher in the House of Lords, former lawyer, and chairman of the Wider Share Ownership Council, Lord Shawcross, reminisced about the old days: “When I started in the City, everyone accepted . . . the rule that “my word is my bond.’ ” He continued by drawing unfavorable comparisons between the gentlemanly codes of conduct he remembered, and “the ‘yuppie’ phenomenon,” which he linked to “the very grave scandals that have come to light” in the City.67 In doing so Shawcross—like many of his contemporaries—lamented a loss of authority that traditional class-­based structures of investment had once conferred.68 In this context, licensed dealers provided a focal point for intersecting cultural and material anxieties. As one City editor commented, “the haphazard OTC boom has created worries about the lack of strict supervision and the obvious free-­for-­all atmosphere that an unconnected collection of markets operating in different ways can create. . . . Clearly the Stock Exchange Council cannot ignore the share ferment on its doorstep.”69 Contrary to such representations, the OTC was not entirely unregulated. Its dealers were subject to the

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designs of two rival self-­regulatory bodies: the National Association of Securities Dealers and Investment Managers (NASDIM) and the British Institute of Dealers in Securities (BIDS).70 There were significant discrepancies in the levels of formality and authority between the two, however. On the one hand, NASDIM gained government-­ recognition and was responsible for some 325 licensed dealers and investment managers including Granville & Co. BIDS, on the other hand, was set up in 1983 by four licensed dealers, including Harvard, who were “convinced that their image would be considerably enhanced and investor confidence boosted by a governing regulatory body.”71 With this in mind it is important to stress that the Stock Exchange’s concerns regarding the OTC were not mere fabrications. This chapter is not an attempt to reclaim the history of the OTC and show it to be a faultless or even honest endeavor. In the words of financial journalist Michael Walters: “Too many OTC issues have collapsed in dubious circumstances. Too many shares slump dramatically in price without warning, and too many shares simply become unsaleable.” There is no doubt that the risks of trading on the OTC were larger than those of trading in listed securities under the regulation of the London Stock Exchange. The companies were small, investment was speculative, and investors often found themselves with thousands of pounds worth of shares for which no market to sell existed. Had it let some of the more improper dealings of OTC firms go unpunished the Stock Exchange would have faced criticism and a crisis of authority of a different kind. And yet, as Walters went on, “some OTC houses have run a fairly clean operation, and others have tried to clean up their operation. . . . [OTC shares] have multiplied investors’ money many times over . . . [and] have helped launch new ideas, and create jobs.”72 Perhaps more to the point, the Stock Exchange was by no means free of scandal itself, with reports of insider trading often hitting headlines. Discussing the unseemly nature of the hard-­sell techniques employed by Harvard Securities, Patience Wheatcroft of the Daily Mail commented that “it is perhaps only fair to point out that the most

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established firms of brokers have been sharpening their techniques for encouraging clients to buy.”73 Her assessment was not unjustified: all manner of financial institutions began to make increasingly aggressive moves to secure the custom of small investors in this period. In 1987, for instance, Barclays bank launched a new Unicorn Smaller Companies Trust. In the accompanying advertising campaign, the bank offered customers a chance to invest in USM and unquoted companies “now . . . while they’re cheap!”74 Images featured well-­known penny shares such as the Body Shop and Amstrad. Citing these companies’ original share prices (in Amstrad’s case just 2p), the ad exploited the exact same fantasy of rapid growth and quick riches as the OTC. Wheatcroft thus concluded her article by stating that “the time is fast approaching when the authorities will either have to admit why they don’t like Wilmot, or learn to live with him.”75 For a short time, the OTC played a role in shaping the investment landscape available to Britain’s investing public. However, the fact that its dealers, and just as often their clients, created publicity around an alternative narrative of popular investment—one based on cheap, high-­risk speculation—was one of the reasons that it drew such ire from the City. Much like nineteenth-­century bucket shops, the OTC exposed the instability of popular narratives surrounding investment by explicitly blurring distinctions between organized speculation, investment, and stock markets. It also directly competed with the London Stock Exchange for the business of venture capital and small investors. By discursively rejecting the OTC from its regulatory system, the London Stock Exchange was able to firm up its own legitimacy and consolidate its power in a period when the boundaries of financial markets were being redrawn by politicians. Disagreement over the respectability of stock market investment was as much about self-­preservation and profit as it was the fates of apparently vulnerable small investors. Despite the ongoing castigation by the City establishment, Tom Wilmot faced the impending changes of 1986’s “Big Bang” with optimism. In Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market he suggested that the knock-­on effects of deregulation would create a more favorable

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climate for the OTC. The adoption of dual capacity by the main markets, Wilmot hoped, would render the dealing practices of the OTC common practice rather than a sign of inherent fraudulence. Adroitly anticipating the likely outcome of reform, he presumed that a concentration of power in fewer hands would leave the small private client and small businesses more marginalized than ever. In such circumstances, Wilmot confidently predicted that the niche markets of licensed dealers would “do well,” and that the OTC would “dramatically increase in size.” So assured was he that he concluded Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market by proclaiming that “The OTC market in the United Kingdom is here and here to stay. Those who ignore it do so at their peril.”76 Just three years later, Harvard Securities was wound up and Tom Wilmot, ever the money maker, re-­advertised his book as a “once in a lifetime chance” to get a signed copy of “the book on a dead industry.”77 The question arises: how did Wilmot get it so wrong? He could be accused of misinterpreting the boon of a bull market as long-­term expansion. Kenneth Fleet of The Times commented in 1984 that “in any stock market surge, the good, the bad and the indifferent benefit to varying degrees,” continuing that “in the current investment climate the OTC cannot fail to score.”78 There is no doubt that the BES and new custom produced by privatization provided a windfall for OTC dealers. But the effects were short lived. The crash of October 1987 certainly put a strain on Harvard: the Guardian reported in 1988 that the company lost an estimated £2.5 million, offsetting the entirety of its previous two years’ profits.79 However, the paper also noted that even before the crash, the failure of Harvard to gain external Stock Exchange membership had “necessitated retrenchment.”80 As we have seen, the Stock Exchange was keen to exclude the “share peddlers” of the OTC from the Square Mile. The restructuring of Big Bang provided an opportunity to achieve just this. Under the terms of the incoming 1986 Financial Services Act, all licensed dealers required membership of one of the City’s new self-­regulatory organizations (SROs) to keep trading. Having steadily grown into a “significant City body,” NASDIM

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merged with the Life and Unit Trust Intermediaries Regulatory Organization in July 1986 to form the Financial Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Regulatory Association (FIMBRA). Designated as an SRO, FIMBRA was tasked with licensing all non-­Stock Exchange members involved in financial services and imposing on them an effective system of rules.81 By comparison, the OTC self-­regulatory body, BIDS, was not granted status as an SRO, meaning that several dealers, including Harvard were left in the lurch. Harvard’s initial response was to apply for external membership with the London Stock Exchange, which the latter took over a year to reject. Consequently, when the Financial Services Act came into force in 1986, Harvard found itself unable to do business. The Stock Exchange’s hesitancy appeared to some a deliberate snub designed to undermine Harvard’s position: Michael Walters of the Daily Mail described the “unseemly delay” as “grossly unfair.”82 Ultimately, after functioning under interim authorization under the Financial Services Act and failed applications to both the Securities Association and the Securities and Investments Board (SIB), the Daily Mail reported in 1988 that Wilmot “had run out of time and money in his fight for full authorization.”83 His downfall followed an early day motion filed by a number of Labour MPs that advised investors to withdraw their business from the company. In his usual manner, Wilmot described the political intervention as “ill-­conceived” and slammed the London Stock Exchange for conducting “a dirty tricks campaign” to kill a market that provided valuable jobs and money for small business.84 Harvard’s fate was shared by other licensed dealers. The Ravendale Group failed to have its licenses renewed by the DTI, surviving for only two weeks after Big Bang. Afcor also found itself in the limbo of interim authorization after going into receivership. It ceased trading in May 1988.85 Prior Harwin initially had more success, securing membership of FIMBRA. Even so, it was also issued a winding-­up petition by the DTI, despite having what The Times described as a much cleaner reputation than some of its “cowboy” counterparts. Its chairman, Tony Harwin, refuted the accusation that

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the company was insolvent based on a £90,000 deficit but admitted that he did not have the available funds to fight the petition.86 By 1989, The Times reported that 553 individual companies (not all of them licensed dealers) remained in limbo, functioning only via interim authorization of the Financial Services Act.87 As one licensed dealer after another went into insolvency, they left behind them hundreds, and frequently thousands of clients, whose position as unsecured creditors consigned them to substantial losses on their investments. In light of such maneuvers Michael Walters commented that “the Office of Fair Trading cannot feel comfortable that the Stock Exchange has secured a monopoly. . . . The end of the OTC, with no alternative outlet for thousands of innocent investors, cannot be good news. The small investor is already battered and bruised in the wake of Big Bang and the October Crash. This summary execution of the OTC market is one more, nasty, unfair blow.”88 Despite the anti-­monopolistic philosophy of those politicians overseeing the break-­up of the Stock Exchange’s closed market system, Walters recognized that patterns of hierarchy and influence in the City had not been entirely disrupted. On the one hand, the OTC’s downfall can be seen as a success story; the introduction of a self-­regulatory system that ensured the expulsion of a group of potentially rogue traders. Clearly, the OTC trod the line between legal and illegal, legitimate and illegitimate. Indeed, in 2011 Tom Wilmot was sentenced to nine years in prison for conspiracy to defraud investors after a lengthy investigation by the Financial Services Authority, City of London Police, and Eurojust.89 On the other hand, so much of the consternation that came from the City did not appear to stem from an altruistic desire to root out the rot in financial markets. Disquiet over perceived blemishes on the London Stock Exchange’s reputation can be read as the nostalgia of an older generation of stockbrokers wistful for the unquestioned legitimacy that membership had once conferred. More likely, the Stock Exchange Council’s concerns were based in the fear that inexperienced investors might turn away from the supposed safety of its member firms, lured elsewhere by the promise of commission-­free

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trading and the thrill of penny shares. Licensed dealers also raised questions about the City’s ability to regulate itself at a time when government intervention threatened to endanger the City’s way of life. The rise and fall of the OTC reveals the complexity of concerns that growing popular participation in capital markets unleashed. But it also shows how different visions of wider share ownership were mobilized by institutions in search of a foothold in the political upheaval of the 1980s. In the case of the OTC, the attempted discursive exclusion of licensed dealers by the London Stock Exchange in the early 1980s was matched by an irresistible physical exclusion in the process of deregulation. The outcome was a vastly reduced number of options when it came to market access for the small investor by the end of the 1980s. With the exit of Harvard and several other licensed dealers, the OTC was effectively reduced to the activities of Granville & Co., which by this point had become traders in larger companies on a far more restricted basis. The experimental “free-­ market” created by licensed dealers failed as a long-­lasting competitive model of private client share dealing, especially once legislative restructuring enabled much larger institutions to perform some of the functions that had previously separated the OTC from the mainstream financial community. Yet, despite its brief existence, the OTC did drive reform within the structures of the Stock Exchange. In addition to launching the USM, in 1986 the Stock Exchange began talks about opening up an electronic “Third Market” for companies too new or small to get a quote elsewhere; companies that the Economist commented could at that time “only be traded on Britain’s unruly over-­the-­counter (OTC) market.”90 The Stock Exchange proposed to restrict access to this new market to its own member firms by refusing entry to other self-­regulatory organizations.91 The “Third Market” was launched in January of 1987 at the same time as the Stock Exchange began quoting American OTC stock from NASDAQ on its price lists.92 Michael Walters described these activities as the Stock Exchange’s way of offering “a more respectable way towards raising money for smaller companies” noting that in doing so the Exchange had

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“effectively locked out the more aggressive OTC.”93 Over the course of the 1990s the Stock Exchange continued to drop or alter a number of prohibitive listing requirements for companies seeking admission to its main markets.94 By the end of the century, it had thus effectively absorbed a lot of the kind of over-­the-­counter trading overseen by the OTC, thereby squashing any criticism that it ignored the needs of small businesses in a political environment that valorized them. In another telling move, the London Stock Exchange dissolved the USM in 1995, replacing it with the Alternative Investment Market (AIM).95 This time the impetus was external rather than domestic competition. Desirous of imitating the successes of the NASDAQ, European financial centers set up new stock markets that could provide for smaller companies and therefore draw in billions of dollars of business in venture capital. AIM alongside its equivalents in Paris and Frankfurt essentially opened up Europe to a form of incentivized high-­risk investing previously thought to be discordant with postwar social democracy.96 Venture capital markets thus became an integrated and institutionalized part of London’s existing hierarchical structures, despite the fact that the OTC for private investor equities—­ Britain’s former “alternative market”—had all but disappeared.

Playing the Market: Financial Bookmaking In the same period that the OTC experienced its rapid rise and decline, other ways for investors to get a taste for speculation also came into being. Not all these entailed direct investment in shares, but they nonetheless formed part of Britain’s investment culture. Included among them was financial bookmaking, or spread betting. In one of the only studies of this phenomenon Claire Loussouarn describes spread betting as “a type of ‘gambling’ ” inherently “shaped by the City of London and its regulatory environment.”97 And yet, financial bookmakers suffered none of the same disdain as licensed dealers, despite trading on the appeal of speculation. This was no doubt because they did not pose a direct threat to the

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business interests of more well-­established City institutions. Nor did their clientele draw so explicitly from a body of novice working-­ and middle-­class investors. Consequently, anxieties produced by the OTC about risk, responsibility, and investor protection were almost entirely absent in discussions surrounding betting on share price indexes. Where licensed dealers were outcast and closed down by City regulators, spread betting developed into a significant part of London’s financial services sector. Its story was one of absorption by the City establishment, rather than elimination. As part of this process, financial bookmakers nonetheless disturbed barriers that brokers and exchange officials had, in other instances, used to distinguish “real” and legitimate practices of investment from those seen as beyond the pale. Much like the OTC, spread betting pushed City institutions to incorporate established popular cultures of gambling into their vision of wider share ownership. Although as chapter 1 discussed, financial bookmaking existed in Victorian Britain, the more institutionalized version that came to the fore in the late twentieth century had roots in Britain’s postwar gambling, rather than financial services, industry. In 1961, as part of a series of socially liberal political reforms, the Betting and Gambling Act legalized off-­course betting shops in Britain. By 1963 some 14,388 betting shops operated across the nation.98 They did not represent the creation of a new industry so much as the legalization of an already well-­established illegal one.99 Nonetheless, with a new governmental seal of approval, companies that had long since provided odds on horseracing introduced a host of new services. Ladbrokes, for instance became the first company to introduce fixed-­odds football betting. Meanwhile, in the words of historian Roger Munting, William Hill was “prepared to lay odds on anything legal and living.” As his research demonstrates, competition between the big four betting firms—Coral, Ladbrokes, William Hill, and Mecca—led to rapid expansion. In 1962 Coral owned 23 shops, a number that grew to some 1,377 by 1989. Ladbrokes expanded the 660 shops it owned in 1972 to 1,600 by the end of the 1980s.100 These leviathans of the betting industry pioneered forms of financial bookmaking clearly

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inspired by nineteenth-­century stock ticker betting that would eventually find their way into the mainstream of Britain’s financial services landscape. The first of the big four to make a move in this direction was Coral. In 1964 it launched a subsidiary company called the Coral Index.101 Its service allowed individuals to bet on the movements of two financial indices: the FT-­30 and the Dow Jones. Clients could stake any sum of money between £250 and £1 per point movement of the chosen index: their profit or loss was the cost of the bet multiplied by the number of points the index rose or fell. Customers could close the bet any time, although each bet also had an expiry date of thirty days (something geared toward the Stock Exchange’s fortnightly account period).102 In the 1960s and early 1970s, Coral’s service was largely the remit of an elite cohort of City workers inclined to view spread betting as a vicarious form of investment. A 1964 job advertisement for the Coral Index on the appointments pages of the Financial Times indicated that the company was looking for “experienced dealers.”103 Margot Naylor of the Daily Mail similarly noted that those wishing to become customers had to be “pillars of financial rectitude” able to produce references from a banker and a broker.104 In fact, Coral offered to open accounts “immediately” for anyone who was already a member “of recognised Stock Exchanges, Commodity Markets, Partners or Directors of Merchant Banks, and Exempted Dealers.”105 Clearly targeting the City’s traditional workforce, it should come as no surprise that 90 percent of Coral’s business was done by members of the London Stock Exchange and other institutional investors.106 And this business was healthy enough. By 1972 the company had around fifteen thousand customers, with profits rising from £2,600 in 1965 to nearly £70,000 by 1968.107 In this sense, Coral Index functioned as a highly integrated part of City speculation. It published its daily closing price in the Financial Times on the Stock Exchange Reports page. Journalists even made use of betting activity on the Index as a forward indicator of the market more generally. After all, the majority of those staking money

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were stockbrokers and stockjobbers with an inside view.108 As to why financial spread betting proved so popular among City workers, it is most likely because any profit they made was not subject to capital gains tax. This was due to the legal designation of spread betting as gambling, a fact that betting companies eagerly trumpeted in their advertising campaigns.109 In this guise gambling and speculation were viewed as entirely complementary activities within the upper echelons of Britain’s postwar investment culture. Through the mid-­1970s and into the early 1980s the number and popularity of these betting indices grew. With the rise of public interest in high finance, several companies offered even more novel ways of betting on the movements of the stock market, in the hope of appealing to people from beyond the Square Mile. In 1973, for instance, “big four” bookmaker, Mecca, began to deliver its own version of financial bookmaking through its 900 high street shops. Rather than spread betting, customers could take a fixed-­odds bet on the whether the FT 30-­share would go up or down on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis. The service was essentially an extension of Mecca’s regular bookmaking and was clearly targeted at a less specialist customer base.110 Around the same time, a company called Investapools began advertising another slightly different service, more akin to the highly popular football pools formula of betting. Legalized after 1928, football pools allowed participants to predict the results of elite-­ level football matches on a weekly basis. Pools players were simply required to complete a coupon containing their prediction, which could then be posted or collected in person by an agent. Up until the late-­1980s, research suggests that 34 percent of adults in Britain participated in football pools, making this one of Britain’s most popular betting formats.111 That Investapools was targeting this more general audience is clear from its advertisements. According to the Guardian, the company distributed initial marketing material to “nearly 6,000,000 doctors, dentists, chartered accountants, publicans, and hair­dressers.”112 With a minimum stake of only 20p, and a simple process of sending

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off a weekly coupon, Investapools consciously merged the language of the market with a format of betting most familiar to working-­and middle-­class customers. Advertisements for the service asked those staking a bet to pick “Allied Breweries instead of Arsenal and Woolworths instead of West Ham,” promising them that “Investapools is as easy as the football pools.” In a more explicit use of investment-­ based terminology, the company reassured customers that although their profits might not be “six figure dividends to start off with . . . they will be well worth the winning.”113 Through these different services, financial bookmakers exploited historic intersections between speculation and gambling to produce new avenues of possibility for investors from beyond the tight-­knit circles of the City. To contemporaries it certainly seemed as though Investapools might be just “the company to try and bring gambling on the Stock Market to the whole family,” albeit the Stock Exchange reserved some of its usual disdain, stating that “We do not see that it will significantly advance public knowledge of the exchange.”114 Of course, not all these experiments with alternative ways of “investing” in the stock market were successful. Investapools arrived on the investment scene too soon to benefit from the explosion of public interest in the market that would occur in the 1980s and there is little evidence of it lasting beyond 1973. The form of spread betting pioneered by Coral, however, displayed much greater longevity, spawning numerous copycats. In 1975, ex-­merchant banker Stuart Wheeler launched a new outfit for customers hoping to bet on the price of metals and other commodities called the IG Index.115 In 1979, Ladbrokes also entered the fray courtesy of a deal with one of Britain’s largest stockjobbers, Smith Brothers, which enabled customers to bet on the FT-­30. Two years later the company purchased the Coral Index and the business of its ten thousand clients for £500,000.116 In February 1984 a third competitor, the City Index, was unveiled by former Coral and Ladbroke Index managers Chris Hales and Jonathan Sparke.117 With the growth of competition in the industry the range of options for customers steadily expanded. Whereas in the 1970s the Coral Index had taken bets only on the

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FT-­30 and Dow Jones, in the 1980s Ladbrokes started conducting business on the gold indices, the pound/dollar exchange rate index, and the newly minted FTSE 100.118 IG offered a yet more expansive range of indices, and in 1988 it even introduced a way for customers to bet on house prices via the Halifax Building Society national house price index.119 In line with this expansion, anecdotal evidence indicates that the customer base for spread betting slowly but surely broadened throughout the 1980s. This can partly be attributed to the more general importance of market indices in the late twentieth century. In a financializing Britain, share indices were reported upon in daily news cycles by journalists keen to provide a simple measure of the economic and political state of the nation, and they were attended to by investors and non-­investors alike. It is unsurprising, therefore, that indices should become the subject of a growing culture of speculation and gambling among a broader spectrum of the population. The Times noted in 1990 that the Ladbroke Index considered its most consistently successful client to be Graham Morris from Bournemouth, who was a building contractor not a commodities broker or hedge fund manager.120 The content and placement of financial bookmaking advertisements further indicate that, for the companies’ concerned at least, a wider market of potential customers was envisaged. Whereas advertisements had previously been reserved for the Financial Times and Economist, they began to appear more frequently in the pages of the major national dailies. Of the three main financial bookmakers operating in the 1980s, Ladbrokes most clearly courted a nonspecialist audience. It placed ads in the money pages of the Daily Mail, seeking a financially curious middle-­brow reader with no expert knowledge or experience. “Playing the stock market is easier than you think” claimed the company in 1985, hinting that the world of stocks and shares was more readily accessible to the uninitiated.121 Although IG and City Index tended to target a more expert clientele than Ladbrokes, they, too, changed tactics in their approach to marketing. Their early advertisements employed technical language and sold

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index betting as a tax-­free form of hedging. But by the mid-­to late 1980s IG could be found promising customers a chance to “play the American Stockmarket . . . without the problems and expenses of a direct stake in shares or unit trusts.”122 City Index similarly offered “an alternative way of dealing” that didn’t require “up front money.”123 This all seemed to offer the public a chance to experience the thrills of investment without the same need for financial and social capital. Not unlike the OTC, financial bookmakers traded on the cultural cache of the City. Ladbrokes, for example, used stock market language and imagery to help create the illusion of an authentic investment experience. Ads featured a London skyline and the infamous hexagonal booths of the Stock Exchange trading floor. Meanwhile, the company listed “no dealing fees” and a “Trading desk open weekdays; 9.30am to 9.00pm” as benefits of the service, despite the fact that it provided a gambling, not a trading operation. Accompanying taglines similarly promised customers “easy access to playing the Stock Market” and the chance to “deal with today’s market makers.” Such was the blurring of lines between investing and betting that advertisements carried the small caveat that “Ladbroke Index has no connection with The Financial Times or Stock Exchange,” reassuring customers that they would not in fact “buy any shares or options.”124 This was not just any vision of life in the City. Financial bookmakers capitalized upon a version of investment rooted in the assumed appeal of speculation. In 1987 IG launched an IG Index Dealing Card that promised a “fast, simple [and] efficient way to phone in your bets.”125 Rather than fastidious long-­term investment, this clearly invoked the idea of a high-­octane trading floor where dealers bought and sold over the phone. Ads for the company used the term “speculation” freely, stressing the “substantial profits” and “considerable personal gain” to be made. Much like the OTC, financial bookmakers courted those eager to “play the most exciting markets in the world” by inviting them to vicariously “ ‘deal’ on the Dow Jones Industrial and FTSE 100.”126

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The boundary between stock market investment and more traditional forms of gambling was further destabilized by the expansion of financial bookmakers into other areas. In a 1983 ad the Ladbroke Index announced that it would “quote prices for major sporting events such as the number of finishers in the Grand National, number of World Cup goals, [and] winners score in Open Golf Tournaments.”127 The IG Index also began offering sports bookmaking in 1985.128 The City Index meanwhile took sports bets from the start with a fifth of its profits accounted for by this business in its first year. By mid-­1985, around half of its bets were on sports and in 1996 it merged with a major rival, Sporting Index.129 Financial bookmakers also took bets on political elections, the length of budget speeches, and other national events.130 In 1988, the City Index even made odds on the weight of the Duchess of York’s baby.131 Such activities merged the worlds of finance with those of horse racing, sports, and politics, giving it the appearance of a middle-­class hobby. In doing so, financial bookmakers opened the door for contemporaries to draw their own conclusions about the relationship between speculation and gambling. In certain guises, then, financial bookmaking undermined representations of the stock market as a place of knowledgeable, objective, and calculated investment only accessible to an upper-­class elite. Advertisements for Investapools in the Daily Mail informed readers that “You certainly don’t have to be a financial expert” to participate: an “inspired hunch could play as important a part as skill.”132 Journalists discussing the service also eagerly drew connections between bookmaking and speculation, noting that “the world is not short of people who argue that the Stock Exchange itself is basically a gambling organization.”133 The Guardian had much the same to say about the Coral Index: “Public relations men spend their working lives denying that stock and shares and the commodity market are a gamble. Gambling means speculators and speculators means trouble. But . . . [Coral has] worked out schemes for people who want to take a punt on . . . the direction in which the gold, or copper, or cocoa price is about to shift.”134

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Yet financial bookmakers met with none of the dismissal that faced the licensed dealers of the OTC. Barry Phelps of the Daily Mail even noted his surprise that “the London Stock Exchange Council, always paranoid about anything to do with gambling,” had approved Ladbrokes’s 1979 deal with stockjobbers Smith Brothers.135 One possible explanation for this apparent indifference is that financial bookmakers tended not to redirect the profit-­making activities of the City away from the London Stock Exchange. Ladbrokes’s deal with Smith Brothers is a case in point: it channeled business through a Stock Exchange member firm. Likewise, competition for spread betting clients existed largely between bookmakers, rather than between bookmakers and City institutions. In its spread-­betting format financial bookmaking essentially served as an adjunct to the financial services sector, allowing individual traders to offset risk by hedging their position in the market. In fact, the opening of the London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE) in 1982 provided a formally regulated version of this trading practice. Here investors could “bet” on the stock market by taking out an option or future to buy or sell the index at a later date. In a telling comment, the Daily Mail described those trading in LIFFE’s new markets as “gamblers large and small” seeking to “have fun playing the Index”—a description that could just as easily have been about financial bookmaking.136 Futures, options, and financial bookmaking thus sat almost side by side, separated by the differing tax regimes to which each were subject. The City’s broad accommodation with spread betting also reflected the class dynamics of financial bookmakers and their clients. As outlined above, in the early days of the Coral Index cus­ tomers were usually Stock Exchange members. Those working at financial bookmakers also claimed reassuringly respectable backgrounds. Michael Spencer, a partner in City Index, described his company’s managing director, Jonathan Sparke, as “not a typical loud-­mouthed bookmaker. He’s very much a gentleman. . . . He doesn’t get sucked into the excitement of the moment, or get carried away.”137 Spencer’s description portrayed Sparke as a traditional

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upper-­class financier—calculating, rational, and capable of making responsible decisions in the market. The reputation of these men alone, seemed enough to provide legitimacy to spread betting. The Telegraph assured its readers that “IG is a long way removed from the ‘50p each way’ concept of a bookmaker since its founder and managing director is an ex-­merchant banker.”138 Such treatment was a far cry from the tropes usually attached to working-­class gambling, or indeed, to the OTC’s traders who were often described as impulsive and reckless. By situating the histories of these two investment practices alongside one another, we can thus begin to identify the social structures that shaped perceptions of popular investing and small investors in the late twentieth century. Consider, for example, this 1998 description of spread betting in The Times: “There was a time when betting had an unsavoury image as the resort of the ne’er-­do-­wells. Unemployed layabouts lurked behind the anonymity of the opaque betting shop window . . . [seeking] quick riches on the pools . . . [and] lounged round the casino tables. Spread betting has changed all that. Firms such as City Index and IG Index combine the mystique of the City with the thrill of the National Lottery. It has made gambling respectable.”139 In such ways, financial journalists performed mental acrobatics in their attempts to reconcile long-­standing attitudes to working-­class gambling, more acceptable forms of middle-­class gambling, and spread betting’s apparent role as a legitimate extension of the City. More often than not they were simply inconsistent. Barry Phelps of the Daily Mail commented in 1982 that such services “treat the FT Index just like a bookie with a two-­horse race,” making the association with gambling very clear.140 A 1986 Economist article similarly referred to the whole process as “gambling on gambling.”141 By contrast, the Guardian referred to financial brokers as “City-­style jobbing operations.”142 The problem of categorization went beyond mere semantics. Even the regulators of the City seemed unsure where the line between investing and gambling lay. In 1988 IG Index became the first financial bookmakers to be appointed as a member of the Association of

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Futures Brokers and Dealers, bringing it officially into the fold of City regulation under the new Financial Services Act.143 The Telegraph described this as a “hard won acceptance.” It came at a price, however. The SIB sought to entrust IG Index with ensuring that “each client was an ‘experienced investor,’ ” despite protestations from IG’s chairman, Stuart Wheeler. The potential danger in terms of both profit and litigation was evident. The matter was finally sorted out when the SIB was persuaded to create an entirely new category of “execution-­only dealer” for financial bookmakers.144 As this dispute indicated, by moving more firmly into the structures of the City, financial bookmaking’s more popular potential was put on hold. In 1987 Ladbroke Index was bought by the larger (in financial bookmaking terms), but less mass market–oriented IG Index. Between them IG and City Index shifted their attention almost exclusively to the business of providing an adjunct investment strategy tool. In 1996, Jonathan Sparke, described City Index’s services as “an opportunity to take protective steps against a market which is not going to open until the following morning.”145 By 2002, in a book titled How to Win at Financial Spread Betting, author Charles Vincent similarly described spread betting as “the fastest growing sector in the investment field today” and a “fail-­safe adjunct to your portfolio of ordinary shares.”146 Barclays bank and Halifax even added spread betting to their range of products under the name of “spread trading” in 2006 and 2011 respectively.147 Between the 1960s and the 2000s, spread betting transitioned from a niche form of gambling provided by Britain’s largest bookmakers into an investment tool provided by the institutional giants of Britain’s financial services industry. As this transition suggests, financial bookmaking existed at the junction between legitimate and illegitimate notions of investment, bringing a veneer of City respectability to gambling. Financial bookmakers occupied a strange space, neither part of the City nor separate to it. Financial bookmaking was no less risky than stock market speculation, and not far removed from working-­class forms of betting such as the pools and races (especially in its more experimental forms). In different ways

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to the OTC, financial bookmaking exposed the cracks in political and institutional claims about the democratization of share ownership and the regulatory power of the City. However, because those running financial bookmakers and their clientele did not transgress existing class hierarchies, index betting found a home within the changing structures of Britain’s financial services sector in a way that the OTC could not. In fact, as London’s markets expanded to include more risky financial instruments like futures, spread betting gained even greater legitimacy. This, despite the fact that their price listings could be found advertised right alongside those of licensed dealer M. J. H. Nightingale in the likes of the Financial Times.

Conclusion The matter of deregulation lifted the lid on tensions bubbling beneath the surface of the City. In the struggle that followed, the London Stock Exchange was able to leverage its financial and reputational resources to protect its own position. However, while the existing institutional hierarchies of the City appeared to stay much the same, there were also important changes. Popular forms of investment, however short-­lived in some instances, actively celebrated a vision of investment that was based on speculation; affordable, exciting shares; and the pursuit of rapid personal wealth. The response of the Stock Exchange to these potential sources of competition was to introduce far more high-­risk markets of its own and to make certain forms of speculation acceptable. It subsequently oversaw the production of a highly controlled and managed investment culture that was nonetheless able to tolerate seemingly contradictory discourses of investment. In short, the growth of popular investment relied upon the antagonism that developed between institutions on the hunt for new ways to expand profits in the postwar period. As augmenting numbers of working-­and middle-­class individuals sought to enter Britain’s capital markets, opportunities arose to reimagine the discursive and practical boundaries of investing. In the case of financial bookmaking,

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traditionally upper-­class cultures of investment merged with an established popular culture of betting and gambling to produce a socially acceptable way for middle-­class private clients and City workers to have a flutter on the stock market. Even though more experimental and mass-­market versions of financial bookmaking never really took off, it is nonetheless notable that in the 1960s and 1970s companies more regularly associated with football pools and horse racing began offering something that looked like stock market investment. Given the way the licensed dealers of the OTC were ostracized and eventually ousted from the City, it is also significant that financial bookmakers were gradually integrated into Britain’s mainstream investment landscape. The different trajectories and experiences of private-­client OTC markets in equities and index betting highlights two things. Firstly, the institutions and individuals involved in both industries expose the unstable amalgam of ideas and actors that remolded British investment culture in this period. Preexisting social and cultural norms, collided with changing global economic conditions, technological advances, and legislative reform. In particular, institutional interests disturbed a carefully constructed Conservative Party rhetoric that foregrounded forms of dutiful and informed long-­ term investment. The activities of individual firms, bookmakers, and stock exchanges diverted the process of deregulation, even as legislative change shaped their field of action. The outcomes of financial reform thus relied as much upon inter-­institutional interactions as they did interactions between the City and the state. Secondly, institutions trying to navigate the financial reform in Britain had to engage with the figure of the small investor. Arguments about who could best serve small investors’ needs became an important site of contestation for institutions. Licensed dealers and financial bookmakers opted to mobilize popular discourses of speculation in their efforts to open up the London Stock Exchange in the 1970s and 1980s. As we will see in the next chapter, other institutions pushed an alternative narrative of democratization that was rooted in mass consumption. This institutional in-­fighting to define the limits of popular investment slowly but surely supplanted more traditional

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relationships between investors and capital. It shaped how investment happened: who could participate, buying what kinds of equities, and through what products and services. And as we have seen, the playing field was hardly even. Large financial institutions were able to exercise their considerable economic, social, and cultural capital to maintain a position of authority in Britain’s capital markets.

Chapter 3

Shopping for Shares The Rise of Financial Consumerism

At the same moment that Tom Wilmot of Harvard Securities was confidently predicting the long-­ term prosperity of the OTC, the City’s more traditional stockbroking firms were also making moves to secure their position at the heart of London’s domestic capital markets. In 1985 The Times captured the spirit of the moment as it announced the arrival of Britain’s first investment fair: “Financial consumerism comes of age next week when the Money ’85 Show . . . opens at Olympia 2 in London. . . . More than 100 financial services companies will be displaying their wares and talents . . . to the public who want to know what to do about their money. . . . The past five years have seen an explosion in the personal finance sector. So the idea of staging a financial fair is well overdue.” Entry to the three-­day event cost only £3. As the Money ’85 Show’s organizer, Richard Copley-­Smith noted “many people are bemused by the wide proliferation of investment vehicles,” so the fair was intended to help members of the public navigate their way through an increasingly crowded marketplace. The Times highlighted the “abundance” of stockbrokers due to set up stalls at the fair, commenting that it was 94

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“not surprising as many firms are now eager to increase their private portfolio management business.”1 A combination of political expediency, public pressure, and potential profitability meant that stockbrokers, clearing banks, and building societies spent the early-­to-­mid-­1980s experimenting with novel ways to entice those with a little spare cash at the end of the month to invest rather than spend. Their efforts on this front went far beyond setting up stalls at an investment fair. By the end of the decade, financial journalist Michael Walters cheerfully described the situation: “There are sections of the City eager to tap into small investors and their money. . . . Go-­ahead stockbrokers are geared up to trade for the smaller share buyer, trying to offer good value and efficient dealing services. They are promoting their wares in the press, on TV even. Share shops are opening in the High Street inviting you to buy and sell on the spot.”2 Such was the flurry of activity that contemporaries heralded the arrival of “a financial revolution in the high street.”3 As we have already seen, institutions deployed different visions of investment in their attempts to sell the idea of investing to the public, particularly once the latter’s curiosity had been piqued by wide-­scale privatizations. Some, like licensed dealers and financial bookmakers brought narratives of speculation to the fore, highlighting the possibility for rapid wealth accumulation and the thrill of the market. Others offered a promise of financial security and responsible asset management. However, as Walters’s description indicates, the discourses, practices, and spaces of British investment culture also increasingly drew inspiration from Britain’s mass consumer society. Although borrowed from The Times’s throwaway phrasing, the term financial consumerism proves a useful way of describing an emerging norm at the heart of popular investment practices. It recognizes a series of cultural, political, and institutional processes that encouraged individuals to adopt a relationship with personal finance predicated on the consumption of financial products. The sharp rise in the application of consumer narratives in finance during the 1980s points to the necessity of tying cultural analyses of investment to a supply-­side history of financialization.

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Contemporaneous studies of the retail banking sector and scholarship produced in light of the 2008 financial crash demonstrate that Britain’s financial retail environment was an essential arena of change in this period.4 The transformation of investment culture into something consumer oriented and heavily institutionalized occurred through innovation in product design, service delivery, and marketing. At each stage, the people involved had a mass-­market of novice investors in mind. A study of the tactics they employed exposes the many ways that institutions preempted, appropriated, and mediated the processes of political and economic reform attributed to Thatcherite popular capitalism. Studying how financial institutions redefined investment services as a mass-­market commodity doesn’t only tell us about institutions, however. It also begins to unravel the ties that bind individuals to global and domestic financial markets. This chapter traces the rise of the investor-­shopper as a principal subject of late twentieth-­century investment culture. Assuming an identity as a consumer was a defining experience for the individual throughout the twentieth century. This only increased in significance as the consumer became the heart of justifications for neoliberal and free-­market economics.5 Just like other areas of life in modern Britain, investing became enfolded into Britain’s mass consumer society. As we saw in chapter 1, signs of this process were already apparent in the 1950s and 1960s. Then, too, the drive toward a more consumer-­friendly retail environment was largely conducted by financial institutions seeking to secure the custom of working-­and middle-­class families. In the 1980s banks, brokers and building societies once again tested the power of consumerism to direct the nation’s savings into a variety of investment services. This time, their actions came as a response to the opportunities presented by privatization and growing public awareness of the City.

“The Land of the Ever-­Rising Perk”: Share Perks The rise of financial consumerism was a multifaceted process. At its heart lay a steadily disintegrating cultural division between everyday

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consumption and investment. While speculation and gambling had always been a feature of British investment culture, it wasn’t until the second half of the twentieth century that institutions and individuals began making such frequent and explicit associations between investment and goods consumption. This chapter largely focuses on the reasons why financial institutions made this connection. However, companies issuing shares—those hoping to enlist investors as a way of raising capital—also exploited and embellished a linkage between the two. And it is with their activities that this chapter begins. It made perfect sense for companies to draw associations between their products/services and their equity as a useful tool for enticing new shareholders. This tactic was formalized in so-­called share perks: small incentives attached to the ownership of shares in a particular company. Perks could range from discounts at certain shops or restaurants, to gift vouchers and free products, but they generally related directly to the goods and services produced by the company offering them. These bonuses could usually only be claimed by the individual in whose name the shares were held, making them unavailable to those with an indirect stake (via a unit trust, pension fund, or broker nominee account). Like much that this book discusses, a system of share perks was not a product of the 1980s. In fact, a history of share perks aptly highlights a crucial transition in British investment culture produced by the rise of financial consumerism. Over the postwar period, investors who had once been encouraged to actively participate in the process of investing and company management— taking responsibility for assessing information, the decision to invest, and attending annual general meeting (AGMs)—were exposed to a new norm whereby the investment process was largely delegated to large investment institutions. While the former system engaged individuals in a subject position of investor-­citizen, the latter encouraged Britons to assume a role as investor-­shoppers of financial products. In the 1950s and 1960s a small number of companies introduced perks as a way of “getting a toe-­hold” in various competitive markets. Perks also allowed companies to maintain levels of private investment in the face of governmental regulation on dividends and

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other cutbacks to tax incentives.6 This worked because any money that an investor saved via the use of a share perk was tax free. During the 1970s, for instance, shareholder perks experienced an initial boom in line with a decade-­long stretch of dividend restraint.7 They were similarly used to ward off unwanted takeover bids by rewarding investors for continued loyalty. For this reason, most perks came with restrictions—a minimum shareholding or term of investment that ruled out those with only very small shareholdings. In this sense, share perks formed part of a broad package of favor used by companies to maintain the interest of their investors. This included things like free sample products and drinks receptions at company AGMs. At the heart of this dynamic was an assumption that investors should have a direct interest in the company, its products, and profits and take an active role in its management. Share perks were, in other words, the product of an early-­to-­mid-­twentieth-­century investment culture characterized by relatively significant levels of individual investment and politicized ideals of an actively investing citizenry. They offered a small reward for investor allegiance at a time when the percentage of shares owned by individuals was high, but where Britain’s share-­owning demographic was small and fairly much contained within the upper-­middle classes. Even in the years leading up to the 1980s, share perks remained a relatively limited phenomenon of seemingly little public interest.8 This began to change, however, as contemporaries sought to tackle a decline in the percentage of shares owned by private investors. In this context, share perks offered a way to “bring private shareholders back,” as the Daily Mail’s Patrick Sergeant put it.9 Ideologues associated with the Conservative Party’s wider share ownership agenda echoed his position. Writing in 1986, Philip Chappell, a frequent Centre for Policy Studies contributor and investment banker, laid out a nine-­ point action plan for companies wishing to encourage wider share ownership. His aim was to curb the trend toward “indirect, packaged form[s] of . . . second-­hand ownership” associated with the growth of pension schemes and unit trusts. Alongside opening share shops and developing employee share ownership, his

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recommendations also included offering shareholder perks.10 In such ways, share perks became entangled with political debates about shifting patterns of ownership in the late twentieth century. Accordingly, the prevalence and visibility of shareholder perks expanded significantly over the course of the 1980s and 1990s. The government’s approach to privatization no doubt helped to popularize and normalize them for a more general audience. During the BT flotation, for example, potential investors were offered free phone vouchers for money off monthly bills as an enticement to invest.11 In this guise, shareholder perks formed part and parcel of the mass marketing of share issues to an increasingly expansive investing public. As Melvyn Marckus of the Observer commented, BT’s flotation also “gave an air of respectability” to perks.12 Such was the expectation created by the BT and British Gas campaigns that when the details of the British Airways (BA) flotation were announced in 1985, people were surprised to find that BA Chairman, Lord King, and his chief executive, Colin Mitchell, had “set their faces against shareholder perks. No cheap flights, no cut-­price holidays, no duty-­free vouchers.” Instead, the company planned to “use their shareholder’s register as a mailing list for promotions.”13 But it was not just former state monopolies that sought to entice investors with the promise of perks in 1980s Britain. The number of companies offering them tripled from 42 in 1978 to 120 in 1989.14 The likes of Ladbrokes, P&O Ferries, and Grand Metropolitan made a particular virtue of shareholder perks. This was not a case just of ideological concession to an incoming Conservative government making a noise about popular capitalism. Rather, companies recognized share perks’ potential as a “powerful magnet to attract many new investors” in a situation where publicly available information about investing was becoming more commonplace.15 The strategy appeared to be a successful one. In a 1989 Guardian article, journalist Phillip Money noted that “the lure of 20 per cent off the cost of a portion of fish ’n’ chips at Harry Ramsden’s Yorkshire restaurant has proved irresistible to thousands of small investors.” His comment followed the successful offer for shares in the company, which ended

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up two and a half times oversubscribed. Money’s article further reported a 60 percent growth in P&O’s shareholder register after the introduction of a 50 percent discount on ferry crossings.16 In fact, such were the successes of perks as a means to recruit new shareholders that some companies found themselves backpedaling. In 1985 European Ferries restricted its 50 percent channel crossings to holders of preference shares only (previously the discount had been available to all categories of shareholders).17 This kind of reversal was not uncommon because shareholder registers were becoming more and more expensive to maintain.18 It turned out that a system of perks designed to reward a small number of investors with substantial holdings was less well suited to a climate where much larger numbers of investors held far fewer shares. Compared to earlier postwar decades, therefore, share perks became less about rewarding an active and loyal investor base. Instead, they evolved into a tacit recognition that this dynamic had been lost. Interviewed in 1989 by the Guardian, the finance director for stockbrokers Seymour Pierce Butterfield observed that a major benefit of perks was that they enabled investors “to relate more to the company” lamenting, “These days there’s always a vast gulf between management and the people who own the company.”19 It was not only companies that drove the boom in share perks in the 1980s, however. Stockbrokers provided clients with collated lists of perks, the most famous being the annual Seymour Pierce Butterfield guide.20 The authors of popular investment guides similarly began to highlight share perks as a major benefit of investing. Financial journalist Rosemary Burr’s 1985 investment guide, The Share Book, contained nearly twenty pages of information about shareholder perks, with details of over one hundred companies’ discounts and offers.21 Public interest was also undoubtedly bolstered by the almost uniformly positive position that financial journalists adopted toward perks. Throughout the decade, articles regularly ran with titles such as “Playing the Perks Market,” “City’s Perks for Sale,” and “Goodies Galore.” Column inches on the subject were abundant as journalists noted with delight which companies were the latest to

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join the “shareholders perks club.”22 Even the left-­wing press exulted in advising readers how to get their hands on goods and services at a discounted price via the joys of share ownership. The Guardian and Observer were particularly assiduous in reporting on the topic, perhaps best evidenced by the Observer’s 1981 announcement of a new regular and comprehensive list of shareholder perks.23 Other papers soon followed suit, not wanting to get left behind in the race to capture a growing audience of potential investors.24 For anyone interested in the world of stocks and shares, shareholder perks became part of a daily diet of information about potential investments in the 1980s. Across the decade, they accordingly transformed into a “perennial favorite” among astute investors who realized that they could secure “several hundred pounds-­worth of benefits a year.”25 Sunderland-­based Vaux Breweries even introduced shareholder discounts at the group’s hotels at the behest of shareholders who put forward the suggestion at an AGM.26 The discourse associated with perks adjusted in line with their newfound role as marketing tool for companies eager to generate interest among a general public of potential investors. Retailers were among the “keenest” to provide discounts to shareholders, no doubt recognizing the potential for using product discounts as a way of securing capital investments from their customers.27 This generated a close connection in the minds of many between shopping and share perks. Articles discussing perks advised readers how to “buy discounts,” and featured cartoons in which investors surrounded by marked-­down consumer goods noted: “I don’t bother with the dividends any more.”28 In the lead up to Christmas in 1980 the Guardian ran an article adjudging which shares (and associated perks) would make the best Christmas gift for children.29 Keeping up with the theme of seasonal consumption, Sam Parkhouse of The Times commented in 1990: “The January sales may be ending but incurable bargain hunters should consider diverting their energies to hunting the best shareholder perks.”30 The most commonly discussed share perks in the press were those related to the kinds of conspicuous consumption that contemporaries

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thought would “make capitalism fun”: discounted fine dining experiences, cruises and holidays, house purchases, and even Wimbledon Centre Court tickets.31 The role assumed by share perks in Britain’s late twentieth-­century investment culture thus spoke to a vision of investment largely divorced from more serious issues of financial asset management or a family savings plan. Discussion about them often completely sidelined the economic growth prospects of whichever company a perk was associated, although most newspaper articles contained a brief line suggesting that readers shouldn’t pick an investment based purely on the perks. This advice went out the window, however, if the share perk was especially attractive. Commenting on the range of “goodies” on offer in leisure, manufacturing, and property firm Grand Metropolitan, the Daily Mail explained that shares in the company “may not be bad as an investment—but as a source of shareholder perks, they come top of the league.” The paper went on to delight in the offering: “A weekend break? Why not consider a Chef and Brewer hotel, £10 off for two, a meal? There is a £5 voucher for a Berni restaurant or a Barnaby Carvery. A drink at home? There is so much—a special case of selected wines with a complementary bottle of J&B Rare Scotch Whisky. . . . Or perhaps you would prefer a case of Moselle, or Claret, or Beaujolais . . . all at special shareholder prices.”32 For those shares requiring only a minimal holding, financial journalists even encouraged investors to view them “in the same way as a club subscription.”33 This equated shareholding with access to a private and exclusive world of luxury. James Vernon has described the 1980s and 1990s as witnessing the rise of “fidelity capitalism”; the evolution of affective marketing techniques designed to generate bonds of loyalty between customers and companies. Such ties were often achieved via membership clubs and rewards cards.34 Developments in the meanings and function of shareholder perks in the 1980s offers another example of this process in practice. All of this is to say that the perk hunters of the 1980s were not the investor-­citizens that figured in the imaginations of mid-­century advocates of wider share ownership and Conservative Party politicians.

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Although no less calculative in their assessments about which shares to buy, perk hunters took less interest in measuring the growth prospects of a particular company than they did scoring discounts on goods and services. The entire system evolved around the notion a life of luxury lived by affluent investors but applied to an expanded investing public. Share perks thus became a popular dimension of shareholding for a public well versed in aspirational consumption and encouraged to view investment through a lens of price comparison, bargain hunting, and value for money. The changing use of share perks hints at the growing importance of consumption to how investing was articulated and understood by both companies and investors. Although there were clear differences between long-­term gratification in investing and the instantaneous gratification of goods consumption, share perks closed the gap to some extent. The boom they experienced in the 1980s also exposes the complex interactions between investor demands and companies’ economic interests. But like much else under discussion in this book, share perks’ moment of expansion and popularity in the 1980s was short lived. The continuing demise of direct ownership by small investors spelled trouble, and the hope that perks might provide an antidote to this trend proved mistaken. As the power of institutional investors grew, the benefits for companies of courting and administering extensive shareholder lists dwindled.35 So too did the system of perks that had evolved to maintain them.

“Taking Stocks to the Stores”: Share Shops Share perks were by no means the only instance of Britons being invited to see investing as somehow connected to their day-­to-­day lives as consumers, however. In November 1987, an article in The Times stated: “A famous American retail group once proclaimed: ‘Buy your stocks where you buy your socks.’ Few people thought share dealing in department stores could prove successful on this side of the Atlantic. Events have shown otherwise.”36 As this quote indicates, the idea of selling shares in a retail environment emerged

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as a new norm in 1980s Britain. As the Daily Mail put it, this was a period in which stockbrokers “dumped their traditional starch-­and-­ stripes-­forever look and . . . [rolled] up their sleeves to push their wares across the counter just as if they were selling cabbages and cauliflowers.”37 We saw in chapter 2 how financial institutions claimed ownership over small investors’ needs as a survival tactic in the upheaval of financial services reform in the late twentieth century. Product innovation in retail markets was another weapon in their armory.38 In the 1980s private investors began to encounter new models of investment designed for their pleasure by institutions eager to court their attention. Among these innovations sat the share shop. By and large, the term referred to share dealing services set up by stockbroking firms in high street spaces. These new delivery points unified the desire of the OTC to target small first-­time investors with all the prestige and legitimacy of the old brokerage firms of the City of London. They epitomized the convergence of the practices, spaces, and subjectivities of consumption with the mechanisms, service pro­viders, and purchasers of financial products. But despite being hailed as the arrival of a share-­owning democracy in institutional form, by the end of the decade most share shops had either closed or been absorbed back into mainstream financial services. This came as a surprise to many, given that share shops were nearly all opened by well-­known private client brokerage firms of the London Stock Exchange. And yet they suffered essentially the same fate as the OTC, falling by the wayside in the aftermath of deregulation. This is because facilitating quick and easy share dealing for private investors failed as a profitable business model for any but the largest outfits. A history of share shops therefore demonstrates that the cultural shift from investor to consumer did not precipitate a fundamental shift in the dominant position of financial capital interests in the UK securities markets. While patterns of individual investment changed, they did so in ways that complemented the ongoing concentration of capital in institutional hands across the closing decades of the 1900s.

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As with shareholder perks, the push to innovate a new share shopping experience was a feature of the Conservative Party’s ideological positioning in the 1980s.39 In a 1983 profile of Consumer Affairs Minister Alex Fletcher, journalist Margareta Pagano highlighted his “preoccupation . . . with the US-­style share shops which he would love to see spread in the UK . . . with people buying shares even in the supermarket.”40 For Fletcher, any growth in Britain’s securities industry, meant “tap[ping] the savings of the community where they are to be found.”41 Uniting daily consumption with investment appeared one way to do this. As noted in the article, Fletcher’s main inspiration came from American retailing giant Sears, Roebuck & Co. In 1981 the company acquired brokerage house Dean Witter Reynolds and real estate agent Coldwell Banker & Company. Alongside Sears’s existing insurance subsidiary, Allstate, this merger created the largest financial services firm in the United States at the time. Following the merger, Sears opened a small number of “brokerage booths” in its stores where customers could purchase insurance, shares, or mortgages. By 1985 booths operated in around three hundred stores.42 In Britain, initial experimentation with the share shop format began in September 1985 as a “tale of two share shops.” The press characterized the situation as a “high street battle . . . for the hearts and wallets of the nation’s small investor.”43 The first of the two combatants was stockbroker Quilter Goodison, the family firm of “City champion” and chairman of the Stock Exchange, Sir Nicholas Goodison. It represented the attempts of the respectable but often uninterested member firms of the London Stock Exchange to attract “a new generation of investors.”44 The broker’s experimental share shop, named the Money Centre, offered on-­the-­spot dealing as well as personalized portfolio modeling, tax planning, and advice on bonds and currency movements. The venture did not have the backing of the entire company, however. Robert Hodge, a consultant who worked on the launch of the Money Centre, described the company as “split in two” over the issue. Its institutional brokering section was fearful of potential reductions in profits. Meanwhile, established partners who served private clients with larger accounts were also hesitant. Hodge

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suggested that they may have harbored concerns about the “dumbing down” of investment.45 Indeed, such concerns were echoed by Quilter Goodison’s competition. A year into the Money Centre operation, the director of brokerage firm Hoare Govett’s private-­client department admitted that it was “set against that approach because we think it is reducing the common denominator.” He went on to dismiss the “sock and stocks business,” stating that “if a customer inherits 1,000, he would sell the stock and buy a washing machine. This is not the business we want.”46 As with debates surrounding the OTC, the issue of class evidently underlined institutional anxieties about the share shop model. Brokers worried about how to deal with Thatcher’s working-­and lower-­ middle-­ class “popular capitalists”: should they lower themselves to cater for them? And could they make money by doing so? The answer to the latter as far as Quilter Goodison was concerned was a yes, although the solution it settled upon was something of a middle ground. Reflecting the firm’s sense of its own status, Quilter Goodison launched its flagship Money Centre in Debenhams’ Oxford Street department store where it was granted a one-­year lease.47 The launch coincided with a period of upheaval for Debenhams. At the time, the company was the largest operator of concessions in British retailing: around £200 million of its £650m turnover was accounted for by this feature of its retail offering.48 However, Debenhams had spent much of the 1970s struggling to identify and meet the needs of its largely middle-­class customer base in the face of national economic adversity.49 The early 1980s thus marked a period of “regeneration” as the company reconciled itself with attracting a younger customer base drawn from the newly affluent skilled working class.50 Quilter Goodison’s share shop no doubt formed part of the company’s evolving vision of to whom its products, services, and carefully selected concessionaires needed to cater, and vice versa. The second protagonist in Britain’s high street battle over the small investor was “Mayfair share pedlar” Kunwar Chander Jeet Singh and his City Investment Centres. Despite laying claim to the title of share shop, Singh’s outfit was an operation of a different nature. It was run

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by the Ravendale Group, which included licensed dealers Ravendale Securities. Packaging his service as a share shop allowed Singh to create an environment where potential customers could walk in on a whim, have a free cup of coffee, and be put at ease. The shop’s initial product line, so to speak, consisted of familiar blue-­chip titans of British industry such as British Telecom, Marks and Spencer, British Aerospace, P&O, and Boots.51 Singh also pioneered Sunday trading, offering customers the opportunity to deal seven days a week. This consumer-­friendly delivery model initially appeared to have paid off. The company’s turnover reportedly soared from £67,000 to £57million in the space of just one year.52 Even so, the City Investment Centres remained firmly on the fringes of the securities market and the DTI shut down Singh’s share shops along with the rest of the Ravendale Group in the weeks following Big Bang.53 The closure of the City Investment Centres was by no means the end of the share shop model, however. This is because history of the share shop in the 1980s was not, in fact, a tale of two, but a tale of many. Adding to the government’s marketing efforts during privatization, a succession of big-­name share offers created the sense that investing was a national event, participation in which was not to be missed.54 According to The Times, the 1985 Trustee Savings Bank (TSB) share issue caused “near pandemonium,” including “quite a stir at Debenhams. The queue at the Money Centre stretched through a number of departments.” Those involved in the issue anticipated “a similar response” during the privatization of British Gas the following year.55 Following this success, Quilter launched shops in the provinces, opening stores in Bristol and Truro, while its competitors scrambled to offer the public share dealing where they shopped. There seemed to be no limit on the imaginations of those involved in the private investor share-­dealing market, and share shops opened in cities across the country. Following Quilter’s lead, brokers Margetts & Addenbrooke created a full information and dealing operation through the Birmingham branch of Sears’s Lewis department store where it conducted “around 30 share deals a day.”56 London firm Laing and Cruikshank meanwhile reportedly put together

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“a high street chain of share shops by stealth,” setting up offices in buildings with ground floors to enable people to “come in and browse around the literature.”57 Their Taunton office ended up sitting between a dentist and a frozen food shop. Save and Invest money shop in Glasgow intended to franchise the share shop concept, while the Birmingham Stock Exchange launched a shop in the middle of Birmingham International’s Railway Station. Here a “rota of duty stockbrokers at the end of a telephone line enable[d] callers to buy and sell shares on the spot,” on their morning or evening commute.58 Reporting on the phenomenon in 1986, the Glasgow Herald rightly conceded that “The term ‘share shop’ had come to cover a wide spectrum from stockbrokers’ offices with an open-­door policy to the slickest of financial supermarkets.”59 The thing that all these variations had in common was their ambition to bring share dealing into the kinds of public spaces usually occupied by working-­and middle-­class consumers. Share shop owners no doubt imagined that such customers would more readily adopt consumer subjectivities than those associated with being an investor. They thus distanced themselves from the “hard sell” tactics of the OTC, claiming to provide a safe and relaxing space where customers could make investment decisions at their own pace.60 Elaborate press descriptions of the shops reveal the type of environment that financial institutions created in their attempts to entice first-­time investors. One Times journalist portrayed the atmosphere in Quilter’s Money Centres as “benevolent and relaxed, less threatening than the average betting shop. . . . I watched customers being sucked into the alluring, heady world of modern money-­culture.”61 Elsewhere the press described the Money Centres as a “boutique” experience, invoking visions of high-­end and personalized shopping.62 Customer descriptions of using these services further paint a picture of the share shop experience. Describing the Birmingham railway station shop, David Shamash a twenty-­one-­year-­old “importer/ exporter of fancy goods” told the Daily Mail, “As soon as I get off the train . . . I drop into the share shop . . . and if I see something good I get on the phone and do a deal right away. It’s a very simple

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process. You don’t even need to know a stockbroker or how to buy or sell—the girls behind the counter can do it all for you.” The article, titled “Taking a Trip Round the Local Market,” also reported on David Stone, a thirty-­nine-­year-­old BT engineer who “wandered into . . . [Quilter Goodison’s] Money Centre on an impulse” where he “ended up buying some Scottish and Newcastle Brewery shares.” He told the newspaper, “Now I drop in most days.” Civil servant Peter Bennett likewise described becoming a “bit of an investment addict” after a spur-­of-­the-­moment trip into a share-­dealing branch of Anglia Building Society.63 In such environments, it seems, buying shares had the potential not only to be a serious financial decision but a purchase made on a whim while browsing in store. Share shops were not the only way that City firms sought to emulate Britain’s retail environment. Writing in Retail and Distribution Management magazine in 1981, Ann Foster outlined what she saw as the future of “push button armchair shopping.” Foster claimed that the wide acceptance of “technically complex items” such as videotape recorders, home computers, and automatic cash machines implied the possibility of a technologically driven “retail revolution.”64 And indeed, in the early 1980s, high street stalwarts such as Debenhams, W H Smith, and Comet began experimenting with a system known as Prestel.65 Essentially a precursor of online services, Prestel enabled individuals to remotely access databases via a television set. Mirroring these developments, stockbrokers eagerly experimented with their own versions of “armchair” service delivery. Often labeled “telebroking,” brokers encouraged investors to set up account cards that provided a direct line to the stock market via their telephone or television. Among the first to pioneer such services was brokerage firm Hoare Govett. It took share orders through its “no-­frills” Dealercall service (utilizing Prestel’s CitiService platform).66 It was by no means cheap, but for those who could afford it, CitiService allowed customers to participate in a highly privatized and individualized form of investment directly from their living rooms. For brokers, telebroking had the benefit of avoiding the costs associated with renting a

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high street location, installing expensive electronic machinery, and employing the staff needed to run share shops.67 They nonetheless advertised telebroking services using a distinctly “shopping”-­based language. For instance, Kleinwort Grieveson likened its ShareCall card to a credit card in advertising campaigns, promising that buying shares was “as easy as filling your [petrol] tank.”68 Other firms pitched telebroking as part of a package deal of home entertainment, shopping, and personal money management. Nottingham Building Society’s Homelink service, for instance, gave customers access to round-­the-­clock telebroking services, a personalized share portfolio, instant bank and building society statements, discount shopping, and a monthly stock market game with “real stocks and real prizes.”69 As its name indicated, its intention was to directly link the home with the market. Contemporaries commonly praised such developments as part of a new wave of democratization in share ownership, arguing that “the more outlets to the stock market there are, the less insular and exclusive the Stock Exchange will seem.”70 Conservative politicians and their advocates in the press heralded the relocation of investment onto the high street as a triumph for the powers of the free market to drive down prices and improve service quality. They argued that deregulation had exposed clearing banks to “the pressures of consumer demand,” forcing them “to become more like other high street traders, especially as high profile retailers like Marks & Spencers now sell unit trusts.”71 And indeed, as John Kennett, a fund manager for stockbrokers Phillips & Drew, conceded: “We are gradually being dragged into the 20th century. . . . If we want more clients, we have to go out and get them.”72 Those involved with share shops and telebroking vocally embraced this development, portraying their business models as an altruistic attempt to provide greater access for all to the wealth of the stock market.73 This did not mean, of course, that the profit motive had disappeared from view for share shop providers. As The Times put it, despite “talk of ‘offering an all-­ round financial service’ and ‘de-­mystifying the stock market,’ Quilter Goodison has opened in

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Debenhams for the same reason as all the other concessionaires; it believes there is money to be made.”74 Stockbrokers were acutely aware of the need for innovation as they headed into a more competitive trading environment. The services they created in response to this challenge drove the rise of new forms of financial consumerism. Indeed, customers’ comments indicate that the type of dealing encouraged by the unification of high street shopping and investment was not necessarily the well-­ informed, responsible share dealing envisaged by political advocates of wider share ownership. Rather, it was a more casual consumption of shares, sold by “shop girls” over the phone or counter to often barely informed customers. Although share shops were replete with cartoon guides, these were designed to make buying shares easy as a way of increasing business, not to develop customers’ intricate knowledge of the stock market.75 As Quilter Goodison’s consultant, Robert Hodge, suggested, customers using the service “didn’t really quite understand the concept of owning a part of a company and what that gave you, in terms of being able to vote at meetings and so on.”76 In sum, the share shop was an exercise in marketing and service delivery, rather than an attempt to educate or “empower” investors. It reorganized the meanings associated with investment by placing the process into a more familiar environment, governed by a more familiar codes and behaviors. This in turn, created a method of buying and selling shares that was suited to working-­and middle-­class consumers. And yet, both telebroking and share shops ultimately failed as long-­term solutions to the challenges facing stockbrokers. As early as June 1987, the press remarked that stockbrokers and building societies alike had been unable “to solve the problem of providing retail services at a price which is both acceptable to consumers and worthwhile for themselves.”77 Such observations came in response to a growing tide of terminations. Charles Stanley, Spencer Thornton, and Kleinwort Grieveson all unexpectedly halted their telebroking services in 1987. Just four months prior, the latter claimed to have an apparently healthy list of approximately ten thousand ShareCall clients but indicated that this had placed an unmanageable strain on

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the firm’s administration.78 Press commentary made clear that similar problems plagued the share shop model. The Observer noted that the kind of setup adopted by Quilter Goodison produced “a lot of interest, consuming a great deal of staff time, but little business.” As evidence for this claim it pointed out that only around “half the 200 to 300 visitors [to Quilter’s Money Centre] actually transacted any business.” It likewise described the salesmen staffing Chander Singh’s Investment Centres as “clearly underwhelmed by the trickle of genuine clients amid the simply curious walk-­ins: two men and a dog studying the list of 10 shares quoted.”79 Margetts and Addenbrooke, meanwhile, closed their Lewis’s department store shop after only five months, claiming to have been “swamped by too many small deals.”80 It appeared that like so much of late twentieth-­century consumer culture, shopping for shares often entailed little more than aspirational window-­shopping. As it was, Quilter Goodison’s Money Centres found themselves in a precarious position by 1987. The company itself was bought in 1986 by the French group Paribis “at the height of the Big Bang merry-­go-­round,” before being handed over at a “knockdown price” to insurance group Commercial Union in 1988.81 Richard Waters of The Times cited the decision to champion wider share ownership as a major factor in the company’s downfall.82 Like share perk companies suffocating under bulging shareholder registers, share shops suffered in a situation where more people than ever owned shares, but only in very small quantities. Quilter’s Money Centres certainly did not survive long. When the company’s year-­long agreement with the Burton Group came to an end, operations were moved for a short time to Selfridges before failing when the stock market crashed in 1987. They eventually disappeared with little fuss or commotion.83 With the loss of its share shops, Quilter began targeting private investors via an alternative channel: Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society. The latter already provided a service for dealing in privatization issues such as Rolls Royce, but wanted to develop a permanent walk-­in service across all branches.84 Here, clients were envisaged as largely risk-­adverse investors who wanted safe rather

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than speculative stocks from a familiar access point. Quilter’s share shop concept thus made the transition from an independent space dedicated to small investors, to an in-­branch ancillary service for generic consumers of financial products. As for the original share shop spaces housed in Debenhams, the Burton Group continued to run the shops under its newly formed Debenhams Investment Services (DIS) division.85 In 1990, after just three years, DIS was bought by the Midland Bank as part of an expansion of the latter’s share shop network. And so, Debenhams’ flagship share shop also ended up forming part of the ancillary services of a large financial institution. On the one hand, the adoption of the share shop format in the mid-­ 1980s represents a brief period of experimentation; a passing moment during which competing models of service provision to the private investor hinted at alternative trajectories of mass share ownership in the United Kingdom. Financial institutions trialed new ways of engaging the public with share ownership, often by mirroring developments in Britain’s retailing environment. They spoke about and to investors as casual consumers of shares. On the other hand, these emerging discourses of financial consumerism represented a site of institutional struggle that unfolded in fits and starts. Actors that initially took the lead found themselves getting left behind and it was soon apparent that the key players in the small investor market would not be independent brokers or licensed dealers. Mourning the loss of Britain’s share shops in August of 1987, the Daily Mail posited that “The love affair between the City broker and public is over. The small stock market punter is out in the cold.”86 This may have been true as far as the relationship between private client brokers and small investors was concerned. However, the latter soon found warmth as financial consumers in the branches of their local high street bank.

“Your Local Stock Exchange”: Financial Supermarkets In 1985 the Financial Times reported that “two years ago, Sir Timothy Bevan, chairman of Barclays Bank . . . portrayed the banks as

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under siege on all fronts.” And yet, as share shops, telebroking services, and licensed dealers alike fell by the wayside, Britain’s banks appeared to thrive. The question, therefore, is how did banks so successfully capture and shape private investor markets to their needs in the 1980s? The answer is hinted at by the next sentence of the Financial Times report, which described Bevan’s 1983 lament as “a rallying cry for a counter attack . . . on the fiercest battleground: the high street.87 As it was, less than a year after Quilter Goodison opened its flagship operation, the Midland Bank opened the doors on a “true share shop at its branch in New Street, Birmingham.”88 Here customers could monitor share prices on computerized systems and access instant share dealing via a Midland-­owned Birmingham stockbroker. Similar services were swiftly introduced by the rest of the “big four” clearing banks: Barclays, Lloyds, and National Westminster (NatWest). Between them, they provided an alternative model of financial services provision for a mass market of first-­time investors. Known by the moniker “financial supermarkets,” this model proved to be incredibly successful, offering Britons a full range of services all under one roof: from checking and savings accounts to share-­ dealing, pensions, and mortgages.89 Stockbrokers had, of course, always been in competition with the more well-­established presence of clearing banks on the high street. According to The Times, “More recent converts” to share ownership preferred to deal with banks, due to “a lack of knowledge about stockbrokers” and a feeling of being unwanted if they had only small amounts to invest.90 Its assessment rang true. In a 1982 survey Money Which? observed that 43 percent of respondents had made their most recent share purchase through a bank (compared to 35 percent dealing through a broker).91 The Times similarly reported in May 1986 that about one-­tenth of the Stock Exchange’s total volume of business was conducted through high street banks.92 Despite these high numbers, before Big Bang the monopolizing potential of banks was at least partially curtailed by a system of regulation that excluded them from direct dealing and market making. Stock Exchange rules limited permissible numbers of partners and clerks, placing limits

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on the possible volume of business that banks could conduct. Customers, meanwhile, were unable to deal on the spot. They instead received secondhand advice from their bank manager, who passed business on to local stockbrokers with their own commission added, thus inhibiting the competitiveness of rates.93 But even so, the direction of travel was there for observers to see. As early as 1982 the Economist noted that “Few on Wall Street and in the City of London doubt that the capital markets’ future will be dominated by big financial supermarkets . . . offering a broad range of in-­house financial services.”94 The comment was an astute one. While overseas expansion had been “all the rage” in the 1970s, a debt crisis in 1982 diluted some of the “glamour” of international banking for many large institutions.95 They instead identified domestic debit and credit markets (and the possibility of charging shops for every item purchased) as a reliable income stream.96 With the passing of the Building Societies Act in 1986 and the imminent arrival of outside finance houses in London’s stock markets after Big Bang, clearing banks and building societies thus began to fulfil their potential as integrated banking and broking operations. In their history of Barclays, Margaret Ackrill and Leslie Hannah note that the bank was more uninhibited in the late 1980s than it had been at any time since the 1930s, able to “conduct a wider range of businesses . . . though it had long been de jure free to enter most of them.”97 These comments reflect the fact that Barclays, like its competitors, became a hive of activity in the mid-­to-­late 1980s. In the run up to Big Bang it bought broker de Zoete and Bevan and stockjobber Wedd Durlacher Mordaunt, to create stockbroking arm Barclays de Zoete Wedd (BZW).98 According to Sir Timothy Bevan, the former chairman of de Zoete and Bevan, the new outfit was “an enormous organisation” housed in a “great big separate building, with a separate dealing room.”99 The bank’s efforts to establish a broking arm in the 1980s coalesced with its attempts to become a major player in the government’s privatization plans. In 1984 Barclays Merchant Bank (BMB) submitted a proposal to then secretary of state for trade and industry, Norman Tebbit, where it outlined its own “Strategy

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for Widening Share Ownership in Britain.” The document pushed the idea that BMB should “be fully involved in all aspects of the BT issue as a joint lead manager,” from “planning and execution of the marketing and distribution campaign” to adopting “a substantial underwriting position.”100 The bank’s proposal mobilized familiar critiques about the closed nature of the London Stock Exchange in a self-­admonishing attempt to now vie for a seat at the table. Commenting on the long-­term decline of share ownership among British investors, Barclays lamented the “lack of a proper retailing service for equities” before asking who better to now fill this gap than a high street name such as itself? 101 In light of such maneuvers, it should come as no surprise that Barclays announced the launch of a new retail stockbroking arm by the name of Barclayshare almost as soon as it completed its BZW merger. This provided an in-­branch, low-­cost stockbroking service that provided telephone dealing.102 Elsewhere the bank could be found offering investment schemes from as little as £20 a month.103 ­Britain’s other largest high street banks, NatWest, Midland, and Lloyds swiftly followed suit, all announcing services that would “make some of their branches part-­bank, part-­stockbroker.”104 Rivalry between these giants was fierce. Midland, for instance, clearly had half an eye on Barclays’ £20 a month offering when it dropped its minimum investment amount from £500 to £250, and from £20 a month to just £10 for its regular savings plan.105 By the mid-­1990s, the bank ran 200 share shops across the country, proclaiming itself to be “Your Local Stock Exchange.”106 These kinds of services were a naked attempt to compete for the business of the very smallest of investors: people who might never even have heard of a firm like Quilter Goodison, let along considered becoming a client of one. Banks’ ability to offer cheap and cheerful share-­dealing services was a function of their size. Just as in the world of mass-­produced consumer goods, economies of scale increased the profitability of carrying out private investor business for large financial conglomerates. In tactics not entirely dissimilar to the operations of OTC dealers, Barclayshare bought large blocks of equities at low commission and

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split them up between plan holders. Using this wholesale approach, the bank could deliver commission-­free products to gain a competitive edge.107 Another major advantage for large banking operations was their ability to offset initial outlays with other business. Discussing Barclayshare’s provision of Personal Equity Plans (PEPs) the Guardian suggested that the bank would be running the service at a loss in order to obtain the business of small shareholders.108 The paper quoted chief executive, Gavin Oldham as stating that “It will take a couple of years to recoup the investment but we intend to make money.”109 The move toward full-­ range financial services provision was accompanied by banks’ adoption of a more advanced marketing model. Fiona McEwan of the Financial Times reported that spending on advertising by large financial institutions increased fivefold between 1979 and 1984, reaching £42.5 million. Bank customers, she argued, had “never been courted so hard: a zooful of griffins, stallions and piglets—amongst other characters—currently beg our financial loyalty.”110 In among this mass of financial advertising, was a consistent thread of consumerist language and imagery. For banks it was a natural fit to appeal to customers as consumers, not least because they already hosted an extensive high-­street branch network. In 1984, for example, Lloyds advertised a personal loan service with the strapline: “It’s surprising the bargains you can pick up at the bank.”111 Such phraseology referenced popular notions of shopping around, encouraging savvy consumers to engage in a bargain hunt for higher-­interest rates, lower commission fees, and better customer service. Investment services did not escape this turn to consumerist discourse. A particularly explicit example comes from a December 1987 Halifax advertisement for their “off the peg investments.” Featuring an image of a shop window containing a coat rack of investment products, Halifax visually situated investment on a snowy British high street, inviting the reader to peer in and see what was in store. The building society even tapped into the idea of heightened seasonal consumption describing their products as the “best treat you can give yourself this Christmas” (figure 6).112

Figure 6. Halifax Instant Xtra and 90 Day Xtra Accounts advertisement, c. December 1987. Courtesy Lloyds Banking Group Archives.

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The notion of shopping for shares also became a common motif in the financial press as journalists tried to articulate Britons’ newfound relationships with financial institutions. Various cartoons depicted shares being sold from stalls and counters and as items thrown in a shopping basket (figure 7).113 Some highlighted the clear problems that such associations threw up. They reminded readers that even though companies might suggest that buying shares was akin to buying a car, a fridge or even the weekly grocery shop, the rules of the transaction were very different (figure 8). Just like OTC licensed dealers and brokers running share shops, banks were especially keen to be seen as agents of democratization. They stressed their role in aiding the downward dispersal of capital by giving the public access to a previously inaccessible world of high finance. Likening investment to shopping and stressing the ease with which their services could be used was one way of achieving this. Charles Villiers, the chief executive of NatWest, told the Financial Times that the company’s direct share-­dealing services were intended to provide “the same kind of service you got from your stockbroker in London very much on your own doorstep.”114 Save & Prosper asserted that the Stock Market was “not just a rich man’s plaything” because its services made “the stock exchange as easy to get at as the building society,” while Barclays told customers, “We felt it was time to bring the world of stocks and shares within a lot more people’s reach.”115 Such statements implied that the affordability of banks’ services and the accessibility of high street branches could introduce countless “ordinary” men and women to share ownership. The rise of financial consumerism was about more than just a shift in the quantity and content of advertising, however. Marketing came to inform the entire business operation of British retail banking in this period. Writing in 1994, academics David Knights, Andrew Sturdy, and Glen Morgan noted that the postwar UK financial services sector was traditionally typified by a supply-­oriented approach that had centered on issues of operation, risk, finance, and product-­ led marketing. Consequently, the presence of marketing departments in banks was limited, and often given a comparatively low

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Figure 7. Drawing by David Fernandez, Daily Mail, 4 February 1987, 23. © DMG Media, Associated Newspapers Limited.

status in contrast to more traditional business-­related disciplines like accounting. The scholars did note, however, that an early exception to this rule was retail banks. By the end of the 1980s they claimed, retail banks were already “entering the ‘final’ evolutionary stage of marketing development . . . where the marketing concept drives the whole organization.”116 Knights et al. were not alone in recognizing the arrival of a “new retail banking revolution,” in which “the consumer is ultimately ‘king.’ ”117 In 1991 social scientist Dawn Burton noted the “active strides” that clearing banks were taking to train staff, adapt human-­ resource policies and hiring strategies, and offer employees incentivized competition to encourage good customer service. Interviews from her study suggested that this process was far from straightforward: staff admitted that heavy workloads and disinterest often meant that they “deliberately avoided marketing a particular service

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Figure 8. Drawing by Peter Maddocks, Daily Telegraph, 14 September 1985, 23. © Telegraph Media Group Limited.

to a customer even though the opportunity presented itself.” Others stated disenchantment because they had not joined the bank to become salespeople. And yet around half of Burton’s respondents confirmed that they spent between 5 and 25 percent of their time undertaking marketing activities. A further quarter placed that figure at 25 to 50 percent. Perhaps more telling was the fact that marketing activity was not restricted to any particular pay grade, but was instead seen to be “everybody’s job.”118 In line with this shift to a marketing-­driven business model, banks expanded their telecommunication and data gathering capabilities. Conventionally having “known very little about their customers,” from the mid-­1970s, banks’ marketing departments were expected to

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“undertake competitor analyses, identify consumer needs, play a role in the product range and development strategy, evaluate pricing tactics, and . . . help to educate employees directly in the ‘art’ of selling.” At the heart of this undertaking was the collection of new types of information about customers, including things like account activity, lifestyle, product usage, customer profitability, and their risk profile.119 Access to such large databases sped up and expanded banks’ volume of business, and with it the amount of funds that could be levied from a wide range of investors.120 Banks were able, for example, to produce lower-­cost, generic financial products that could be targeted at certain “types” of customers.121 In October 1990, Barclays produced and mailed a share-­dealing brochure accompanied by a personalized letter to a total of 41,500 of the bank’s current account customers. The same correspondence contained a Barclayshare application form, along with a discount voucher for 10 percent off the customer’s share transaction and a gift flyer for a free document case. The customers were not chosen at random, of course, but targeted on the basis that they were already known to be shareholders.122 Just as significant as who Barclays targeted with this brochure, was the nature of the services on offer. Recipients were presented with a choice of three packaged investment services: the Barclays Certified Share Dealing Service, the Barclayshare Dealing Service, and the Barclayshare Advisory Service. Sales literature presented this range as the chance to “choose your best route through the ups and downs of the stockmarket,” claiming that “whatever your share dealing requirements, Barclays has a service which will help you deal faster, easier and more conveniently.”123 Barclays thus sold its investment products on the basis of consumer choice and a personalized service, all while reducing delivery to three preset options. It was this kind of price reduction through product standardization that became the major competition factor between financial institutions.124 Such moves were also connected to increased competition among financial institutions for the “cradle-­to-­grave business”: the ability to capture consumers and service them at various stages throughout their lives.125 Sorting consumers into lifecycle and lifestyle categories

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was central to this process.126 To stick with the example of Barclays, the company launched a series of coordinated marketing campaigns in 1988 aimed specifically at the needs of different target markets. One set of literature catered to the needs of “School leavers,” and another for students. It even launched a “Getting Married Scheme.”127 Similar tactics were also evident in a 1987 Lloyds Bank advertisement. Clearly targeted at the student market, the ad depicted a young man being given a £10 note. The accompanying text was written as a first-­ person description from the man’s own perspective. In it he praised the bank for the range of facilities offered to student account holders, before concluding “Small things to base a life-­long relationship on, perhaps.”128 In such ways, financial supermarkets were willing and able to offer a financial service for every rite of passage and every member of the family in the hope of generating a long-­lasting association. Banks and building societies with large customer bases and an existing presence on the high street quickly developed a new expectation that customers would practice one-­ stop shopping.129 This approach capitalized on customer apathy, lack of expertise, and/ or naivety around financial management. Research from the 1990s suggested that inertia characterized financial services customers, who were disinclined to switch between service providers. This was especially true of products perceived as the most useful method of expanding bank business: life insurance, pensions, and investments. Once targeted via cross-­selling through direct-­mailing campaigns, in branch literature, and sales calls, only a small number of customers requested information about comparable products. Even if they did, the vast range and complexity of products made comparisons challenging.130 Consequently, banks could exploit a lack of financial literacy among their customers and offer them relatively low-­cost, prepackaged investment products that required little input or understanding of the share-­buying processes. They did this all with the promise of greater access to the market for everyone. It is for this reason that, like other institutions discussed in this monograph, banks and building societies were keen to capitalize on

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the furor around popular share issues. New investors meant big business. This was not only because of commissions on investments, but because of the potential to cross-­sell a whole range of financial products to them. In the days and weeks after a big privatization, banks ran ads with straplines such as “Telecom was a great start. Don’t ring off . . . INVEST NOW in a Unit Trust” and “Disappointed with your allocation in British Telecom? Wondering what to do with your returned cheque?”131 In 1986, a year that can be considered the height of share mania in Britain, Lloyds Bank launched a whole series of ads designed to mop up the kind of business that followed big public share offers (figures 9 and 10). Such was the demand for access to first-­time investors that a company called Publishing Holdings bought the BT, British Aerospace, Cable & Wireless, and Amersham International shareholders lists for around £500,000. Company director, Greg Thain, boasted possession of “about two million names, and we can sort them into active investors and even spot the big spenders—and the stags.”132 From this database Publishing Holdings generated and sold mailing lists to other companies keen to target particular customer bases. For customers, the incentives for dealing with a bank, as opposed to broker or licensed dealer, were multifaceted. Terry Carroll of National and Provincial Building Society (which launched a three-­ year strategy to evolve into a high street investment service), told the Glasgow Herald, “There are great attractions [for customers] in a one-­stop service,” including that they were “locally based and staffed by friendly, efficient staff with whom the investor feels at ease.”133 There was also undoubtedly a sense of social affirmation associated with dealing through a well-­ known and traditionally prestigious institution such as an old clearing bank.134 This was especially true in comparison to the “barrow boys” of the OTC. After all, in a bank, investing sat alongside pillars of reputable financial behavior like insuring against the unforeseen, providing for old age, and buying a home. Banks capitalized upon this dynamic, repeatedly highlighting their well-­established credentials. Barclays, for instance, advertised Barclayshare with the promise that “you can be sure that you are

Figure 9. Lloyds Bank High Interest Cheque Account advertisement, c. October 1986. Courtesy Lloyds Banking Group Archives.

Figure 10. Lloyds Bank Sharedeal advertisement, c. December 1986. Courtesy Lloyds Banking Group Archives.

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using one of the most efficient share dealing services available . . . all backed with the reassurance of dealing with Barclays.”135 It similarly sold its unit trusts with the “hope that the Barclays name, in itself, is something of a guarantee to you of sound, secure and successful management.”136 In such ways, high street banks used brand recognition to sell investment services to a mass market of financial consumers, presenting themselves as a familiar access point to the highs and lows of the stock market. Their job was made all the easier because they already featured in customers’ lives as current account and credit card providers, and mortgage lenders. Rather than pure speculation, retail banks and building societies tended to appeal to customers on the basis that investment could be an easy way of managing assets and to provide stable financial future. In September 1987 Save & Prosper launched a “ShareSafe Deposit” service which, according to the Daily Mail, allowed investors to “enjoy some of the thrills of stock market investment without any of the risk.”137 The very name of the product merged the idea of investment with safety. This approach recognized that with little knowledge of financial markets and limited funds, first-­time investors were largely risk averse. A 1986 advertisement for one of Lloyds’ unit trusts similarly tapped into the kind of anxieties that might befall novice investors. Accompanied by a plethora of well-­ known brand logos—from Asda and Tesco, to Unilever, Marriott Hotels, and British Telecom—the ad’s tagline invited readers to “Join our world of stocks and shares. (Unless you think these companies might go broke).” The copy then proceeded to commiserate with potential customers: “If you don’t work in the City, you can’t be expected to keep up with the 2,000-­plus companies quoted on the Stock Exchange.” The answer? To let the “experienced people” at Lloyds do the work for them, choosing shares from “famous companies” to help “lessen your risk.”138 Such tactics became even more prevalent in the aftermath of the October 1987 market crash as financial institutions targeted investors keen to mitigate against the kinds of dramatic losses they saw splashed across the front pages of the press (figures 11, 12, 13, and 14).139

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Figure 11 and 12. Lloyds Bank Unit Trust Regular Savings Scheme advertisement, c. November 1987. Courtesy Lloyds Banking Group Archives.

Banks’ marketing efforts were not the only aspect of their offering that capitalized upon investor uncertainty. The products themselves were designed to appeal to this characteristic of the investing public. As we have already seen, some advocates of wider share ownership championed unit trusts as the perfect vehicle for first-­time investors because they required little knowledge about the stock market and allowed investors to reduce risk by buying into a diversified portfolio. After the initial decision to select a particular unit trust, customers were more or less uninvolved in the investment process, often asked only to pay annual management fees and glance over regular updates. Banks found new ways to channel their customers toward these kinds of investment instruments in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1989, for example, TSB launched a share exchange scheme, through which customers could swap shares for an investment in the company’s unit trusts, life assurance, or pension products. According to managing director Geoff Gray, “There are thousands of first-­time shareholders

Figure 13. Halifax Instant Extra and 90 Day Xtra Accounts advertisement, c. October 1987. Courtesy Lloyds Banking Group Archives.

Figure 14. Abbey National Building Society advertisement, c. October 1987. © Copyright Santander UK plc.

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out there who have no idea what to do with their shares. They need to be able to swop [sic] them for a more manageable investment.”140 These kinds of products exploited popular perceptions that direct equity investment was “a horrendously sophisticated and difficult form of investment.”141 In this discourse of low-­maintenance investing, banks and building societies implied that their products created a more inclusive investment environment. Brochures highlighted minimal paperwork as a selling point, all while promising that “you don’t have to be accustomed to reading the Financial Times in the back of a chauffeur-­driven Rolls to be a stock market investor.”142 In short, financial supermarkets guided individuals toward forms of investment that were comparatively “safe” and affordable for customers, cost effective for institutions, and less time-­consuming for all concerned. Importantly, the creation and promotion of “simple” services such as monthly savings plans, discretionary dealing, and mutual investment funds were not designed to transform customers into active participants in mass democratic ownership (and therefore management) of British business and industry. Rather than demanding that their customers display the financial literacy of the “investor-­citizen,” financial supermarkets instead allowed anyone with a small amount of spare money at the end of the month to adopt the role of a risk-­ averse and inactive consumer of generic financial products. Although The Sunday Times announced the 1986 arrival of Barclayshare as “a streamlined package of stockbroking services designed to change us into fully paid-­up citizens of the share-­owning democracy,” in reality the “investing public” that financial institutions most eagerly catered to in the 1980s was an under-­informed investor-­shopper, driven by price comparison but ill-­equipped for direct-­dealing products.143 The dominant position that clearing banks achieved in retail investment in this period was actively facilitated by successive Conservative governments. Particularly revealing was the Party’s sale of the remaining government stake in BT in 1991. Described by the Financial Times as designed to “ ‘pump prime’ the number of investors who might be persuaded to buy shares through the banks and

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building societies,” the government preceded the issue by delivering twenty million personalized letters to BT’s customers. These letters offered customers a chance to preregister for the sale with one of eight “preferred retailers”: Barclays, Lloyds, Midland, NatWest, Bank of Scotland, Abbey National, the Norwich and Peterborough Building Society, and Sharelink (a share service in which BT had a 66 percent stake).144 By designating these institutions as government-­endorsed retailers the BT sale essentially advertised each company’s services and funneled investors through their doors. Indeed, every customer who chose to invest in BT shares through this scheme received a further letter “no later than two and a half months after dealing” that offered them the chance to “develop a relationship with the retailer of their choice” by receiving more information about them.145 In this instance, privatization became an exercise in government-­sanctioned market capture, something clearly recognized by contemporaries. Having since left Barclayshare to set up an independent retail stockbroker called The Share Centre, former chief executive Gavin Oldham wrote to the Office of Fair Trading to complain that “freezing out” smaller organizations in this manner would “have a detrimental effect on the range of share services available to the public.”146 And indeed, by the end of the 1980s the private investor was left with few channels of access to the market beyond those heavily mediated by powerful institutional interests. This is because financial supermarkets proved to be a highly successful model of investment provision for the private-­client market. Although for many new investors, the exciting, fast-­paced world of share dealing was a draw to the OTC or even a share shop, for many more the safety and familiarity of their high street bank or building society won out. The ease of dealing with only one or two institutions for all their financial needs was undoubtedly an appealing prospect. So, too, was the relief of being able to hand the reins over to an expert. But the rise of financial supermarkets and financial consumerism as defining features of British investment culture didn’t necessarily benefit the investor-­shoppers that sat at its core. Suppliers of financial services were “heavily constrained from satisfying consumers’ ‘needs’

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by the higher priority of selling profitable products.”147 The decline in the separate provision of services such as insurance and private banking reduced the availability of independent financial advice, a limitation not often understood by consumers.148 Meanwhile, many brokers were amalgamated into large financial conglomerates in a decade of takeovers and mergers, leaving their clients with little choice but to follow them.149 Gavin Oldham was later quoted in the Financial Times as critiquing banks for only being interested in making quick profits in privatization issues, with no real interest in promoting wider share ownership.150 But this was not strictly true. Large financial institutions were clearly very keen to reach out to new kinds of customer and invite them to invest the fruits of their labor in stocks and shares. It was just that banks and building societies wanted to arbitrate this process, preferring to deal with customers as consumers of various asset-­management products, not as time-­and resource-­ consuming investor-­citizens. The simplified and mediated share dealing they encouraged failed to educate investors. They certainly did not involve them in the process of investing: financial consumers were rarely asked to research companies, calculate risks, or assert managerial influence on the companies they owned. Instead, Britain’s investing public found themselves best placed to choose between the standardized, advertised investment packages posted through their letterboxes, displayed on the pages of their daily paper, and present at eye-­level every time they made a trip to their bank.

Conclusion Many of the new models of investment launched by different institutions in the first half of the 1980s had failed by the end of the decade. The share shops and telebroking services of private client stockbrokers struggled to convert privatization-­ induced share mania into sustainable and profitable business. Meanwhile, after an explosive moment of growth, shareholder perks began to decline in popularity. They became an uncomfortable reminder of a time when companies

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wanted to secure the loyalties of relatively small but well-­capitalized investing elite. As the numbers of investors grew but their average portfolio size shrank, these older ways of doing business no longer appeared fit for use. The problem was thus: commissions on small investors’ buying and selling orders became a much less attractive prospect than siphoning individuals’ savings into managed funds where decisions about where to invest remained the remit of the company’s own fund managers. Consequently, a new norm of one-­ stop shopping for financial consumers emerged as the most profitable way to convert public fascination with stock market investment into a steady stream of business. This system, overseen by rapidly forming financial conglomerates, exploited customer inexperience and risk aversion to cross-­sell a whole range of prepackaged risk-­minimizing products, from mortgages and pensions to share dealing and life insurance. This was not so much a case of financial institutions duping investors, as it was a process of market capture through supply-­side maneuvers based on product standardization and astute marketing. Able to mobilize economies of scale and benefitting from pr-­existing customer bases about whom extensive data could be collated, banks, pension funds, and unit trust providers shaped private investor markets to their own needs. The processes outlined in this chapter fostered a trajectory of wider share ownership that “democratized” investment, but not in a way that many ideological advocates of wider share ownership would have recognized. More people were indeed using financial services and tying their current and future economic security to financial markets for the first time. But this was a heavily mediated and unevenly distributed process. While histories of the 1980s tend to stress the rise of individualism, greed, and speculation in Britain, for many individuals the 1980s was a moment where investment was repackaged as a part of a wider set of quotidian financial management activities. Transformations in British investment culture were not driven entirely (or even mostly) by individual desire for rapid wealth accumulation. Rather, feelings of uncertainty, a concern for family finances, or desire to minimize financial risk motivated people

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as they navigated new relationships with capital markets and the institutions that constituted them. Their lack of expertise, resources, and contacts merged with an entrenched culture of consumption in ways that led investors into a position of passivity. The story told in this chapter is not about the apparent success or failure of a politicized project to democratize share ownership. Instead, it hints at a bigger picture relating to the emergence of an oligopoly in late twentieth-­century British financial markets.151 Most of the institutions discussed above happily claimed to be fulfilling a democratizing role—opening up Britain’s equity markets to new constituencies—but their motivations were those of profit, market position, and survival in the face of legislative reform. Significantly, their actions drove the institutionalization of British investment culture, confirming a decades-­long decline in the percentage of British company shares accounted for by individual ownership. A supply-­ side history of mass-­market investment products thus helps us to better understand how the rise of financial consumerism bolstered the position of financial capital, all with the appearance of giving individuals a stake in Britain’s neoliberal socioeconomic order. This ultimately defined how individuals (and also which individuals) were able to access the market, firmly placing financial and business elites in control of the mechanisms of capital distribution.

Chapter 4

“The Moneymen’s Sunday Sermon” The Making of a Mass-­Market Financial Advice Industry

In 1987, on the Sun’s infamous page three, a short caption accompanied a full-­page image of a topless woman donning only a bowler hat and a black umbrella. Tucked under her arm was a copy of the Financial Times. The caption read: “Here’s some good news from the City, folks in the shape of canny Gail McKenna, who can knock the pinstripes off those so-­called whizzkids. . . . The 18-­year-­old Liverpool lovely sold her diamond-­mine shares well before the Big Panic, making a tidy profit. When it comes to assets our Gail outstrips the rest!”1 Three years earlier, in the run up to the privatization of BT, page-­three girls Sam Fox and Linda Lusardi were given the title of Buzby Babes, a nod to the company’s cartoon yellow bird mascot. With phone cables wrapped seductively around them and holding copies of the telephone directory, the women formed an unlikely part of the paper’s coverage of the upcoming privatization share issue. In the 1980s, financial news and advice became a significant feature of day-­to-­day life.2 As the Sun’s odd mixture of nudity and share issues indicates, Britons could even expect to encounter something approaching a stock market tip in spaces usually reserved for 136

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entertainment and titillation. A huge semiautonomous financial advice industry matured to cater to the new financial consumers being created by privatization and the institutional activities discussed thus far. This ancillary to the financial industry produced new genres and delivery formats and sought out new audiences. In doing so, the purveyors of financial advice helped to produce what might be described as a genuinely mass culture of investment, as access to information about financial markets became more diffuse than ever before. If banks and building societies offered investors a route to the market, the financial advice industry made sure they knew about it and had the tools and confidence to take up the offer. Of course, financial advice was nothing new.3 Investment guides had existed since the eighteenth century, a regular financial press from the mid-­nineteenth century, and television programming on the subject became a staple of the 1960s. However, there was something both qualitatively and quantitatively different about the financial advice industry from the 1980s onward. This chapter explores the role of the financial advice industry in driving the integration of financial planning and asset management into everyday life, sometimes even for people who never came to possess shares.4 Tracking the activities of financial journalists, investment gurus, and their associated products allows us to identify how a mass investing public was imagined and created in the late twentieth century. Britain’s exploding financial advice industry was both a response to the growing appetite for information about financial markets, and a cause of it. It had three main purposes: to sell, to educate, and to entertain. In pursuing these three aims, financial advice often produced contradictory messages. Sometimes it portrayed investing as a serious form of financial planning for responsible family men. At others, it treated investment as a form of mass-­market consumption about which investors should be savvy. Those offering advice depicted investment as a means of female empowerment, a necessary skill, or a way to have fun with spare money at the end of the month. Gamesmanship was a particularly common motif as was the ever-­ present temptation to entice people with the promise of quick riches.

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What all these guises had in common was that they normalized investment. In the course of engaging with financial advice, Britons learned to read price lists and to understand the significance of a bull or bear market for the national economy. The purveyors of mass-­ market financial advice thus contributed to the spread of investment culture, albeit in a manner riven with contradictions. Of course, some financial journalists took their duty to inform and educate more seriously than others. Most advice contained at least some recognition that prices could indeed go down as well as up; that there were potential losses lurking just around the corner. But this was rarely an overriding concern, precisely because the main function of Britain’s rapidly expanding adjunct financial advice industry was to encourage new investors to join the action, not shy away from it. As The Times noted in 1986 “Money never goes out of fashion. . . . But talking money is quickly acquiring a chic of its own.”5 Advising (and entertaining) an expanding investing public became big business in late twentieth-­century Britain. The role of mass-­market financial advice was to generate revenue by producing a society of financialized subjects—people ready, willing, and able to place their money in private pensions, mortgages, unit trusts, and privatization shares issues.

From “Money Mail” to Moneyspinner : Financial Advice for Financial Consumers As discussed in chapter 1, it was in the 1960s that a mass-­market-­ oriented financial press first emerged. This took the form of a consumer-­ minded personal finance genre and was epitomized by the “money page.” Money pages were dedicated to family money matters, from mortgages and pensions to family heirlooms, travel insurance, and, of course, investments. With titles like the “Money Mail” or the “Family-­ money-­ go-­ round,” they domesticated (and even “feminized”) certain kinds of financial practice.6 These sections told readers what products to buy and how to spot good deals as consumers of financial services and managers of the family’s finances.

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This form of financial journalism frequently ran in addition to, rather than instead of, more traditional City and Investment sections. But it was not until the mid-­1980s that it became a fully integrated and consistent feature of the press. Long-­standing trend setter in this field, the Daily Mail, continued to lead the way in the 1980s. The Daily Mail’s readership and editorial position made the paper particularly responsive to initiatives to promote Conservative Party visions of a property-­owning democracy. But its “Money Mail” pages were first and foremost designed to encourage and meet the demands of a new market of private investors for the paper’s own benefit. The paper’s approach focused on fostering an interactive relationship with its readers, offering them ample opportunity to reach out for advice and information. It held a number of open days at the Stock Exchange, for instance, which were often timed to coincide with (and build an appetite for) well-­ publicized share issues.7 From April 1984, the Mail added an extra financial segment to its Saturday editions—the Mail Investment Extra—to give “readers even more help with investment decisions.”8 By the end of the decade it even had its own shares hotline. This was not a telebroking service of the kind discussed in chapter 3, but an information service that investors could call for up-­to-­date news and advice from the paper’s “City team” from as little as 25p a minute.9 Perhaps most telling was the paper’s decision to stage a “Money Mail Advice Centre” at its annual Ideal Home Exhibition from 1979 onward.10 First launched in 1908, by the late twentieth century the exhibition was a staple of British cultural life.11 Its purpose was to “educate and entertain,” serving as a publicity tool for the Daily Mail. It also provided a public stage for companies keen to profit from the kinds of aspirational household consumption assumed to be of interest to the Mail’s readership. The exhibition thus established a commercial culture of homemaking that viewed domestic modernity through the lens of an idealized middle-­class home.12 In 1980 a full double-­page spread in the Mail publicized the Money Mail’s upcoming presence at that year’s exhibition. The piece promised attendees the chance to meet “eminent investment authors,” a

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“rota of brokers,” and a “Stock Exchange Guide.”13 Having spent years producing regular personal finance features, establishing a presence at the exhibition was a natural step for the editors of the Money Mail. Their stall there placed investment in a family-­and consumer-­ oriented environment where visitors could easily find themselves wandering from stalls about cookery, home decoration, and family entertainment into a conversation with a stockbroker. More than simply informing the public about investment, the Advice Centre’s appearance at the Ideal Home Exhibition sent a clear message to attendees: investment was an expected feature of a well-­rounded family life. As for financial institutions considering placing advertise­ ments on the pages of the “Money Mail,” it appeared that the Mail knew how to curate the perfect environment to bring together consumers and sellers of investment products. In addition to providing opportunities to find out more about investing, the Daily Mail also sought to make investing fun for its readers. A clear example comes from the paper’s annual stocks and shares competition. First launched in 1957, the competition became a major feature of the Daily Mail’s financial offering during the 1980s. In 1987, it launched an additional contest, “The Best of British Portfolio.” This was run in conjunction with Henderson Unit Trust Management.14 The process of entering these competitions was straightforward: readers simply had to predict which shares would rise most dramatically (and in the case of the “Best of British Portfolio,” write fifteen words explaining why unit trusts were a good way to invest). The paper repeatedly stressed that potential entrants should not be “put off just because you don’t normally invest in shares.”15 It clearly intended to encourage casual readers toward adopting a more active relationship with both the paper and investment. These kinds of activities were replicated across the right-­leaning press, which readily contributed to the evolution of a widespread investment culture in Britain. Under the direction of newly appointed personal finance editor, Lindsay Cook, the Telegraph added a mid-­ week version of its weekly Saturday “Family Money-­go-­round” in 1987.16 The tabloid press, too, added to the abundance of shares-­

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related material available to the British public. As we have seen, the Sun was perfectly willing to intermingle financial news with popular features like the nudity of page three. In a more calculated move the paper transformed its long-­standing but somewhat sporadic “Your Money” section into a systematic weekly and several-­page section in the mid-­1980s. Even the more traditionally left-­wing and liberal press joined the financial advice game. The Guardian overhauled its family money pages in April 1982, appointing Margaret Dibben as editor to replace Tom Tickell who left to become deputy City editor of the new Mail on Sunday. When announcing the decision the paper positioned its revamped content as a consumer-­oriented segment, stating that “there is a gap between the advice that national newspapers are able to print on any one day, and the sort of detailed treatment that finance gets in the textbooks or in publications like Money Which? We aim now to plug that gap.”17 The Mirror likewise a regular dedicated money section for the first time in July of 1987.18 Just over a year later it launched a Mirror Money Hotline telephone service “for readers who want to know how Britain’s most popular shares are doing—second by second, 24 hours a day.”19 The incitement toward participation in a culture of mass investment did not come without points of tension for such papers. In 1988, for example, the Mirror could be found adopting an uncomfortable position in relation to the sale of British Steel. After proclaiming that “Maggie’s about to flog some more of the family silver—or to be precise all of our old iron,” it went on to state: “Forget the political arguments at the moment. The question is whether the ordinary man in the street has made a profit taking part in these big share deals.” The piece finished with an attempt to present privatization as the triumph of small shareholders, claiming, “Ordinary folk seem to be determined to have a slice of the action instead of leaving it all to rich City slickers.”20 Such items tacitly reinforced claims that the Conservative Party was democratizing access to capital. Yet this obscured the fact that privatization shares tended to end up in institutional portfolios, not least because many small investors sold their

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individual allocations to make a quick profit. Reporting on Thatcher’s first bout of privatizations in June 1984, John Plender of The Times noted that since 1979 private individuals had been net sellers of shares, offloading more than £13 billion “mainly to the insurance and pension funds.”21 In short, when it came to financial journalism there was a remarkable similarity of approach and style across the national press despite varied editorial stances. This is because such activities were less about endorsing a Thatcherite vision of popular capitalism, and more about generating revenue. As the Guardian conceded in May 1987, “the age of wider share ownership has dawned at last,” and it was clear that like all the other national dailies, the paper intended to capitalize on it.22 The press encouraged their readers to join a growing investing public no matter their political stance. Like clearing banks and stockbrokers, competitive instincts to capture private investor markets (and the advertising revenue it entailed) meant editors were eager to give readers all the information they needed. Nor was it just the printed press that recognized the benefits of catering to a financially curious public. Broadcasters also commissioned a profusion of programming intended to provide listeners and viewers with yet more opportunities to “increase the pounds in your purses and pockets.”23 This included radio programs such as BBC Scotland’s Moneyline, LBC Radio’s Family Money, and TV-­ am’s Money Matters. Meanwhile, television programs such as Channel 4’s Moneyspinner, ITV’s The City Programme, and BBC 2’s The Money Programme all aired on a weekly basis to deliver what Mary Kenny of the Daily Mail described as the “moneymen’s Sunday sermon.”24 Such was the breadth of programming that from 1990 onward, the Observer launched a new weekly “Business on TV segment” that listed all the places interested viewers could watch content about business and City affairs. Much like the financial press, this programming could largely be split into two categories: business and current affairs programming intended for a more specialist audience, and the more general-­purpose and consumer-­oriented family money programs. The former was a

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mainstay of British programming throughout the postwar period. The BBC’s Money Programme, for example, was a financial current affairs show that first aired in April 1966. Presented by financial journalists Erskine Childers, William Davis, and Joe Roeber, its opening episodes featured items about foreign-­exchange dealing in Zurich and London, speculation on the pound, and pricing in the steel industry.25 In the 1980s, however, the producers began to play around with its content and format. They switched to a “magazine” style, patching together studio-­based discussion and prerecorded items. The show continued to include investigative reporting, but news items were interspersed with “weekly strands” with titles like “House of the Future.” Although still described as “the BBC’s only regular specialist television program on economic and financial matters,” it had clearly moved some way toward a more mass-­market offering.26 An evaluative study of the show in 1984 provides some insight into audience demands for financial programming, albeit mediated through the assumptions of the report’s authors. It surmised that viewers wanted more “concrete examples (e.g., ‘typical families’),” “material relevant to women’s domestic and social situations,” information about unemployment, “coverage of financial issues over which ordinary viewers have some control,” and “ ‘happier’ economic topics and success stories.” Such suggestions indicate two things. Firstly, it indicates that audiences for financial programming were diverse and keen to hear advice that reflected their own lived experiences. And this was a fairly substantive audience at that. According to the BBC’s own audience reports, in 1982/3 the program had maintained a regular audience of some 2.1 million views each week, with 46 percent of the total population (aged four and over) seeing at least some part of it.27 Secondly, viewers’ suggestions indicate that the production and delivery of financial advice was a negotiated process. Those creating financial advice tried to cater for the interests of their presumed audiences so as to retain their attention in an increasingly crowded marketplace. During the 1980s this marketplace included more consumer-­ oriented shows like Channel 4’s Moneyspinner. Aired for eight series

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between June 1986 and May 1989, the program’s format was that of a traveling finance roadshow. Each week it visited towns across the country to provide advice to the public on money matters.28 Its content was a mix of footage taken from each roadshow (mainly discussions between members of the public and featured experts), and prerecorded items. Channel 4’s senior education commissioning editor noted that his intention with Moneyspinner was to “get a national message over which people can then apply to their personal circumstances.”29 In this sense, the channel sought to meet the kinds of demands made by audiences of BBC’s Money Programme. Topics covered included advice about married women’s tax, redundancy, personal debt, home insurance, and starting up a business. Investment was also a key strand of the show. In addition to a one-­off Big Bang special, nearly early every week the program featured some discussion of investment issues.30 Enhancing the applicability of advice to individual viewers led the show to produce “fact sheets” that provided extra guidance on issues covered in each program. Thirty-­two thousand of them were sent out at viewers’ requests during the first series. Consequently, the Observer noted that “ ‘Moneyspinner’ seems to have cracked the difficult problem of making financial television programmes entertaining, participatory and useful.” Indeed, the series proved popular with audiences. Its initial eight-­episode run achieved between 1.1 and 2 million viewers.31 This almost simultaneous creation and/or expansion of money pages and financial advice programs in the 1980s both relied on and helped to fuel a widespread culture of investment in Britain. It made investment advice readily available and accessible to a growing constituency. At the same time, the design, function, and purpose of this genre bolstered an association between consumption and investing. Moneyspinner, for instance, echoed the form and content of popular consumer-­advice and roadshow-­style programming such as BBC One’s The Antiques Roadshow (first aired 1979) and Watchdog.32 Even more tellingly, Moneyspinner was created in conjunction with the newly launched Money Management Council. This was an

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independent charitable organization that took the form of a kind of financial consumers’ advice service. Its executive director was financial journalist and investment guide author, Marie Jennings.33 The Council’s director, Jeremey Leighton, meanwhile, had previously spent ten years as national director at the Citizens Advice Bureau, a charity primarily concerned with issues of consumer protection.34 The Council’s chairman was another familiar figure: long-­standing chairman of the Wider Share Ownership Council (WSOC), Edgar Palamountain.35 By the late-­1980s advice about financial products was as in-­ demand as advice about other consumables.36 Journalists and television producers encouraged readers to identify what kinds of services fit their lifestyles and sense of self as consumers. In 1987 the Consumers’ Association (CA) publication Which? even published its own investment guide titled How to Buy, Sell and Own Shares.37 Through the 1990s, Which? editor Helen Parker and newly appointed director, Sheila McKechnie continued to oversee an increasing emphasis on personal finance. In September 1995, the magazine drew up league tables of specific investment products for the first time, rating them according to best and worst buys and brand reliability.38 Through a variety of outlets the delivery of mass-­market, comparative consumer/investment advice became a mainstay of Britain’s ever-­ expanding financial advice industry, and so too of many Britons’ lives.

To Train in Vain? Educating the Nation Such was the growth in financial advice in the 1980s that in 1987 Bradford & Bingley Building Society launched its own annual personal finance media awards to recognize “considerable contribution[s] to promoting a better understanding of financial affairs.”39 The awards formed part of the building society’s Money Factor educational program, which was designed to improve public financial literacy.40 Indeed, while the motivations of those offering to advise the public in matters of investment were multifaceted, a key

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self-­justification across the board was that these activities served a much-­needed educative purpose. The purveyors of mass-­market financial advice almost uniformly proclaimed to be helping an otherwise vulnerable public by decoding, demystifying, and therefore democratizing financial markets for them. How far this was ever achieved (or in some cases whether it was really the goal) is questionable. Nonetheless, a significant subsection of mass-­market financial advice claimed to do more than give one-­off consumer guidance about particular products and services. In many ways the educative impetus of financial advice literature overlapped with the consumer-­driven agenda embodied by the likes of Which? and the CA. The latter’s vision of consumer activism was an outgrowth of a postwar society in which shoppers were progressively urged to be informed, objective, and discriminating in exercising choice in both private and semi-­private markets.41 As we have already seen, ideological advocates of wider share ownership frequently cast investors in this light: as knowledgeable and responsible investor-­citizens. Britain’s financial advice industry professed to offer a necessary source of support to those wishing to fulfil that role, inviting potential investors to send off for information packs, join workshops, or enroll in correspondence courses where they could become experts in their own right. The cost and quality of this plethora of services varied dramatically. Organizations—usually charities—with an ideological interest in creating a more well-­informed and widespread shareholder base often provided guides at only the price of postage, and courses at little or no charge. A prime example was the WSOC. As part of its self-­given remit to “enlighten the community on investment matters” the Council was heavily involved in educational initiatives for both children and adults.42 This included a role in founding the aforementioned Money Management Council, as well as providing literature for two courses run by the Open University, advertising a speakers’ panel in the Times Literary Supplement, and running a series of essay competitions for school children sponsored by Sainsbury’s, B.P, and the Midland Bank.43 All of these activities (among many others) were

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created with the aim of producing individuals ready to become direct investors in British companies. But it was not only charities that were giving investment advice for next to nothing. Banks, brokers and building societies recognized that the offer of free advice was a good way to get customers through the door and their addresses onto mailing lists. The London Stock Exchange was particularly active on this front in its bid to build customer loyalty to member firms already under the pressure of increased competition. The Stock Exchange’s uncertain political position in the early-­to-­mid-­1980s provided yet more incentive to be seen helping to educate a nation of shareholders. Consequently, it readily produced free “ABC” guides to investing, ran evening courses in London colleges, and hosted a variety of open days at the Stock Exchange.44 In July 1987 the Stock Exchange even launched an Investors’ Club for small investors. The cost of membership was £15 a year and benefits included “a quarterly newsletter, information leaflets,” and a 20 percent discount in the Stock Exchange Shop. The club also ran event such as “A Day in the Life of a Market Maker,” and a weekend course in the Yorkshire Dales.45 By April the following year, the Daily Mail reported that over three thousand people had joined.46 To be clear, this was an investors’ not investment club (which are discussed in chapter 6). This meant that there was no buying or selling shares on behalf of members. Instead, the Stock Exchange Investors’ Club was essentially a fee-­charging service for those eager to develop financial literacy that also provided preferential access to other Stock Exchange services. Stuart Valentine (head of the Stock Exchange’s Wider Share Ownership Unit) described the club as intended “primarily to educate and put us in touch with the new investors who’ve just dipped their toes in the market.”47 So while the scheme appeared to “enable people to become better investors . . . [to] help them become wiser about the stock market,” like so much financial advice it was also about accessing new potential clients and building their sense of loyalty to a particular service provider.48 It should be noted that these kinds of services gave investors more than just investment advice. They imbued investing with an air of

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exclusivity such as the right to claim to be a member (of sorts) of the London Stock Exchange. They also provided reassurance to nervous entrants into the world of capital markets. Quotes from Investor Club members (who included housewives, retirees, businessmen and white-­collar workers) suggested a range of motivations. For some, uncertainty about the process of investing provided motivation for joining, as did the desire to shift from indirect to direct investment. For others it was the hope of a direct line to lobby the Stock Exchange. More than anything else, as housewife Jane Drewett told the Daily Mail, “I hope the Investors’ Club brings it all down to earth.” 49 But while the stock market appeared to be opening its doors to a wider proportion of the public, for investors keen to push beyond generic mass-­market financial services, the process could be costly. Becoming an active and independent investor required the luxury of free time and a level of financial resources unavailable to most. A private pension or savings account was out of reach for a large number of Britons, let alone a personal shares portfolio. According to an Institute of Fiscal Studies report on household savings, 4.7 percent of British households had no assets to speak of in 1980, only 63.9 percent had an interest-­bearing account, and only 53.1 percent had an occupational pension.50 Unsurprisingly, financial assets were particularly rare among certain groups. More than 80 percent of single-­parent families (with heads of household aged twenty-­five to thirty-­four), did not have a savings account.51 Even for those who could afford to buy shares, the additional cost of personalized advice or of-­the-­moment share prices could be prohibitive. The cost of a stockbroker’s advisory service compared to execution-­only dealing could differ by around £150 per shares transaction.52 For price information and tips, at the cheaper end financial hotlines of the 1980s charged callers anywhere from 25p to 49p per minute. A full information service was far pricier. In 1986 Prestel’s CitiService cost an initial registration fee of £37.50, plus a £12.50 monthly subscription charge. This came in addition to the need for a Prestel terminal or an adaptor, which cost around £1,000 and £250,

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respectively. The Financial Times’s equivalent service, Finstat, cost subscribers £690 a year.53 Access to the Stock Exchange’s “Market Eye” information service was similarly expensive for individual subscribers, coming in at a cost of £1,150 for a compatible terminal and £865 annual rent.54 Alternative sources of information were available but often inferior. The BBC’s Ceefax and ITV’s Oracle teletext services were free for anyone with a television set able to receive them. However, despite using London Stock Exchange price lists, the information they provided was not comprehensive and was less frequently updated. This is because even with its determination to help educate small investors, there were limits to the London Stock Exchange’s generosity regarding public access to its resources. After all, price lists were not “a free good but one that cost money to create in the form of the infrastructure and staffing.” More to the point, the ability of stock exchanges to produce and control the dissemination of dependable prices became an increasingly important source of authority after deregulation. Delaying the circulation of prices to nonmembers justified fees by conferring an advantage to member firms.55 Consequently, the Stock Exchange was not dedicated to ensuring equal or democratized access to up-­to-­date price information. In 1991, for instance, it stopped updating share prices on the BBC’s Ceefax and ITV’s Oracle teletext pages every half an hour (which it had done during the Gulf War), reducing the time to only once every ninety minutes. The reason? To differentiate “between those who pay for instant information and those who get it free.”56 The appeal for investors of “going it alone” and otherwise foregoing professional and personalized advice was clear. A fairly low-­ cost alternative was, therefore, to opt for something in between personalized financial advice and the more generic money management content of the financial press. A large volume of mass-­market investment self-­help guides began to emerge in the mid-­1980s to cater for precisely this audience. By no means a novelty (this was a genre that had been around since at least the mid-­eighteenth century), financial advice books sat alongside the likes of the Investors’

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Chronicle as stalwarts of the financial advice landscape.57 But again, the sheer number and diversifying format of these items in the 1980s and 1990s marks them out as significant. By the close of the twentieth century, investment guides had evolved all manner of subgenres, offering advice tailored for female investors, for children, or investors interested in particular types of investment products. The list of variations was almost endless. Needless to say, such guides were unlikely to become best sellers in a broader sense. But their vast numbers indicates that a fairly substantial market for them existed. The 1989/1990 Waterstone’s Guide to Books (essentially the bookseller’s catalog) listed no fewer than fifty-­one titles in its personal finance section.58 Many such guides were released in second, third, fourth, and even fifth editions by the end of the century. In a preface to the second edition of Fair Shares (published 1987), author Simon Rose commented, “When I wrote the first edition . . . I felt rather in the apprehensive position of a missionary. . . . I appear now to be preaching to the converted.”59 The first edition had been published only a year earlier. Circulation figures for similar mass-­market financial advice publications further confirm the popularity that investment advice of this kind achieved. What Investment? had a circulation of 50,000 in 1984, while What Mortgage? had a circulation of 40,000. The Money Observer meanwhile reached some 29,800 readers in 1995.60 It is fair to say that these numbers reflected a sharp upward trajectory in public interest in information about investing. There were many familiar names and faces to be found among the authors of these guides, most notably a number of well-­known financial journalists. Michael Walters, deputy City editor of the Daily Mail released a whole series of books advising on share ownership, including individual works on penny shares, personal equity plans, and new issues.61 Wendy Elkington of the Daily Express similarly published several financial advice guides.62 So, too, did countless others. Frequent contributor to the Financial Times, The Times, and the Guardian Rosemary Burr even ran a financial publishing company.63 The newspapers for which these journalists worked were also

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regularly involved in the production and promotion of investment guides. The Telegraph, for instance, published an “Investor’s Handbook” series, including titles such as Stocks and Shares: A Practical Guide for the First-­Time Investor, and Unit Trusts.64 Financial institutions similarly featured as sponsors or coproducers of investment guides. Both the TSB and Midland Bank worked with Marie Jennings in her capacity as a financial journalist, money management adviser, and consumer affairs expert, to publish books.65 Elsewhere, Rosemary Burr repeatedly secured financial or promotional backing for her publications. Clive Fenn-­Smith, chairman of both Barclays Unicorn Trust and the Unit Trust Association wrote an accompanying foreword for Burr’s Unit Trusts Explained.66 Save & Prosper sponsored Burr’s Your Personal Money Programme, while the Prudential Unit Trust Managers Ltd. published a Book of Money, also edited by Burr.67 This all means to say that there was a heavy crossover between the work of investment guide authors, the newspapers for which they worked, and the financial institutions providing the services about which they wrote. Nor should it come as any great revelation that many investment authors endorsed Conservative Party policies. Popular capitalism and privatization were hardly bad for business. In his guide to “How to Make a Killing in the Share Jungle,” Michael Walters, applauded Nigel Lawson for “enticing the small investor back into the stock market . . . [allowing] more people [to enjoy] the thrill of owning shares directly.”68 Particularly telling is the fact that Rosemary Burr’s The Share Book was advertised in the press as “Thatcher’s Choice” of share guide, and contained a foreword written by the prime minister herself.69 These publications were, of course, first and foremost about making money, seeking to cash in on the public’s interest and lack of expertise in the matter of investing. Almost all of them contained details of other sources of information, tacitly promoting the services of particular advisers and institutions over others. Rosemary Burr’s The Share Book contained over seventy pages of contact information for various financial institutions and dealers.70 But even if there were

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both financial and ideological interests at play, the function of these guides as a self-­educative tool marks them out as significant. More than just offering comparative advice, investment guides fit comfortably within a wider culture of self-­improvement and self-­ help that emerged across the twentieth century.71 Self-­help books were among the most successful mass-­market nonfiction books of the period. Their formula was an adaptable one, finding a home on TV talk shows, radio phone-­ins, and also in “quasi-­educational products” such as training courses. The self-­help genre became an especially strident feature of women’s magazines, with middle-­class professional women proving to be the target demographic for promises of self-­realization, whether through advice about how to dress, or how to make their relationships work. Much of this literature took the form of managerial and coaching texts that drew on feminist and left-­wing conceptions of emancipation, empowerment, and politicizing the personal.72 However, rather than retaining the collectivist politics and consciousness-­raising of these movements, self-­help authors advised readers how to pursue highly individualized goals, reimagining empowerment as an object of personal consumption.73 Self-­ help guides were rarely, therefore, about a genuine pursuit of self-­fulfillment. Instead, they pushed individuals to reform themselves into well-­adjusted, and therefore productive, citizens (whether their authors would have seen their texts in this light or not).74 Investment guides provide another example of this twentieth-­ century endeavor to create self-­monitoring, “expert” citizens, this time in the domain of financial health. Indeed, many investment books were part of extensive series that aimed to create all-­round self-­governing subjects. For instance, Marie Jennings’s Perfect Personal Finance was part of the “Perfect Series,” published by Arrow Business Books. Of the twenty-­seven other titles in the series, there were books advising on Perfect Decisions, Perfect Presentation, Perfect Time Management, and Perfect Communications.75 Authors’ own claims to expertise were a key feature of their self-­help styling. In his book, Investing to Survive the ’80s, investment magazine author Malcolm Craig asserted his credentials with

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reference to his “many years in the City of London as a merchant banker” and current position as a “financial consultant, writing and broadcasting on business and investment matters.”76 J.  T Stafford similarly appealed to her background as a graduate from the London School of Economics and position as an investment analyst in a firm of London Stockbrokers.77 Such declarations were no doubt partly a marketing ploy: they asserted the comparative legitimacy of an author’s advice in a marketplace that contained numerous charlatans. More generally, however, they reflected the extension of expert knowledge in the twentieth century as a technique of governing the modern self.78 Authors reassured readers that they, too, could flourish as investors by following only a few (remarkably generic) simple steps. The nature of the advice investors received encouraged them to turn their focus inward and work on their individual capacity to adapt and grow.79 Guides directly addressed readers, often referring to them in the second person, thus throwing the weight of expectation in their direction. For instance, on the cover of one of her guides, The Share Book, Burr claimed that the book “unravels the mystery of the stock market and puts you in charge of your investments” (emphasis mine).80 In this sense, investment and personal finance guides offered an overtly financialized vision of the path to self-­improvement: essentially serving as a niche corner of a much wider self-­help industry. The underlying implication in these guides was that readers needed to develop an expertise of their own. This dynamic also invited people to adopt personal responsibility for financial security and wealth accumulation in a manner that shifted high levels of risk away from the state or private business. Pat O’Malley describes this as process as “responsibalization,” something that he argues is a key feature of neoliberal governance.81 To this end, Britain’s proliferating financial advice industry worked to produce financialized subjects by asking Britons to transform themselves into risk-­assuming investor-­ citizens. They were expected to make carefully measured and well-­ informed choices about where to invest their resources to achieve maximum returns, continued stability, and financial independence from the state.

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Investors’ ability to do just this rested on their willingness to take on an information-­heavy relationship with financial markets. Again authors were eager to assist. They included sample application forms and share records in their books, alongside case studies of fictional first-­time investors and glossaries, or a “what they really mean” decoding of stock market terminology. All this advice was delivered in an informal style and through the use of personal, humorous, and often self-­effacing anecdotes—another trick of the self-­help trade. These tactics worked to reassure readers that they were not alone and that their mishaps were not unique. Michael Walters comforted readers with the knowledge that the stock market was full of “hundreds and thousands of ordinary people doing ordinary jobs, all of them as liable as you are to get a little muddled now and then.”82 By way of solving this problem, authors offered to place at their readers’ fingertips all the intellectual and informational tools they needed to confidently access the market. Both investment guides and the money pages of the popular press sought to reassure readers by homing in on examples of “ordinary people” succeeding in the market.83 Doing so also helped to evidence authors’ claims that the stock market was newly accessible to all. Take, for example, housewife Diana Crook, who featured in a 1985 Money Mail article titled “£6,000 profit on the Stock Market.” Discussing the secret to her £6,000 success, Crook told the paper that she had taken a correspondence course, stating that “Lots of women think the Stock Exchange is beyond them, but actually it is very easy. . . . I can’t add up and didn’t even take maths O-­level but I enjoy investing.”84 Such stories made financial news more accessible and relatable to readers who might otherwise be put off by jargon-­ filled articles. Their protagonists—often women and working-­or lower-­middle-­class investors—became parables of financial success. They provided an imagined future onto which readers could pin their own aspirations, all the while giving the impression that investing was a realistic and viable option for anyone. These kinds of articles helped to normalize the process of investing by making it seem like an “ordinary” act for “ordinary” people.

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In fact, a particular set of tensions surrounded attempts to engage with women investors in financial advice literature. On the one hand, a large number of financial journalists were women, indicating that (largely male) editors saw women as capable of reporting on such matters. On the other hand, women journalists tended to cover personal finance as opposed to high finance, although by no means exclusively. Understood as advice best suited to attendees of the annual Ideal Home Exhibition and delivered in segments called the “family money-­go-­round,” this type of financial journalism occupied a less transgressive space of domesticity and household consumption. Even so, authors clearly recognized that a market existed for advice tailored specifically toward women audiences with their own financial agency. Some investment guides even used this as a unique selling point for advice that otherwise looked largely identical to other offerings.85 In a 1979 advertisement for The Women’s Financial Letter, author Sheila Black asked, “Isn’t it high time that the special needs of women in respect of money matters were given special consideration?”86 In almost identical phrasing, Marie Jennings assured readers that her 1988 Midland Bank–sponsored book, Women and Money, “is the book for women and their special needs in today’s world.”87 But despite a recognition that women should be seen as “responsible financial citizen[s]” in their own right, much of the advice available to women understood them first and foremost as housewives looking to make a bit of extra money on the side; mothers wanting to secure a better financial future for their children; or as divorcees and widows forced to unexpectedly manage money on their own.88 Like most features of late twentieth-­century investment culture, investment guides were replete with discourses of democratization. They vowed to unlock the mysteries of the market for those previously excluded from financial know-­how. In general, authors took the side of the public, condemning the “snooty City” and the “cosy world of the stock exchange,” noting that stockbrokers gave off the impression of being “unapproachable people who will turn up their public school noses at sums below £20,000.”89 Rosemary Burr, for

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example, dedicated a whole book, titled Funny Money, to a cynical but humorous explanation of financial matters. Clearly poking fun at the City, she proclaimed to “take the lid off the world of high— and low—finance. To provide you with a helpful phrase book when travelling in the strange and sometimes fantastical world of Big Money.”90 Yet such guarantees glossed over the intersecting interests of investment guide authors and the institutions whose advertising and endorsements filled their pages. Indeed, there remained a series of strange paradoxes within self-­ help investment guides.91 These were often generated by the methods that publishers and authors used to sell financial advice books, and how they approached the task of advising a mass market of novice investors. First of all, authors tended to valorize direct investment and risk-taking over the kinds of managed investment vehicles into which many financial institutions wanted to funnel investors. It made no sense to stress the importance of developing independence and an expertise of one’s own, only to suggest handing the reins over to professionals. Discussing the discretionary services offered by stockbrokers and banks, Kevin Goldstein-­Jackson concluded, “This has no appeal to me: I prefer to choose my own investments and make my own mistakes and have my own successes.”92 A second contradiction related to authors’ persistent reassurance that share ownership was simple and easy. The prospect of wading through a technical book was unlikely to move copies, especially if a reader felt that their circumstances prohibited any chance of their becoming an investor in the first place. So claims about the accessibility of the stock market made sense for authors keen to make sales. In the words of Simon Rose, “To buy shares, all you have to do is pick up the telephone, call a stockbroker and give him your order.”93 The overriding impression left by investment guides was that making a “killing in the share jungle” was possible with only a small amount of “common sense, and good luck.”94 Such promises undermined any sense that investing was an elite activity, or that it required a hard-­earned expertise. They thus sat at odds with a reality in which many would-­be investors faced significant material barriers to access.

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They also ran counter to sales tactics that exploited readers’ aspirations to participate in an activity usually construed as middle class. Investment guide authors thus trod a fine line between reimaging investment for a mass-­market audience and retaining the allure of the elite social status and professional acumen with which share ownership was traditionally associated. Ultimately, investment guides were primarily intended to encourage Britons to heed the call of the market—to see themselves as investors, needing only a small amount of advice to start their journey to financial independence. They also implied that small investors could place themselves on an equal footing with stockbrokers, bank managers, and financial advisers. The educative impetus of Britain’s financial advice industry thus rested on the silent promise that financial inclusion awaited those willing to develop a certain level of expertise and shoulder the burden of financial risk. And yet, as we have already seen, powerful networks existed between financial advice authors and financial institutions. Investment guides generated profit for the former and drummed up business for the latter, all while hiding from view the power and resource asymmetries that disadvantaged even the most astute and well-­informed small investor.

“Bulls at Play”: Entertaining the Nation Alongside more serious-­minded assurances of financial security and ease of access, Britain’s mass-­market financial advice industry had other ways to sell the idea of investing to the nation. Persuading people to buy copies and places on training courses, and to tune in for weekly programming was about more than just offering advice. It also meant offering the promise of excitement and some source of entertainment. Thus, the purveyors of financial advice sought to portray the stock market as something enlivening or “cool,” often by mobilizing morally ambiguous narratives of gameplay, gambling, and self-­enrichment. Consequently, ideas about who investing was for, and how it should be done became evermore fragmented as

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financial advice created encounters with investment culture designed to attract even those unable to afford to buy shares. With titles like How to Make a Killing in the Shares Jungle, authors happily courted the privatization stag, the yuppie pretender, and the penny shares speculator just as eagerly as the uncertain unit trust investor. In this version of investment, it was the courageous and confident opportunists of free-­market capitalism who provided a source of aspiration. Writing about American investment culture in his book Fair Shares Simon Rose noted admiringly that “the whole American ethic is built upon the concept of speculation; those who are prepared to take risks in the hope of an eventual reward are society’s idols.”95 Consequently, for every investment guide catering to risk-­averse and assiduous financial consumers, there was one that appealed to the more risk-­taking, ambitious investor. Indeed, authors of financial advice sometimes split their readers into “types” according to the investment experience they coveted and advised them on this basis. In Share Millions, author and Financial Times journalist, Kevin Goldstein-­Jackson, outlined a total of eight “investment personalities,” including the “natural gambler” and the “all-­or-­nothing investor.” The only personality type he advised against shareholding was the “worrier investor” who, he sarcastically remarked, should just “try not to worry so much.”96 In their attempts to court this target-­market of potential speculators, investment guide authors reveled in the enlivening experience of investing as much as they did the possibility for profit. This led them to further disparage the likes of pension funds and unit trusts as lacking “the thrills and spills of direct share-­dealing.”97 After all, investing could only really be portrayed as a fun pastime if someone played an active role in selecting investment prospects, delivering buy and sell orders, and following company fortunes with anticipation. That being said, financial advice literature also freely relied on the allure of potential fame and fortune when selling the concept of the market to a mass-­market audience. Articles in the national press ran with titles such as “Getting Rich Quicker,” and focused on the “decade’s newest millionaire[s]” who “like policemen” were

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“getting younger all the time.”98 Elsewhere reports on privatization focused on the fact that it seemed “like child’s play to double your money.”99 A 1987 Money Mail article titled “10 Ways to Get Rich” took an even blunter approach. It told readers, “Overnight riches are no longer the stuff of dreams for a growing band of people. They are reality. Many of the routes to instant riches don’t even require hard work. Luck plays an important part, of course.” The article promoted all manner of “frankly frivolous routes to wealth,” including marrying and divorcing a rich husband, winning a libel case, and the “magic of the penny shares.”100 In this light, investment appeared to offer something quite apart from asset management, or dutiful financial planning. Further fueling readers’ flights of fancy, newspapers reported on more extreme versions of the “ordinary” success stories described above. Rather than housewives making a little extra cash for a family holiday, financial journalists indulged in dramatic tales of rapid social mobility and personal wealth accumulation through stock market triumph. The Daily Mail ran a regular “Money Makers” column that followed people’s paths to financial success. These tales worked as financialized versions of the human-­interest story, imbuing traditionally dull financial news with greater entertainment value rooted in the alluring potential of free-­market capitalism.101 The Mirror similarly, ran a regular “City Star” column that tracked the backgrounds and fortunes of big names in the Square Mile. Gleefully reporting on each person’s assets, the paper familiarized readers with financiers and bankers, turning them into household names. Once again, however, the approaches that journalists used to popularize financial advice created points of tension. Depictions of investment as a route to instantaneous individual wealth and elite social status clashed with other discourses of investment that framed it as a part of day-­to-­day financial management. Celebrations of speculation especially contradicted a Conservative Party rhetoric that glorified popular capitalism as a form of responsible citizenship and political enfranchisement.102 Risking it all on a penny share hardly complemented Thatcherite concerns with hard work, thrift, and

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earned wealth. While these more moralistic constraints of the Conservative Party’s rhetoric were regularly trumpeted in the front pages of the press, the financial advice found in the back pages sometimes eschewed more overtly politicized visions of investment. By far the most common tactic that the purveyors of financial advice used to sell the appeal (rather than common sense) of investing to audiences was to stress its game-­like qualities. Metaphors of play were rampant within mass-­market financial advice in late twentieth-­ century Britain. Investment was described variously as like tossing a coin, juggling, a game of tennis, scrabble, or “like playing Monopoly with real money.”103 In a Daily Mail article titled, “Now millions are playing, you can be a winner in the stock market snakes and ladder game,” Pauline Skypala advised readers that “to play in the investment game you need a strategy.” And although she reminded them not to “even consider investing in shares unless you have a nice cushion of cash tucked away,” the accompanying cartoon of an investment-­themed Snakes and Ladders board hardly suggested serious money management.104 But there was one pastime, more than any other, that served as a well-­worn analogy for investment: gambling. Despite the anxiety that such associations caused elsewhere in the City, investment guide authors and financial journalists were (sometimes at least) all too happy to highlight similarities between investing and horse racing, the football pools, or a casino roulette wheel.105 They embraced rather than fought the shared cultural space between popular investment practices and gambling. After all, gambling in postwar Britain had assumed the role of a commercial leisure experience that promised a break from routine and the possibility of altering one’s fortunes.106 Invoking this feeling was no bad way to popularize investing as a mainstream practice. The titles and designs of investment guides explicitly re-­created this riskier, and by association, more exhilarating aspect of investment. Tony Levene, former investment editor of The Sunday Times, titled his book the Shares Game and used the image of a die on the cover (figure 15). Financial writer for the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, and

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Guardian Harold Baldwin used a fruit machine on the cover of his book (figure 16). Meanwhile, the blurb of Michael Walters’s guide to penny shares informed prospective buyers that “low-­priced penny shares are the great stock market gambling chips, the shares that put the thrill into the stock market and give the small investor a real chance of turning a few pounds into a tidy fortune.”107 Speculation, then, was to be the great leveler that gave ordinary men and women the chance to change their fortunes by joining the ranks of London’s moneymen. A number of companies embraced gameplay in even more tangible ways. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed the release of a spate of investment-­based board games. These games entered a transatlantic market that had long since sold audiences the fun of simulating capital transactions.108 One of the world’s most famous board games, Monopoly, was by this point a well-­established family favorite, providing players an opportunity to emulate life on the property market. Its successes meant that all manner of games—from Chainstore to Rat Race—adapted its format, giving players a chance to mimic life in a capitalist society.109 Although never achieving the popularity or longevity of Monopoly, for a short period investment board games cumulatively had a significant reach as part of this wider trend. The games themselves ranged from more lighthearted basic approximations of investing to relatively serious and number-­intensive simulations of the stock market. As an example of the former, Shocks and Scares—a game launched in 1983 for ages nine and older—proclaimed that it was “NOT a game for financial experts, or mathematical geniuses. It simply generates a lot of fun, excitement and enjoyment, as players scramble over each other in a mad rush to prove who is the luckiest, boldest, shrewdest, most unscrupulous moneybags in the family.”110 Insider Dealing (1988) pushed such themes even further. With a launch date timed to coincide with the one-­year anniversary of Black Monday, it gleefully encouraged players to enact audacious stock market behaviors like share ramping and crashing the market. The game dramatized investment and celebrated it as a spectacle, hoping to make money from its perceived

Figure 15. Tony Levene, The Shares Game: How to Buy and Sell Stocks and Shares (London: Pan Books, 1987). Cover illustration by David O’Connor. © Tony Levene. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.

Figure 16. Harold Baldwin, Shares: A Beginners’ Guide to Making Money, 2nd edition. (London: Wisebuy, 1987). Cover illustration by Richard Carr. Cover design by John Strange and Associates.

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entertainment value. The lack of subtlety achieved with Insider Dealing’s name continued in its rule book. Here players were informed that it was important to “Do ANYTHING to ANYONE in order to WIN!” This included “report[ing] your sister to the Taxman,” “Bankrupt[ing] your Dad,” and “Inform[ing] the Stock Exchange Committee about your best friends.”111 An ad for the game further suggested that its target market was anyone with ambitions to be “a shrewd investor, a risk taker, a financial whizz kid, or simply those who love a good board game.”112 There was no sign of a cautious or risk-­averse investor in sight. At the other end of the spectrum were more earnest games like The Stock Exchange Game. Designed in the mid-­1980s by a casualty doctor from Hartlepool, Abhay More, the game was officially developed and endorsed by the London Stock Exchange. Those purchasing the game received a free Stock Exchange advice leaflet, a “Who’s What” booklet containing information about all featured companies, as well as a leaflet promoting the services of the Stock Exchange’s Investors’ Club. More was himself something of a privatization “Sid,” having gained his first taste of investment filling out newspaper coupons for the BT share issue. As he told the Telegraph, “I could not believe it when my money virtually doubled overnight.” Converted to life as an investor, More applied for shares in every subsequent privatization before deciding to develop an investment-­based board game.113 The game proclaimed to be “loosely based on the real-­life operations of the Stock Market” and took a relatively serious tone. But even so, its rule book commented that “assuming that luck evens out, the most daring and entertaining player will usually make the biggest profits.”114 The Daily Telegraph reported that The Stock Exchange Game sold 3,500 copies in its first year, having been stocked in major retailers such as WH Smith and John Lewis.115 Perhaps because of the promotional opportunity such success presented, the London Stock Exchange also endorsed another board game, called Investor. For players age twelve and older, Investor’s tagline was: “The authentic game about REAL companies quoted on the International Stock Exchange, London.

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Based on true fact, actual share prices and dates.”116 The game was designed, produced, and published as part of a collaboration between the Telegraph, Lamplight Games, and educational game specialist ScaMaTra. And indeed its educational potential earned Investor the endorsement of then WSOC Chairman Sir John Harvey-­Jones, who stated: “I am delighted to acknowledge its contribution to the wider understanding, in an enjoyable way, of the opportunities for wider share ownership.”117 Strike It Rich (c. 1986) similarly claimed to provide the “exciting experience of finding out how you would have fared as an investor in the real world.”118 Its apparent similitude was created by getting players to deal in market prices derived from the London Stock Exchange Publications Department. Each year players could order a fresh card deck and accompanying price book to keep the game up to date with the movements of the Stock Exchange. In such guises, board games sold readers the promise of an “authentic” approximation of investing, and a chance to gain a valuable educative experience without any real risk of financial loss. This was financial advice of a different kind. Despite their differences in tone, these board games all blurred the lines between individuals’ financial lives and their personal lives. Leisure time in the twentieth century did not disappear, but it increasingly encompassed features of economic life. In the case of investment board games, even shared family time could become oriented toward moneymaking and asset management activities. Like investment guides, board games undertook to endow players with the practical and discursive skills they needed to adopt financialized subjectivities. And precisely because it took the guise of a game, this form of financial training explicitly included children. Even if they made mistakes and lost money, investment games furnished the young with lessons in the necessity of risking short-­term losses in pursuit of long-­term gains.119 Games trained players to be able to calculate rationally and invest wisely to maximize benefits and minimize costs, explicitly encouraging them to emulate certain behaviors. Games also provided a framework that fostered specific understandings about what those behaviors were intended to achieve.120 For instance gameplay

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cards pushed players to draw connections between certain events (e.g., inflation, a market crash, changes in bank rates) and their own holdings. Take this example from The Stock Exchange Game: “Your shares keep rising but sometimes ‘Dip’ by a few points. You don’t know therefore when to sell. You decide to follow a ‘stop-­loss’ limit at 10% instead of your usual 20%. You get out just as a ‘Bear’ market is setting in, selling your shares at 10% below their best. You profit £1,100.”121 Players, often expected to be as young as nine, were thus required to analyze changes in stock prices, estimate their own profits and losses, and also to keep an eye on their competitors’ holdings. Some of the more complex games involved building portfolios that contained a mix of property, shares, bonds, and cash. Strike It Rich and Insider Dealing even made the inclusion of a free calculator part of the appeal to potential purchasers.122 Investment board games also hinted at a wider nexus of activities, hobbies, and behaviors expected of (and available to) real-­world investors: Your “investment” course at adult education centre evening classes. Pay £100 to bank. Purchase of microcomputer software with forecasting ability. Pay £300 to bank. Your flying club fees. Pay £300 to bank. School adventure holiday in Scotland for your children. Pay £200 to bank.123 The games thus maintained an imaginative quality that allowed successful players to live out their social and material aspirations all the while learning how to achieve them. Perhaps the most interesting thing about these games was the extent to which they melded together diverse features of British culture. Calamity! (1983), for instance, bought together financial education, family entertainment, and a Grammy, Tony, and Olivier award winner all in one. Its action centered on the international insurance

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market, with players taking on the role of a syndicate, insuring risks such as the “legs of a beautiful actress” and a “Panamanian Supertanker on the high seas.” Produced in association with the Sentry Group of Insurance Companies, Calamity!’s rule book proudly provided contact details for anyone interested in information on the “real world of insurance” (emphasis original).124 Somewhat surprisingly considering its subject matter, Bill Skirrow of the Guardian described Calamity! as “perhaps the most effectively hyped game this year.”125 This unlikely attention from the press was a result of the reputation of the game’s designer, Andrew Lloyd Webber. Something of a cultural icon of the period, Lloyd Webber was far better known for writing musicals such as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Evita, and Cats than for designing board games. The fact that he had participated in such an undertaking reveals the breadth of British investment culture and the unusual places into which it seeped in the late twentieth century. Nor was Calamity! the only instance of a public entertainment figure seeking to make a profit from financial-­based fun. Strike It Rich was designed by Andrew Wood, a writer and producer of television gameshows, including the popular ITV darts-­based Bullseye.126 The strange creep of financial advice-­cum-­entertainment did not stop at board games. In 1988, Anglia TV launched a new gameshow on Channel 4 called The Stocks and Shares Show. The program ran for twelve weeks and lasted only a series, earning an audience of almost three-­quarters of a million.127 Despite its lack of commercial success, the fact that the show was commissioned at all suggests that producers believed there to be a market for financial entertainment. The show was given the prime-­time slot of 8.15 p.m. on a Sunday night where over the course of three months viewers watched as four contestants invested a hypothetical £10,000 in real stocks. Guest experts from the City were on hand to offer them guidance. Using language similar to financial self-­help books, producer John Swinfield explained that the show’s purpose was to teach people to “know when to ignore . . . experts and when to . . . heed good advice.”128 Critics, too, noted that the program “slipped in a few painless lessons on investing.”129

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The program’s educative veneer appeared unconvincing to others, however. One of the show’s guest experts, financial journalist David Brewerton, expressed his disappointment that The Stocks and Shares Show lacked authenticity because of distortions in profit estimates and an overemphasis on the benefits of speculation. Others criticized the program for “treating the stock market as a casino,” rehearsing well-­worn anxieties that the popularization of investment necessarily meant some kind of dumbing down or degradation.130 John Naughton of the Observer admitted that he had written the show off as “a primer for citizens of Mrs Hacksaw’s proposed share-­owning democracy.” “How better to teach the arcane jargon of ‘leveraged buy-­ outs,’ ‘interims,’ ‘scrip issues’ etc.,” he asked, “than via a game show in which four apparently happy and normal adults get richer and richer simply by backing corporate horses?” However, as Naughton went on to discuss, if the show’s main purpose was to create discerning investors, it had failed. Its major shortfall, in his opinion, was that it had become “increasingly evident that neither the contestants nor their supposedly expert advisers have a rational basis for their ‘investment’ decisions.”131 These concerns reflected the fact that contestants on The Stocks and Shares Show were simply “real” people trying on for size the different investing “personalities” they saw around them. From press coverage of the show, we can glean some insight into how the push and pull of British investment culture played out in practice. The eventual winner, aero-­engine fitter Donovan Taylor was described in the press as “a gambler as well as an investor” who wanted shares that “could turn round rapidly to give him a winning edge.” Runner-­up and homemaker Madeline Cohen told the Daily Mail that investing was little more than “posh gambling” and that her preference was for “wild risky shares.” Building society manager Ivan Fuller, meanwhile, finished the series by risking all his money on one company.132 In the players’ own comments we can see the incompatibility of cautions to undertake responsible and rational decision-­ making, and incitements to embrace risk in the pursuit of rapidly and vastly increased personal wealth.

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The shares competitions, board games, and gameshows of 1980s and 1990s Britain allowed individuals to simulate the practices and calculations proscribed in theory by investment guides and the money pages of the financial press. They were, of course, simplified versions of stock market investment, and hardly a faithful reflection of the actualities of the processes involved. But they often discussed genuine shares and prices and contained an alluring imaginative quality. Investors and non-­investors alike were given the chance to feel part of a new national past time. The Stocks and Shares Show even instigated fears that experts’ tips could “influence the real world outside the studio.”133 In the world of late twentieth-­century financial advice, the lines between reality and entertainment could often be paper thin. David Brewerton ultimately dismissed The Stocks and Shares Show as a mere reflection of “the massive increase in interest in owning shares,” and therefore as something that “should not be taken too seriously.”134 However, such a statement overlooked the extent to which playing at investment encouraged Britons to develop economic selfhoods uniquely adjusted to a financialized society. Of course, not all investment games had such high-­minded ambitions, and not everyone played them. But even the more frivolous ones brought investing into the homes and habits of the British public. Daily Telegraph cartoonist, Kipper Williams, nicely visualized the specter of investment advice packaged as a fun family gameshow, beaming into millions of living rooms across the nation (figure 17). Just as privatization, money pages, and investment guides created a level of visibility around investing, these games also offered a first taste of investment to individuals intrigued by, but otherwise ignorant of, the functioning of capital markets.

Conclusion The evolution and expansion of Britain’s mass-­ market financial advice industry was a key facet of financialization for two reasons. Firstly, the widespread availability of cognitive tools and discursive

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Figure 17. Drawing by Kipper Williams, Daily Telegraph, 11 January 1988, 18. © Telegraph Media Group Limited.

frameworks relating to investment fueled the expansion of Britain’s investing public.135 More Britons than ever before had access to information that told them how to read and process technical information about different kinds of financial assets. They were invited to attend seminars, undertake independent reading, network, and self-­educate.

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Britain’s financial advice industry thus helped to create a “financial audience” with the ability to obtain, interpret, and act upon information about financial markets.136 Secondly, the visibility that mass-­market-­oriented financial advice afforded the financial sphere helped to generate new expectations about what getting by in contemporary Britain looked like. All manner of journalists, “experts,” and swindlers reinforced the notion that possessing and managing capital assets was part and parcel of a successfully lived life. That is not to say that a single vision of the perfect investor existed. Consumer advice columns and shows guided individuals in how to become discerning financial consumers. Self-­serious investment guides made financial health one more feature of contemporary life over which self-­governing citizens should take responsibility. Meanwhile, frivolous versions of financial advice portrayed investment as little more than a quick and easy way to make money. Most mass-­market financial advice contained a slightly bewildering mix of all these elements. These competing discourses of popular investment existed because the purveyors of financial advice were rarely ideologically committed to encouraging people to err toward one form of investment over another. Their priority was to translate public interest in shares into revenue by catering to many different “types” of investors, interested in different types of products. None of this meant that the advice on offer was inherently faulty or irresponsible. Investment authors and financial journalists dutifully reminded readers that share prices could go up and down and that savings should not be mindlessly gambled on the stock market.137 They also generally noted that unit trusts or managed funds were well suited to individuals with little know-­ how. Many displayed a real commitment to helping overwhelmed or underinformed investors. After all, their reputations as financial advisers relied on readers’ trust in the suitability of their advice. But at the same time, their careers more generally relied on their ability to entice people toward the market. More than anything, variation characterized British investment culture in this period of transformation. And this produced a number

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of tensions that were especially apparent in mass-­market financial advice. The most significant of these tensions was the one that existed between treating individuals as nervous, ill-­informed consumers, and sales tactics that encouraged people to get involved regardless of their level of expertise. The simple fact remained that investing simply was not an option for everyone, and in spite of every suggestion otherwise, this was no game. Unlike the competitions run by the likes of the Daily Mail or The Stocks and Shares Show, losing out could result in diminished savings, financial insecurity, or bankruptcy. Dreams of a rapidly rising penny share, and the promise that success required only common sense and luck obscured reality: for most people, accessing the stock market required ample savings, ample time, and the means to acquire appropriate support. Even then, huge information and resource asymmetries existed between individuals and large financial institutions.138 What is clear, is that mass-­market financial advice broadly complemented the activities of financial institutions discussed thus far. It forged new forms of social acceptability (or even desirability) around investment, and steered people toward available products and services that might most appeal to them. Mass-­market financial advice also contributed to the illusion that share ownership really was undergoing a process of democratization. By offering discursive acceptance and vicarious access to the cultural capital associated with life as an investor it encouraged audiences to think they had gained admittance to the elite world of stocks and shares. But as we have seen in previous chapters, British investment culture was shaped by well-­resourced and well-­networked institutions that were often able to secure advantages over aspirant private investors. The shares game, then, was one in which the cards were heavily stacked and the odds of a big win were very long indeed.

Chapter 5

Yuppies Finance and Investment in Popular Culture

The term yuppie first gained common currency in Britain in late 1984. In its initial usage, yuppie stood for “young urban professionals” and was used by political commentators reporting on the 1984 American elections. These “college educated” and career-­conscious workers of the “computer society” were tipped to be the pillar of Democrat Gary Hart’s bid for presidential nomination.1 As the election gained momentum, so too did the term. When Hart’s yuppie supporters appeared to switch allegiance to Republican candidate Ronald Reagan, observers scrambled to define what, if anything, was unique about this demographic of young Americans. As the term made its transatlantic journey to Britain, it evolved stronger class connotations, becoming more commonly employed as a shorthand for “young upwardly mobile professionals.”2 There it was applied to a rapidly expanding class of professional service industry workers who filled the office spaces of urban centers. Their lives told a story of deindustrialization, globalization, and the reorganization of Britain’s economy around London’s finance, business, and creative service industries.3 A target of ridicule and derision as well as emulation 173

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and admiration, the term yuppies soon became part of the lingua franca of 1980s Britain. Produced somewhere between academic study, marketing research, psephology, journalism, and popular culture, the yuppie was one of several new cultural archetypes that emerged in the late twentieth century. Alongside the entrepreneur, the self-­made businessman, and the tech whiz kid, yuppies articulated a vision of what it took to participate in the new economy—the new world—of 1980s Britain.4 Of particular interest for our purposes is a subgenre of this yuppie archetype: the yuppie-­trader. This figure emerged from Briton’s growing cultural fascination with London’s Square Mile, its financial markets, and the traders that constituted them. The yuppie-­ trader modeled a white masculinity that was sometimes working class and sometimes lower-­middle class in appearance. In both guises it promised social mobility for those willing to attune themselves to the i­ncreasingly precarious conditions of global financial capitalism.5 To this end, the yuppie-­trader exhibited what I have termed an “investment orientation” to life.6 In previous chapters we have seen how the investor-­ shopper competed with the politically inflected ideal of the investor-­citizen in debates about widespread public involvement with investment. Both these financialized subjects represented the application of existing subject positions—the citizen or the consumer—to the idea of the investor. In the case of the yuppie-­ trader, we find the opposite. This was a subject for whom efficiency in the market took precedence above all else. As investment-­oriented subjects, yuppie-­traders applied the logic of investing to other areas of life: outlays in personal, financial, social, and cultural capital were measured against possible dividends in the pursuit of desired assets. Tracing a history of the yuppie in its City-­trader guise emphasizes the unprecedented position occupied by the City of London in British popular culture during the closing decades of the twentieth century. Signs of this can be found in earlier chapters. But depictions of the stock market were not limited to the sphere of financial advice and explicit attempts to curate a public of investors. All manner of ­writers, directors, producers, commissioners, retailers, and marketing

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teams scattered images of the City and its workers across popular culture. Many of these cultural producers shared little in common, least of all an ideological agenda, with the historical actors described elsewhere in this monograph. Their activities nonetheless generated far-­reaching ripples. When Britons picked up a novel, turned on their television sets, or went to the cinema, they could expect to hear and see portrayals of stock markets and investors. Those representations were no mere by-­product of economic and political change. They shaped financialization as an economic process by promoting aspirations and norms associated with the people who worked at the very heart of global financial markets. That is not to say that investment culture was all encompassing. Not everybody could, or indeed wanted to become anything like a yuppie. Nor was the yuppie the only manifestation of this process of neoliberal sociocultural realignment. It does, however, provide a rich case study through which the latter can be analyzed. Although exaggerated, fantastical, and something slightly “other,” archetypes like the yuppie generated cultural resources through which people could make sense of the world around them. It is time, therefore, that we take yuppies seriously as an object of historical study.7 Doing so exposes the extent to which broad cultural processes transformed British investment culture into something widespread, heavily commodified, and consumer oriented. It also demonstrates how individual subjectivity (and not only that of actual investors) was remade in line with the financialization of the British political economy.

The Yuppie-­Trader In Britain, yuppies have largely been remembered as a consequence of a Thatcherite extolment of individualistic wealth acquisition. Thatcher herself largely avoided the term while in office but later appeared willing to acknowledge some kind of association. Speaking in 1996 she commented: “The economic growth and the improvement of living standards which resulted from these [Conservative Party] reforms were so great that for a time materialism, rather than

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poverty, became the main accusation against us. ‘Hunting the yuppie’ became the favourite sport of the neo-­puritan, liverish Left. . . . What would we give for a few more of those yuppies today!”8 As Thatcher intimated, both sides of the political spectrum tended to conflate yuppies with the dangerous excesses of unfettered capitalism.9 The Socialist Standard labeled them the “errand boys and girls for the capitalists,” while those on the right dismissed yuppies as unfortunate outliers and “moral bankrupts.”10 But viewing the yuppie as little more than a derivative of political reform misses the rather more multifaceted processes of cultural construction it exemplified. An obvious first question thus seems to be: exactly who or what was the yuppie? The answer in many ways, of course, was nobody. Yuppies were a cultural construction with constantly shifting boundaries. The term was used by many people in many contexts: it did not refer to a single set of defining characteristics.11 This lack of definitional clarity was particularly apparent in the parodic publication, The Official British Yuppie Handbook, published by Ravette Limited in 1984. The book was an adaption of an original American publication and, as its title would suggest, it covered every aspect of the yuppie lifestyle, from character traits to taste in food and even attitudes to parenting. In a section on typical yuppie jobs, the book produced an occupational list that ranged from publishers, record producers, and photographers, to solicitors, computer programmers, financial consultants, and accountants. The only explicitly stated condition for a job to be considered a yuppie job, was that it should be “highly paid [and] high powered.”12 For this reason, we cannot easily reduce the “yuppie” to a particular occupational identity. Yet, from this sometimes-­bizarre mix of likes, dislikes, and characteristics emerged a number of distinctive tropes that came to demarcate the parameters of the yuppie cultural universe. In Britain, one such trope was that of the yuppie stock market trader. The advent of the term yuppie in British culture almost perfectly aligned with the deregulation of the stock market, the height of privatization mania, and a boom in the numbers of people employed by financial institutions. Of course, not all of these individuals shared

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a social or cultural space with what came to be known as yuppies. Many jobs in Britain’s rapidly expanding financial services sector were a far cry from the practices of trading and dealing that dominated popular understandings of the City. Manual data entry, for example, was a defining feature of systems management in the semi-­ computerized world of the 1980s. Robert Skinner, a worker at Lloyds Bank Registrars in Durrington-­on-­Sea described his first day on the job in 1985 as little more than mundane office work: “I was given a box of slips that were the record of share transactions and there was duplicated information on each side. . . . I spent my first morning cutting [them] . . . in half. [After that] I spent some time trawling through reams and reams and reams and reams of computer print-­ outs looking for sequences of numbers that were slightly out.”13 As Skinner’s account suggests, there is a whole other history to be written about the labor that comprised late twentieth-­century financial markets. But within the City, employees came to see certain jobs as more fundamentally “yuppie-­esque” than others. This undoubtedly reflected the increasing significance of occupation in the formation of identity in the late twentieth century: who you were as an individual was determined not only by how much you earned, but also how you earned it. Consequently, traders emerged as a City icon and a major feature of yuppie discourse in the 1980s even though only a small number of people were employed in such work (and were heavily concentrated in London’s Square Mile at that). The cultural significance of the yuppie derived from the growing presence of the City more generally. City institutions had long ago established a central position for themselves in political and public imaginations of the British economy. Recent research by Aled Davies and Jacob Ward on the Committee on Invisible Exports and its 1968 and 1981 offshoots, the City Telecommunications Subcommittee and the Liberalisation of Trade in Services Committee, has shown just how effectively City interests lobbied government on this front. They used well-­networked memberships to drive an economic agenda designed to secure the place of British companies in international trading. Whatever helped to maintain London as a global financial

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center was hailed by committee members as good for Britain as a whole.14 The adoption of this assumption by a Thatcher-­led Conservative Party placed the City in an influential position within British economic and social life. The ways the City measured growth, for example, served as a yardstick against which the nation’s success or failure was assessed. This message was seemingly taken on board by the British public. The British Social Attitudes Survey for 1987 reported that 73.4 percent of people either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that “The success of ‘The City’ is essential to the success of Britain’s economy.”15 Such beliefs undoubtedly bolstered the cultural capital of financial sector workers. But the growing cultural clout of the financial sector was not only a top-­down process, driven by the machinations of powerful City interests. Actors far-­removed from Whitehall and high finance also played a role. As artists, novelists, scriptwriters, and other cultural producers reflected upon the City’s economic and cultural authority they afforded it greater visibility. Take for instance, the spate of films and novels in the 1980s that made protagonists of financial sector workers. The British film Dealers hit cinemas in 1989 as a slightly forlorn imitation of Oliver Stone’s 1987 sensation, Wall Street. Greater success was experienced by the likes of Jeffrey Archer, whose international business epic Kane and Abel became a New York Times bestseller, generating some $2.8 million in sales and television rights.16 Novelist Martin Amis also hit bestsellers lists in 1984 with Money: A Suicide Note. Here, Amis offered readers a postmodern critique of the violent and pornographic excesses of global modern money culture. Set in 1981, the novel followed the life of a drug-­and sex-­addicted mid-­Atlantic script writer, John Self, and his destructive relationship with American film financier, Fielding Goodney.17 Playwrights, too, translated the lives of London’s traders directly onto the stage. Caryl Churchill’s 1987 West End production, Serious Money, received critical acclaim as a fast-­talking and darkly comedic rendering of the futures market, LIFFE.18 The play followed a series of interconnected storylines involving a murdered trader and an attempted hostile takeover loosely based on the contemporaneous

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Guinness scandal. Drawing on journalism of the time, Churchill contributed to mythmaking around the death of gentlemanly capitalism at the hands of a cohort of cutthroat traders created by deregulation. The play was an instant hit when it debuted at the Royal Court Theatre, starring Gary Oldman as corporate raider Billy Corman. However, despite intentions to critique the world it depicted, Serious Money found popularity precisely among those it sought to satirize.19 The play was lauded by the Daily Mail as “the absolute must play for Yuppies, Buppies . . . and honest City folk.”20 Michael Davie of the Guardian similarly noted that “City people who rarely go near a theatre have been attending it in droves. Usually it’s bicycles; now it’s Porsches parked in Sloane Square.”21 Nor was Churchill the only playwright to deconstruct the phenomenon of the yuppie-­trader on stage. Tony Marchant, who grew up on a council estate in Wapping, premiered Speculators at the Barbican Centre in London in 1987.22 Written during the financial crash of October that year, the play tackled his experience of seeing several former grammar school classmates become dealers in the City.23 Its action followed the fortunes of a small group of currency traders working for an American bank located in the Square Mile. These included Sarah, a hard-­nosed female trader; Nick, the son of a merchant banker struggling with the expectations of his upper-­class family; Ian, the son of an unemployed northern steel worker who sends his earnings back home; Cutter, an ageing trader suffering illness and the breakdown of his marriage; and Jimmy, a young, crass, and ambitious working-­class trader who spends every penny he earns on the finer things in life. The growing presence of Hollywood films in British cinemas only added to the visibility of this yuppie-­trader archetype. A rapid succession of successful Wall Street–based comedies, dramas, and thrillers found popularity among British audiences in the 1980s and early 1990s. Notable titles included Trading Places (1983), Quick­ silver (1986), The Secret of My Success (1987), Working Girl (1988), Other People’s Money (1991) and Barbarians at the Gate (1993). It goes almost without saying that the most famous yuppie of the era

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was Oliver Stone’s Oscar-­winning creation Gordon Gekko.24 Played by Michael Douglas, the corporate raider’s now infamous mantra that “greed, for want of a better word, is good” quickly became a shorthand for the whole yuppie ethos. In fact, much like Churchill’s Serious Money, Gekko’s infamous speech sometimes met with approving applause by cinema audiences.25 Other iconic American yuppie-­traders included Sherman McCoy, a bond trader, self-­ proclaimed “master of the universe” and protagonist of Tom Wolfe’s 1988 “runaway best-­seller,” Bonfire of the Vanities. The book provided a sketch of 1980s New York and the stark contrast between the excesses of Wall Street and the city’s battle with crime, poverty, and racism.26 Author and screenwriter, Bret Easton Ellis pushed the limits of 1980s materialism and individualism to even greater extremes in his 1991 novel, American Psycho.27 His protagonist was narcissistic serial killer Patrick Bateman, whose occupation as a mergers and acquisitions specialist on Wall Street marked him out as another memorable, if abhorrent character-­study of yuppiedom. In short, cultural engagement with the City produced a recognizable archetype in the figure of the yuppie-­trader. Its emerging cultural cachet reflected London’s bourgeoning position as a center of both British and international financial markets. But it also offered a model of what was expected of the people who worked in those environments. Financialized societies require individuals that are ready and able to participate in financial market transactions. But they also rely upon a kind of widespread public reconciliation with financial markets. The yuppie-­trader and its associated discourse contributed to both processes.

Frontiersmen of a Financial Age With this in mind, we should turn our attention to precisely what norms were promoted by depictions of yuppie-­traders. For most of their existence financial markets were coded as inherently masculine spaces characterized by rational and objective action. Only men (and even then, only certain types of men) were deemed equipped to

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thrive. In their research on female entrepreneurs, Attila Bruni et al. argue that business success has historically been “located in the symbolic universe of the male,” with entrepreneurs frequently likened to masculine archetypes such as the frontiersman, explorer, or imperialist.28 And indeed, we have already seen that nineteenth-­century capitalism was at least partly organized around networks of “gentleman” financiers, fashioned as executors of colonial expansion.29 There was a clear lineage between the hegemonic masculinity of this nineteenth-­ century elite class of financiers and the emerging masculinities that underpinned British investment culture in the 1980s. A case in point is the continued prevalence of sporting, sexual, and combative metaphors used for acts of dealing in the 1980s. In a 1997 study of gender in the City, sociologist Linda McDowell noted the frequency of such language in traders’ descriptions of their work. For example, interviewees referred to a rising market as a “hard-­on,” successful traders as “real players,” and appropriate work wear as their “uniform.”30 Such phraseology clearly harked back to the militaristic and educational institutions of Britain’s economic elite. Depictions of yuppie-­traders in the 1980s did not simply perpetuate long-­standing hegemonic versions of masculinity, however. They refashioned them to reflect the changing working conditions in the City at the time. The deeply entrenched power structures of financial capitalism were thus renegotiated rather than replaced in the closing decades of the twentieth century. As discussed in chapter 3, the Financial Services Act of 1986 removed boundaries between previously discrete financial subsectors and reinforced inter-­institutional rivalries. This in turn drove the evolution of strategic management structures that operated on the basis of carefully measured and monitored individual performance. Such structures fostered forms of competitive masculinity that ranked individuals according to their capacity to symbolically or otherwise exercise domination over the world around them.31 The long-­standing preference for well-­ connected “corporate” men in financial services was to some extent replaced by a lenience toward “self-­made” men, at least when it came to the art of dealing.32 The trope of the yuppie-­trader reflected this

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competition-­driven environment. It became a unique embodiment of the parable of free-­market meritocracy in the financial sector, casting the stock market as a place where particular kinds of working-­ and lower-­middle-­class men could prosper. It is no coincidence that “upwardly mobile” often replaced “urban” in the yuppie portmanteau in a British context. Performances of working-­class financial masculinity can clearly be seen in a 1986 episode of the BBC documentary series Commercial Breaks titled “Billion Dollar Day.” The episode followed the fortunes of three FX currency traders in a single twenty-­four-­hour trading period: Richard Hill, working for Barclays Bank in London; Ronnie Schlapfer, a New York speculator; and William Wong, a trader for the American Chemical Bank based in Hong Kong. The documentary’s action was organized around a narrative of strategic prowess and competition between the three traders as each tried to outfox his opponents in a global game of risk. During the program, Richard Hill’s boss on the Barclay’s desk, Chris Pavlou, described him as “the best in the world because he . . . has learnt his trade the hard way. He started getting sandwiches when he was in his early twenties, and he was kicked about by the other dealers.”33 Pavlou’s account of Hill’s rise through the ranks stressed the latter’s ability to survive the emotional and physical rough-­and-­tumble of the market. It foregrounded the affirming experience of competition, not only in securing social mobility, but also in proving oneself as a man. While these men were expected to be aggressively competitive, audacious, and individualistic, they were also seen as less respectable than the middle-­and upper-­class financial elite of old. This was evident in new terminologies of the City in the 1980s. The term barrow boy, for example, came to describe the unrefined ethos of East London working-­class traders. In Serious Money, Caryl Churchill had the patriarchal old guard of the City dismiss LIFFE ­traders as little more than “yobs” or “oiks”: the kind of people “you’d expect to see on a street corner selling Christmas paper and cheap watches.”34 Jimmy, the foreign currency exchange trader and protagonist in Marchant’s Speculators, was similarly described as “a

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football hooligan on a footballer’s wages” by another character.35 Meanwhile, the Financial Times quoted a former Barclays de Zoete Wedd dealer who described middle managers at his firm as “anti-­ intellectual Cockneys.”36 The figure of the yuppie-­trader thus acted as a vessel for fears about etiquette and “excessive performance[s] of the same drivers” that informed more reputable upper-­class financialized masculinities; things like ambition and self-­interest.37 The City’s attempts to grapple with the nature of class and work were part of wider changes in transatlantic free-­market economies of the late twentieth century. In his analysis of “market populism” in the USA, Thomas Frank argues that a radical shift occurred in the 1980s and 1990s whereby the business class adopted the characteristics of the working classes; the rich were reimagined as overworked.38 In the City this manifested itself in the veneration of a work ethic not usually assumed to be the norm for an older generation of financial elites. This change was captured by the narrator of “Billion Dollar Day” who mused over footage of Richard Hill driving his BMW to work: “It’s 6.30 a.m., a time when no traditional City gent would be seen dead arriving at work.”39 Interviews with leading figures from the City conducted as part of a 1988 City Lives oral history project, similarly revealed a contemporaneous perception that a new “frightening standard” was being set by incoming American workers, and that there was a growing “trend towards longer hours” in the aftermath of Big Bang and the computerization of trading.40 Such comments implied an inherently British quality to the “old” ways of working that were being overwritten by the influx of foreign investors and institutions in domestic markets. To be a yuppie-­trader thus entailed putting in additional hours to compete in a competitive, rapidly globalizing workplace, and securing social mobility through tough dealing in currency trades, takeover speculation, and so forth.41 There were limits, however, to what social mobility meant within discourses of the yuppie-­trader. Depictions of this archetype tended to focus on the hunt for personal wealth accumulation rather than any desire to break into the upper echelons of the City via the

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accumulation of cultural and social capital. While free university education and means-­ tested maintenance grants after the 1962 Education Act meant more accessible professional qualifications for individuals from working-­class backgrounds, few progressed to senior management positions in the City without a private school and high-­ranking university education. This was especially true in some institutions. Leading figures in British-­run merchant banks and stockbroking firms, for example, remained those of a traditional familial elite well into the late twentieth century.42 It is for this reason that yuppie-­traders were rarely depicted as progressing up the managerial ladder by socializing with clients in the mold of corporate men in banking. The development of a new working-­and lower-­middle-­class financial masculinity was also informed by enhanced telecommunication capabilities. In the 1980s the arrival of the “information age” was heralded by Conservative Party politicians as the prerequisite of a successful economy, particularly in financial services where the speed of information was paramount. Access to world-­leading computers, fiber optics, and mobile phones were thus conflated with marketplace success.43 Such technology also further compounded the expectation that financial sector workers could and should be work obsessed. Viewers of BBC’s “Billion Dollar Day,” for example, watched Hong Kong–based William Wong eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in sight of a portable receiver that kept him abreast of movements in currency prices. According to the program’s narrator “Financial athletes” like William needed to “keep at it day and night,” in a world where the lucrative “sport” of currency trading and the capabilities of technology lead banks to “compete against each other twenty-­four hours a day.”44 These sentiments were echoed by fictional representations of ­dealers. In Speculators, currency trader Cutter described his relationship with his Reuters portable receiver as verging on obsessive: “I look at this the same way most people look at their watch. . . . I wake up in the dark to see how it’s doing. I keep it on while I shave, it’s with me at breakfast, I take it to restaurants. I don’t listen to the

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radio or read newspapers—I just watch this. . . . The market never stops and I can’t either.”45 The Official British Yuppie Handbook similarly described yuppies as always “on-­line,” with “rooms . . . devoted to homeworkspaces [sic] . . . streamlined high-­tech centres of activity, equipped with the latest technology.”46 Rather than a constraint on leisure time, traders and commenters alike hailed the capabilities of technology as assets. If work was an ideal vehicle for the pursuit of masculine self-­ fulfillment and social mobility then an ability to conduct transactions round the clock was a form of empowerment.47 The “self-­made man” of the yuppie genre was one whose masculinity relied upon his work ethic and uncompromising desire to rise from rags to riches by entangling with the market.48 Equally central to any hope of survival in the cutthroat, masculine world of trading was a person’s willingness to assume risk. The individualization of risk was a consistent feature of the Conservative Party’s political economy, most notably in its privatization of public services.49 But nowhere was risk-taking more explicitly extolled as a masculine virtue than in relation to finance. The entire plot of the 1989 British film Dealers centered on the tension between Danny Pascoe, a young, ambitious trader at fictional investment bank Whitney Paine, and his boss-­cum-­love interest, Anna Schuman. After the suicide of Danny’s colleague and dollar currency trader, Tony Eisner, Anna is hired to replace the latter. Throughout the film, the two repeatedly clash over Danny’s approach to trading: Danny:  I might take a dive every now and again but I always bring it back. Every quarter I’m never less than even and last return showed I made three million for the book in a nine week stretch. Take a look. Anna: I did take a look. I’ve read every major deal you’ve made over the past twenty-­four months. I know that you’re dangerous. Danny: Dangerous? Anna: Reckless might be a better word. Listen, I don’t want anyone under me taking those kinds of risks, alright?50

The climax of the film sees the matter settled. In a bid to rectify Eisner’s poor trading performance and recover the bank’s losses, Danny

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undertakes a spectacular gamble behind Anna’s back. He initially makes a loss, and on discovery, Anna is desperate to sell the dollars he purchased to minimize the damage. Danny holds fast as the market bottoms out and finally rallies, however, eventually securing a profit. He emerges victorious. His success also wins him Anna’s affections, implying that his sexual appeal as a man was linked to his trading acumen. In ways such as this, the yuppie-­trader archetype gendered risk aversion as feminine and cowardly, and portrayed the decisive adoption of risk as a test of masculinity. This was exemplified by the LIFFE traders whose activities inspired Churchill’s Serious Money. First opened in 1982, LIFFE was a futures market. In the words of historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, this kind of market brought ­traders to “the edge of the ordered world, on the barbaric final frontier of modern technology.”51 Compared to traditional commodities markets, LIFFE price movements bore decreasingly direct correlation to real-­ life goods or infrastructure: both profits and losses could be staggering. In a 1987 review of Churchill’s play, the Daily Telegraph’s City editor, Neil Collins, praised the production for its verisimilitude to real life. He juxtaposed the wild “bursts” of activity of LIFFE, where traders handled “ever more obscure forms of money,” with the “sedate” and “dying” commodities markets of the London Metal Exchange.52 Collins’s description imbued the risk-­taking LIFFE traders with a kind of youthful virility that he implied was lacking in those who opted for more traditional commodities trading. Embodying the role of financial frontiersman did not come without costs, however. Depictions of traders—both real and fictional— emphasized the physical toll that financial markets exacted from participants. Footage from the trading floors of Hong Kong, New York, and London in “Billion Dollar Day” reveled in close-­ups of traders chewing their fingers and smoking profusely. Chris Pavlou of Barclays’ currency desk remarked that “There’s nobody on that desk who’s over thirty-­five. People start in their early twenties for about ten years and then by the time they reach their very early thirties they’ve

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had about enough.”53 Suicidal or chronically ill traders were another common trope. In both the film Dealers and Tony Marchant’s Speculators, key plot points revolved around the declining health of senior traders, suffering through addiction and the loss of their marriages, jobs, and eventually lives because of the demands placed on them by the market. “There’s an unspoken rule in the Bank,” Speculators’ Cutter informs a fellow trader, “If dealing [isn’t] making you ill you [aren’t] doing your job properly.”54 Academic studies of the time painted a similar picture. Writing in the early 1990s, Howard Kahn and Cary L. Cooper found that 41.3 percent of financial dealers based in the City indulged in heavy drinking (three to six units of alcohol a day), something which they linked to coping strategies for occupational stress. In another study, Kahn and Cooper noted that male dealers displayed significantly higher free-­floating anxiety than the normative population.55 These aspects of trading no doubt contributed to the “young” part of the yuppie portmanteau. Yuppie-­traders were portrayed as youthful not only because they represented a generation of post-­youth-­culture baby boomers, but also because life as a trader seemingly required men in their prime to push themselves to the point of physical and mental exhaustion. Depictions of the yuppie-­trader thus articulated the heavily gendered set of expectations that underpinned British investment culture. While women were no longer excluded from the trading room floor by the 1980s, investing was still coded as a masculine space. In 1986 just 200 out of 6,400 traders working on the London Stock Exchange floor were women.56 More generally career paths for women within financial services remained limited: most female workers clustered in clerical as opposed to managerial grades.57 Just as significantly, the cultural archetype of the yuppie silently cemented racialized assumptions about the idealized subjects of British investment culture. In the 1980s British society was conditioned by deeply entrenched systemic racism, so it should be no surprise to find racism in the City.58 Writing for the Observer in 1986, journalist Martin Bailey commented that Bernard Isagba, the

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London-­born son of Nigerian and French parents, had become “the only black person among the 6,400 people transacting business” on the London Stock Exchange floor. This dubious honor was the result of the only other Black trader, David Adeleke, quitting his job with Barclays de Zoete Wedd, citing demotion and discrimination. The bank responded that Adeleke’s demotion was simply because he had “not displayed the attributes required” for the job of trader.59 However, Adeleke’s contemporaries confirmed that institutionalized racism was a persistent barrier for Black and ethnic minority individuals in the City. Interviewed by the Observer in the aftermath of the incident, Burmese-­born director of County Securities and fellow Stock Exchange member, Angus Phaure noted that “City recruiters say that people wouldn’t like working with blacks, and therefore it’s better to choose white candidates.”60 Robert Digby, a recruiting company director, similarly noted that Black candidates were overlooked during hiring processes because of their lack of “personal contacts,” or in other words their lack of access to white social and cultural capital.61 Manifestations of racism within City institutions were explicit and violent. According to press reports a man dressed as a black-­and-­ white minstrel walked onto the trading floor in the midst of Adeleke’s dispute, while other former colleagues called Adeleke a “token coon” and placed a “doll with pins inserted voodoo-­style” on the wall of his trading pitch.62 Equally as telling was the fact that Bailey concluded his otherwise condemnatory article by writing, “Not exactly the conventional City Gent, Mr Isagba wears a smart silvery-­grey suit which most of his colleagues consider “disco wear.” He certainly stands out on the crowded floor of the Exchange.”63 It is clear, then, that the dealing rooms of the City were explicitly coded as white spaces where those of European descent could expect to get ahead. The lack of genuine representation in the ranks of City institutions reinforced a whitewashing of investment culture more broadly. Depictions of nonwhite traders were certainly few and far between. And when people of color were given airtime in their capacities as traders, representation was marred by heavily racialized discourses.

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In “Billion Dollar Day,” William Wong was portrayed as Richard Hill’s transcontinental foil in the daily battle of global currency markets. The program’s narrator described Wong in orientalist terms, focusing on his lineage from a “family of currency traders.” His successes were pronounced as “not so much a product of education as thousands of years of Chinese trading tradition.”64 The Official British Yuppie Handbook similarly implied the “othered” nature of people of color within British investment culture. In a section of the book called “Variations on a Theme” the authors highlighted the existence of Buppies and Juppies for the unaware reader, terms that stood for Black and Japanese urban professionals, respectively. The authors went on to note, “These [groups] represent such minorities in contemporary British society that no in-­depth anthropological survey on them can be undertaken.”65 The existence of such terms indicated that people of color were not the norm, marking them out as different from the implicitly white yuppie that the rest of the book presumed to describe. The book’s authors were also eager to highlight what they saw as the more widespread phenomenon of Guppies—or gay urban professionals. Characterizing them as “super-­Yuppies,” they employed a series of tropes associated with gay men, highlighting Guppies’ roles as trend setters and the fact that their lack of family commitments (and two-­income households) meant they had “money to burn” and “possessions . . . that make straight Yuppies green with envy.” The segment finished with the comment that “It’s little wonder that some Yuppies view herpes, AIDS and arrest by police posing as gays as the price paid by Guppies for their marvellous lifestyle.”66 Gendered and racially coded as such, the yuppie-­trader culturally reinscribed social and economic hierarchies that had long since underpinned financial capitalism. Depictions of life as a City trader adapted the norms of nineteenth-­ century financial masculinity in light of rapidly globalizing deregulated markets and a Thatcherite rhetoric of free market meritocracy. The work-­obsessed and ambitious yuppie-­trader thus buttressed a process of cultural adjustment. This imagined the City as a site of wealth creation and social mobility

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for certain types of white working-­and middle-­class men. For those enticed into the world of stocks and shares, even if only vicariously, such images produced clear messages about the kind of individual they should expect to be to succeed.

The Filofax Generation The 1980s was a pivotal decade with regards to the role of consumer goods in the process of identity formulation.67 A delve into personal material and physical presentation thus provides further insight into the expected behaviors of participants in British investment culture. Specifically, the fashions, accessories, and beauty regimes associated with yuppie-­traders fostered the requirements of the masculine subject sketched out above and highlight the extent to which traders were expected to adopt an investment-­orientation to areas of their life beyond their trading decisions. Shifting our focus to material culture highlights the fact that the yuppie-­trader was as much a creation of late twentieth-­century consumer culture as it was of City culture. In 1998, associate professors of marketing Alan Bush and David Ortinau attempted to develop a psychographic profile of the American yuppie consumer and identify their preferences.68 Bush and Ortinau saw their work as meeting the needs of the large number of companies, from Ford and Zippo to Anheuser-­Busch, that had “been spending a great deal of money, time, and talent attempting to reach the Yuppie segment.”69 In Britain, too, marketing executives were determined to define new demographics to whom a whole range of products and services could be sold. In the course of this pursuit, they played a significant role in shaping the yuppie-­trader archetype. They also helped to make investment culture accessible to non-­investors, even if only in the form of lifestyle replication through cultural consumption. The masculine consumer did not, of course, first appear in the 1980s. Over the course of the postwar decades, consumption in Britain transitioned “from a female activity to a feminine-­marked but non-­gender directed one.”70 Take for example articulations of

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male consumer needs in works such as Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. Fleming was well known for detailing the elite purchases of his upper-­class spy, something which contributed to the concept of the “gentlemanly accessory.”71 The arrival of the “new man” as an “icon of masculinity” in the 1950s and 1960s, meanwhile, reflected an evolution in understandings of the male consumer. Whereas men’s retailers like Burton’s had once presented themselves as “tailors of taste” for gentleman, their marketing efforts increasingly spoke to young fashion-­conscious men.72 Under the tutelage of a generation of finance-­minded admen, consumer masculinity continued to evolve in the 1980s, spurred on by innovations in interconnected markets like menswear, grooming, toiletries, and consumer magazines.73 One of the intended audiences for these markets was clearly young urban professionals, not least because editors knew their spending power could serve as a honey trap for advertising revenue. Interviewed in a 1984 article in the Guardian, a representative of the newly launched Cosmo Man reflected that its readership was “likely to be mainly between 21 and 28; single with a steady relationship and ‘fairly substantially heterosexual.’ They’re interested in skin care and health; there’s ‘quite a considerable self-­interest’ in their profiles— they’re concerned about the pressures of their jobs, which demand that they become workaholics; and they’re also under pressure from their womenfolk, who want emotional openness from them.”74 Firstly, this description suggests a turn away from the domestic male ideals of the nineteenth century and postwar period described by John Tosh and Laura King.75 Yuppie masculinity was premised on youthful, consumerist hedonism and changing expectations that marriage (like all other aspects of life) should fit around the individual pursuit of marketplace success.76 The Official British Yuppie Handbook, for instance, informed readers that yuppies “just don’t have time for sex” due to their hectic schedules determined by long office hours, exercise classes, and shopping. Later sections of the book discussed marriage as little more than a mutually beneficial financial arrangement, emphasizing the importance of an investment mind-­set when it came to personal as well as financial decisions.77

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More importantly, Cosmo Man’s comments implied that physical upkeep was necessary to survive the rigors of a high-­powered job. The significance of material performance in the forging of financialized subjects was particularly apparent in the changing fashions of financial workers. The 1980s witnessed a greater emphasis than ever before on appearance, style, and bodily form in the workplaces of the Square Mile. In her 1997 study Linda McDowell argued that ­workers’ “ways of being and doing” became part of the product on sale in a rapidly expanding financial services sector.78 Knowing how to present oneself was, therefore, a necessary skill. It is no coincidence that huge sections of American Psycho languished on Patrick Bateman’s descriptions of his daily health care, hygiene, and even hair routines. Attention to dress or the purchase of beauty products were not deemed effeminate in the discourse of the yuppie-­trader, but a rational investment in future income potential and a marker of success. While the suit had long since been the expected standard in workplace attire, a more minimalist variation was adopted as the “uniform” of culturally self-­conscious City workers in the 1980s. This trend paid homage to working-­class subcultures of the 1950s, such as Mods and Teddy Boys, which foregrounded material expressions of social aspiration. Mods were particularly known for wearing conservative suits, kept fastidiously neat to enable a smooth transition between work and leisure.79 Despite their minimalism, those in the know attached a great deal of importance to subtle points of variation in attire.80 This was also true of the 1980s. A male assistant director interviewed by McDowell commented: “There is an unwritten rule about dress. Of course guys are going to come here in suits, but there’s a lot about the sort of style and colour.” Another interviewee echoed that “To wear a brown suit in the City is unforgiveable.” Workers themselves clearly recognized that the cut, hue, and brand of a suit were part and parcel of colleagues’ and clients’ perceptions of their authority and expertise. Presentational failings could mean lost commissions or career stagnation.81 For the yuppie-­trader occupation and consumption were impossibly intertwined: their job was assumed to determine their spending habits, while their ability to

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make calculated consumer purchases was marketed as determining their career success. For the female worker of the City the value attached to presentation posed a particular problem. As Joanne Entwistle points out, “For as long as women have been engaged in paid labour, dress has been a consideration at work.”82 This was especially true in an environment where appearance was equated to professional acumen and the masculine form was an assumed norm. For women in financial services there appeared little choice but to govern their femininity through daily acts of consumption. The pressure to do so manifested itself in the rise of power dressing, a style famous for its form-­extending shoulder pads.83 Although by no means exclusive to financial w ­ orkers, power dressing was a recognizable feature of the female yuppie-­trader discourse. The very name “power dressing” articulated a newfound strength for women: more than simply a fashion statement, it provided a particular set of rules that offered strategies for female career success based on androgyny and the replication of masculine body forms. And yet power dressing was a complex and ultimately commodified expression of late twentieth-­century female selfhood. Its particular vision of empowerment reinforced rather than questioned the importance of reorientating gender presentation to the needs of patriarchal workplaces. We have already seen in chapter 4 that a subgenre of financial self-­help exploded in the 1980s. In the case of power dressing, we can see its relationship to a much broader industry of image consultants, self-­ help authors, and staff development training course-­ leaders. Their task was to encourage self-­reflection and considered consumer purchases among people eager to improve their life circumstances. Their efforts epitomized the worldview of the investment-­oriented subject. For instance, image consultants claimed to have perfected the “science” of workplace dress by applying economically rational calculations to the processes of self-­presentation.84 Theirs was an explicitly market-­based discourse, as can be seen in the 1986 comments of Daily Mail fashion editor, Gail Rolfe: “The backbone of my wardrobe is a good suit. . . . You should always spend as much as

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you can afford on the outfit, remembering that quality of fabric and cut are the key to power dressing. Investing in this one good outfit pays enormous dividends.85 Such advice could even extend into the realm of bodily function. A Daily Mail “Femail” segment in 1984 praised advances in birth control like fertility predictors as an essential step toward female workplace success. An industry expert interviewed for the piece explained: “It’s a great Yuppie test for working women who want to time their pregnancies to fit in with the business cycle.”86 For marketing departments the notion of a female yuppie consumer with her own unique needs remained a deviation from a masculine norm. For women, the result was an expectation that they should adapt their gender presentation and even reproductive cycles to the rhythms of the market. At other times, women were simply excluded from yuppie material culture, remaining absent from advertisements for all kinds of yuppie-­oriented products. This is evident if we turn our attention to the marketing associated with a “wave of organization chic” that hit Britain in the 1980s. As “Odd bits of office gimmickry swamped the shops” yuppie culture transformed mundane office supplies into highly coveted commodities.87 Epitomizing this trend was the Filofax. Originating in early twentieth-­century America, the Filofax was a portable loose-­leaf planning system designed for scientific, military, and ecclesiastical data collection.88 However in the 1980s this storage system emerged as the must-­have item for the young and proficient businessman. Like power dressing, use of Filofaxes was not limited to those involved with high finance, although City workers certainly fell within the purview of its target demographic. A case study of the Filofax thus helps us to situate 1980s investment culture within a wider sociocultural transformation conditioned by the norms of free-­ market competition and the logic of business and finance.89 Often bound in expensive leather and fleshed out with a range of insert sheets—from “portfoliofax” investment guides to a map of the capital city—the Filofax became an iconic yuppie fashion statement.90 Each year Filofax produced a product catalog, which it began with a short company biography. In earlier years, this section was largely

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perfunctory. However, in the late 1980s Filofax began to curate a brand-­image that spoke to its target male executive audience. In its 1988 catalog, for instance, the company informed readers that Filofax products had long since been part of a “distinctively dynamic twentieth century lifestyle” that had transformed the “planet . . . into the biggest, busiest marketplace yet.”91 That this was envisioned as a masculine universe is attested to by individual product advertisements. For instance, Filofax sold its Winchester Personal Organizer with the tagline “Fully loaded and ready for action.” The text was accompanied by an image of a Filofax holstered in a gun belt, calling forth images of fellow frontiersman of a bygone age: the cowboy of the American West.92 This mercantile appendage was thus pitched as the must-­have accessory for masculine go-­getters ready to “shoot straight into action” in the world of business and finance.93 Responding to the needs of its intended yuppie target market, Filofax advertisements also promised to facilitate those eager to work around the clock in global markets. The launch of the Filofax desktop organizer in 1988 guaranteed that the product “does not stop working on 31st December. On the contrary . . . [it] helps you make an effortless transition to the New Year, which is far more efficient than having to break into a new desk diary.”94 By 1990 the company was offering inserts that covered everything from “finding more time” to “productive thinking” and a “flexible time log.”95 Its whole purpose was to enhance individual efficiency by encouraging people to divide their life into manageable and well-­organized data, collate and store networks of contacts, and strategically deploy their resources. The company sold its products as more than a mere handy tool. In the introduction to its 1987 product range, Filofax noted that its organizers were “a recognizable extension of each individual owner.”96 A year later the company similarly asserted that its products had “become more and more an integral part of today’s coordinated lifestyles.”97 Contemporaries appeared to receive the message: “I file therefore I am,” wrote one journalist in The Times.98 Journalist Pearson Phillip likewise hinted that the Filofax represented an entire way of life in a piece titled “Sans Fax, Sans Everything.” Having lost

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his Filofax, Phillip claimed to have been rendered “that most pathetic of creatures . . . a magician who has lost his wand, a baby who has lost his rattle, a snail who has lost its shell. My life support machine has been switched off.”99 The Daily Mail meanwhile described the generation of young people growing up through the Thatcher years as “The Fax Generation”: individuals whose entire identity was defined by the Filofax mentality. Such emotive (albeit tongue-­ in-­ cheek) descriptions of loss and obsession in relation to the Filofax reflects the disintegration of social compartmentalization in late twentieth-­century Britain. The distinctions between “work” and “life” that had characterized industrial capitalism became blurred under neoliberal-­inspired political and economic restructuring.100 For the “fax generation” each minute of the day had to be accounted for and allocated to enhancing some asset or another—whether building friendships, perfecting one’s outward appearance, or curating useful networks of contacts. As we have seen, British investment culture was dominated by depictions of individuals working round the clock at the heart of financial markets. With the aid of office gadgetry, this work could be extended to the self. It is for this reason that Filofaxes and personal electronic devices, like pagers and mobile phones, were viewed as signifiers of success in the material discourses of the yuppie-­trader. Such items were more than sheer extravagance. Their appeal lay in the fact that they enhanced the individual’s ability to participate in profit-­making and asset-­building activities by enabling “work” to occur outside office spaces and hours. Analyzing the cultural capital associated with these accessories also reveals the relationship between old and new in British investment culture. On the one hand the computerization of trading, and the arrival of devices like mobile phones and laptops clearly transformed the boundary between work and leisure for many individuals. But these processes did not exclusively rely on the arrival of new technology. After all, the Filofax could hardly be classed as innovation. It was the changing place that these tools were given within Briton’s

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daily lives that was important; they harnessed individual identity to the needs of global financial markets and large private corporations. Thus, much that was old began to perform functions that were new in the late twentieth century, as established products took on new meanings. This was an issue of expanding scale as much as changing context. Products and services associated with the world of business and finance gained unprecedented acceptance and even reverence in the 1980s. The huge popularity achieved by the Filofax is a case in point. Turnover for the company exploded, rising from £47,000 in 1978 to £12.9 million in 1987.101 Some of this success reflected the company’s own shift in focus away from an exclusively executive male audience. In 1990, an advertisement for Filofax implored its male clientele to buy a Pocket Organizer for the non-­executive women in their lives, whether their girlfriend, wife, or mother.102 Elsewhere the company began offering inserts such as “Leisure” with feminine-­marked activities like horoscopes, television, and shopping, as well as “Health and Good Looks,” which included advice for developing your wardrobe, “discovering your colours,” and monitoring your daily calorie intake. These kinds of inserts clearly mirrored the self-­help guidance that women encountered elsewhere, once again encouraging Filofax owners to apply an investment-­oriented mind-­set to other areas of their lives. In their efforts to identify and sell luxury goods and cultural commodities to young City workers, marketing departments and goods manufacturers helped to shape the boundaries of the figure of the yuppie-­trader. For those paying attention to the advertising campaigns that accompanied products like the Filofax or mobile phones, this archetype provided lessons about the supposed correlation between an investment-­orientation to life and success in a financialized economy. In the (often male) universe of the yuppie-­trader investing sat as part of an entire lifestyle characterized by excessive working hours, careful self-­presentation, and assiduous accumulation and deployment of resources.

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Buy! Buy! Buy! Of course, only a very small number of people ended up with a job as a trader on the stock exchange floor. In this sense the yuppie-­trader remained something “other”—an unrealistic fantasy of an elite life unavailable to most. And yet the culture of the City and its traders was not niche. Retailers and marketing departments reinforced the cultural authority of the City in their attempts to curate and capitalize upon consumer demand for yuppie commodities. In the case of Filofax, for example, the distribution activities of numerous companies extended the likely influence of its loose-­leaf organizers. High-­end fashion retailers including Mulberry began selling their own versions, while other competitors opened show rooms where staff would spend up to forty-­five minutes helping clients to buy the perfectly tailored personal organizer.103 In 1986 the company Funfax Ltd. began selling a version of the Filofax targeted specifically at a youth market. Meanwhile, a whole range of service providers used Filofax’s executive appeal to drive sales for their own products. In a 1988 television commercial for its young person’s account, Barclays Bank presented new customers with a choice between two free gifts: either a “genuine Filofax or the sixteen-­track music box tape, including the Blow Monkeys, Mel and Kim, and Swing Out Sister.”104 This framed the Filofax as a fashion accessory for a financially literate, style-­conscious youth who might otherwise be interested in pop and rock music. The outcome of such efforts was that Filofaxes caught the attention of a more varied consuming public. As chairman of Filofax, David Collischon, noted in 1987, the personal organizer sold “in Wigan just as well as in Sloane Street.”105 Indeed, such was the Filofax’s cultural cachet that BBC flagship soap opera Eastenders ran a subplot that revolved around a lost Filofax, while popular children’s television program, Blue Peter, instructed viewers how to make one at home.106 Marketing executives for other companies, too, recognized that the ups and downs of stock markets and the antics of their inhabitants held an attraction that could be used to sell a seemingly endless

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array of products. Tellingly, a 1988 academic study of yuppie demographics in the United States commented that advertisers should target “those who think and act like yuppies even if they don’t meet the demographic definitions.”107 Many companies in Britain took exactly this approach. They rendered images of the yuppie-­trader visible by scattering them across consumer society. In June 1987, a Famous Grouse advertisement sold its whiskey to customers by offering them a chance to win £25,000 in stocks and shares.108 Another listed prize in the promotional competition was free advice from a firm of Scottish stockbrokers. Just two days after the stock market crash in October that same year, Cadburys used the event to sell Boost bars with a copy that read, “Buy! Buy! Buy! Every stock­broker’s ego deserves a Boost.”109 In 1992 Waddingtons even announced that it was replacing the character of Reverend Green with a “City entrepreneur” in popular board game “Cluedo,” suggesting that the yuppie had become an instantly recognizable caricature in contemporary Britain.110 In the world of fashion too, the City served as a source of inspiration. Commenting on New York fashion week in 1984, Suzy Menkes of The Times noted that Ralph Lauren had modeled an oversized jumpsuit on the “traditional pin-­striped suit” of the Square Mile, while “his sleek new evening outfit is the gentleman’s city coat.”111 The preferences of City workers thus began “breaking out of the bespoke tailors and into high-­fashion . . . outfitters.”112 Elsewhere, Berlei bras and Alexon clothing both utilized the City of London as a backdrop for their advertising campaigns.113 The yuppie-­trader had clearly become someone whose style was to be admired, and their life emulated through acts of conspicuous consumption. Celebrity endorsement added further fuel to the fire. Mass media coverage of the rich and famous grew across the postwar period in ways that altered the expectations of daily life in many societies.114 So it is significant, for example, that New Romantic bands like Spandau Ballet and Ultravox donned City-­ inspired double-­ breasted trench coats and pinstripe suits on album covers and in music videos.115 In 1986, meanwhile, The Times gleefully pointed out that well-­known

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figures like Steven Spielberg, Brooke Shields, Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, and Mark Thatcher had all been spotted with Filofaxes in their possession.116 By turning business wear into cultural commodities pop, film, and television stars contributed to the sense that business and finance were “cool.” Equally as important was the fact that a growing number of financiers, entrepreneurs, and CEOs forged a place for themselves in mainstream celebrity culture.117 Peter York of the Observer noted that “1986 was the year of the business celebrity. . . . Cityland, moneyland, designland; they all synthesised in a new way in the world of Business . . . seriously rich, seriously cool.”118 As part of this phenomenon, people like Richard Branson, famous for building a business empire from his record label Virgin Records, provided new human-­interest angles on happenings in the City. Writing about the share flotation of Virgin in 1986, financial journalist Michael Walters commented that ads for the sale were “nicely calculated to bridge the gap between the City and show-­biz,” running with the tagline “After the Big Bang, try a little pop.”119 Other business celebrities of the period included figures like Alan Sugar and Anita Roddick whose careers as financiers and social entrepreneurs enacted the same kind of upward mobility as the barrow boys of the Square Mile. Jo Littler argues that this meritocratic discourse was peculiar to the cultural economy of the late twentieth century, and one that masked the re-­ embedding of certain forms of inequality.120 In short, the world of material goods, celebrity, and popular culture collided with the world of business and finance to a greater extent than ever before in the 1980s. In 1988 City journalist for the Daily Mail Margaret Stone even commented that “The City is the biggest entertainment show in town these days.”121 She was not wrong. Television in the 1980s was replete with depictions of traders. In addition to their role as protagonists in documentaries like “Billion Dollar Day,” they appeared in one-­off episodes of long-­running sitcoms, as reoccurring characters in popular sketch shows, and as regulars in soap operas. Producers clearly recognized that growing public fascination with the City could be translated into audience

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figures. In the process, they further commodified investment culture for a mass-­market audience. After all, television constituted a highly visible medium in this period. Until 1989 only four channels existed: BBC One, BBC Two, ITV and Channel 4. A program could expect to receive anywhere between three and twelve million viewers on a given evening, thus offering writers a chance to reach a “nationwide audience” and have their work “a topic of general discussion the next day.”122 Thames Television’s Capital City exemplified producers’ belief in the appeal of financial-­based entertainment. The hour-­long weekly drama followed the lives of a group of young traders at the fictional investment bank Shane Longman. The show aired for two series between 1989 and 1990, the first of which was screened during prime-­time hours on Tuesday evenings in the run-­up to Christmas. The show received the full support of television network ITV, including significant financial outlays. Describing the high production quality of Capital City, the TV Times built an impressive picture of its visual lexicon: “Walk across the back lot of Elstree Studios . . . and stroll down a dingy passage. You pass a wardrobe room with rails of £600 suits, silk blouses, silk ties . . . and suddenly you get a whiff of money. You are approaching the main set of Capital City.”123 The program was also accompanied by “the most expensive [advertising] campaign ever mounted by a British TV company for one series.”124 Clearly intended to increase seasonal advertising revenue for the channel, critics perceptibly described the show as “one of the most naked attempts ever to capture a young professional audience.”125 Compared to the likes of Serious Money or Wall Street the writers of Capital City offered viewers a more sympathetic and relatable portrayal of the Square Mile’s inhabitants. Speaking to the Observer, Capital City’s main writer, Andrew Maclear commented: “I tried to get away from a hard-­core storyline . . . and not sit down to write an extended account of, say, a fraud. . . . The programme is all about 10 characters.”126 The show’s appeal, in other words, theoretically derived from the fortunes of the “young, high-­flying dealers, hired by Shane Longman for their particular blend of style, genius and

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energy . . . [and] their ambitions, their loves, their gambles and their ultimate dreams.”127 And yet, despite the writers’ best efforts to move away from a show about financial markets, Capital City was precisely about what it meant to live in the shadow of them. Takeover bids, price collapses, and insider dealing all provided storytelling devices and a major source of motivation for the lead characters. In such ways the program transformed the world of investment into digestible entertainment for a general television audience. The program struggled to convert high production values into strong audience figures, however. After eight episodes it had viewing figures of around five to six million, three million fewer than ITV’s major soap, Emmerdale Farm.128 One of the main problems appeared to be the mix of genres generated by the writers’ attempts to dramatize finance. Part “City soap opera,” part high-­end prime time drama, Capital City tried to adapt the melodrama and plotline structures of the former with something that might also appeal to a professional, male market.129 A typical passage of dialogue flowed as follows: Max: 88 is a reasonable risk with EEC intervention hanging on for the PanMed price. Take the profit while it’s there! . . . Jimmy: I’m going to wait till 86 before buying if that means I can cover your swap loss and wipe out my book deficit. . . . Max: If you don’t buy at 88 and the EEC do bail PanMed out, the price will escalate, our profit will be blown and we’ll both lose.130

The result was a strange combination of “incomprehensible money-­ shuffling . . . [and] arcane City jargon, presumably appealing to City folk,” and an “emotional side, which is not very different to other examples of the [soap] genre.”131 Capital City’s failings should caution us against making assumptions about the level of demand for City-­based general entertainment. For every commercial success like Wall Street there existed many partial or complete failures. Nonetheless, the quantity of new programming that fit this genre in the 1980s is telling in itself. ITV was by no means alone in seeking out a new investment-­based hit show. BBC One’s 1986 drama series Strike It Rich followed the fortunes of a

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group of “working class and middle class types” brought crashing into the world of stocks and shares.132 Its plot chartered a takeover bid at the fictional news corporation, Bentley News Agency, and the subsequent race to track down inheritors of original shares soon to rocket in value. Airing weekly in the prime-­time slot of 7:30 p.m. on Saturdays, BBC audience reports for Strike It Rich indicated that the series drew in an average of 7.3 million viewers in its first run. It proved most popular among DE audiences—those in semi-­skilled, unskilled, and casual work; pensioners; and the unemployed.133 This audience mirrored the program’s characters, which included: Susan Morgan, an unhappily married school teacher; the Pearce family, who lived on a council estate in Manchester; Kelley, a petty criminal on the run from the law; and Helen Mayne, an elderly hotel owner. Throughout the series, viewers followed these people in their attempts to learn the ropes of share ownership and manage a newfound relationship with money. Audiences were invited to imagine what they would do with a small fortune won on the stock market, or how they would act in a tense AGM. The show normalized the world of stocks and shares not through the lives of traders, then, but through the lives of ordinary people. Such programming provided lessons in share ownership that complemented the more consciously educational efforts of financial advice programs discussed in chapter 4. If nothing else, it was more likely to be seen by individuals not already seeking out a lecture on investing. The comic writers of the 1980s were equally as keen to say something about life in a society increasingly dominated by stock markets. One of the more memorable episodes of Jon Sullivan’s classic sitcom Only Fools and Horses found pathos and humor in the kind of social aspiration engendered by the yuppie-­trader. First aired in 1981, Only Fools and Horses followed East London wheeler dealers, Derek “Del Boy” Trotter and his younger brother Rodney as they failed to make a success of various semi-­legitimate business ventures. In the opening scene of the season-­six episode in question, titled “Yuppy Love,” Rodney moans to his Uncle Albert about a change in Del’s attitude:

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Rodney: He saw that film, Wall Street, about 6 bloody times. . . . There’s a character in that called Gordon Gekko and he’s a real tough high flying whizz kid, right. And Del wants to be just like him! . . . Del thinks all you need is a Filofax, a pair of braces and you’re a chairman of the board.

Sure enough, moments later Del Boy arrives in a striped shirt, blue suit trousers, and red suspenders. In response to Rodney’s criticism, Del retorts “That’s the trouble with you Rodney, you don’t move with the times. The world is changing out there, it’s a financial ­jungle. It’s a question of he who dares wins, he who hesitates, don’t.”134 The episode clearly offered a commentary on the growing presence of the City in daily life. In Del’s case, this meant not only taking on the style of the yuppie, but also its accompanying values as embodied by a fictional Wall Street trader. The show’s comedic value came at Del’s expense, however. For example, his unsuccessful attempts to flirt with female yuppie stereotypes at a trendy wine bar exposed his failure to obtain the necessary social and cultural capital to fit in: Del: Well, I’ve been up since six this morning trying to talk to a bloke in New York. Woman 1: [giggling to her friend] Why didn’t you use a telephone? Del: No, I’ve got a telephone an’ all that. No, I mean, it’s just a long and stressful day wheeling and dealing in the old commodities market. It ain’t all champagne and skittles. Oh no—buying, selling, making billion-­pound decisions. It’s a git of a journey home an’ all! Woman 2: What exactly do you buy and sell in the commodities market? Del: Oh, you know, this and that, whatever’s going, you know. Iron, ore, sugar beet. I made a killing today on olive oil. Gawd knows what Popeye’ll say when he gets home!135

At the end of this exchange, the two women burst out laughing at rather than with Del, much to his bemusement. Unbeknownst to him, Del’s downfall was his inability to talk knowingly about financial markets. By highlighting the humor of his shortcomings as a yuppie-­ trader, Only Fools and Horses reinforced a message that participating

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in the financialized world of 1980s Britain required more than just investment in material goods. It also required a genuine investment in financial literacy and financial markets, something that was simply not possible for the Del Boys and Rodneys of the world. If the Trotters were loveable because of their inadequacies as financialized subjects, other comedic characters occupied a more contentious place in British popular culture because of their success in adopting this role. Comedian Harry Enfield’s short-­lived sketch character, Loadsamoney, was an artful parody of what it looked like when the working-­class aspiration of the yuppie-­trader found its way outside of the Square Mile. The character’s premise was based on a new cohort of tradesmen enriched by a booming property market and demand for home improvements. Less investor, more small business owner, Loadsamoney’s riches were no less tied to the movements of financial market transactions than his barrow boy counterparts in the City. He occupied an almost identical cultural space, articulating a parallel white working-­class masculinity: that of “Essex Man.”136 Loadsamoney’s unrefined and uncultured characterization mocked working-­class affluence, as he waved his wads of cash, sneered at audiences, and drove a convertible adorned with the bumper sticker: “I’ve upped my income—UP YOURS!” Where Del’s entanglement with yuppie culture seemed to suggest inevitable failure, Loadsamoney implied that certain types of working-­class men had indeed benefited from booming deregulated markets, albeit with unpalatable consequences. Loadsamoney certainly obtained cultural prominence. His name turned up in political debates, job advertisements, personal announcements, and racehorse names. Meanwhile, Enfield was inspired to release a spinoff single, “Doin’ up the house” which reached number 4 in national music charts. This earned the character an appearance on television chart show, Top of the Pops in May 1988. He also starred in a series of Sekonda advertisements, and appeared on televised charity fundraising marathon, Comic Relief.137 Responses were, of course, mixed. Many critics praised Enfield for capturing the very worst of 1980s individualism and obsession with personal wealth. Enfield was shocked, however, to find his creation also becoming something of an

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anti-­hero. The Times reported that Loadsamoney was “the most popular catchphrase in the country; it resounds around banks, pubs and undergraduate bars—and is most of all imitated by the wad-­waving Loadsamoneys who personified Loadsamoney in the first place.”138 The Guardian similarly noted that “real yobs all over the City . . . have begun appearing in pubs brandishing bundles of genuine bank notes and screaming ‘loadsamoney, loadasamoney.’ ”139 The plasterer’s appeal to City workers indicates that they, at least, recognized something in him that resonated with their perceptions of success in an increasingly financialized socioeconomic system. As previous chapters have shown, the activities of financial institutions and the financial advice industry set many of the parameters of late twentieth-­century investment culture. However, their efforts were complemented by a proliferation of advertisements, television shows, films, novels, songs, and plays that took the stock market as their backdrop, its various bit-­players as their characters, and the ups and downs of the market as a source of drama, intrigue, and comedic mishap. In doing so, the producers, commissioners, and writers of the 1980s and 1990s normalized investing and rendered it a form of cultural, as much as economic, capital. In short, the cultural phenomenon of the yuppie-­trader emerged out of, but also intensified, the reach of British investment culture. It certainly chimed with the valori­ zation of the City and financial markets that the public experienced in the pages of the popular press and political rhetoric. And even if people laughed at characters like Del Boy, it was often because they could see parts of themselves in them. They too bought Filofaxes, red suspenders, and trench coats, often despite living miles from London and being employed in industries far removed from financial services.

Conclusion In 1987, Robert Worcester, the chairman of polling company Mori, noted that “if you’re a mass manufacturer of consumer goods, forget it. . . . [The concept of the yuppie] won’t do you much good.” As he went on to conclude, “Anything, even a newspaper, where there need

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to be many buyers to succeed” was best advised to keep clear of the yuppie, because there weren’t that many of them “and the rest of us are tired of hearing about them. Yuppies, Puppies, phooey.”140 In his dismissive attitude toward the mass-­market appeal of yuppie goods, Worcester overlooked the growing significance of the City of London not only as a center of Britain’s economy but as an icon of British culture. Indeed, the increasing cultural prevalence of the yuppie-­trader archetype indicates just how far investment culture took on a genuinely diffuse and populist character in the 1980s. This, despite the fact that it centered on the entirely niche world of high finance. So, although City traders by no means represented the masses dealt with in the rest of this monograph, the culture that surrounded them did play an important part in the broader story being told. Part cultural construction, part reflection of socioeconomic and demographic change, the archetype of the yuppie-­trader modeled ways of being that were particularly responsive to a deregulated and globalized financial environment. It normalized risk-­taking and the drive for profit by hailing them as masculine virtues, and it celebrated capital markets as an engine of social mobility. That is not to say that financial workers in the 1980s were “more” masculine than those of older capitalist orders. They were differently masculine in ways that reinscribed a white, male norm at the heart of British financial infrastructures. At the same time, yuppie-­traders embodied an investment-­ orientation to life, applying their market-­making acumen to their decision-­making processes in their personal lives. The iconography of the yuppie-­trader thus provides a useful case study of how cultural processes shaped financialization. In this instance, subtle revisions to established cultural norms served to reconcile Britain’s emerging consumer-­oriented investment culture; a governmental rhetoric that lauded the meritocracy of deregulated financial markets; and the long-­standing interests of an institutionally embedded capitalist elite. Yuppie culture also helps us to understand why investment culture was so uneven in its transformation of society. The extent to which “ordinary” people adopted and integrated cultural resources associated with the yuppie-­trader into their daily lives was inevitably highly

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differentiated. At the same time, the meanings attached to the yuppie were constantly shifting with a growing trend toward parody, satire, and critique. Consequently, the British public displayed resistance and anger at, as well as plenty of indifference to this figure. Britons certainly did not all seek to become financial whiz kids working as a traders in London’s boom and bust markets. They were no Gordon Gekko or Patrick Bateman. Rather, many were individuals who, despite never having owned shares, found themselves more au fait with investment products, the sights and sounds of a trading-­room floor, and what success in those environments looked like. There was also a growing desire among consumers to be sold the cultural markers associated with life in the City. After all, producers, retailers, and advertisers not only created demand, they also responded to it. In such ways, the presumed needs and norms of the yuppie-­trader came to shape spaces of living and ways of being for a brief moment in the mid-­to-­late 1980s. Even after the specific fashions and fads of the period faded, the wider sociocultural transformation to which yuppie culture contributed continued to find expression. Business and markets retained their place as a mainstay of popular culture in programs like The Apprentice or the BBC’s online celebrity share trading game, Celebdaq.141 The result was something more everyday than the exaggerations of the yuppie; a sanitized version of a financialized culture that was neither all-­encompassing nor inconsequential. The growing cultural clout of the City in the 1980s thus served as a powerful tool to legitimate the broader shifts in capitalism outlined in the rest of this monograph. It expanded the parameters of investment culture beyond only those who directly invested in British companies, and fostered a degree of accommodation with the economic processes of financialization.

Chapter 6

Are We Rich Yet? Investment Clubs and Investor Activism

Writing in 1990, Rosanna Spero of the Daily Mail commented on a revival of the investment club as a popular vehicle for stock market investment among Britons: “Although investing in stocks and shares may sound a daunting prospect, teaming up with a group of friends can make it fun and even the social event of your month. Some 53,000 people have grouped together to form more than 3,800 investment clubs, pooling their money to invest in the stock market. These DIY investment funds invest a total of £2.2 million a month and . . . will be worth £74 million by the end of the year.”1 As discussed in chapter 1, investment clubs first gained popularity in the 1950s. But a stock market crash in the late 1960s followed by a decade of falling share prices and unfavorable tax regimes dampened interest in this form of DIY mutualism. From a high point of 2,500–­ 3,000 clubs in the mid-­1960s, by the mid-­1980s only around 600 clubs remained affiliated to the National Association of Investment Clubs (NAIC).2 These fleeting communities of investors left few records behind. Much of the material that does account for their activities in the 209

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late twentieth century comes from contemporaneous journalistic commentary and occasional interviews with members. However, this material is rare, particularly between the late 1960s and early 1980s when so few clubs existed.3 Even when the first privatizations of the Thatcher governments and a mid-­decade stock market boom appeared to give the nation the share-­buying bug, little comment was made about investment clubs in a press awash with news about popular capitalism and private investors. It was not until after the 1987 stock market crash that the movement appeared to recover some of its lost verve. As Spero’s article suggested, by the mid-­1990s club numbers were well and truly on the rise. Newspaper coverage indicates that they were set up all over the country, from Poole on the southern coast up to Liverpool and Middlesbrough, as well as beyond the Scottish boarder to Glasgow. Their memberships included minicab drivers, schoolteachers, construction workers, mechanics, council workers, baggage handlers at Heathrow airport, firemen, and much more besides. After decades of waxing and waning in popularity, investment clubs once again found something to offer large numbers of British investors.4 The experiences of investment club members take us a step away from the elite levels of the City and toward more everyday encounters with share ownership. This chapter thus begins the task of reconstructing how people responded to Britain’s consumer-­oriented and institutionalized mass investment culture through a study of investment clubs and investor activism. Doing so reveals that some people did indeed adopt more financialized subjectivities in this period. Many investment club members and investor activists, for example, can be viewed as aspirant investor-­citizens. They chose to be actively involved in the processes of investment, turning away from the more pervasive experience of being a passive investor-­shopper, despite sharing similar concerns about risk exposure and inexperience in the market. Of course, we should be wary about overstating the illustrative nature of club members and investor activists. They were not necessarily representative of Britain’s “investing public,” and a comprehensive examination of how Britons understood investing in the 1980s

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and 1990s is beyond the scope of this book. But investment clubs and investor activism remain interesting in their own right. As a 1960 article in The Times pointed out, club portfolios reflected the “regular discussions of groups of individuals of diverse ages and occupations” about matters of investment.5 Investment clubs can, therefore, provide insights into the opinions of small investors through the trail of agendas, accounts, and minutes of meetings they left behind. Although bureaucratic, these records offer a glimpse into the motivations and concerns of Britain’s intrepid investors in the 1980s and 1990s. We can see what “buying into” British investment culture meant to people both financially and culturally. It becomes especially clear that ordinary people in search of financial security, social inclusion, and political enfranchisement saw the purchase of shares, unit trusts, and pensions as more than mere asset management. The decision to invest reflected their hopes, fears, and anxieties about the novel expectations of life in an increasingly financialized society. A history of these individuals also reminds us that we should not think of investors as fools, manipulated by politicians, salesmen, and marketers into purchasing products and services they neither wanted nor needed. Although many people felt compelled to educate themselves in financial matters and to participate in investment culture, they did so in knowing ways. Through the activities of club members and activists we can begin to see just how far individual desire and demand fueled the transformations of British investment culture described in previous chapters. In their often failed attempts to overcome the relative disadvantages of a highly institutionalized investment culture, we can also identify investors’ growing awareness of their apparent vulnerabilities in capital markets dominated by powerful financial conglomerates.

“Join the Club”: The Rebirth of the Investment Club “Movement” Since their arrival in Britain in the late 1950s, investment clubs served a complex and composite set of purposes. These were largely derived

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from the economic, social, and cultural moment of their creation: they first emerged in a postwar political economy that largely accepted social democratic notions of pooled social risk and collective action. On the economic side, investment clubs offered the obvious benefits of mutualism. Members with only limited capital could invest in a diverse and therefore risk-­reducing portfolio. They profited from financial, experiential, and temporal economies of scale without having to resort to a unit trust and the loss of control over investment decisions that doing so often entailed. But beyond their economic functions, mid-­twentieth-­century investment clubs displayed similar traits to many other forms of postwar associational life. Members certainly perceived there to be social benefits to collective investment such as building social capital through regular meetings.6 To function, clubs required communal discussions, underpinned by (usually democratic) group decision-­making. It was a genuine joint venture into the world of investment that also provided opportunities for self-­education. By comparison, unit trusts were a distinctively individualistic method of risk and resource pooling. In their second wave of popularity in the late-­1980s, investment clubs retained their social character and long-­standing format (clubs of up to twenty members paying small monthly amounts to a pooled investment pot). They also continued to reflect the strange blend of financial management, financial education, and leisure activity that characterized Britain’s investment culture in the late twentieth century. Writing about the growth in investment club numbers in 1995, Justin Urquhart Stewart of the Independent commented that “What all investment clubs have in common is a sense of fun. Playing the stock market doesn’t have to be a grey pastime. The investment club approach offers an enjoyable, sociable, low-­risk route to the thrills and spills of stocks and shares.”7 This mixed function manifested itself in the diverse activities that investment clubs organized for members. The all-­women Sirens club from Oxford, for example, hosted summer barbecues and Christmas events, while the mixed-­ gender Belcombe Investment Club ran a regular “stick and pin” shares competition for members’ children.8 The 1981 Investment

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Club, a women-­only investment club located in Glasgow, likewise hosted curling matches and annual trips to coincide with their AGM. A large portion of their activities centered on socializing and learning from local guest speakers (usually about financial topics, but not exclusively). Some members noted that their eventual decision to quit came because they chose to prioritize other social activities such as art classes, working with Girlguiding, and choir practice, clearly conceptualizing their investment club activities in the same vein.9 The 1981 Investment Club also ran fictional shares competitions for members, named the “Great Share Races.” They were not at all dissimilar to the Daily Mail’s annual shares competition, and included a “Spring Sprint,” a “Bargain Mart Race,” and the “Inheritance Game.”10 If investment board games provided an opportunity for people to practice investing with fictional money in an entertaining and social environment, investment clubs were the real-­life version. The ways that politicians, journalists, and club members talked about investment clubs underwent subtle changes in the late twentieth century, despite the degree of continuity in how they functioned. Descriptions of their role in promoting self-­help, active citizenship, and direct ownership of shares may have sounded familiar, but the context in which these discussions occurred gave them new significance. The period between 1986 and 1989 was an odd one for British investment culture. Many of the early experiments with share shops and licensed dealers were falling by the wayside and the frenetic energy associated with the twin forces of privatization and deregulation had begun to wear off: it was becoming apparent that popular capitalism had failed to enfranchise the nation in the ways envisaged by many of its political advocates.11 And yet mass-­market financial news, advice, and entertainment was coming into its own. As the dust settled on the far-­reaching reforms of the decade, the more permanent fixtures of Britain’s new investment culture were coming into view. This was a more subtle culture of mass investment than the apparent zeitgeist of popular capitalism, one based on new consumerist relationships between Britons and those financial institutions keen to point them toward managed funds.

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In this context, investment clubs embodied a distinctive culture of investment that didn’t simply echo Conservative Party visions of popular capitalism or institutional offers of simplified asset management services. Rather they served as a response to the changing conditions that private investors faced in a heavily institutionalized market. Contemporary commentators of the late 1980s and early 1990s certainly began to more frequently disparage the realities of investing faced by small investors. Gavin Oldham, previously of Barclayshare and the WSOC, lamented in 1990 that “Materials prepared for investors are heavily geared toward the institutional investor and the corporate community” in ways that were, “typically difficult to understand and deal with” for private investors.12 In the face of rising dealing costs and lack of information, journalists likewise felt justified in asking whether “certain companies really want private investors—or even any investors at all.”13 Much the same sentiment was captured by cartoonist Christine Ellingham in a 1987 depiction of overwhelmed City brokers fending off crowds of unwanted small investors (figure 18). Club members themselves commented on their disillusionment with their experiences of investing in late twentieth-­century Britain.14 Echoing Gavin Oldham’s concerns, East Sussex-­based investment club member, Paul Tolhurst, complained to the Daily Mail that it was “difficult for an inexperienced investor to find out about a company without professional help.”15 Meanwhile, Peter Adams of the Nottingham-­based Test Match Investment Club described his club’s investment strategy as a response to the experience of losing money on “shares tipped in the Press” because they “always went up before we had a chance to buy them.”16 Early member of the 1981 Investment Club, Sheila Humberstone, also recalled, “I joined to . . . learn about our financial institutions . . . but I was disappointed to find that both banks and the share market were almost completely concerned with quick, high profits. It seemed to me that this was particularly bad for our new technologies—which neither banks nor the share market would support. . . . Established companies were also damaged by shareholder greed. . . . I remember calling the stock

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Figure 18. Drawing by Christine Ellingham, Daily Mail, 5 August 1987, 18–19. © DMG Media, Associated Newspapers Limited.

market middle-­class bingo.”17 One way or another, investment club members recognized their lack of power in a financial system dominated by institutional investors. Investment clubs also appeared to offer a solution to the persistent problem of investor ignorance. In an evocatively titled article, “The Kiss-­and-­Run Brokers!,” Daily Mail journalist Garran Patterson hit the nail on the head when he noted that “the British public was only too ready to be wooed” by privatization issues, adding, “What we are not . . . is the stockmarket investor the government hoped for” (emphasis original).18 His was a view shared by many of his contemporaries. In a 1990 self-­produced report about its own organizational future, the WSOC worried that after a decade of popular capitalism many investors lacked the necessary financial literacy to make sound investment decisions. It lamented that most small shareholders “simply have no contacts, [and] no knowledge.”19 Investment author Simon Rose likewise despaired that a “substantial number” of new investors “don’t even realize that you can sell them [shares],” while

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“Investment Referee,” Richard Youard told the Guardian that “A depressing number” of investors had yet to understand the differences between different forms of investment. Many, he suggested, regarded “the written warning that investments can go down as well as up as nothing more than weasel wording by professionals to protect themselves.”20 In such circumstances the stock market crash of 1987 seemed only to confirm the need for an investment vehicle that protected small investors from dramatic losses; allowed them to gain knowledge and experience of financial markets; and through which they could retain autonomy from large financial institutions and develop a more powerful voice in UK markets. In short, investment clubs reflected the fears and insecurities of Briton’s small investors as they entered new markets.21 Peter Bromwich of the Walsall-­based “Fast Breeders Club” told the Daily Mail, “Most of us have never invested before. It is nice to be able to sit down and talk about investments before actually buying them.”22 By comparison to other financial educative opportunities, people appeared to like investment clubs precisely because they treated investment as a collective rather than an individual pursuit. This helps to explain why Britons continued to form investment clubs based on personal relationships with neighbors, friends, coworkers, or family members. The Harlsey Group Investment Club, for example, took its name from Harlsey Cresent in Stockton-­on-­Tees, the road on which the three families who constituted its membership lived.23 A Daily Telegraph article on the Belcombe Investment Club revealed that its members discussed their portfolio when they bumped into one another at the local cricket club.24 Elsewhere, Lynne Bateson of the Evening Standard affirmed the social trust and cohesion that clubs provided when she commented that investment clubs were “Particularly popular with retired people, who see them as a way of keeping contact with their work-­mates.”25 The resurgence of investment clubs can also be seen as part of a wider increase in public concerns about the management and control of risk in late twentieth-­century Britain.26 Risk management certainly became central to how clubs were discussed by members. Describing

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her experience of club life, Christine Richards of the 1981 Investment Club noted that “discussions at the Club made me more aware of risks and how to care for one’s savings.” Stella Money, who joined the club in 1995 also told of her desire to have “a reassuring way to buy and sell stocks and shares with real money, real gains, and some grievous losses.”27 Nor was caution limited to all-­women clubs. Discussing the investment club he founded in 1988 with three childhood friends, Paul Tolhurst claimed that it was “based on friendship, not on making the maximum profit.”28 Members clearly viewed financial literacy as a necessary part of contemporary life, but something that could come at great personal cost to obtain. Consequently, they tended to prioritize access to a protected route to the stock market over the quick riches apparent in cultural depictions of yuppies and incitements to invest found in some financial advice books. In this context, the localized and intimate lines along which clubs were formed made them central to a feeling of connection and safety for members. Tolhurst, for example, reiterated that he and his friends had founded the club because they “wanted a way of protecting each other as well as seeing each other—to show that we would always be there and to have financial backup in times of need.”29 Such emotive language attached to a form of mutual investment highlights the anxiety that drove the resurging popularity of investment clubbing. For some at least, DIY mutualism was a way to reaffirm long-­standing bonds of friendship by offering financial protection in a period of apparent opportunity but also distinct uncertainty for small investors. The emergent identity of the financial services consumer (as opposed to investor) in late twentieth-­century investment culture also affected how some members articulated their collective approach to investing. In the 1960s the friendship and social trust that underpinned investment clubs did not produce especially political outcomes. In the 1980s and 1990s members still saw their activities as part investment, part “drinking clubs” and the basis of annual “weekend get-­together[s].”30 But they also became more politicized, partly because of the infiltration of consumer narratives into financial services. Seen by institutions and politicians alike as consumers

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of financial services, investment club members had a ready-­made language to express their growing sense of discontent.31 Indeed, Lawrence Black’s description of the Consumers’ Association (CA) as voicing “the concern of the consumer against producers,” provides a comfortable fit for investment clubs in the late twentieth century.32 Members’ descriptions of their activities often portrayed the benefits of club membership in terms of financial “empowerment” (itself a term derived from activist notions of sovereign consumer choice). In fact, the CA even threw its weight behind demands for better rights for financial services customers by proclaiming that the Financial Services Act of 1986 had been a failure and producing its own set of proposals for new legislation.33 It would be easy to write off club members as little more than middle-­class and small-­“c” conservative hobbyists. In many cases this was undoubtedly true. But ownership of shares did not necessarily fall easily along political fault lines. A 1988 survey of readers of the Labour Party’s members’ magazine revealed that 17 percent of respondents owned stocks and shares.34 More to the point, we should not overlook club members’ complicated relationship with Britain’s financialized political economy. Clubs represented a strange mix of acquisitive individualism and community-­centered collectivism. While some members came to see themselves as well-­informed share owners in the mold of the idealized investor-­citizen, many also identified as part of local collectives, struggling to make their voices heard in unequal financial marketplaces. In the 1980s and 1990s, investment clubs thus became vehicles for concerns about the vulnerable position of private investors in an institutionalized investment environment. They also provided a space in which new regimes of financialized subjectivity combined with more traditional forms of social organization.

Women Investors As discussed in chapter 5, the financialization of British society was a gendered process. At this point, therefore, it is worth pausing to

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consider the case of women’s investment clubs more specifically. Unfortunately, there are no exact figures for the numbers of women-­only investment clubs in Britain between 1980 and 2000. A 1960 survey by the NAIC suggested that housewives accounted for 5.47 percent of members, with women constituting an overall average of 13.62 percent of club members. By 1999, the Mirror reported that a quarter of British investment club members were women, indicating a certain level of growth.35 It was among women investors that a language of financial empowerment most explicitly began to penetrate conceptualizations of investment. As one woman told the Daily Mail’s Rosanna Spero in 1994, “Learning about money allows women to take control of their lives.”36 The need for women to establish economic independence became a locus of anxiety in a British society awash with investment fervor. Reporting on a Gallup survey in 1987, the Daily Mail noted that a fifth of married women had no knowledge of their husband’s earnings or their pension arrangements.37 A 1994 Mintel “Women 2000” survey similarly reported that less than 25 percent of women had their own bank account.38 This general state of affairs should have come as no surprise to contemporaries. It was not until the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act that women were legally entitled to hold a bank account or access mortgage credit in their own name. Before that, they could find themselves subject to a request by the bank for their husband or father to cosign. It was also only in the 1990 budget that married women were made responsible for their own tax bill and assessed on their individual income and assets. In such circumstances it is no wonder that women articulated their dismay that when it came to investment, as one woman said, “the bank don’t expect that I can handle it all, and keep sending communications to my husband.”39 Women’s revised legal position in the early 1990s matched a series of changes in the discourse surrounding female investors in this period. Ben Jackson argues that neoliberalism and second-­wave feminism “were the most influential ideologies in British life after the 1970s.”40 In the world of investment we find a space where some of

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the boundaries between the two were negotiated. Take, for example, a 1988 article in The Accountant’s Magazine reporting on the 1981 Investment Club: “Ask the average male chauvinist what image is conjured up by the phrase ‘women’s investment club’ and he will probably rise to the bait. ‘Half a dozen housewives who feel unjustifiably oppressed and splurge the house-­keeping money on shares in Virago Publishing.’ In some instances he may, of course, be right.”41 As this comment suggests, second-­wave feminism did not simply run parallel to British investment culture, it fed into it (or at the very least provided a framework through which contemporaries understood the significance of women’s financial autonomy). It is important to note that financial autonomy was not a given for women in investment club settings. Their experiences often depended on the social networks that comprised each club’s membership. Some women joined investment clubs as part of a couple (either with husband and wife acting as members in their own right, or investing together as a single unit). In such instances gendered hierarchies sometimes prevailed. Mrs. Gird of the Furness Park Investment Club, for example, held funds in her own name but club minutes reveal that it was her husband who attended meetings and spoke on her behalf.42 By comparison, other women formed or joined women-­only investment clubs precisely because they wanted to discuss money in a homosocial space. Reflecting on her reasons for joining the 1981 Investment Club, Stella Money commented: “A money club for women only—I jumped at the chance.” A fellow member further admitted being drawn to the club because it had a “female stockbroker (a rare breed at that time!).”43 Despite this enthusiasm, few all-­women investment clubs demonstrated ardent feminist credentials. Even so, members’ desire to discuss their experiences with other women echoed the rationale behind the self-­organization and consciousness-­raising activities of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Indeed, nearly all the members of the 1981 Investment Club spoke of the positive affirmation they derived from spending time with other “women with whom I would encounter bears and bulls.”44 Elaborating on this same issue, Paula Aczel of

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the all-­female Peninsula Club told the Daily Mail in 1994: “Women don’t normally have a focus for talking about money, whereas men can always go into the pub and talk about investments and insurance. The investment club gives us one evening a month to meet and talk about finance. We also share other problems about money, such as insurance. It is terribly important for women to learn about the process of investing money, and so many are ignorant of it. The investment club is an educational club for all of us, which is why we don’t put much money in each month.”45 Nor was she the only woman to express such sentiments. Reporting in 1988 on the Ladies of Goring Investment Club, or LOGIC, the Daily Mail quoted the chairwoman, Joy Harrison, as saying “What I get out of LOGIC is a knowledge of how the investment world works, about what buying and selling shares actually means. I did not join the club to make my fortune.”46 For these women the kind of individualistic wealth acquisition assumed to be the driving force behind popular capitalism was usually quite far down their priority list. Although women club members recognized the unlikelihood of making a fortune they were often driven by a growing awareness of their unique financial exposure. That is to say, material concerns were a factor in members’ decisions to join. Quotes from women investors reveal a feeling of being left behind in a world where knowledge of how financial markets worked was an important feature of day-­to-­day living. Reflecting on her time in the 1981 Investment Club, founder Foye Weatherhead spoke of her fellow members’ motivations for participating: “All of them were aware that they had a serious vulnerability; that they had been well looked after by the men in their lives up to that point, but that if suddenly left to fend for themselves for whatever reason as most women were, there was a big gap in their understanding of financial affairs.” Fellow member Helen Scott noted that it was the experience of being widowed that drove her to seek a better understanding of financial matters, while Jenny Knill-­Jones cited a recent divorce.47 Reassured by the safety provided by group support, these women clearly felt that learning

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about investing was one way to enfranchise themselves in contemporary society. Just as similarities existed with the CA, investment clubs thus also sat comfortably alongside other examples of middle-­class same-­ sex associational life. Katrina-­ Louise Moseley’s descriptions of weight-­loss clubs in postwar Britain as “neither feminist [nor] political” but nonetheless “spaces used by and designed for women” captures certain aspects of women-­only investment clubs and their relationship with the “search for female autonomy” that characterized late twentieth-­century Britain.48 Second-­wave feminism was not the only historical phenomenon that changed women’s relationship with finance in the 1980s. Women’s entanglements with the market were also shaped by the shifting priorities of financial institutions. Having identified women as a market segment with growth potential, they exerted extra energy courting female customers, signing them up to credit and debt agreements, and otherwise enlisting them in Britain’s rapidly emerging financialized asset economy.49 Fiona Allon goes so far as to argue that this period witnessed the “feminisation of finance.” This process, she suggests, derived from the reimagination of the home as an “object of financial speculation and investment” that no longer existed in a private realm beyond the market or state. The more that finance was integrated into spaces usually coded as feminine, the more that male family members, politicians, and financial institutions expected women to develop new kinds of calculative skills. The result was a broad re-­gendering of certain financial practices as female empowerment was equated with women’s integration into capitalist social relations.50 And yet, as we have already seen, this was a period in which high finance was coded as hypermasculine. Consequently, discourses of female financial agency in the late twentieth century were complex. Contradictory representations of women as emotional and irrational on the one hand, but risk averse on the other, meant that they had been consistently ostracized from political and public visions of investment.51 At the same time, contemporaries increasingly spoke about women as independent economic agents. For example, in 1987 Alison

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Mitchell, financial journalist and host of Channel 4’s Moneyspinner, waxed lyrical in the Daily Mail about the numbers of women “looking for—and making sure they get—the best value for their savings and borrowings.” The article assured readers that the Money Mail would be “concentrating more on women and money” in the future.52 Her comments amounted to a tacit admission that up until that point the Daily Mail had overlooked women’s financial needs. The complexity of gendered discourses in British investment culture was laid especially bare in press coverage of Channel 4’s The Stocks and Shares Show. From the very start producers struggled to recruit female contestants for the investment-­based gameshow. A 1987 Daily Mail article revealed that the program had received over three hundred applications from men, but only five from women. Journalist Margaret Stone implored more women to apply, seemingly confused by the situation given that “plenty of women are not only interested in stocks, shares and unit trusts . . . [but] are successful investors to boot.”53 They eventually selected a woman participant for the show, Madelaine Cohen, was described as a “housewife and mother of two,” and she told the Daily Mail that “After hearing men talk over the dinner table about how they were making money in the stock market I felt I didn’t want to miss out.” Cohen went on to become a runner-­up on the show, in light of which her husband, Laurence, reportedly “gave her £2,000” with which “to play the market.”54 Throughout this whole episode, Madelaine was portrayed in the fairly normative position of housewife and mother, reliant on her husband for pocket-­money for her new hobby of investing. Yet, she described her own activities to the paper in different terms: “[I find myself] watching the Teletext five times a day, phoning my broker at least once a day, and scouring the financial pages, and poring over books to learn the jargon.” Discussing spending time at home and with her family, she suggested that she was “itching to get back to the market.”55 Despite attempts to contain her within gender-­ appropriate categories, Cohen thus displayed characteristics usually associated with the masculine investment-­oriented subject—investing personal time, and financial, intellectual, and emotional resources

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into her relationship with the market. Her willingness to place her investment practices before family entailed pursuing an option usually reserved for men. Nor was Madelaine the only woman eager to assert her financial proficiency when given a voice in the press. Joan Ford of the “Giddy Aunts” investment club told the Mirror in 1999: “We’ve relied on men for too long to make the investment decisions. . . . In the US, all-­women clubs get far better results than the others. They do their research properly and they make rational investment decisions.”56 Here Ford clearly attempted to claim rational financial decision-­making as a feminine quality, recasting caution—or doing “research properly”—as the sound basis for successful investment rather than a sign of weakness or cowardice. Despite women’s own attempts to stake a claim to “masculine” financial behaviors and norms, financial journalists and advisers continued to connect women’s financial agency to their role as consumers. They frequently implied that women-­only investment clubs benefitted from a uniquely feminine intuition in the selection of shares derived from their shopping habits. After all, who better to make sound investment decisions than the people who went out and experienced the quality of goods and services firsthand? Such assumptions appeared to be supported by contemporary research into investor preferences. In the 1990s Brooke Harrington, an economic sociologist, conducted an extended study of US investment clubs. She found that all-­female clubs preferred stocks from the consumer sector, while men preferred what they perceived to be “boy stocks”; shares in manufacturing, technology, and basic energy industries that were often connected to their personal work experience. However, Harrington concluded that in both instances such preferences served as evidence for the fact that amateur investors regardless of gender viewed investment portfolios as akin to consumer products. They understood shares “as identity markers” with social functions, “rather than exclusively as instruments of a financial transaction.”57 The tendency for small investors to invest locally, even in rapidly globalizing markets, was neither an unusual nor necessarily gender-­specific phenomenon. In the first heyday of the investment

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club movement in the 1960s the press noted that “consumer shares are by far the most popular field for investment” among small investors.58 Clubs of all varieties invested in “things near home,” lending a regional—and certainly domestic—quality to investment club portfolios.59 In the mid-­century, Britain’s relatively small investing public was assumed to be familiar with the companies whose shares they bought. Consequently, little further comment was made about this trend. But investment clubs’ preferences for “familiar” shares continued into the mass investment culture of the 1980s. To take just one example, the minutes of the Furness Park Investment Club, founded in the late 1980s, indicate that members frequently discussed and bought shares in well-­known British companies, often privatization issues and initial public offerings that had garnered a lot of media coverage.60 More to the point, in the late-­1980s the apparent inequalities of the market had become a major feature of the discourse surrounding investment clubs. Consequently, commentators recast small investors’ preference for investing in companies of which they had personal experience as a unique category of financial knowledge that enabled them to do better than industry professionals and overcome disadvantageous information asymmetries. Such arguments proved especially popular in discussions about the consumer experience of women investors. In a classic of the genre, Terry Bond, British director of the World Federation of Investment Clubs, recalled an unlikely success from the early days of his own investment club. The win came thanks to “Little Sue,” an otherwise quiet member of his club, who one day suggested purchasing shares in the clothes retailer Next. Her recommendation was based on the popularity of the shop’s latest spring line and her own appreciation of it. “The miracle of Little Sue’s suggestion,” remarked Bond, “hit most of us at the same time. We were in a position that most private investors and clubs only dream about. We were privy to insider information. Ours was probably the first investment club in the country to realize that Next had a winning range. And we knew before those City analysts who wouldn’t get the news until takings from stores scattered around Britain filtered through to the corporate bottom

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line.”61 The club immediately bought shares in Next. They later sold them at a profit when Little Sue became discontent with the style of that winter’s incoming lines. A 1995 sociological study of Which? magazine’s reporting on financial services similarly argued that a key advantage of investment clubs was their members’ ability to “draw on and share their socially embedded knowledge, instead of consuming knowledge as an exogenously produced commodity.” As an example, author Alan Aldridge cited one of America’s most infamous (and all-­women) investment clubs, the Beardstown Ladies.62 He focused on their successful investment in Wolverine Worldwide, a work boots manufacturer, based on members’ observation that many women were beginning to wear practical footwear to work.63 Placing the focus on consumer know-­how allowed authors to encourage investors to see themselves as experts in their own right, able to access flows of information unavailable to professionals. But they did little more than paper over the gulf that existed between small investors’ reservoirs of knowledge and capital and those of large financial institutions. The role of women investors in late-­twentieth-­century investment culture was thus an ambiguous one. Legally and institutionally, they had been marginalized from high finance for decades. However, with the partial disintegration of dichotomous categories such as domestic versus economic labor, new discourses of economic womanhood did emerge in the 1980s and 1990s. Investors themselves borrowed from feminist-­inspired languages of liberation to articulate the importance of investment (and therefore economic independence) in their lives. In this sense, the relationship between women and investment became an important site through which gender roles and the fight for equality were reimagined.64 Journalists and investment guide authors even began to portray investing as a vital means of female empowerment. But this was rarely, if ever, done to challenge free-­market capitalism itself. After all, financial investment was the matter at hand. Ultimately, investment clubs did little to mount an opposition to the inherent disadvantages faced by individual investors or the gendered discrimination faced by women in financial markets. Instead, they

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represented something of a “culture of consolation,” a “ ‘de facto’ recognition of the existing social order as the inevitable framework of action.”65 This accommodation can be seen in the ultimate path taken by the investment club “movement” in the 1990s.

Co-­o ption Despite becoming vehicles for concerns about the growing power of financial institutions, investment clubs slowly but surely became incorporated into the mainstream of financial markets over the course of the 1990s. Having persisted throughout the postwar years as something of an alternative investment culture driven by a more collectivist ethos, investment clubs lost their apparent determination to “go it alone” and work beyond the services offered by large financial institutions. The first step toward co-­option came with the arrival of a new representative national organization for investment clubs in the early 1990s: ProShare. This organization emerged from a shared locus of anxiety among investors and advocates of wider share ownership who feared that small investors were in a more vulnerable position than ever after Big Bang. Writing in 1993, financial journalist Kevin Goldstein-­ Jackson lamented that “City institutions have a number of powerful committees which make representations to the government and use their massive voting power to work behind the scenes. . . . Where are the equivalent committees to represent private shareholders?”66 ProShare’s arrival appeared to provide an answer to this question. It was a government-­and City-­backed organization that materialized from the dissolution of the WSOC after its nearly thirty-­five-­year campaign to widen share ownership in Britain.67 Across the 1980s, the WSOC had become increasingly concerned with issues of investor ignorance, investor protection, and financial intermediation. Although the Council remained committed to spreading “enlightenment” about share ownership as it had done throughout the postwar period, it identified inherent dangers in the new relationship developing between financial services and private investors. In a 1987

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policy document, the Council admitted that, “an enormous amount remains to be done. Although wider ownership is now wide, it is still very shallow.”68 But despite its impressive list of influential backers, its particular vision of wider share ownership struggled to take root in the upheaval of the 1980s, with the result that conversations turned toward dissolution. This is exactly what happened in 1992. The WSOC did have something of an afterlife, however. It left behind a core framework and membership that went on to form the basis of ProShare. Described as a “lobby group for private investors,” ProShare also absorbed another major postwar institutional advocate for small investors: the NAIC. ProShare subsequently launched ProShare Investment Clubs in 1993, which served as “the national trade association” for investment clubs from that point on.69 However, the organization clearly represented something more “top-­down” than had the NAIC. It was no longer run by investment clubs and small investors themselves. Instead, Lindsay Vincent of the Observer described the atmosphere at ProShare as one “where men in suits have mobile telephones and diaries as their mercantile appendages.”70 Its committee consisted of high-­level appointees: familiar faces included Stuart Valentine (of the WSOC and Stock Exchange Wider Share Ownership Unit), and ex-­WSOC president Sir John Harvey-­Jones. Just as significantly, ProShare was directly funded by the Department of Trade and Industry and several FTSE 100 companies. It also benefitted from the support of the Stock Exchange’s research team and educational budget.71 In short, the organization was reliant on those forces by which many small investors felt victimized. The conflicts of interest at play in ProShare’s approach to investor advocacy were apparent in the way it helped financial institutions to capitalize on the renewed growth of investment clubs. In the late 1980s financial supermarkets began to create investment club services that mirrored their existing mass-­market offering for small investors. These services ranged from specialized accounts for holding investment club funds, to those designed to help clubs form in the first place. For instance, an execution-­only stockbroking off-­shoot of

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British Telecom called ShareLink joined forces with ProShare in the mid-­1990s to launch what it described as a “matchmaking service.” The service was intended to bring together new clubs and potential club members.72 This either intentionally ignored the fact that personal relationships had provided the basis of investment clubs across the postwar period, or it demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of their nature. It also ran contrary to the advice offered by ProShare itself, which stressed that “it is important that the people [in an investment club] know and trust each other.”73 In a similar move in 1993, Barclayshare set up a dealing and administration service dedicated to investment clubs, which the Financial Times suggested had come about as the result of a link between the bank and ProShare.74 The two organizations certainly appear to have had a good working relationship. Barclays, for instance, provided prizes for a series of school share competitions run by ProShare as part of its National Investment Programme.75 The company also sponsored the first national ProShare Investment Club Awards in 1996, the top prize for which was £1,500.76 In return for such support, it seems that ProShare was all too happy to help direct clubs toward its services. The appeal of gaining the business of investment clubs for banks was clear: it presented a convenient customer base to whom other financial services could be sold at a later date. According to ProShare, some 60 percent of its members had never invested in the stock market prior to joining an investment club.77 For many such people, club membership undoubtedly provided a launching pad into other financial activity. Sally Kuenssberg of the 1981 Investment Club certainly recalled using the dividends she received from the club’s activities to buy her first shares as an individual.78 Her experience was likely a common one. As we have seen, investment club members also often lacked confidence when it came to investment matters. Working with ProShare thus gave banks access to a clientele that was well suited to their business model: designing and cross-­selling products that minimized the burdens and stresses of investment. Members of Barclays’ investment clubs’ services, for instance, could expect to receive monthly newsletters detailing different stocks, as well as have access

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to all the benefits of “one-­stop banking and share-­dealing.” The company’s “Portfolio Service” provided help with paperwork and tax returns, while the bank promised to pick shares for any clubs willing to pay for its “Advisory Service.”79 This undermined the other major feature of investment clubs up to that point: that they provided investors with direct experiences of capital ownership. A series of regular articles run by the Daily Mail in the 1990s further demonstrates these patterns of co-­option in action. Each article in the series focused on a single investment club. Interviews with club members gave readers an insight into how they got together, the meaning behind their name, where they met, and what general strategy they took. It seems likely that the series was cosponsored by Barclays and ProShare, although mention of an official collaboration was never explicitly stated in the articles. This is because each club made a point of mentioning Barclays’ new investment club services as their preferred method of running shop, and ProShare’s details were provided at the end of every article. This subtle advertisement was integrated into the stories told by club members, and only becomes apparent when viewing the features one after another, as opposed to a week apart as would have been the case for readers. A similar run of articles appeared in the Daily Mirror, this time underpinned by a collaboration between Natwest, ProShare, and the paper. The latter even took the opportunity to launch a “Mirror Investment Club” competition and “Investment Club Hotline.”80 In short, ProShare forged a network of interests that was keen to define the parameters within which investment clubs functioned. In their hands, investment clubs were not encouraged to become a largely independent form of DIY mutualism or an alternative to financial intermediation. Rather, investment clubs were reimagined as yet another product variation to be selected off the shelf at a local financial supermarket by risk-­averse investors. We must also remember, however, that consumers purchase and use products and services in self-­knowing ways.81 The co-­opting of investment club culture by financial interests emerged from the tensions between the demands, desires, and needs of club members, and

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the ability of financial institutions to creatively meet and organize those needs around a self-­serving vision of popular investment. Consequently, even among these comparatively proactive individuals a tendency toward risk aversion and ease, a lack of confidence, or limited resources led them toward managed and heavily mediated routes to investment. This becomes evident if we focus on the reasons club members cited for founding their clubs and choosing to invest via banks’ broking services. Interviewed as part of the Daily Mail’s series in 1994, seventy-­three-­year-­old Alan Kershaw of the White Hart Investment Club stated that the club had switched to Barclays because it was cheaper than the stockbroking service the club had previously used.82 Alan Farley of the Stabmonk Investment Club also felt safe using Barclayshare’s advisory service because investing was “new to most of us and . . . we can ring one of the stockbrokers for assurances.”83 Other clubs cited help with tax returns as yet another reason for joining Barclays. Minutes of the meetings of Furness Park Investment Club, meanwhile, show that the club relied on NatWest circulars that advised them on market prospects (NatWest being their chosen service provider). Although they ultimately did nothing, members also discussed “shopping around for cheaper dealing costs” when faced with a rise in prices from the bank.84 With so few club records remaining, it is hard to make broad assumptions. But it seems reasonable to suggest that for some people at least, involvement in an investment club slowly became less about self-­education or even self-­help, and more about access to affordable professional services. In other cases, clubs almost absent-­mindedly ended up dealing through the services of one financial supermarket or another. The 1981 Investment Club found themselves dealing through Barclays Wealth after a series of mergers across the 1980s resulted in their stockbroking firm being incorporated into the Barclays group.85 Many, if not all roads, it seemed, led to mass-­market investment services, even for Britain’s more active and self-­conscious investors. ProShare maintained a powerful rhetoric that cast investment clubs as a source of strength for the small investor, despite its role in funneling their business toward large financial institutions. In the

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preface of his 2002 book, ProShare’s director, Terry Bond, claimed that “private investors realize that clubbing together with friends and colleagues provides a pool of knowledge to outstrip the abilities of the best-­informed City analyst.”86 Such arguments implied that “common sense” and the resources of around ten to twenty people were equivalent to those available to large finance institutions. In reality, ProShare’s empowering rhetoric masked the very apparent information asymmetries that continued to exist in Britain’s equity markets. Perhaps as a result, ProShare never became much more than a bit-­player (despite boasting around five thousand individual members and over five hundred investment clubs by the mid-­1990s). This is because the investment club model increasingly complemented rather than countered the rise of mediated investment. It certainly never emerged as a serious counterpoint to the power of institutional investment. Nor did ProShare develop into a kind of Consumers’ Association for investors that might shield the latter from the power of institutional investors. As a government-­backed advisory service, ProShare did lobby on issues such as tax advantages for investment clubs, the inclusion of personal finance training on the National Curriculum, and a code of conduct for brokers.87 But in 1996 the organization’s chief executive, Gill Nott, asserted that ProShare had “no intention in getting involved” in activities like helping “shareholders in their relations with particular companies” and throughout the period it remained unclear whose material interests ProShare really served.88

Crest-­Fallen: Investor Activism in the 1990s Given ProShare’s failings, it should come as no surprise to see a spate of investor activism in the 1990s: small investor-­run organizations that lobbied government and the City for better conditions for private investors. These investment activists largely rejected the idea of wider share ownership and did not believe that investment clubs (or DIY mutualism) were the best way to amplify their voice. Instead, investment activists called for only the most active and financially literate of investors to reestablish dominance in Britain’s financial markets.

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As with the reinvigoration of the investment club movement, investor activism can be read as a response to the growing power of institutional investors in the late twentieth century. In a system where institutions owned 80 percent of the UK stock market and were able to buy and sell “on a whisper,” small investors were at a huge disadvantage. By the time gossip and rumors diffused down to them, shares prices had often already moved or were suspended.89 Developments in UK investment markets in the early 1990s seemed only to highlight this issue and exacerbate tensions. In 1995, for example, a Stock Exchange committee announced plans to end its rule that issues raising more than £50 million had to be offered to private investors because it was more cost effective for businesses to raise money from institutional backers alone. Such moves led the Daily Telegraph to comment: “If private investors get the idea that they are regarded as troublesome irritation, then they have got the right idea.”90 Another issue of particular concern for investment activists was the Stock Exchange’s proposals to launch a paperless share settlement system called CREST (Certificateless Registry for Electronic Share Transfer). The Stock Exchange’s move toward paperless trading spelled bad news for small investors. Firstly, it involved gradually reducing the age-­old two-­week settlement period down to a five-­day rolling settlement period. This meant that after each shares transaction any associated paperwork had to be completed within a much shorter time frame. Paperless trading also required access to particular hardware and software. Secondly, while the Stock Exchange’s previous system, TAURUS (Transfer and Automated Registration of Uncertified Stock), had cross-­subsidized small investors, it was by no means clear that the same would be true of CREST. In short, the new system meant that the cost of smaller trades was likely to rise and be passed on to individual clients. Financial journalists criticized this move for prioritizing “the convenience of investment institutions” over the needs of small investors, based as it was on cutting down costs for those trading in bulk.91 One proposed solution was that small investors could simply make use of brokers’ nominee accounts.92 But in most instances

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nominee services came with additional charges.93 It also meant that shareholders no longer directly owned their shares. Consequently, nominee account clients did not receive annual reports, circulars, or statements directly from companies. Instead, they were reliant on their broker forwarding information (a process that introduced yet further delays in the spread of information from companies to individual investors).94 Investors using nominee accounts were also unable to attend shareholder meetings unless their broker appointed them as a proxy. Even then, proxies were banned from speaking at company meetings.95 In sum, this work-­around meant that investors had less, not more, direct contact with the companies in which they invested. Their ability to express dissent at AGMs was minimal and they needed to be particularly active to keep up to date, especially when it came to rights issues and takeover bids. As Guardian journalist Frank Kane commented, “The time sensitivity of these kinds of events means that many shareholders simply will not be able to react quickly enough.”96 Unwilling to wait for government intervention to improve their lot, some investors chose to take matters into their own hands and created activist and action groups. The first of these small investors’ organizations was the UK Shareholders’ Association (UKSA). Set up in 1992 and officially launched in 1993, at the time of writing the organization describes itself as the “oldest shareholder campaigning organisation in the UK.”97 It was funded by subscriptions and owned by its members who were self-­proclaimed experienced investors. UKSA offered “an alternative support club” to ProShare “with one crucial difference”: it aimed to “help small shareholders fulfil their responsibilities as part-­owners of companies.”98 It did not, in other words, propose collective investment practices, but rather small-­scale collective action in relation to particular companies. Spokesman for the organization, Donald Butcher stressed that its most important task was to encourage members to become part of “a network of active private investors.”99 This meant exercising their rights not just through buying and possessing capital for its own ends, but through realizing their potential as fully enfranchised investor-­citizens.

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This aspect of UKSA’s modus operandi was especially evident in its campaigns on AGM resolutions. Legally, any shareholder requesting to put a resolution to an AGM was liable to pay the cost of circulating it to all other shareholders. This was a problem in companies with large shareholder registers where the cost could be prohibitive for small investors (even those willing to collectively table a resolution). Companies claimed that changing AGM resolution rules to make it easier for small investors would “open the floodgates to political activists and environmental agitators—people who . . . will waste time on issues that are of no interest to the majority of shareholders.”100 Such concerns were not without cause. Environmental groups were especially successful in pursuing shareholder resolutions as part of their campaigns. For example, in 1997 Balfour Beatty, a UK firm involved in a controversial damn-­building project in Turkey, faced a targeted campaign by Friends of the Earth. The latter purchased twenty thousand shares in order to mount a shareholder revolt.101 However, claiming to fear the threat posed by “professional disturbatori,” allowed companies to overlook the fact that pressure for change was largely coming from “a lot of angry, genuine, ordinary shareholders.”102 In fact, as journalists noted, lists of resolutions for company meetings were already “hopelessly weighted in favor of the board, with at best one or two resolutions from shareholders.”103 By forcing investors to foot the bill, companies effectively froze out small investors, rendering them powerless to change the direction of company management. UKSA sought to highlight the injustice of this system by taking direct action. For example, in a dispute about pay structure at British Gas UKSA’s Donald Butcher announced his intention to table a resolution calling for a vote on the chief executive’s pay. The company threatened Butcher with covering the cost of circulating the proposal among British Gas’s two million shareholders: a bill of approximately £40,000. In response, a group called the Gas Shareholders Campaign indicated its intention to mount a protest march, while several other groups threatened to disrupt the upcoming AGM. Through such campaigns UKSA mobilized shareholders and tried to

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hold institutional investors and the large corporations they jointly owned to account. In this endeavor UKSA faced stiff opposition. As Luke Blair of the Evening Standard reported, the whole British Gas incident indicated that “several of the big City institutions were prepared to swing behind” large corporations.104 Meanwhile the Institute of Directors (an interest group for company directors set up in 1903), not only opposed plans to strengthen shareholder rights, but wanted to further raise the qualification threshold for allowing entry into meetings.105 Like investment clubs, UKSA had no interest in appealing to investors by promoting the possible riches that stagging a privatization share issue might bring. It focused on the importance of sensible, long-­ term investments. Unlike the NAIC or ProShare, however, UKSA’s vision of shareholder activism was not located in the politics of a mass movement or collective investment practices. This was reflected in the organization’s size, which totaled around four hundred members by 1995.106 Instead, UKSA advocated for the rights of small investors on the basis that they were company owners, rather than because they were financial consumers with certain consumer rights. In doing so, the organization rejected late twentieth-­century investment culture by rejecting one of its central features: the assumed value of mass participation in investment. As one spokesperson for the organization stated, its membership was “not at all convinced” that widespread investment was “necessarily a good thing.”107 UKSA’s view was not entirely uncommon. A paternalistic sense of nervousness began to enter public and political debate in the 1990s. Discussion once again foregrounded questions about how well suited the general public was to capital ownership. Despite praising ProShare for its lobbying efforts, Teresa Hunter of the Guardian commented that its wider share ownership agenda gave her “the uncomfortable feeling that lambs are being led to the slaughter.” She stressed that encouraging direct ownership was problematic given that buying small numbers of shares was “largely inappropriate for most ordinary savers,” especially in volatile markets susceptible to the “vagaries of the large institutions.” She concluded by calling into question

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the claims of popular capitalism that “share ownership was good for everyone.”108 Elsewhere, investment author Simon Rose lamented the apparent passivity that characterized widespread investment Britain, highlighting what he saw as a troubling lack of investor activism among Briton’s small investors. “Most” investors, he commented “wouldn’t recognise a stockbroker if one bit them on the nose.”109 Such critiques of late twentieth-­century investment culture effectively romanticized the mid-­century heyday of individual share ownership. UKSA particularly wanted to see investors become the kind of responsible company owners that politicians had long since presumed to be the basis of a property-­owning democracy. If this meant reducing Britain’s shareholding constituency, then so be it. In 1995, two more groups joined the fray: the Guild of Shareholders, a company set up by former Tory MP Tom Benyon; and the Shareholders’ Charter. Both were outfits of a slightly different nature to UKSA. Although both companies undertook more general advocacy work, they were founded first and foremost as a fee-­paying service for groups of shareholders who wished to bring action against loss-­ suffering companies. Group members could expect returns based on a percentage of any compensation/remuneration won.110 Neither group was especially large. The Shareholders’ Charter had one hundred members at the time of its launch. The biggest of the three groups, the Guild of Shareholders had one thousand members shortly before its official launch in September 1995. This rose to three thousand by 1996. Its aim was to train “an army” of non-­executive directors that could infiltrate “old-­boy network arrangements” at ailing companies “where board appointments are stitched up over a glass of port.”111 Mobilizing a familiar “us” vs “them” narrative, Benyon further elaborated, saying, “The boards of companies have become the masters. . . . We want to make them accountable.”112 The Guild also ran exhibitions where potential investors could meet small businesses, although the possibility for a conflict of interest seems to warrant the suspicion with which some contemporaries viewed Benyon’s operation.113 One company secretary described the Share­holders’ Guild as “a group of aged terrorists.” Donald Butcher

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implied something similar when he commented that the Guild was “a bit more confrontational” than UKSA and suggested that investors in search of more aggressive activity should join the Guild rather than his own organization.114 Despite their differences, journalist Rosanna Spero expressed her hope in 1995 that all three groups might join forces to increase their effectiveness. Echoing Benyon’s portrayal of small investors as underdogs, she hailed shareholder activism as a means for “investors fed-­up with boardroom fat cats” to make their voices heard and to “stop companies running roughshod over them in favor of institutional investors.” In light of Britain’s highly institutionalized investment culture, “Small investors” she argued “have never needed a voice more.”115 The persistent attempts by small investors to organize and voice their concerns in the closing decades of the twentieth century highlights the perceived instability of their position in post–Big Bang domestic markets. Conservative Party promises that deregulation and the subsequent competition it unleashed would encourage choice and a better deal for the individual had a hollow ring to them by the end of the 1980s. Whether via the creation of alternative cultures of investing through DIY mutualism or self-­run lobby groups, the mid-­1990s saw the emergence of a range of different investment-­related organizational forms. Each in its own way attempted to offer some kind of voice to disenfranchised and disadvantaged private investors. In 1995, Wayne Asher of the Daily Mail even advised readers how to set up shareholder action groups of their own, telling them how to contact other shareholders, interact with the press, and get legal help.116

Conclusion The plethora of diverse and geographically dispersed groups of friends and coworkers who came together to invest and promote the interests of small investors throughout the second half of the twentieth century shows us that alternative cultures of investment existed within the broader mass consumerist investment culture outlined in this monograph.

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Originally born in a postwar moment of pooled social risk, social action, and mass affluence, investment clubs frequently prioritized friendships, sociability, and collective action over accelerated personal asset acquisition. At times, their national organizational bodies even promoted collective claims to investor rights and protection. It is important to remember, too, of course, that investment clubs were not made up of radicals who envisaged an entirely different economic system. To a degree, members tried to become what was asked of them by ideological advocates of wider share ownership: investor-­citizens attuned to the vagaries of financial markets. But their reasons for so doing were multifaceted. For those who might usually feel ostracized from a world of investment categorized as middle-­class and gendered as male, investment clubs offered ways of directly owning shares that didn’t entail going it alone. Club members were neither passive financial consumers of unit trusts and pensions nor the hypermasculine, profit-­chasing, and individualistic investors depicted in popular culture. They were people who sought reassurance and comradery as they entered financial markets, often for the first time. Even so, within the emerging institutionalized structures of Britain’s consumerist mass investment culture, their history ended up being one of co-­option. Members may have been self-­defining actors, but they were inherently constrained by networks of vested interests between companies, the press, and financial services institutions. Investment clubs’ symbolic and discursive inclusion in Britain’s financialized political economy concealed the significant material exclusions that drove members to join them in the first place.117 Clubs frequently lasted only a few years before disbanding, often having made losses en route. And although club numbers at the turn of the century were as high as they had ever been, for many members a desire for managed professional services had become as important as an interest in learning the ropes. This did not mean that investors were mindlessly manipulated by financial institutions. But investment clubs did remain a product of elite power rather than a counterpoint to it.118

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The apparent failings of mass investment culture to meaningfully enfranchise small investors also spurred on the creation of shareholder activist groups like UKSA. Those investors most committed to promoting active investment (characterized by an intimate relationship between shareholders and company management) began campaigning for greater recognition and power. Their concern was not with securing the democratization of capital ownership. Rather they felt that a limited but organized and informed investing public could constructively shape the direction of British business. Theirs was a vision that sought the return of an older investor-­company dynamic, premised on smaller numbers of well-­placed and well-­financed long-­ term investors. In short, a history of Britain’s shareholder activists and investment clubs shows us that investors were agents in their own right, often all too aware of their position in hierarchies of power and influence in Britain’s financial markets. These atypical groups of investors can also tell us something about “ordinary” investors. First and foremost, they show us that people engaged with investment culture in complex ways, creating their own versions of life as an investor based on social relations as much as economic sense. Secondly, even though a desire for risk-­aversion in volatile markets inspired the resurgence of the investment club movement in the 1980s and 1990s, this same desire ultimately led many individuals to plump for professional services and managed portfolios. Club members thus faced the same challenges as less “active” investors: limited levels of financial literacy; pressures of time; the burden of risk; limited access to up-­to-­date investment information; and trepidation at the prospect of having to negotiate complex financial systems. Their understandable responses to these pressures expedited a nexus between Thatcherite economic reform and the interests of financial capital that ultimately favored the latter.

Conclusion

The forging of a financialized political and economic consensus in Britain relied in no small part upon the creation of a culture of mass investment. This culture took shape over the course of a century or more in a series of processes that accelerated from the 1950s and culminated in an intense burst of activity over the course of just a few years in the mid-­to late 1980s. In many ways, the political reforms of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party decided the timing of this moment of transformation. A sudden explosion in the number of investors followed a series of widely publicized privatization share issues, while deregulation in the City pushed institutions to compete more ferociously for retail business than before. However, the financialization of British society did not start or end with the policy programs of the Conservative Party in the 1980s. Instead it relied upon the activities, ambitions, and antagonisms of actors hailing from beyond the realm of party politics. What at first appears to have been a predominantly political and economic transformation was in fact founded upon a requisite social and cultural one.

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By the end of the twentieth century public knowledge about financial markets and the practice of investing in them had spread farther and wider than ever before. Are We Rich Yet? connects histories of financial institutions, with those of everyday consumption, material and visual culture, and social life in order to explain how this happened. At the heart of this story is a universe of institutions and individuals, many of whom made strange bedfellows. This included bankers, stockbrokers, traders, financial journalists, newspaper editors, marketing agencies, high street retailers, good manufacturers, television producers, novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, dogged entrepreneurs, and no small number of charlatans. Between them, this network of shifting interests transformed investing from a predominantly elite activity with only limited cultural resonance, to a much more complicated web of practices undertaken by people from many walks of life. Various strands of this web, including the actual practice of buying and selling shares, remained the purview of a privileged minority. But other strands were accessible to the masses. British investment culture was not limited to the purchase of an investment trust or equities in British Gas. It expanded to embrace even those unable to stake money on the stock market, with no shortage of companies offering would-­be-­investors a facsimile of life as share owner. Consequently, images, terminologies, and goods associated with the City and its traders could be found scattered across British social and cultural life in the 1980s and 1990s. This dispersion contributed to a powerfully seductive notion that investment, and with it the ability to extract value from the market, was in the process of being democratized. However, statistics paint a more complicated picture. From the mid-­twentieth century, the proportion of UK quoted shares held by individuals fell into a seemingly irreversible decline. Rather than reverse the waning power of the small investor in Britain’s business and industry, the advent of a mass investment culture in the closing decades of the twentieth century served only to consolidate the power of pension funds, insurance companies, unit trusts, and overseas investors. By the turn of the twenty-­first century British investment

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culture was more institutionalized than it had been throughout the preceding century. The massification and institutionalization of investment occurred in large part thanks to the merging of popular investment with Britain’s established culture of consumption. Over the postwar period financial institutions (with the help of an adjunct financial advice industry) set to work transferring the savings and aspirations of newly affluent wage earners into profitable and reliable revenue streams. They did so by framing investment as a form of consumption. The rules of the transaction were of course different: investing offered none of the same instant gratification that goods consumption did. Nonetheless, financial institutions advertised in the consumer sections of newspapers, sold shares in high street shops, and called their clients, “customers.” Meanwhile investors often viewed the shares and services they bought as identity markers as much as financial instruments. Unlike ideologically or politically driven mid-­century advocates of wider share ownership, financial institutions’ main priority was not to “manufacture capitalists” or create a nation of well-­ informed investor-­citizens. Instead they were all too happy to exploit small investors’ tendency toward risk aversion, apathy, and technical ignorance of stock markets, by offering them prepackaged investment services that required little knowledge about the working of financial markets, or the companies whose equity was traded on them. Financial institutions responded to the far-­reaching reforms of Margaret Thatcher’s administrations in the 1980s by intensifying their existing efforts to monopolize rapidly expanding private investor markets. They appropriated, managed, and otherwise molded the upheaval of the period to reinstate their position at the heart of a global financial economy. In a newly deregulated environment, banks and building societies pushed to extremes their consumer-­ oriented service delivery formats and marketing efforts. In doing so they created a version of popular investment that channeled the savings of Britain’s first-­time investors into their own managed funds. Large financial institutions encouraged customers to shop around for the best commission rates, share perks, and time-­saving services, all

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while guiding them toward a position of passivity when it came to the actual process of investing. More than an elite form of asset management, or even a middle-­class hobby, then, financial institutions transformed investing into a form of service consumption. Although consumer narratives became a newly hegemonic feature of popular investment, it is also important to note that late twentieth-­ century investment culture did not take a singular form. It represented an unstable fusion of actors and agendas that reshaped society in uneven ways. The purveyors of investment services, financial advice, and financial entertainment forged new forms of legitimacy as they competed for the attention of Britain’s expanding investing public. The veneration of “greed is good” individualism and speculative wealth acquisition stands out as a key feature of 1980s investment culture, dominating as it does popular memories of the decade. But British investment culture encompassed other tales of meaning, too: it presented investment as the obligation of a responsible citizenry, a fantasy, an escape from drudgery, a means to a better life, a source of female empowerment, a test of working-­class masculinity, and a source of anxiety for first-­time investors. What all these competing visions of popular investment had in common was that they asked people, in one way or another, to attune themselves to the market. At its most extreme, British investment culture was premised upon the creation of financialized subjects; individuals ready, willing, and able to invest their time and resources in order to maximize their capacity to withdraw value from the market. The widespread availability of information and advice about financial markets at once normalized the expectation that individuals should invest emotionally, politically, and economically in them, while legitimizing the ever-­enlarging gap that existed between those who held financial assets, and those who did not.1 But perhaps more remarkable than the number of people who threw themselves headlong into the world of personal portfolio building, were the many more Britons who accommodated themselves with the financialization of British society in more subtle ways. These were people who conflated a dip in the FTSE 100 with a dip

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in the nation’s economic outlook (and their own future prospects), adorned the cultural signifiers of a financial elite as everyday fashion, and tied their future to financial markets via more indirect means (homeownership, pension provision, or life insurance, for instance). By the 2000s the British public had not become a nation of Thatcherite popular capitalists. They certainly hadn’t engaged in a wholesale embrace of free-­market neoliberal reform. They had, however, readjusted their sensibilities toward its underlying logic. Participating in the practice of investing was not the only way that individuals were encouraged to develop more financialized subjectivities. Emerging discourses of entrepreneurialism, management, and business also featured as part of a neoliberal sociocultural landscape that celebrated the language, logic, and rationale of the free market. As a significant part of this bigger cultural shift, a study of popular investment practices and the expansion of an “investing public” provides a useful insight into the patterns of reform, types of actors, and cultural processes that shaped the nature of capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-­first century. A study of mass investment culture also helps us to understand how the financial order survived the crash of 2008.2 Having made financial markets central to their visions of national economic security, governments otherwise keen to individualize risk through the reduction of state spending on welfare responded to the crash by socializing financial risk at an unprecedented scale. That is to say, they used huge reservoirs of taxpayers’ money to bail out failing banks, using quantitative easing to bolster the value of financial assets without concurrently securing higher employment rates and growth.3 Governments’ ability to do this relied not only on the shared interests of policy makers and corporate leaders. It also came thanks to financial institutions’ ability to forge unprecedented levels of public and political acquiescence during the late twentieth century. The analysis in Are We Rich Yet? thus provides an insight into how, by the early twenty-­first century, financial institutions had come to be seen as largely “too big to fail.” It suggests that the survival of financial capitalism in 2008 can be ascribed to the many thousands of interactions

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between financial institutions and their customers in the preceding half century. Cumulatively these interactions gave people a sense that they too had a stake in the existing socioeconomic order, even as their power in equity markets waned. They also fundamentally transformed the very starting point from which discussions flowed about the place of financial markets in political and economic life. In sum, understanding how financial markets became such a prominent feature of twenty-­first-­century Britain involves unpicking the subtle changes, strange continuities, and sudden transformations in what it meant to invest, who was able to invest, and how they chose to do so in the closing decades of the previous century. More than anything, Are We Rich Yet? accounts for investment culture in all its forms. That is to say, it concerns itself with both the economic practices that directly constituted investing, and the wider sets of beliefs, cultural norms, and social relations that surrounded them.

Notes

Introduction 1. Karin Newman, The Selling of British Telecom (Eastbourne: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1986), 61. 2. Cited in Peter Saunders and Colin Harris, Privatization and Popular Capitalism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994), 144. 3. Saunders and Harris, Privatization and Popular Capitalism, 144–145. 4. This aspect of the Conservative Party’s policy making under Thatcher has been well documented. See Saunders and Harris, Privatization and Popular Capitalism; David Parker’s two-­volume Official History of Privatization (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009–2012); Pippa Norris, “Thatcher’s Enterprise Society and Electoral Change,” West European Politics, 13, 1 (1990), 63–78; Matthew Francis, “A Crusade to Enfranchise the Many”: Thatcherism and the “Property-­Owning Democracy,” Twentieth Century British History, 23, 2 (2012), 275–297. 5. Maureen Guirdham and Siew Choo Tan, “Prospects for Bank Share Shops,” International Journal of Bank Marketing, 4, 5 (1986), 41–57, 49.

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6. Broadly speaking, the term financialization refers to the growing power of financial institutions, values, and technologies over individuals, firms, and the macro-­economy. Through case studies at the level of the corporation, the nation state, and the household, geographers, economic sociologists, and cultural theorists have shown just how far politicians and big business reorganized different facets of society around the deepening power of financial markets. For a survey of scholarship in this field see Johanna Montgomerie, “Bridging the Critical Divide: Global Finance, Financialisation and Contemporary Capitalism,” Contemporary Politics, 14, 3 (2008), 233–252; and Shaun French et al., “Financializing Space, Spacing Financialization,” Progress in Human Geography, 35, 6 (2011), 798–819. 7. In doing so, Are We Rich Yet? builds on a growing body of scholarship that has explore the nature and development of American investment culture. See: Adam Harmes, “Mass Investment Culture,” New Left Review, 9 (2001), 103–124; Steve Fraser, Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life (New York: Vintage, 2004); Gerald F. Davis, Managed by the Markets: How Finance Reshaped America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Julia C. Ott, When Wall Street Met Main Street: The Quest for an Investor’s Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011); Urs Stäheli, Spectacular Speculation: Thrills, the Economy, and Popular Discourse, trans. by Eric Savoth (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013); Janice M. Traflet, A Nation of Shareholders: Marketing Wall Street after World War II (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). 8. Youssef Cassis, Capitals of Capital: The Rise and Fall of International Financial Centres, 1780–2005 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Ranald C. Michie, The London and New York Stock Exchanges, 1850–1914, Routledge Revival (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011); David Kynaston, The City of London Volume 1: A World of Its Own, 1815–1890 (London: Pimlico, 1995). For the ongoing debate about gentlemanly capitalism see: P.  J. Cain and A.  G. Hopkins, “Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas II: New Imperialism, 1850–1945,” Economic History Review, 40, 1 (1987), 1–26; M. J. Daunton, “ ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism” and British Industry, 1820–1914,” Past and Present, 122, 1 (1989), 119–158; Raymond E. Dumett (ed.), Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: The New Debate on Empire (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014). 9. Alex Preda, “The Rise of the Popular Investor: Financial Knowledge and Investing in England and France, 1840–1880,” The Sociological Quarterly, 42, 2, (2001), 205–232. See also chapter 1 of this monograph for more on nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century investment culture. 10. Ranald C. Michie, The London Stock Exchange: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 72.

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11. Janette Rutterford and Dimitri Sotiropoulos, “The Rise of the Small Investor in the US and the UK, 1895–1970,” Enterprise and Society, 18, 3 (2017), 485–535, 525. 12. For more on consumption in Britain’s postwar political economy see: Hâkan Johansson and Bjørn Hvinden, “Welfare Governance and the Remaking of Citizenship,” in Remaking Governance: Peoples, Politics and the Public Sphere, ed. by Janet Newman (Bristol: Policy Press, 2005), 101– 118, 109–110; Alex Mold, “Patient Groups and the Construction of the Patient-­Consumer in Britain: An Historical Overview,” Journal of Social Policy, 39, 4 (2010), 505–521; Clare Munro, “The Fiscal Politics of Savings and Share Ownership in Britain, 1970–1980,” Historical Journal, 55, 3 (2012), 757–778. For more on the postwar credit industry, see: Stuart Aveyard et al., The Politics of Consumer Credit in the UK, 1938–1992 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 13. Christopher Grey, “Suburban Subjects: Financial Services and the New Right,” in Financial Institutions and Social Transformations: International Studies of a Sector, ed. by David Knights and Tony Tinker (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), 47–67. 14. Paul Heelas, “Reforming the Self: Enterprise and the Characters of Thatcherism,” in Enterprise Culture, ed. by Russell Keat and Nicholas Abercrombie (London: Routledge, 1991), 72–92; Pat O’Malley, “Risk and Responsibility,” in Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-­liberalism and Rationalities of Government, 2nd edition, ed., by Andrew Barry et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 189–207; Francis, “A Crusade to Enfranchise the Many’; Amy Edwards, “Financial Consumerism: Mass Investment Culture and Thatcherism, c. 1958–1995,” (PhD Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016), ch. 1. 15. Bodleian Library, Oxford, Conservative Party Archive (hereafter CPA), PUB 120/5, David Coleman, “Housing Policy: Unfinished Business,” a Bow Group Research paper (1988), 10. 16. Harmes, “Mass Investment Culture”; Lisa Adkins et al., The Asset Economy: Property Ownership and the New Logic of Inequality (Cambridge: Polity, 2020), 6. 17. Academics have identified the key policy tenets of the macroeconomic doctrine of neoliberalism with a reasonable amount of consensus, stressing its advocacy of economic liberalization, privatization, free trade, open markets, deregulation, and reductions in government spending to enhance the role of the private sector. See Colin Hay, Why We Hate Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), 97; James Ferguson, “The Uses of Neoliberalism,” Antipode, 41, 1 (2009), 166–184, 170). A major strand of scholarship on neoliberalism focuses on the role of political thought collectives and think tanks in first

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incubating and then implementing an economic revolution in both Britain and America. For examples, see: Richard Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-­Tanks and the Economic Counter-­Revolution, 1931–1983 (London: Fontana, 1994); Andrew Denham and Mark Garnett, “Influence without Responsibility? Think-­Tanks in Britain,” Parliamentary Affairs, 52 (1999), 46–57; Monica Prasad, The Politics of Free Markets: The Rise of Neoliberal Economic Policies in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Daniel Stedman Jones, Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2012). We cannot ignore, however, the processes of institutional adaption and resistance that mediated political ambition. Nor should we overlook the constraints imposed by existing social and cultural norms. 18. Office for National Statistics (hereafter ONS), “Ownership of UK Quoted Shares: 2018,” 14 January 2020, 8, https://​www​.ons​.gov​.uk​/economy​ /investmentspensionsandtrusts​/bulletins​/ownershipofukquotedshares​/2018 [accessed: 08/04/2020]. 19. For more detail on the historical conditions in which pension funds and insurance companies established such a dominant position see Aled Davies, The City of London and Social Democracy: The Political Economy of Finance in Britain, 1959–1979 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 39–40; John Kay, “Kay Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-­term Decision Making: Final Report,” 15 September 2011, 30 https://​www​.gov​.uk​ /government​/consultations​/the​-­­kay​-­­review​-­­of​-­­uk​-­­equity​-­­markets​-­­and​-­­long​ -­­term​-­­decision​-­­making [accessed: 04/05/2018]. 20. Table 7, in Gavin Oldham, “TAURUS and the Private Shareholder,” Economic Affairs, 11, 1 (1990), 14–20, 18. 21. Paul A. Grout et al., “One Half-­Billion Shareholders and Counting: Determinants of Individual Share Ownership around the World,” 22nd Australasian Finance and Banking Conference (2009), 39, 44, https://​papers​.ssrn​ .com​/sol3​/papers​.cfm​?abstract​_id​=​1457482 [accessed: 01/03/2020]. 22. The Investment Company Institute and the Securities Industry Association, Equity Ownership in America, 2005 (2005), 7 https://​www​.ici​.org​/pdf​ /rpt​_05​_equity​_owners​.pdf [accessed: 12/04/2019]. For more data on patterns of stock ownership in the USA see James M. Poterba and Andrew A. Samwick, “Stock Ownership Patterns, Stock Market Fluctuations, and Consumption,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2 (1995), 295–371, 313 https://​www​.brookings​.edu​/wp​-­­content​/uploads​/1995​/06​/1995b​_bpea​ _poterba​_samwick​_shleifer​_shiller​.pdf [accessed 08/08/2019]; Edward N.

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Wolff, “Changes in Household Wealth in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States,” in International Perspectives on Household Wealth, ed. by Edward N. Wolff (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2006). 23. “Sid the Stag-­Chaser No Longer Runs with the Hounds,” Daily Telegraph, 17 August 1995, 21. 24. Kay, “Kay Review of UK Equity Markets,” 22, 29–30. 25. Davies, The City of London and Social Democracy, 40–42. See also Paul Thompson, “The Pyrrhic Victory of Gentlemanly Capitalism: The Financial Elite of the City of London, 1945–90,” Journal of Contemporary History, 32, 3 (1997), 283–304. And for the parallel American process of institutionalization see: Devin Kennedy, “Silent Partnership: Passive Investors and Financial Power in the Institutionalization of Markets, 1950–1975,” paper presented at the Financial History Network Seminar Series (online, Dec 2020). 26. Since the 1990s a body of largely Foucauldian-­inspired scholarship from economic geographers and sociologists has identified an emerging link between consumer subjectivities, retail banking, and the discursive formation of “financial services” as a cohesive entity. Examples include Dawn Burton, Financial Services and the Consumer (London: Cengage Learning EMEA, 1994); David Knights et al., “The Consumer Rules? An Examination of the Rhetoric and ‘Reality’ of Marketing in Financial Services,” European Journal of Marketing 28, 3 (1994), 42–54; David Knights and Andrew Sturdy, “Marketing the Soul: from the Ideology of Consumption to Consumer Subjectivity,” in Knights and Tinker (eds.) Financial Institutions and Social Transformations: International Studies of a Sector, 158–188; Antony Beckett et al., “An Exposition of Consumer Behaviour in the Financial Services Industry,” International Journal of Bank Marketing, 18, 1 (2000), 15–26; Damian E. Hodgson, Discourse, Discipline and the Subject: A Foucauldian Analysis of the UK Financial Services Industry (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); Paul Langley and Andrew Leyshon, “Guest Editor’s Introduction: Financial Subjects: Culture and Materiality,” Journal of Cultural Economy, 5, 4 (2012), 369–373. 27. Jim McGuigan, Neoliberal Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Keat and Abercrombie (eds.), Enterprise Culture. 28. For more on financial exclusion in the late twentieth and early twenty-­ first centuries see works by Andrew Leyshon and his frequent collaborators, e.g., Andrew Leyshon and Nigel Thrift, “Geographies of Financial Exclusion: Financial Abandonment in Britain and the United States,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, 20, 3 (1995), 312–341; Andrew Leyshon and Nigel Thrift, “Guest Editorial: Financial Exclusion and the Shifting Boundaries of the Financial System,” Environment and

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­Planning  A, 28, 7 (1996), 1150–1156; Andrew Leyshon et al., “Financial Exclusion and the Geography of Bank and Building Society Branch Closure in Britain,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33, 4 (2008), 447–465. See also Lindsey Appleyard, “Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs): Geographies of Financial Inclusion in the US and UK,” Geoforum, 42, 2 (2011), 250–258. A parallel body of scholarship focuses on how financialization has exacerbated existing inequalities in wealth accumulation, e.g., Tracy Warren, “Moving beyond the Gender Wealth Gap: On Gender, Class, Ethnicity, and Wealth Inequalities in the United Kingdom,” Feminist Economics, 12, 1–2 (2006), 195–219; Dalton Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010); Mehrsa Baradaran, The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). 29. Edwards, “Financial Consumerism,” ch. 1. 30. These two visions of investors resonate closely with Lizabeth Cohen’s characterization of the differences between the more passive “purchaser consumer” and the more active “citizen consumer” in her research on consumerism in twentieth-­century America, A Consumers” Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage, 2003), 18. 31. For another example of this see Matthew Watson’s research on home ownership and national economic restructuring under New Labour: “House Price Keynsianism and the Contradictions of the Modern Investor Subject,” Housing Studies, 25, 3 (2010), 413–426. 32. My ideas regarding this investment-­oriented subjectivity are also significantly shaped by scholarship on the entrepreneurial self. In this largely Foucauldian-­inspired work, subjectivity is viewed as the object and means of power and regulation through which government is achieved. The “autonomous, choosing, free” subject emerges as a defining feature of contemporary Western liberal democracies. See Nikolas Rose, “Governing the Enterprising Self,” in The Values of the Enterprise Culture: The Moral Debate, ed. by Paul Heelas and Paul Morris (London: Routledge, 1992), 141–164. See also Ulrich Bröckling, The Entrepreneurial Self: Fabricating a New Type of Subject (London: SAGE, 2016); Peter Kelly, The Self as Enterprise: Foucault and the Spirit of 21st Century Capitalism (London: Routledge, 2013); Attila Bruni et al., “Entrepreneur-­Mentality, Gender and the Study of Women Entrepreneurs,” Journal of Organizational Change Management, 27, 3 (2004), 256–268. 33. Examples include Edward Gardner et al., “The New Retail Banking Revolution,” The Service Industries Journal, 19, 2 (1999), 83–100; Beckett

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et al., “An Exposition of Consumer Behaviour”; Dawn Burton, “Tellers into Sellers?,” International Journal of Marketing, 19, 6 (1991), 25–29. 34. Examples include Michael Moran, The Politics of the Financial Services Revolution: The USA, UK and Japan (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991); Michie, The London Stock Exchange; David Kynaston, The City of London, Volume 4: Club No More, 1945–2000 (London: Pimlico, 2002); Ranald Michie and Philip Williamson (eds.), The British Government and the City of London in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Margaret Ackrill and Leslie Hannah, Barclays: The Business of Banking: 1960–1996 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); David Kynaston, The Lion Wakes: A Modern History of HSBC (London: Profile, 2015); Davies, The City of London and Social Democracy. Kieran Heinemann’s forthcoming book, Playing the Market: Retail Investment and Speculation in Twentieth-­Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021) looks to be a valuable addition to traditional histories of the City, given its focus on the voices of ordinary investors and everyday practices of speculation and gambling since the First World War. However, it is not available at the time of writing. 35. The work of Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization: Fictitious Capital in Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Randy Martin, The Financialization of Daily Life (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2002). 36. Examples include: Martin, The Financialization of Daily Life; Greta Krippner, “Financialization and the American Economy,” Socio-­Economic Review, 3, 2 (2005), 173–208; Paul Langley, The Everyday Life of Global Finance: Saving and Borrowing in Anglo-­America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Haiven, Cultures of Financialization; Tami Oren and Mark Blyth, “From Big Bang to Big Crash: The Early Origins of the UK’s Finance-­ Led Growth Model and the Persistence of Bad Policy Ideas,” New Political Economy, 25, 5 (2019), 605–622; Phillip Mader et al., The Routledge International Handbook of Financialization (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020). 37. Knights and Tinker (eds.), Financial Institutions and Social Transformations; Linda McDowell, Capital Culture: Gender at Work in the City (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997); Hodgson, Discourse, Discipline and the Subject; Viviana A. Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Karin Knorr Cetina and Alex Preda (eds.), The Sociology of Financial Markets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Viviana A. Zelizer, Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011); Kelly, The Self as Enterprise; Bröckling, The Entrepreneurial Self.

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38. For an overview of the “Economic Humanities” see: Paul Crosthwaite et al., “The Economic Humanities and the History of Financial Advice,” American Literary History, 31, 4 (2019), 661–686. For specific scholarship on the “investor subject” see: Watson, “House Price Keynsianism”; Paul Langley “The Making of Investor Subjects in Anglo-­American Pensions,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 24, 6 (2006), 919–934. For more on financialized subjectivities see Robert Aitken, “ ‘A Direct Personal Stake’: Cultural Economy, Mass Investment and the New York Stock Exchange,” Review of International Political Economy, 12, 2 (2005), 334– 363; Michael Pryke and Paul du Gay, “Take an Issue: Cultural Economy and Finance,” Economy and Society, 36, 3 (2007), 339–354. 39. For an excellent overview of this field see Sven Beckert and Christine Desan (eds.), American Capitalism: New Histories (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), quote from p. 11. 40. See for example; Jonathan Levy,  Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). Examples of scholarship that focuses on a British imperial context include: Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Vintage, 2014); Erika Rappaport, A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). Finally, recent global histories of finance and capitalism include: Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-­First Century; Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crisis Changed the World (London: Allen Lane, 2018). 41. Beckert and Desan, American Capitalism, 11–12. 42. In 1989, Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques argued that British society had entered what they described as “New Times.” In their analysis, Britain moved away from the mass industrial production, politics, and communication of the Fordist age, entering into a new historical conjuncture characterized by service sector industries and social fracture. See Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques (eds.), New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1990s (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1989). Since then, academics have largely understood this shift through the lens of Thatcherism and the rise of a New Right. See: Dennis Kavanagh, Thatcherism and British Politics: The End of Consensus?, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Colin Hay, “The ‘Crisis’ of Keynesianism and the Rise of Neoliberalism in Britain: An Ideational Institutionalist Approach,” in The Rise of Neoliberalism and

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Institutional Analysis, ed. by John L. Campbell and Ove. K. Pedersen (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 193–218; Roger Backhouse, “The Rise of Free Market Economics: Economists and the Role of the State Since 1970,” History of Political Economy, 37 (2005), 355–392; Richard Vinen, Thatcher’s Britain: The Politics and Social Upheaval of the 1980s (London: Simon & Schuster, 2009); Keith Tribe, “Liberalism and Neoliberalism in Britain, 1930–1980,” in Mirowski and Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 68–97; Ben Jackson, “The Think-­Tank Archipelago: Thatcherism and Neo-­liberalism,” in Making Thatcher’s Britain, ed. by Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 43–61; Aled Davies et al., “ ‘Everyman a Capitalist’ or ‘Free to Choose?”: Exploring the Tensions within Thatcherite Individualism,” Historical Journal, 61, 2 (2018), 477–501; Ben Jackson, “Free Markets and Feminism: The Neo-­ liberal Defence of the Male Breadwinner Model in Britain, c. 1980–1997,” Women’s History Review, 28, 2 (2019), 297–316. 43. Academics have particularly turned their attention to notions of the “ordinary,” everyday life, and regionalism as ways of exploring the diversity of experiences and narratives in contemporary Britain. For examples see: Jon Lawrence and Florence Sutcliffe-­Braithwaite, “Margaret Thatcher and the Decline of Class Politics,” in Jackson and Saunders, Making Thatcher’s Britain, 132–147; Stephen Brooke, “Living in ‘New Times’: Historicizing 1980s Britain,” History Compass, 12, 1 (2014), 20–32; Matthew Hilton et al. (eds), “New Times Revisited: Britain in the 1980s,” Contemporary British History, special issue, 31, 2 (2017), 145–165; Stephen Brooke, “Space, Emotions and the Everyday: The Affective Ecology of 1980s London,” Twentieth Century British History, 28, 1 (2017), 110–142; Kieran Connell, Black Handsworth: Race in 1980s Britain (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019). See also urban histories that introduce new actors and periodization to the history of neoliberalism in Britain: Sam Wetherell, Foundations: How the Built Environment Made Twentieth-­Century Britain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020); Guy Ortolano, Thatcher’s Progress: From Social Democracy to Market Liberalism through an English New Town (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 44. Sam Wetherell, “Painting the Crisis: Community Arts and the Search for the ‘Ordinary’ in 1970s and ’80s London,” History Workshop Journal 76, 1 (2013), 235–249; Daisy Payling, “ ‘Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire’: Grassroots Activism and Left-­Wing Solidarity in 1980s Sheffield,” Twentieth Century British History, 25, 4 (2014), 602–627; Gavin Schaffer, “Fighting Thatcher with Comedy: What to Do When There Is No Alternative,” Journal of British Studies, 55, 2 (2016), 374–397; Natalie Thomlinson and Florence Sutcliffe-­Braithwaite, “National Women Against Pit Closures: Gender, Trade

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Unionism and Community Activism,” Contemporary British History, 32, 1 (2018), 78–100; Sarah Kenny, “A ‘Radical Project’: Youth Culture, Leisure, and Politics in 1980s Sheffield,” Twentieth Century British History, 30, 4 (2019), 557–584. 45. Amy Whipple, “ ‘Ordinary People’: The Cultural Origins of Popular Thatcherism in Britain, 1964–1979” (PhD thesis, Northwestern, 2004); Chris Moores, “Opposition to the Greenham Women’s Peace Camps in 1980s Britain: RAGE Against the ‘Obscene,’ ” History Workshop Journal, 78, 1 (2014), 204–227; Chris Moores, “Thatcher’s Troops? Neighbourhood Watch Scheme and the Search for ‘Ordinary’ Thatcherism in 1980s Britain,” Contemporary British History, 31, 2 (2017), 230–255. This research mirrors a similar body of literature that traces the rise of New Right in the United States. See, for example, Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001) and Kim Phillips-­Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009). 46. My approach here is also inspired by scholarship that questions the coherence of Thatcherism as a policy program. Recent research has dispelled any myth that either Government or the City approached issues like deregulation or pension reform with a coordinated plan or clear ambitions. See, for example, Robert Saunders, “ ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’ Thatcherism and the Seventies,” in Jackson and Saunders (eds.) Making Thatcher’s Britain, 25–42; Christopher Bellringer and Ranald Michie, “Big Bang in the City of London: An Intentional Revolution or an Accident?,” Financial History Review, 21, 2 (2014), 111–137; Emma Barrett, “King Caz: Cazenove, Thatcherism, and the 1980s Financial Revolution,” Twentieth Century British History, 30, 1 (2019), 108–131; Davies et al., “ ‘Everyman a Capitalist.” 47. Jamie Peck, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason (Oxford: Oxford University, 2010), xii. In this I also build on James Vernon’s recent article on Heathrow Airport, in which he demonstrates the benefit of studying neoliberalism in situ—as something “located in place and seen as a set of practices” and thus characterized by “different elements with overlapping temporalities and periodizations” (“Heathrow and the Making of Neoliberal Britain,” Past and Present, first view [2021] https://​doi​.org​/10​.1093​/pastj​/gtaa022). 48. Aveyard et al., The Politics of Consumer Credit; Matthew Hilton, Prosperity for All: Consumer Activism in an Era of Globalization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009); Matthew Hilton, Consumerism in Twentieth-­Century Britain: The Search for a Historical Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Emily Robinson et al., “Telling Stories about Post-­war Britain: Popular Individualism and the “Crisis” of the 1970s,” Twentieth Century British History, 28, 2 (2017), 268–304.

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49. Michelle Pearce-­Burke, “Can I Really Be a Serious Investor with Just £1?,” Wealthily Website, ; ; [accessed: 11/07/2019]. 50. For more see David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 9. 51. For more on changing patterns of wealth distribution, see Jeremy Green and Scott Lavery, “The Regressive Recovery: Distribution, Inequality and State Power in Britain’s Post-­crisis Political Economy,” New Political Economy, 20, 6 (2015), 894–923; Adkins et al., The Asset Economy. 52. Tehila Sasson et al., “Britain and the World: A New Field?,” Journal of British Studies, 57, 4 (2018), 677–708, 694, 705.

Chapter 1: “A Wonderful Growth” 1. Ranald C. Michie, “Gamblers, Fools, Victims, or Wizards? The British Investor in the Public Mind, 1850–1930,” in Men, Women, and Money: Perspectives on Gender, Wealth, and Investment 1850–1930, ed. by David R. Green, et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011), 157–183, 160. 2. Malcolm Reed, Investment in Railways in Britain, 1820–1844: A Study in the Development of the Capital Market (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975); Cassis, Capitals of Capital, 41–42; Preda, “The Rise of the Popular Investor,” 207; David Kynaston, The Financial Times: A Centenary History (London: Viking, 1988), 2; Mary Poovey, “ ‘Writing about Finance in Victorian England: Disclosure and Secrecy in the Culture of Investment,’ Victorian Studies, 45, 1 (2002), 17–41, 17–18. 3. Michie, The London and New York Stock Exchanges, 106; Preda, “The Rise of the Popular Investor,” 208. 4. Josephine Maltby et al., “The Evidence for ‘Democratization’ of Share Ownership in Great Britain in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Men, Women, and Money, ed. by Green et al., 184–206, 186. 5. Josephine Maltby and Janette Rutterford, “ ‘She Possessed Her Own Fortune’: Women Investors from the Late Nineteenth Century To the Early Twentieth Century,” Business History, 48, 2 (2006), 220–253, 227, 244; Janette Rutterford and Josephine Maltby, “ ‘The Widow, the Clergyman, and the Reckless’: Women Investors in England, 1830–1914,” Feminist Eco­nomics, 12, 1–2 (2006), 111–138, 132; Mark Freeman et al., “ ‘A Doe in the City’: Women Shareholders in Eighteenth-­and Early Nineteenth-­ Century Britain,” Accounting, Business and Financial History, 16, 2 (2006), 265–291; George Robb, “Ladies of the Ticker: Women, Investment, and Fraud in England and America, 1850–1930,” in Victorian Investments:

258  |  Notes

New ­Perspectives on Finance and Culture, ed. by Nancy Henry and Cannon Schmitt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 120–140. 6. Kynaston, The Financial Times, 2. 7. Cain and Hopkins, “Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas II.” 8. Janette Rutterford et al, “Who Comprised the Nation of Shareholders? Gender and Investment in Great Britain, c. 1870–1935,” Economic History Review, 64, 1 (2011), 157–187, 160. 9. Rutterford and Sotiropoulos, “The Rise of the Small Investor,” 488, 491. 10. Donna Loftus, “Limited Liability, Market Democracy, and the Social Organization of Production in Mid-­Nineteenth Century Britain,” in Henry and Schmitt (eds.), Victorian, 79–97, 95; Michie, “Gamblers, Fools, Victims, or Wizards?,” 171; Kynaston, The Financial Times, 2. 11. Michie, “Gamblers, Fools, Victims, or Wizards?’; Henry and Schmitt (eds.), Victorian Investments, chaps. 7, 8, and 9; Francis O’Gorman (ed.), Victorian Literature and Finance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Tamara S. Wagner, Speculation in Victorian Fiction: Plotting Money and the Novel Genre, 1815–1901 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2010). 12. Preda, “The Rise of the Popular Investor,” 211–219. 13. Loftus, “Limited Liability,” 84–87. 14. Kieran Heinemann, “Popular Investment and Speculation in Britain, 1918–1987” (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2017), 27–28. Material from Heinemann’s thesis was also published as “Investment, Speculation and Popular Stock Market Engagement in Twentieth-­Century Britain,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 56 (2016), 249–272. His forthcoming book on the subject, titled Playing the Market, is not yet available at the time of writing but looks likely to be a valuable source of information about popular investment in the twentieth century. 15. Loftus, “Limited Liability,” 84–85, 88–89, 97; John D. Turner, “Wider Share Ownership? Investors in English and Welsh Bank Shares in the Nineteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 62, 1 (2009), 167–192, 168; Paul Johnson, Making the Market: Victorian Origins of Corporate Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 137. 16. Heinemann, “Popular Investment and Speculation in Britain,” 34–54. 17. There has been more substantial scholarship on the parallel North American phenomena. In the United States, the term bucket shop specifically referenced places where customers could stake small sums of money on the price movements of stocks and commodities (meaning that transactions had no direct effect on the actual prices themselves). Bucket shops were often located in convenient sites, charged smaller commissions, and were open lon-

Notes  |  259

ger hours in a direct attempt to appeal to working-­and middle-­class investors. To their detractors, bucket shops were little more than gambling dens. To their champions, they were independent brokers struggling to compete with the monopolists who dominated the New York and Chicago exchanges (David Hochfelder, “ ‘Where the Common People Could Speculate’: The Ticker, Bucket Shops, and the Origins of Popular Participation in Financial Markets, 1880–1920,” Journal of American History, 93, 2 (2006), 335–358, 335–336; David Hochfelder, “Partners in Crime: The Telegraph Industry, Finance Capitalism, and Organized Gambling, 1870–1920,” IEEE History Center, Rutgers University, 2001; Ann Faber, Card Sharps and Bucket Shops: Gambling in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Routledge, 1999), 188–200; Stäheli, Spectacular Speculation, 75–92). 18. David C. Itzkowitz, “Fair Enterprise of Extravagant Speculation: Investment, Speculation, and Gambling in Victorian England,” Victorian Studies, 45, 1 (2002), 121–147, 132–137; David C. Itzkowitz, “Victorian Bookmakers and Their Customers,” Victorian Studies, 32, 1 (1988), 7–30; Ross McKibbin, “Working-­Class Gambling in Britain, 1880–1939,” Past and Present, 82 (1979), 147–178; Dilwyn Porter, “ ‘Speciousness Is the Bucketeer’s Watchword and Outrageous Effrontery His Capital’: Financial Bucket Shops in the City of London, c. 1880–1939,” in Cultures of Selling: Perspectives on Consumption and Society Since , ed. by John Benson and Laura Ugolini (Abingdon: Ashgate, 2006), 103–126, 103–105; Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” 35. 19. Porter, “ ‘Speciousness is the Bucketeer’s Watchword,’ ” 103–105. 20. This concern in the American context has been identified by both Hochfelder (“Partners in Crime,” 4–5; ‘Where the Common People Could Speculate,” 337) and Faber (Card Sharps, 8–9, 191). 21. The law prohibiting futures trading on certain kinds of securities was repealed in 1860, only a few years after the gambling acts of 1853 and 1854 had clearly outlawed gambling practices (David C. Itzkowitz, “Fair Enterprise, 126). For more on the relationship between gambling and speculation in financial capitalism see Faber, Card Sharps. 22. Preda, “The Rise of the Popular Investor,” 218. 23. Preda, “The Rise of the Popular Investor,” 209. 24. Michie, The London and New York Stock Exchanges, 7–20, Michie, The London Stock Exchange, 73–74. However, like many of the technologies and innovations discussed later in this book, the tickertape did not automatically lead to the “democratization” of investment, but rather a concentration of power as the London Stock Exchange in tandem with the Exchange Telegraph Company centralized their control over the movement of information

260  |  Notes

(for more see John Handel, “The Material Politics of Finance: The Ticker Tape and the London Stock Exchange, 1860s–1890s,” Enterprise and Society, FirstView (2021), https://​doi​.org​/10​.1017​/eso​.2021​.3). 25. Dilwyn Porter, “ ‘A Trusted Guide of the Investing Public’: Harry Marks and the Financial News 1884–1916,” Business History, 28, 1 (1986), 1–17, 1. For more on the history of financial advice see the recent Arts and Humanities Research Council project, “The History of Financial Advice” (project website: https://​historyoffinancialadvice​.wordpress​.com/ [accessed: 17/11/2020]); Paul Crosthwaite et al., The History of Financial Advice: A Finder’s Guide to the Collection at the Library of Mistakes (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 2018), https://​historyoffinancialadvice​.files​ .wordpress​.com​/2019​/03​/hofa​-­­finders​-­­guide​-­­full​-­­compressed​.pdf [accessed: 14/12/2020]. 26. Preda, “The Rise of the Popular Investor,” 211; Poovey, “Writing about Finance in Victorian England,” 20. 27. Kynaston, The Financial Times, 3. 28. Porter, “A Trusted Guide of the Investing Public,” 1. 29. Ellis Powell, quoted in Dilwyn Porter, “City Editors and the Modern Investing Public: Establishing the Integrity of the New Financial Journalism in Late Nineteenth-­Century London,” Media History, 4, 1 (1998), 49–60, 51. 30. Kynaston, The Financial Times, 3–5; Dilwyn Porter, “Where There’s a Tip There’s a Tap: The Popular Press and the Investing Public, 1900–60,” in Northcliffe’s Legacy: Aspects of the British Popular Press, 1896–1996, ed. by Peter Caterall et al. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 71–96, 73–74. 31. Kynaston, The Financial Times, 8–9; James Taylor, “Watchdogs or Apologists? Financial Journalism and Company Fraud in Early Victorian Britain,” Historical Research, 85, 230 (2012), 632–650, 633. 32. Rutterford and Sotiropoulos, “The Rise of the Small Investor,” 489–490. 33. Taylor, “Watchdogs or Apologists?, 642. See also Itzkowitz, “Fair Enterprise of Extravagant Speculation,” 132, 137; Dilwyn Porter, “City Editors and the Modern Investing Public,” 50. 34. James Vernon, Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014), 108–109; Alex Preda, Framing Finance: The Boundaries of Markets and Modern Capitalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), ch. 3; Poovey, “Writing about Finance in Victorian England’; Mary Poovey (ed.), The Financial System in Nineteenth Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 3; Taylor, “Watchdogs or Apologists?,” 636. 35. Michie, The London and New York Stock Exchanges, 7–10, 173–174.

Notes  |  261

36. Vernon, Distant Strangers, 103–106. 37. Janette Rutterford, “The Shareholder Voice: British and American Accents, 1890–1965,” Enterprise and Society, 13, 1 (2012), 120–153, 122. 38. Kynaston, The Financial Times, 2; Michie, “Gamblers, Fools, Victims, or Wizards?,” 160; Ranald C. Michie, “The Battle of the Bourses? Competition between Stock Exchanges in the Twentieth Century,” in Financial Centres and International Capital Flows in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. by Laure Quennouëlle-­Corre and Youssef Cassis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 15–41, 19–21; Preda, “The Rise of the Popular Investor,” 209; Johnson, Making the Market, 198; Rutterford, et al., “Who Comprised the Nation of Shareholders?,” 159. 39. Brian R. Cheffins, Corporate Ownership and Control: British Business Transformed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 191; Johnson, Making the Market, 224. 40. Loftus, “Limited Liability,” 80. 41. Rutterford and Sotiropoulos, “The Rise of the Small Investor,” 488; Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” 26. 42. Kynaston, The Financial Times, 2. 43. Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” 19–20. 44. Rutterford and Sotiropoulos, “The Rise of the Small Investor,” 498. 45. Rutterford, et al., “Who Comprised the Nation of Shareholders?,” 157; Michie, The London Stock Exchange, 773. 46. Rutterford and Sotiropoulos, “The Rise of the Small Investor,” 501–503. 47. Sunday Express, quoted in Porter, “Where There’s a Tip There’s a Tap,” 79. 48. Porter, “Where There’s a Tip There’s a tap,” 71, 79–80. 49. Ellis Powell, quoted in Rutterford and Sotiropoulos, “The Rise of the Small Investor,” 502. 50. Rutterford and Sotiropoulos, “The Rise of the Small Investor,” 506–507. 51. Debates about property ownership in Britain in the 1920s mirrored a parallel emergence of the “shareholder democracy” as a powerful political ideology in the United States (for more, see Julia C. Ott’s excellent history of American notions of an “investor democracy,” When Wall Street Met Main Street). For more on the Conservative Party and property and share ownership throughout the twentieth century, see Edwards, “Financial Consumerism: Mass Investment Culture and Thatcherism,” ch. 1. 52. Noel Skelton, Constructive Conservatism (London: W. Blackwood, 1924). It was actually the Liberal Party that initially took Skelton’s ideas on

262  |  Notes

board, adopting co-­partnership as a feature of its 1928 manifesto (Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” 136). See also Francis, “A Crusade to Enfranchise the Many,” 276. 53. This approach to industrial relations had been tested in the late 1880s, when an outbreak of industrial hostilities was quickly followed by a stark increase in the number of such schemes. See Derek Matthews, “The British Experience of Profit-­Sharing,” Economic History Review, 42, 4 (1989), 439– 464, 444, 446; Harvie Ramsay, “Cycles of Control: Worker participation in sociological and historical perspective,” Sociology, 11, 3 (1977), 481–506. 54. Rutterford and Sotiropoulos, “The Rise of the Small Investor,” 509–510. 55. Matthews, “The British Experience of Profit-­Sharing,” 446. 56. For more on Samuel Smiles and Victorian notions of self-­help see Kenneth Fielden, “Samuel Smiles and Self-­Help,” Victorian Studies, 12, 2 (1968), 155–176; R. J. Morris, “Samuel Smiles and the Genesis of Self-­Help: The Retreat to a Petit Bourgeois Utopia,” Historical Journal, 24, 1 (1981), 89–109. 57. Lewis Rockow, “The Political Ideas of Contemporary Tory Democracy,” American Political Science Review, 21, 1 (1927), 12–31, 17. 58. Rutterford and Sotiropoulos, “The Rise of the Small Investor,” 510–512. 59. Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” 57. 60. Porter, “Where There’s a Tip There’s a Tap,” 83. 61. Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” 30–31. 62. Porter, “Where There’s a Tip There’s a Tap,” 80–81, 83; Rutterford and Sotiropoulos, “The Rise of the Small Investor,” 516; Michie, “Gamblers, Fools, Victims, or Wizards?,” 181. 63. Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” 57; Ranald C. Michie, The City of London: Continuity and Change since 1850 (London: Macmillan, 1991), 137–138. 64. Michael Moran, “Finance Capital and Pressure Group Politics in Britain,” British Journal of Political Science, 11, 4 (1981), 381–404, 386. 65. Michie, “The Battle of the Bourses?,” 26–28. 66. Quoted in David Kynaston, City of London: A History (London: Vintage, 2012), 354. 67. Michie, The London Stock Exchange, 73. 68. Comyns Carr, quoted in Michie, “Gamblers, Fools, Victims, or Wizards?,” 181. 69. Maltby et al., “The Evidence for ‘Democratization’ ”; Rutterford and Sotiropoulos, “The Rise of the Small Investor,” 493; Michie, “The Battle of the Bourses?,” 20; Aveyard et al., The Politics of Consumer Credit, ch. 2.

Notes  |  263

70. Material from this section has previously been published in: Edwards, “Financial Consumerism: Citizenship, Consumerism, and Capital Ownership”; Amy Edwards, “  ‘Manufacturing Capitalists’: The Wider Share Ownership Council and the Problem of ‘Popular Capitalism,’ 1958–92,” Twentieth Century British History, 27, 1 (2016), 100–123. 71. For more on the affluent society see, Lawrence Black and Hugh Pemberton (eds.), An Affluent Society? Britain’s Post-­war “Golden Age” Revisited (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); Avner Offer, The Challenge of Affluence: Self Control and Well-­Being in the United States and Britain since 1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 72. Dilwyn Porter, “ ‘City Slickers’ in Perspective: The Daily Mirror, Its Readers and Their Money, 1960–2000,” Media History, 9, 2 (2003), 137– 152, 140–141; Paul D. Clarke et al., “The Genesis of Strategic Marketing Control in British Retail Banking,” International Journal of Bank Marketing, 6, 2 (1988), 5–19, 14. 73. Aveyard et al., The Politics of Consumer Credit, 72–73. 74. Michael Moran, “Power, Policy and the City of London,” in Capital and Politics, ed. by Roger King (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), 49–68; Sukhdev Johal et al., “Power, Politics and the City of London: Before and After the Great Crisis,” Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute Paper 3, http://​ speri​.dept​.shef​.ac​.uk​/wp​-­­content​/uploads​/2013​/01​/SPERI​-­Paper​–3​-Power​ -Politics​-the​-City​-of​-London​-Before​-After​-the​-Great​-Crisis​.pdf [accessed: 16/07/2018]; many descriptions of the City’s modus operandi can be found in the oral history testimonies of the City Lives project. See Cathy Courtney and Paul Thompson, City Lives: The Changing Voice of British Finance (London: Methuen, 1996). 75. ‘Helping the Small Investor,” Sunday Times, 28 February 1960. 76. By comparison, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was far more proactive in the 1950s when it came to courting the “average” American to become an investor. See, for example, Janice M. Traflet’s study of the “Own Your Share” program in 1950s, where the NYSE experimented with monthly investment purchase plans and actively marketed share ownership to small investors (A Nation of Shareholders). 77. Michie, The London Stock Exchange, 491–493; Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” 39. 78. Kenneth Gooding, “Stockbrokers and the Size of Individual Deals,” Financial Times, 2 August 1971, 14. 79. William Joseph Reader, A House in the City: A Study of the City and of the Stock Exchange Based on the Records of Foster and Braithwaite, 1825–1975 (London: B. T. Batsford, 1979), 171–175. 80. ‘Progress of the Credit Squeeze,” The Times, 16 March 1956, 16.

264  |  Notes

81. “Helping the Small Investor,” Sunday Times, 28 February 1960; “A Source of Joy,” Stock Exchange Gazette, 26 February 1960, 239. 82. For more on the City’s attitude to small investors in the postwar period, see Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” ch. 2. 83. For more on the WSOC see Edwards, “ ‘Manufacturing Capitalists’ ”; Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” 134–148. 84. Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” 137. 85. At the time of study, material from the London School of Economics Library, London, Wider Share Ownership Council Collection (hereafter, LSE, WSOC) was uncataloged. As much detail as possible about the material is given, but there are no available reference numbers. LSE, WSOC, Edgar Palamountain, “Report and Address by the Chairman of the Executive,” minutes of the 1979 WSOC Annual General Meeting of The Wider Share Council Executive Committee Meeting, held 13/06/1979. 86. LSE, WSOC, Minutes of The Wider Share Council Executive Committee Meeting, held 17/05/1978. 87. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the WSOC became attuned to debates within the Conservative Party concerning the potential for capital ownership to transform popular attitudes to free enterprise. However, loyalty to its wider share ownership agenda meant that the 1980s marked a waning coherence between the activities of the Council, the Party, and the designs of large financial institutions. For more see Edwards, “ ‘Manufacturing Capitalists.’ ” 88. LSE, WSOC, The Wider Share Ownership Council, Discussion Paper: The Crisis of Capitalism in Britain and Corporate Governance (undated, c. 1975). 89. “Help for Workers to Buy Shares: Case for Tax Concessions,” Birmingham Post, 23 February 1960. 90. “Britain Needs Wider Share Ownership,” Financial Times, 23 February 1960. 91. Stuart White, “ ‘Revolutionary Liberalism?’ The Philosophy and Politics of Ownership in the Post-­War Liberal Party,” British Politics, 4, 2, (2009), 164–187, 165; Aveyard et al., The Politics of Consumer Credit, 53–54. 92. Ben Jackson, “Revisionism Reconsidered: ‘Property-­Owning Democracy’ and Egalitarian Strategy in Post-­War Britain,” Twentieth Century British History, 16, 4 (2005), 416–440, 421, 429, 432. 93. Low was a coauthor of the Conservative pamphlet, Everyman a Capitalist (CPA, PUB 167/22, Conservative Political Centre, Everyman a Capitalist: Some Proposals for the Small Saver in Industry, April 1956).

Notes  |  265

94. Matthew Francis, “Not Too Many Capitalists but Too Few: The Conservative Party and the Property-­Owning Democracy, 1945–1970,” paper presented at the School of History Modern Research Seminar (University of Leeds, 2013). 95. Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” 140–141; Davies, The City of London and Social Democracy, 45; Reader, A House in the City, 173. 96. Francis, “ ‘A Crusade to Enfranchise the Many,’ ” 280; Richard Ronald, The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 124; Peter Weiler, “The Rise and Fall of the Conservatives’ ‘Grand Design for Housing,’ 1951–64,” Contemporary British History, 14, 1 (2000), 122–150, 133, 136; Aveyard et al., The Politics of Consumer Credit, 49–53. 97. Peter Scott and Lucy Ann Newton, “Advertising, Promotion, and the Rise of a National Building Society Movement in Interwar Britain,” Business History, 54, 3 (2012), 399–423; Peter Scott, “Marketing Mass Home Ownership and the Creation of the Modern Working-­Class Consumer in Interwar Britain,” Business History, 50, 1 (2008), 4–25. 98. E. H. H. Green, “Thatcherism: An Historical Perspective,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, 9 (1999), 17–42, 30; Munro, “The Fiscal Politics of Savings and Share Ownership in Britain, 757–778. 99. “M’s Son Leads Way: Tycoons Meet to Widen Investment,” Daily Express, 23 February 1960. 100. “A Source of Joy,” Stock Exchange Gazette, 26 February 1960. 101. “Helping the Small Investor,” Sunday Times, 28 February 1960. 102. Edward du Cann, quoted in “Growth of Share Ownership,” Financial Times, 26 September 1960, 6. 103. Margot Naylor, “Your Money: Investing for the Wrong Reasons,” Observer, 10 October 1965, 9. 104. Unit trusts are a form of mutual investment fund. Investors buy units in the fund (the price of which rises and falls based on the value of investments held by the fund). The fund’s manager decides which bonds or shares to buy and sell. Unit trusts can be general or specialize in certain sectors with a range of risk profiles. By comparison investment trusts are set up as companies and traded on a stock exchange. Investors can buy shares in the company and thus effectively “buy into” its assets which consist of an investment portfolio. 105. John Palmer, “Reluctance of Workers to Become Investors,” Guardian, 7 October 1965, 13. 106. In this, I build on Porter’s excellent survey of the Daily Mirror’s financial news (“ ‘City Slickers’ in Perspective”).

266  |  Notes

107. The late twentieth century witnessed a growing oligopoly in press ownership that inhibited the diversity of the press as papers fell under the control of one or another of the major press groups: the Sun and The Times were both owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (total newspaper circulation of 10.6 million); the Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph formed the Hollinger group (total circulation of 1.7 million); the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday were owned by Daily Mail/Associated Newspapers under the chairmanship of Lord Rothermere (total circulation of 5 million); the Mirror was owned by David Montgomery’s Mirror Group (total circulation of 9.2 million); and finally the Guardian and Observer were owned by the Guardian Media Group under the Scott Trust (total newspaper circulation of 0.9 million). For more, see James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain, 5th edition (London: Routledge, 1997), 80–81, 105–107. 108. Curran and Seaton, Power without Responsibility, 93–94. 109. Matthew Hilton, Consumerism in Twentieth-­Century Britain: in Twentieth-Century Britain, 203–204. 110. These figures are taken from Table 4.4 in Dick Rooney, “Thirty Years of Competition in the British Tabloid Press: The Mirror and the Sun, 1968–1998,” in Tabloid Tales: Global Debates Over Media Standards, ed. by Colin Sparks and John Tulloch (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 91–111, 98–100. Rooney’s work does not make it clear the extent to which overlaps in readerships occurred, so the numbers cited above may represent an overestimation. However, given the oppositional nature of the papers in question we can assume that levels of cross-­over in readerships were not extremely high. 111. Kenneth Fleet, “The Influence of the Financial Press,” Annual Livery Lecture of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, 3 February 1983, 7. 112. Porter, “ ‘City Slickers’ in Perspective,” 141. 113. Stephen Fay, “Big City, Bright Lights,” British Journalism Review, 22, 1 (2011), 48–53, 48. 114. Table 4, Curran and Seaton, Power without Responsibility, 98–99. 115. Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” 121–131; Porter, “Where There’s a Tip There’s a Tap,” 74. 116. Fay, “Big City,” 50 117. Porter, “ ‘City Slickers’ in Perspective,” 141. 118. Amy Edwards, “ ‘Money Makers’: The Financial Advice Industry and the Limitations of Popular Capitalism,” paper presented at the Modern British Studies Conference (University of Birmingham, July 2017).

Notes  |  267

119. George A. Nicholson Jr., “Preface,” in Starting and Running a Profitable Investment Club, ed. by Thomas E. O’Hara and Kenneth S. Janke Sr. (New York: Times, 1996), v. 120. O’Hara and Janke Sr., Starting and Running a Profitable Investment Club, 3. 121. “Growing Popularity of Investment Clubs: Lessons of United States Experience,” The Times, 30 July 1958, 13. 122. David Moate, Goating, E-­Book (Sussex: Andrew Moate, 2006); “Clubs for Small Capitalists,” The Times, 5 September 1960, 11. 123. “Clubs for Small Capitalists,” The Times, 5 September 1960, 11. 124. A letter to the Financial Times in 1958 from J. R. Campbell Carter discussed his then three-­year-­old Sidcup Investors Club (“Investment Clubs: What an Existing Group Is Doing,” Financial Times, 20 September 1958, 6). 125. “More Popular,” Financial Times, 17 November 1959, 13. 126. “Clubs for Small Capitalists,” The Times, 5 September 1960, 11; “ ‘Investment Clubs’ Funds Now Total Over £313,000,” The Times, 28 October 1960, 20. Elsewhere this figure was estimated as £600,000 (Richard Kellet, Ordinary Shares for Ordinary Savers, Hobart Papers, 16 (London: The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1962), 25). 127. “Investment Club Chief’s New Job,” Daily Mail, 25 August 1961, 13; “Investment Clubs,” Financial Times, 20 May 1961, 7. 128. “Investment Club Gets Bank’s Aid,” Daily Mail, 21 February 1964, 13; “Enjoy Yourself,” Daily Mail, 9 June 1964, 10. 129. For more on working-­class investor motivations in the postwar period, see Heinemann’s discussion of a 1959 Acton Trust study (“Popular Investment,” 70–73). 130. Groups of above twenty members no longer counted as partnerships and had to register as a limited company, thereby becoming subject to corporate tax rules. Some clubs did grow into much larger, highly organized outfits. The B.O.A.C-­B.E.A pilot’s club at London Airport had 426 members by 1963, while the British Investors Club, set up in 1962, reached a membership of 204. These types of clubs are not discussed here, as they represent a different form of investing: many members could not attend meetings and simply read a regular newsletter (“The Investment Clubmen,” Financial Times, 7 December 1963, 8). 131. “Clubs for Small Capitalists,” The Times, 5 September 1960, 11. 132. “Investment Clubs’ Funds Now Total Over £313,000,” The Times, 28 October 1960, 20. 133. “Clubs for Small Capitalists,” The Times, 5 September 1960, 11.

268  |  Notes

134. “Guard against “Tricksters,’ ” Guardian, 28 September 1959, 14. 135. “Enjoy Yourself,” Daily Mail, 9 June 1964, 10. 136. Lord Shawcross, quoted in, Stephen Waley-­Cohen, “Inflation: How You Can Beat It by Saving for Yourself,” Daily Mail, 30 October 1968, 17. 137. “First of City’s New Unit Trusts Announced,” The Times, 27 November 1958, 17. 138. “Clubs for Small Capitalists,” The Times, 5 September 1960, 11; Hansard, House of Commons Debate (hereafter HC Deb), “(New Clause), Investment Clubs,” 6 July 1965, vol. 715, cc. 1381–1402. 139. “Investment Clubs’ Funds Now Total Over £313,000,” The Times, 28 October 1960, 20. 140. “In the money,” The Times, 9 July 1962, 13; ‘Female Clubs in the Lead,’ The Times, 5 September 1967, 22. 141. “In the Money,” The Times, 9 July 1962, 13. 142. “The Investment Clubs,” Spectator, 29 January 1960, 22. 143. Harmes, “Mass Investment Culture.” 144. David Moate letter to the Editor, “Investment Clubs,” Financial Times, 27 September 1958, 4. 145. “Investment Clubs’ Plea to Government,” Financial Times, 16 March 1964, 4. 146. R. F. M. Wilkinson, speech in Liverpool (14 May 1964), quoted in “Investment Clubs ‘Need Controls,’ ” The Times, 15 May 1964, 19; “Investment Club Controls,” Financial Times, 15 May 1964, 25; “Investment Clubs Safeguards,” The Times, 23 October 1964, 23. 147. “Investment Clubs Safeguards,” The Times, 23 October 1964, 23; “Move for Tighter Controls of Investment Clubs,” Financial Times, 23 October 1964, 12. 148. Moate, Goating; “Investment Clubs Show a Rapid Growth,” Financial Times, 9 September 1964, 13; “Investment Clubs Dispute Settled,” Financial Times, 19 November 1964. 149. “Relief for Investment Clubs Still Being Sought,” The Times, 7 July 1965, 13; “Investment Clubs Say Gains Tax ‘Unworkable,’ ” Financial Times, 3 June 1965, 10; “Tax Threat to Investment Clubs: Some Disband,” Financial Times, 18 June 1965, 15. 150. William Davis, “Investment Clubs Face a Trying Time,” Guardian, 22 August 1966, 11. 151. Davis, “Investment Clubs Face a Trying Time” Guardian, 22 August 1966, 11. 152. Jack Amos, “Hard Times for Many Investment Clubs,” Financial Times, 18 August 1967. 153. ONS, “Ownership of UK Quoted Shares: 2018,” 8.

Notes  |  269

154. Harold Wilson, cited in Davies, The City of London and Social Democracy, 40. 155. Edwards, “ ‘Money Makers’ ”; this argument is also made by Heinemann in his thesis on twentieth-­century speculation, although his focus is largely on the long history of the “speculative and buccaneering type of financial capitalism” that has come to be associated with 1980s popular capitalism (“Popular Investment,” 207, 209–210). 156. Hochfelder, “Partners in Crime,” 6.

Chapter 2: Over the Counter 1. Bank of England Archive, London, (hereafter BOEA), EID5/48, D. H. A. Ingram, “The Stock Exchange and Regulation in the City,” Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin (1987), 54–65; L. C. B. Gower, “ ‘Big Bang’ and City Regulation,” Modern Law Review, 51, 1 (1988), 1–22; David Knights, “An Industry in Transition: Regulation, Restructuring and Renewal,” in Knights and Tinker (eds.), Financial Institutions and Social Transformations, 1–27, 4; Moran, The Politics of the Financial Services Revolution; Michie, The London Stock Exchange, 549–550; Kynaston, The City of London, Volume 4; Michie and Williamson (eds.), The British Government and the City of London; Ranald C. Michie, “The London Stock Exchange and the British Government in the Twentieth Century,” in State and Financial Systems in Europe and the USA: Historical Perspectives on Regulation and Supervision in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. by Stefano Battilossi and Jaime Reis (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 79–96. 2. This does not mean the Conservatives came to office with a specific plan for how this process should occur or what its precise aims should be. Christopher Bellringer and Ranald Michie have shown that deregulation was less coherent and more contingent than politicians and City figures have claimed in retrospect, with many of its outcomes proving unintended (“Big Bang in the City of London”). 3. HC Deb, “Investor Protection (Gower Report),” 16 July 1984, vol. 64, cc.19–114. 4. Michie, “The Battle of the Bourses?”; Moran, The Politics of the Financial Services Revolution, 10; Claire Loussouarn, “Spread Betting and the City of London,” in Qualitative Research in Gambling: Exploring the Production and Consumption of Risk, ed. by Rebecca Cassidy et al. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 233–250, 236–238. 5. J. Peter Ferderer, “Advances in Communication Technology and Growth of the American Over-­the-­Counter Markets, 1876–1929,” Journal of Economic History, 68, 2 (2008), 501–534, 502–505.

270  |  Notes

6. Isida Mansaku et al., “An Empirical Comparison of the Major Stock Exchanges: NYSE, NASDAQ and LSE in Perspective,” Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 5, 3 (2016), 406–435; Jeffrey E. Sohl, “The ­Early-­Stage Equity Market in the USA,” Venture Capital: An International Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, 1, 2 (1999), 101–120, 104. 7. Tom Wilmot, Inside the Over-­ the-­ Counter Market (Cambridge: Woodhead-­Faulkner, 1985). 8. Roger Buckland and Edward W. Davis, The Unlisted Securities Market (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 1. 9. Listing requirements for formal exchanges such as the London Stock Exchange relied on stringent rules regarding company size, financial performance, existing track record, and the percentage of shares that had to be issued. In addition to such requirements, the obligation for companies to produce and advertise a prospectus meant that the costs of getting a listing was prohibitive for many small firms. 10. M. J. H. Nightingale, “OTC Market,” Economist, 29 April 1978, 6. 11. “Nightingale’s Nest Eggs,” Economist, 1 April 1978, 102, 104. 12. Mike Allen, “USM and OTC Appeal Continues Despite Risks of Failure and Thin Markets,” The Times, 14 April 1984, 27. 13. BOEA, EID5/45, “The Unlisted Securities Market,” Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, December 1985, 537–543, 543. 14. Wilmot, Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market, 13. 15. Vivien Goldsmith, “Don’t Delay, Afcor Investors Are Told,” The Times, 7 May 1988, 31. 16. “Harvard Securities Truce,” The Times, 6 July 1982, 15. 17. “On April 6 Expect the Stock Exchange to Abolish Rule 211,” Daily Mail, 26 March 1982, 39. 18. Wilmot, Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market, 109–110. 19. Quoted in Charles Batchelor, “Security Dealer Bodies May Merge,” Financial Times, 17 March 1984, 4. 20. In addition to making small business a feature of consecutive election manifestos, the Conservative Party adopted both supply-­and demand-­side measures to stimulate growth in this area. This included the launch of a Small Business Bureau in 1976, a newly created Minister for Small Business, and changes to employment legislation. The party also eased regulatory burdens on small companies to encourage more of them to apply for a listing on the stock exchange. 21. Wilmot, Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market, 10, 12, 81, 111. 22. Ravendale Securities Ltd advertisement, Daily Mail, 8 June 1983, 3. 23. Ibid. 24. BOEA, EID5/45, “The Unlisted Securities Market,” 542–543.

Notes  |  271

25. Wilmot, Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market, 71. 26. Richard Thomson, “Tax Rewards That Brought in Funds,” The Times, 10 May 1985, 16. 27. Kenneth Fleet, “Keeping Over-­the-­Counter Deals under Control,” The Times, 9 January 1984, 13. 28. “Misleading Schemes,” The Times, 3 December 1983, 26. 29. “Putting in Another Tier,” The Times, 13 December 1979, 19. 30. The National Archives, Kew, Surrey (hereafter TNA), BS 9, Lord Wilson, Committee to Review the Functioning of Financial Institutions: Report. Cmnd. 7937 (1980); “Unlisted but No Longer Unloved?,” Economist, 13 September 1980, 97. 31. Buckland and Davis, The Unlisted Securities Market, 2. 32. “Putting in Another Tier,” The Times, 13 December 1979, 19. 33. “Unlisted but No Longer Unloved?,” Economist, 13 September 1980, 97. 34. Buckland and Davis, The Unlisted Securities Market, 1; Michie, The London Stock Exchange, 572–573. 35. BOEA, EID5/45, “The Unlisted Securities Market,” 538–539, 541. 36. Ibid., 542; Pauline Skypala, “The Best Way to Get a Share of the Action,” Daily Mail, 19 June 1985, 18–19; Mike Allen, “USM and OTC Appeal Continues Despite Risks of Failure and Thin Markets,” The Times, 14 April 1984, 27. 37. Derek Pain and Pam Spooner, “ ‘Memcom Arrives at Last,” The Times, 4 February 1985, 17. 38. Harvard Securities advertisement, Telegraph, 28 October 1986, 22. 39. Wilmot, Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market, 55. 40. Ibid., 2–3. A discretionary managed account means that a broker has the discretion to make investment decisions (and buy and sell orders) on their client’s behalf. 41. Wilmot, Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market, 62. 42. Afcor Investments Ltd advertisement, The Times, 13 April 1985, 13. 43. Afcor Investments Ltd advertisement, The Times, 29 September 1986, 22. 44. By comparison, commission rates on the Stock Exchange in 1985 sat at a £15 minimum plus an additional £2.25 VAT (“Share with a Friend,” Economist, 17 August 1985, 61–62). 45. Michael Walters, “Buy Your Shares Wholesale,” Daily Mail, 8 August 1984, 17. 46. Margaret Thatcher Foundation Website (hereafter MTFW, followed by [Unique document ID], see bibliography for more information), 104375, Margaret Thatcher, speech to Conservative Rally in Edinburgh, 25 April 1979.

272  |  Notes

47. Wilmot, Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market, 106. 48. “Throgmorton Street Blues,” Economist, 14 July 1984, 9. 49. LSE, WSOC, Minutes of The Wider Share Council Executive Committee Meeting held 06/05/1986, 2. 50. “Join the Club, Says the Stock Exchange,” Daily Mail, 22 July 1987, 17. 51. LSE, WSOC, Minutes of The Wider Share Council Executive Committee Meeting held 06/05/1986, 2. 52. LSE, WSOC, Minutes of The Wider Share Council Executive Committee meeting held 23/09/1986, 3. 53. Michael Walters, How to Make a Killing in Penny Shares (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1987), 51; Roger Baden-­Powel, “Foreword,” in Wilmot, Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market, xi 54. Baden-­Powel, “Foreword,” xi. 55. Mike Allen, “USM and OTC Appeal Continues Despite Risks of Failure and Thin Markets,” The Times, 14 April 1984, 27. 56. Polly Peck was a small British textile company that started out as a penny share. After a period of rapid growth, it was eventually listed on the London Stock Exchange, breaking into the FTSE 100 share index in 1989. 57. Walters, How to Make a Killing in Penny Shares, 48–49. 58. Alexander Davidson, The City Share Pushers (Horndean: Scope International, 1989), 22. 59. Afcor Investments advertisement, The Times, 13 April 1985, 13. 60. Dan Atkinson, “No Money for 5,000 Harvard Investors,” Guardian, 14 September 1990, 14. 61. Christopher Grey, “Suburban Subjects: Financial Services and the New Right,” in Knights and Tinker (eds.), Financial Institutions and Social Transformations, 47–67, 56. 62. Richard Lander, “Winding Up Petition for Prior Harwin Securities,” The Times, 24 December 1986, 21; Colin Narbrough, “MP Urges Action on “Cowboys,’ ” The Times, 26 January 1989, 25. 63. Walters, How to Make a Killing in Penny Shares, 5; Roger Hardman, Stocks and Shares: A Practical Guide for the First-­Time Investor, 2nd edition (London: Telegraph Publications, 1987), 26; “C & W: It Looks like a small premium,” Daily Mail, 12 December 1985, 33; Isabel Unsworth, “Thrills and Spills in Store for Third Market Investors,” The Times, 18 August 1986, 17. 64. Davidson, The City Share Pushers, 74. 65. McDowell, Capital Culture, 70–71. 66. John R. Short, “Yuppies, Yuffies and the New Urban Order,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 14, 2 (1989), 173–188.

Notes  |  273

67. LSE, WSOC, Lord Shawcross, President’s Address, minutes of the 1988 Wider Share Ownership Council Annual General Meeting, held 09/06/1988, 3. 68. Such statements undoubtedly overstated the case. Recent work on how City institutions negotiated the changing legislative environment of the 1980s shows a remarkable resilience in the cultural and networked norms of key City institutions (Barrett, “King Caz”). 69. Fleet, “Keeping Over-­the-­Counter Deals under Control,” The Times, 9 January 1984, 13. 70. The larger of the two bodies, NASDIM grew out of the Association of Licensed Dealers in Securities (ALDS) which was set up in 1979 when there were only a small number of firms holding licenses to deal in securities. When these numbers expanded in the early 1980s, ALDS changed its name to NASDIM, and with it, its constitution, so that it covered all firms dealing in securities or practicing investment management. It was formally recognized as a self-­regulatory body under the prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act in 1984. BIDS was set up in 1983 by licensed dealers themselves, and was concerned only with licensed dealing (Wilmot, Inside the Over-­the-­ Counter Market, 64–65). 71. Charles Batchelor, “Security Dealer Bodies May Merge,” Financial Times, 17 March 1984, 4; Wilmot, Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market, 65–66. 72. Walters, How to Make a Killing in Penny Shares, 48. 73. Patience Wheatcroft, “Harvard Is No Patch on Eton in the Square Mile,” Daily Mail, 27 April 1987, 34. 74. Barclays advertisement, Daily Mail, 14 November 1987, 20. 75. Patience Wheatcroft, “Harvard Is No Patch on Eton in the Square Mile,” Daily Mail, 27 April 1987, 34. 76. Wilmot, Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market, 104–107, 111. 77. “Inside the Over the Counter Market,” Daily Mail, 13 October 1988, 47. 78. Fleet, “Keeping Over-­the-­Counter Deals under Control,” The Times, 9 January 1984, 13. 79. “Harvard Loses Out,” Guardian, 3 February 1988, 17. 80. Ibid. 81. “NASDIM to Sit on Takeover Panel,” Financial Times, 4 April 1986, 8; “Security Risks,” Financial Times, 23 August 1986, iv. 82. Michael Walters, “Wilmot May Offer His Harvard Head,” Daily Mail, 26 June 1987, 30. 83. Ian Harper and Daniel John, “Cash out of Hand,” Guardian, 1 October 1988, 29.

274  |  Notes

84. Tom Wilmot, quoted in Michael Walters, “OTC Market Dies as Harvard Quits,” Daily Mail, 30 September 1988, 35; Colin Narborough, “Harvard Chief Angry at Common Motion,” The Times, 29 June 1988, 28. 85. Vivien Goldsmith, “Interim Authorized Investors Listed,” The Times, 14 January 1989, 23; Maria Scott, “Dealing with the Limbo Firms,” The Times, 14 May 1988, 31. 86. The DTI later claimed that the petition was based on mismanagement under the “public interest” provisions of the 1985 Companies Act (Lander, “Winding Up Petition for Prior Harwin Securities,” 21; “Prior Harwin Petitions “Not Based on Insolvency,” The Times, 29 January 1987, 21). 87. Goldsmith, “Interim Authorized Investors Listed,” 23. 88. Walters, “OTC Market Dies as Harvard Quits,” Daily Mail, 30 September 1988, 35. 89. “City Spy: At Last, Justice for Wilmot’s Frauds,” Evening Standard, 24 August 2011; Alexander Davidson, “Reflections on the Successful Prosecution of Tom Wilmot, UK Boiler Room King,” Reuters, 26 August 2011; Simon Read, “Jail for Share Scamsters Won’t Stop the Boiler Room Fraud,” Independent, 27 August 2011. 90. “Totting Up,” Economist, 19 April 1986, 91. 91. Barry Riley, “OTC Firms Welcome Unlisted Securities Market,” Financial Times, 17 April 1986, 48. 92. Michie, The London Stock Exchange, 573. 93. Walters, How to Make a Killing in Penny Shares, 47. 94. David Ladipo and Frank Wilkinson, “More Pressure, Less Protection,” in Job Insecurity and Work Intensification, ed. by Brendan Burchell et al. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2002), 8–38, 21. 95. Edward Peter Stringham and Ivan Chen, “The Alternative of Private Regulation: The London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market as a Model,” Economic Affairs, 32, 3 (2012), 37–43. 96. Elliot Posner, “Stock Exchange Competition and the Nasdaq Bargain in Europe,” in The State of the European Union, Volume 7: With US or Against US? European Trends in American Perspective, ed. by Nicolas Jabko and Craig Parsons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 193–218. 97. Loussouarn, “Spread Betting and the City of London,” 234. 98. Roger Munting, An Economic and Social History of Gambling in Britain and the USA (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 98. 99. Carolyn Downs, “Selling Hope: Gambling Entrepreneurs in Britain 1906–1960,” Journal of Business Research, 68 (2015), 2207–2213, 2213. 100. Munting, An Economic and Social History of Gambling, 97–99. 101. “Coral Index Change,” Guardian, 10 September 1981, 23;

Notes  |  275

102. As with real shares, the company set an automatic five-­point spread on the index, so profit was only made on any movement beyond the initial spread. See “Share Comment,” Guardian, 6 November 1972, 21; John Davis, “Go with Honest Joe,” Observer, 22 September 1974, 16; John Davis, “When Coral Is a Good Bet,” Observer, 27 February 1977, 14; Tom Tickell, “Two Schemes for City Gamblers,” Guardian, 14 January 1978, 18; “Be Ready to Cut Your Losses,” Daily Mail, 9 May 1984, 20–21. 103. Multiple classified advertisements, Financial Times, 2 November 1964, 12. 104. Margot Naylor, “Where to Have a Tax-­Free Flutter,” Daily Mail, 19 February 1969, 20; Tickell, “Two Schemes for City Gamblers,” Guardian, 14 January 1978, 18. 105. Coral Index advertisement, Financial Times, 6 December 1967, 29; “Coral Index Ltd.,” Economist, 17 September 1977, 113. 106. Naylor, “Where to Have a Tax-­Free Flutter,” Daily Mail, 19 February 1969, 20. 107. “Share Comment,” Guardian, 6 November 1972, 21. 108. “Markets,” Daily Mail, 2 July 1974, 23. 109. I.G. Index advertisement, Financial Times, 29 April 1981, 26. 110. Michael Thompson-­Noel, “Three-­Way Bets on the Stock Market,” Financial Times, 2 June 1973, 24; “Hedging bets,” Financial Times, 16 May 1973, 18. 111. Downs, “Selling Hope,” 2207–2208; David Forrest, “The Past and Future of British Football Pools,” Journal of Gambling Studies, 15, 2 (1999), 161–176, 161. 112. “City Comment: Sorting Out the Bulls,” Guardian, 9 May 1973, 15. 113. Investapools advertisement, Daily Mail, 9 May 1973, 11; “City Comment: Sorting Out the Bulls,” Guardian, 9 May 1973, 15. 114. “Pools Winner?,” The Times, 9 May 1973, 23. 115. Tickell, “Two Schemes for City Gamblers,” Guardian, 14 January 1978, 18; “Backing a Winner,” Economist, 20 July 1985, 74. 116. Roger Nutall, “I Betcha Ladbroke Will Win,” Daily Mail, 3 February 1982, 17; “The Coral Index,” Daily Mail, 10 September 1981, 26; “Coral Index Change,” Guardian, 10 September 1981, 23; “Ladbroke Group to buy Coral Index,” Financial Times, 10 September 1981, 30. 117. “Betting on the FT Index Is More Fun Than Playing the Market, Says Punters,” Daily Mail, 14 December 1983, 25; “Backing a Winner,” Economist, 20 July 1985, 74. 118. “Be Ready to Cut Your Losses,” Daily Mail, 9 May 1984, 20–21; “Your Best Bet in the City,” Daily Mail, 29 January 1986, 17; “Company Briefing,” Guardian, 3 February 1982, 16.

276  |  Notes

119. “House Price Gamble for the Brave,” Daily Telegraph, 18 September 1988, 28. 120. Jon Ashworth, “Punter’s Debut,” The Times, 14 November 1990, 27. 121. “Easy Access to Playing the Stock Market,” Daily Mail, 20 February 1985, 26. 122. IG Index advertisement, Daily Telegraph, 2 October 1983, 40. 123. City Index advertisement, The Times, 16 November 1989, 25. 124. “Deal with Today’s Market Makers,” Daily Mail, 26 March 1986, 19. 125. IG Index advertisement, Daily Telegraph, 20 August 1987, 15. 126. “Easy Access to Playing the Stock Market,” Daily Mail, 20 February 1985, 26; IG Index advertisement, Economist, 15 September 1990, 115. 127. Ladbroke Index advertisement, Financial Times, 3 February 1982, 19. 128. “Backing a Winner,” Economist, 20 July 1985, 74. 129. “One-­Way Bet for Jonathan Sparke,” Financial Times, 22 July 1996, 26; Fiona Lafferty, “City Index,” Financial Times, 14 October 1996, 14. 130. For a history of political spread betting see Laura Beers, “Punting on the Thames: Electoral Betting in Interwar Britain,” Journal of Contemporary History, 45, 2 (2010), 282–314. 131. Christopher Hales, “Making a Book out of Market Movements, Sunday Telegraph, 6 March 1988, 29. 132. Investapools advertisement, Daily Mail, 9 May 1973, 11. 133. “Pools Winner?,” The Times, 9 May 1973, 23. 134. Tickell, “Two Schemes for City Gamblers,” Guardian, 14 January 1978, 18. 135. Barry Phelps, “Smith in Two Hats,” Daily Mail, 10 March 1979, 35. 136. Barry Phelps, “A Winning Way to Play Footsie,” Daily Mail, 3 May 1984, 27; Peter Rodgers, “Problem for the Futures Flutter,” Guardian, 11 August 1983, 14. 137. Lafferty, “City Index,” Financial Times, 14 October 1996, 14. 138. Christopher Hill, “Betting on the Market” Daily Telegraph, 20 June 1982, 25. 139. Rodney Hobson, “A Flutter in Your Favour,” The Times, 3 September 1998, 4. 140. Barry Phelps, “Spin of the Wheeler,” Daily Mail, 22 June 1982, 24–25. 141. “Gambling on Gambling,” Economist, 20 September 1986, 84. 142. “Bonanza Bets on MPs’ seats,” Guardian, 22 May 1983, 17. 143. Tony Falshaw, “Good News for the City’s Avid Gamblers,” Daily Mail, 24 August 1988, 33; Robert Tyerman, “Trades Deficit,” Daily Telegraph, 28 August 1988, 26.

Notes  |  277

144. Robert Tyerman, “Home and Dry,” Daily Telegraph, 10 April 1988, 30. 145. “One-­Way Bet for Jonathan Sparke,” Financial Times, 22 July 1996, 26. 146. Charles Vintcent, How to Win at Financial Spread Betting (Harlow: Pearson Educated, 2002), xii 147. Loussouarn, “Spread Betting and the City of London,” 233.

Chapter 3: Shopping for Shares Material from this chapter was previously published in Amy Edwards, “Financial Consumerism: Citizenship, Consumerism, and Capital Ownership.” 1. “Prize Days Out with the City People,” The Times, 28 September 1985, 26. 2. Michael Walters, How to Make a Killing in the Share Jungle, 1989 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1989), xi. 3. Wayne Lintott, “Rival Visions of a Financial Revolution in the High Street,” The Times, 6 April 1984, 20. 4. In the 1990s a body of economic sociological and geographical research identified changes in delivery modes, marketing, and organizational structures in the retail banking sector. For examples see: Burton, Financial Services and the Consumer; Knights and Tinker (eds.), Financial Institutions and Social Transformations; Glen Morgan and David Knights (eds.), Regulation and Deregulation in European Financial Services (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997). Further examples cited in the discussion below. For more recent scholarship see: Donncha Marron, “ ‘Lending by Numbers’: Credit Scoring and the Constitution of Risk within American Consumer Credit,” Economy and Society, 36, 1 (2007), 103–133; Leyshon et al., “Financial Exclusion and the Geography of Bank and Building Society Branch Closure in Britain”; Langley, The Everyday Life of Global Finance. 5. Jon Sundbo, “Financial Services in Transition: An Examination of Market and Regulatory Forces in Denmark and the UK,” in Knights and Tinker (eds), Financial Institutions and Social Transformations, 117–134. 6. Judi Bevan, “Getting Your Share of the Perks?,” Sunday Telegraph, 13 May 1984, 23. 7. Margaret Dibben, “Shareholders Perk Up,” Guardian, 5 September 1981, 20. 8. Patrick Sergeant, “In the Land of the Ever-­Rising Perk,” Daily Mail, 19 December 1979, 17; John Davis, “A Fair Share of the Perks,” Observer, 23 May 1976, 17; “Perks—They’re Your Funeral,” Observer, 6 ­February

278  |  Notes

1977, 16; John Davis, “Shareholders Perking Up All Over,” Observer, 28 January 1979, 22. 9. Patrick Sergeant, “Praise Those Perks—and Pass Them On,” Daily Mail, 22 August 1978, 23. 10. Philip Chappell, “Why Ownership Matters,” Long Range Planning, 19, 6 (1986), 130–136, 133, 136. 11. The voucher scheme gave shareowners discounts on their phone bill, relative to the number of shares they purchased (British Telecom Archives, London (hereafter BTA), TCB F8/325/EHA 2843: British Telecom: Offer for Sale of Ordinary Shares, 5). 12. Melvyn Marckus, “Share Perks in Vogue,” Observer, 13 October 1985, 30. 13. Roger Nuttall, “Perkless Progress towards BA’s Float,” Daily Mail, 18 December 1985, 28. 14. Ra Tickel, “Shareholder Perks,” Daily Telegraph, 25 August 1979, 17; Phillip Money, “It’s Full Steam Ahead as Investors Get Appetite for Perks on a Plate,” Guardian, 25 November 1989, 15. 15. “How to Share in the Perks,” Observer, 22 January 1978, 13; Davis, “Shareholders Perking Up All Over,” Observer, 28 January 1979, 22. 16. Money, “It’s Full Steam Ahead,” Guardian, 25 November 1989, 15. 17. Andrew Cornelius, “Shareholder Perks Vanish at Harrods,” Guardian, 8 October 1985, 22. 18. Jeremy Lewis, quoted in Conal Gregory, “Your Dividend, Sir, and a Little Extra,” The Times, 28 February 1987, 26. 19. Peter Hume, quoted in Money, “It’s Full Steam Ahead,” 25 November 1989, 15. 20. Iain McKelvie, “Pain-­Killer Perks for U.S. Investors,” Daily Mail, 6 February 1986, 30; “Shareholder Perks a Cut Above the Rest,” Daily Telegraph, 25 January 1990, 22; Lorna Bourke, “Hidden Costs of Shareholder Perks,” The Times, 18 August, 1984, 24; Sam Parkhouse, “Pick of the Share Perks for Canny Investors,” The Times, 31 January 1990, 24; Margaret Dibben, “City’s Perks for Sale,” Guardian, 4 October 1982, 16; Dibben, “Shareholders Perk Up,” Guardian, 5 September 1981, 20. 21. Rosemary Burr, The Share Book (London: Rosters, 1985), 159–177. 22. Dibben, “City’s Perks for Sale’; Conal Gregory, “Playing the Perks Market,” The Times, 19 November 1988, 24; “Goodies Galore with GrandMet,” Daily Mail, 11 February 1987, 26; “Thorn in the Perks Parade,” Daily Mail, 5 August 1986, 25. 23. “Perks Galore for Just £1,” Observer, 14 June 1981, 19. 24. The Daily Mail announced that the 1983–84 edition of the Daily Mail’s annual personal finance publication, the “Money Mail Saver Guide,”

Notes  |  279

would include a comprehensive list of shareholder perks (“Make More of Your Money,” Daily Mail, 18 May 1983, 17). 25. “Shareholder Perks a Cut Above the Rest,” Daily Telegraph, 25 January 1990, 22; “How to Share in the Perks,” Observer, 22 January 1978; Davis, “Shareholders Perking Up All Over,” Observer, 28 January 1979, 22. 26. Bevan, “Getting Your Share of the Perks?,” Sunday Telegraph, 13 May 1984, 23. 27. Marckus, “Share Perks in Vogue,” Observer, 13 October 1985, 30; Bevan, “Getting your Share of the Perks?, Sunday Telegraph, 13 May 1984, 23. 28. Bevan, “Getting your Share of the Perks?,” Sunday Telegraph, 13 May 1984, 23. 29. “Perks That Go with the Shares,” Observer, 15 November 1980, 19. 30. Parkhouse, “Pick of the Share Perks for Canny Investors,” The Times, 31 January 1990, 24. 31. Tony May, “Condoms among the Share Perks,” Guardian, 16 October 1991, 14. 32. “Goodies Galore with GrandMet,” Daily Mail, 11 February 1987, 26. 33. “Holiday Perks for Investors,” The Times, 5 April 1980, 19. 34. James Vernon, “Fidelity Capitalism at Heathrow Airport,” paper presented at the North American Conference on British Studies (Providence, RI, 2018). 35. Robert Ansted, “Shareholder Perks,” Investors’ Chronicle, 2 August 2013. 36. Steven Fraser, “Down the Shops for a Few Stocks,” The Times, 8 November 1986, 33. 37. “The Share Shop Shuffle,” Daily Mail, 15 April 1987, 24–25. 38. Sundbo, “Financial Services in Transition,” 126. 39. See, for example, comments by Financial Secretary to the Treasury John Moore in “A Capital Market for People Is Tory Aim,” Glasgow Herald, 4 October 1984, 17, and “Britain Leads the Way,” Economist, 21 December 1985. 40. Margareta Pagano, “Share Shops for All, American Style,” Guardian, 28 January 1985, 20. 41. Alex Fletcher, quoted in “Fletcher’s High Street Vision,” The Times, 26 October 1983, 19. 42. This was not the first example of American financial institutions experimenting with retail environments. In the 1950s the New York Stock Exchange worked with New Jersey department store R. J. Goerke’s to ­promote the retail investment services of its member firms. In the 1980s Sears’s major competitors, Montgomery Ward & Company and JC Penney Co., also set up services for retail customers. As was the case in Britain, many

280  |  Notes

of these experiments proved short lived. Sears, for example, announced the breakup of its financial services interests in 1992 (Leonard Sloane, “Sears’s Experiment in Financial Sales,” New York Times, 7 October 1982, D1; Stuart L. Gillian et al., “Value Creation and Corporate Diversification: The Case of Sears, Roebuck & Co.,” Journal of Financial Economics, 55, 1 (2000), 103–137; William Gruber, “Investors’ Road Far from Straight and Narrow,” Chicago Tribune, 17 November 1985; “JC Penney’s View of the Financial Marketplace,” American Banker, 6 February 1986; “Ward to Purchase Bank in Delaware,” New York Times, 19 August 1986, D4; Ken Kohn and Tim Quinson, “Money Business Is Bust: Retailers Retreat from Wall Street,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 28 February 1993). 43. Michel Gillard, “A Tale of Two Share Shops,” Observer, 15 September 1985, 29; “Share Shop Comes to Britain,” The Times, 3 September 1985, 18. 44. Lynne Curry, “Buying Socks ’n Stocks on Oxford Street,” Christian Science Monitor, 28 April 1986. 45. Interview with Robert Hodge (Birmingham, 29 September 2014). 46. Peter Broughton, cited in Curry, “Buying Socks ’n Stocks on Oxford Street,” Christian Science Monitor, 28 April 1986. 47. This built on an earlier advice service offered in twenty-­four Debenhams stores during the BT flotation (“Share Shop Comes to Britain,” The Times, 3 September 1985, 18). 48. Steve Worthington, “Shops within Shops: A Changing Strategy for Retailers,” Retail and Distribution Management (November/December 1984), 15–17, 16. 49. Edward McFadyen, “How to Achieve Successful Regeneration,” Retail and Distribution Management, (November/December 1983), 8–14, 9, 11. 50. McFadyen, “How to Achieve Successful Regeneration,” 11; David Sands, “Debenhams Lights Up Oxford Street,” Retail and Distribution Management (March/April 1987), 28–30, 30. 51. “Sunday Opening for Share Shop,” The Times, 6 September 1985, 19; Tony Samstag, “Shares Shop Starts Trading,” The Times, 9 September 1985, 3. 52. “Share Shop Fallout,” The Times, 21 February 1987, 19; “Police Inquiry Likely into CIC Share Shop Scheme,” The Times, 25 August 1987, 19; Lawrence Lever, “The Mystery of the Missing Shares,” The Times, 15 November 1986, 30. 53. Lorna Sullivan and Michael Gillard, “Big Bang for Singh’s Share Shops,” Observer, 9 November 1986, 31; Melvyn Marckus, “DTI: Regulation in Disarray,’ Observer, 9 November 1986, 31. 54. James Hudson, “BT Privatisation: The Effective Use of Advertising to Promote the Privatisation of British Telecom,” Institute of Practitioners in Advertising Effectiveness Awards Case Study (London, 1986), 4.

Notes  |  281

55. Fraser, “Down the Shops for a Few Stocks,” The Times, 8 November 1986, 33. 56. Ibid. 57. Mark Powell, quoted in Vivien Goldsmith, “High Street Shopping for Shares,” The Times, 31 May 1986, 32. 58. Goldsmith, “High Street Shopping for Shares,” The Times, 31 May 1986, 32; Garran Patterson, “Taking a Trip Round the Local Market,” Daily Mail, 15 April 1987, 24–25. 59. “Building Societies Are Now Joining the Race to Offer Share Deal,” Glasgow Herald, 3 November 1986, 15. 60. Ibid.; Fraser, “Down the Shops for a Few Stocks,” The Times, 8 November 1986, 33; Amanda Pardoe, “Share Shops to Grow,” The Times, 15 August 1987, 29; Goldsmith, “High Street Shopping for Shares,” The Times, 31 May 1986, 32; Phillips, “Taking Stocks to Stores,” The Times, 28 April 1987; Alan Hamilton, “Soft Selling Shares beyond the Lingerie Counter,” The Times, 10 September 1985. 61. Hamilton, “Soft Selling Shares beyond the Lingerie Counter,” The Times, 10 September 1985; Curry, “Buying Socks ’n Stocks on Oxford Street,” Christian Science Monitor, 28 April 1986; Pearson Phillips, “Taking Stocks to Stores,” The Times, 28 April 1987. 62. Curry, “Buying Socks ’n Stocks on Oxford Street,” Christian Science Monitor, 28 April 1986. 63. Patterson, “Taking a Trip Round the Local Market,” Daily Mail, 15 April 1987, 24–25. 64. Anne Foster, “Push-­Button Shopping: When Will It Happen?,” Retail and Distribution Management (January/February, 1981), 29–32, 29–30, 32. 65. This was a product of the Post Office’s viewdata technology, launched commercially in 1979. 66. Curry, “Buying Socks ’n Stocks on Oxford Street,” Christian Science Monitor, 28 April 1986. 67. Goldsmith “High Street Shopping for Shares,” The Times, 31 May 1986, 32. 68. Kleinwort Gireveson ShareCall advertisement, Daily Telegraph, 24 October 1986, 31. 69. Home Link advertisement, Daily Mail, 14 November 1984, 20. 70. Simon Rose, Fair Shares: A Layman’s Guide to Buying and Selling Stocks and Shares (London: Comet, 1986), 191; Garran Patterson, “Share Thrills without Any of the Frills,” Daily Mail, 4 March 1987, 17. 71. Nick Pandya, “Weekend Money: Time Is Money for High Street Banks—Moves to Meet Growing Competition in the Financial Services Market,” Guardian, 2 September 1989, 15.

282  |  Notes

72. John Kennett, quoted in Curry, “Buying Socks ’n Stocks on Oxford Street,” Christian Science Monitor, 28 April 1986. 73. Pardoe, “Share Shops to Grow,” The Times, 15 August 1987, 29; Phillips, “Taking Stocks to Stores,” The Times, 28 April 1987. 74. Kenneth Fleet, “Finance and Industry,” The Times, 10 September 1985, 17. 75. Ibid.; interview with Robert Hodge. 76. Interview with Robert Hodge. 77. Peter Garland, “Societies Build Share Service,” The Times, 1 June 1987, 21. 78. Peter Garland, “Into the City, the Easy Way,” The Times, 14 February 1987, 22; “Curtains for the No-­Frills Service?’ Daily Mail, 5 August 1987, 18–19. 79. Gillard, “A Tale of Two Share Shops,” Observer, 15 September 1985, 29. 80. “The Share Shop Shuffle,” Daily Mail, 15 April 1987, 24–25. 81. Peter Wilsher, “Stock Market: The Party Is Over,’ The Sunday Times, 18 September 1988. 82. Richard Waters, “Quilter Tries to Patch Together Its Broken Strategy,” Financial Times, 28 November 1988, 11; Gower, “ ‘Big Bang’ and City Regulation,” 5. 83. Waters, “Quilter Tries to Patch Together Its Broken Strategy,” Financial Times, 28 November 1988, 11. 84. Pardoe, “Share Shops to Grow,” The Times, 15 August 1987, 29. 85. Nor was the Burton Group the only retail organization moving in this direction. By 1988 both Marks & Spencer and the House of Fraser had financial subsidiaries geared toward servicing their long-­established customer bases (Clarke et al., “The Genesis of Strategic Marketing Control in British Retail Banking,” 9). 86. Garran Patterson, “The kiss-­and-­Run Brokers,” Daily Mail, 5 August 1987, 18. 87. David Lascelles, “Determined Fightback Shows Signs of Success,” Financial Times, 7 October 1985, 11. 88. Goldsmith, “High Street Shopping for Shares,” The Times, 31 May 1986, 32. 89. These were also often referred to as “allfinanz,” or universal banking operations. They were large financial conglomerates that usually grew out of clearing banks and building societies. 90. Garland, “Into the City, the Easy Way,” The Times, 14 February 1987, 22.

Notes  |  283

91. Goldsmith, “High Street Shopping for Shares,” The Times, 31 May 1986, 32. For further data on investors’ preferred dealing methods in the 1980s see Guirdham and Choo Tan, “Prospects for Bank Share Shops.” 92. Quoted in TNA, BT 384/276 Barclays Merchant Bank Ltd., “Proposals for the Issue of Shares by British Telecom: A New Strategy for Widening Share Ownership in the United Kingdom’ (February, 1984), 12. 93. Michie, The London Stock, 388, 555; BOEA, EID5-­45, “The Unlisted Securities Market,” 543. 94. “Mercantile House Scales the Wall to the Rest of the World,” Economist, 5 June 1982, 83. 95. Lascelles, “Determined Fightback Shows Signs of Success,” Financial Times, 7 October 1985, 11. 96. Clarke et al., “The Genesis of Strategic Marketing Control in British Retail Banking,” 7. 97. Ackrill and Hannah, Barclays, 214. 98. Barclays had, in fact, already developed fairly substantial merchant banking capabilities in the 1960s. Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial, and Overseas) operated between dollar and sterling markets, while Barclays Bank (London & International) worked in corporate finance and Euromarket business. Core parts of the latter were eventually renamed Barclays Merchant Bank in 1975, which expanded its corporate lending business throughout the late 1970s (Ackrill and Hannah, Barclays, 241–243). 99. British Library, London, Sounds Archive (hereafter BL, SA), National Life Stories: City Lives Collection (City Lives),C409/097, Timothy Bevan interviewed by Cathy Courtney, 17 October 1993, Part 18, tape 9, side B. 100. As it was, the government enlisted brokers Kleinwort Benson to act as underwriters for the sale, and DFS-­Dorland advertising agency to develop and deliver the accompanying marketing campaign (Edwards, “Financial Consumerism: Mass Investment Culture and Thatcherism,” ch. 1). 101. BMB, “Proposals for the issue of shares by British Telecom,” 1–2, 6. 102. Barclays de Zoete Wedd advertisement, Daily Telegraph, 22 October 1986, 27. 103. “Stocks and Shares for Beginners. Start with £20,” Daily Mail, 13 April 1985, 33. 104. Barclays de Zoete Wedd advertisement; David Lascelles, “Tinker . . . Tailor . . . Banker . . . Broker,” Financial Times, 26 July 1986, 9. 105. “Boost for First Time Buyers is in Store,” Daily Mail, 8 April 1987, 23. 106. “Midland Buys Share Shops,” The Times, 11 September 1990, 24; “Midland Share Shops,” The Times, 12 August 1989, 21; Midland Bank advertisement, Daily Mail, 31 May 1989, 18.

284  |  Notes

107. “First for Barclays,” Guardian, 29 October 1986, 29. 108. PEPs were first announced in the 1986 budget as a tax-­privileged account to encourage wider share ownership and provided tax relief on dividends and capital gains made via equity or unit trust investments. 109. “First for Barclays,” Guardian, 29 October 1986, 29. 110. Feona McEwan, “The All-­Out Battle for a Brand Image,” Financial Times, 7 June 1984, 12. 111. Lloyds Bank advertisement, Daily Mail, 11 January 1984, 5. 112. Halifax advertisment, Daily Mirror, 23 December 1987, 23. 113. See also cartoons accompanying the following articles: “Barclays Hutton Durlacherbank?,” Economist, 19 November 1983, 19; “How to Win in the Nation’s Great Sale,” Daily Mail, 20 November 1985, 20–21. 114. Charles Villiers, quoted in Lascelles, “Tinker . . . Tailor . . . Banker . . . Broker,” Financial Times, 26 July 1986, 9. 115. Save & Prosper Masterfund advertisement, Daily Mail, 6 November 1985, 18; Barclays Unicorn Trust advertisement, Daily Mail, 25 October 1986, 25. 116. Knights et al., “The Consumer Rules?,” 44. 117. An earlier report produced by the TSB and the Institute of European Finance argued that UK retail banks had entered a marketing-­oriented era as early as the mid-­1970s (Clarke et al., “The Genesis of Strategic Marketing Control in British Retail Banking,” 17). See also Edward Gardener, Barry Howcroft and Jonathan Williams, “The New Retail Banking Revolution,” The Service Industries Journal, 19, 2 (1999), 83–100, 87–88. 118. Burton, “Tellers into Sellers?,” 26. 119. Clarke et al., “The Genesis of Strategic Marketing Control in British Retail Banking,” 6, 14–15. 120. This system accentuated inequalities in financial service provision. See Andrew Leyshon, Nigel Thrift and Jonathan Pratt, “Reading Financial Services: Texts, Consumers, and Financial Literacy,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 16, 1 (1998), 29–55. 121. This form of relationship marketing and data farming can be seen as another feature of fidelity capitalism (Vernon, “Fidelity Capitalism at Heathrow Airport”). 122. Barclays Group Archive, Manchester (hereafter BGA), 13615, Barclays Marketing Department, “Branch Briefing’ (October 1990). 123. BGA, 13615, Barclays Marketing Department, “Reaching the Rewards offered by the Stock Market . . .” Barclayshare brochure (c. October 1990). 124. Sundbo, “Financial Services in Transition,” 122.

Notes  |  285

125. Lintott, “Rival Visions of a Financial Revolution in the High Street,” The Times, 6 April 1984, 20. 126. Leyshon et al., “Reading Financial Services,” 41. 127. BGA, HC 107/3, “Students’ Co-­ordinated Campaign No. 4 (August– September 1987); BGA, HC 107/3, “School Leavers Co-­ordinated Campaign No. 5 (11 July 1988 to 12 August 1988); Clarke et al., “The Genesis of Strategic Marketing Control in British Retail Banking,” 9. 128. Lloyds Bank advertisement, Guardian, 16 September 1987, 6. 129. Barclays, for instance, used “statement stuffers” to advertise its share dealing services to all personal current account holders (BGA, HC 107/3, Barclays Financial Services Co-­ordinated Campaign No. 3, 21 March 1988– 29 April 1988) 130. Clarke et al., “The Genesis of Strategic Marketing Control in British Retail Banking,” 6; Sundbo, “Financial Services in Transition,” 122, 129. 131. Abbey Unit Trusts advertisement, Daily Mail, 15 December 1984, 24; Scottish Unit Managers advertisement, Daily Mail, 8 December 1984, 28. 132. Greg Thain quoted in “Junk Mailmen Buy the BT Share List,” Daily Mail, 24 July 1985, 17; “Watch Shares in Publishing Holdings,” Daily Mail, 3 September 1987, 29. 133. “Building Societies Are Now Joining the Race,” Glasgow Herald, 3 November 1986, 15. 134. Christopher Grey discusses the links between subjectivity, social capital, and financial services in “Suburban Subjects,” 53. 135. BGA, 13615, Alan Beavis, Customer Letter: “Barclays Share Dealing Services,” October 1990. 136. BGA, 1318/7690 “Unit Trusts: How to Become a Stock Market Investor for £500 or £20 a month’ Brochure, January 1986, 1. 137. “Thrills . . . without the Spills,” Daily Mail, 30 September 1987, 21. 138. Lloyds Touche Remnant advertisement, Daily Mail, 11 June 1986, 24. 139. Abbey National advertisement, Daily Mirror, 23 October 1987, 10. 140. Sylvia Morris, “New Shares for Old,” Daily Mail, 24 May 1989, 21. 141. Rose, Fair Shares, 37. 142. BGA, 1318/7690 “Unit Trusts,” 1. 143. Diana Wright, “Bang! A Share in the Share Action,” The Sunday Times, 3 August 1986. 144. ShareLink was an execution-­only service launched by Birmingham stockbrokers Albert E. Sharp in 1987, designed to provide an “uncomplicated, easily understood . . . service for the ever-­ broadening base of share­ ownership in the UK” (Classified Advertisement, Financial Times,

286  |  Notes

2 December 1987, 20); “Proshare Conference Plan,” Financial Times, 14 May 1994, ii; Roland Rudd, “Nagging Doubt over Shares Boost,’ Financial Times, 10 August 1991. 145. Rudd, “Nagging Doubt over Shares Boost,” Financial Times, 10 August 1991. 146. Gavin Oldham, quoted in ibid. 147. Knights et al., “The Consumer Rules?,” 47. 148. David Knights et al., “Quality for the Consumer in Bancassurance?,” Consumer Policy Review, 3, 4 (1993), 232–240, 240. 149. For work on similar patterns of choice restriction in other areas of consumer society see Hilton, Prosperity for All. 150. Gavin Oldham quoted in Rudd, “Nagging Doubt over Shares Boost,” Financial Times, 10 August 1991. 151. Banks adopted an incredibly powerful position in the 1980s in both mortgage markets and credit/debit transactions. The role of retail banks in mass investment culture also mirrored the ongoing dominance of the “big four” banks in small business customers, where identical charging structures and the impossibility of multi-­banking helped to maintain their position. See Francesca Carnevali, Europe’s Advantage: Banks and Small Firms in Britain, France, Germany, and Italy Since 1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 201.

Chapter 4: “The Moneymen’s Sunday Sermon” 1. “Boom, Boom by Gail,” Sun, 21 October 1987, 3. 2. Financial advice in this chapter refers to a wide variety of actors providing generic and impersonal advice for a mass-­market audience. It does not include personalized services provided by professional financial advisers (e.g., those accredited by self-­regulatory organizations or employed by financial institutions), although it is worth noting the high level of crossover between the two in terms of personnel. 3. For the longer history of financial advice see Paul Crosthwaite, Peter Knight, and Nicky Marsh, “The Economic Humanities and the History of Financial Advice,” American Literary History, 31, 4 (2019), 661–686; Crosthwaite et al., The History of Financial Advice. 4. Here I draw on scholarship concerned with the “financialization of daily life” in the United States (Martin, The Financialization of Daily Life; Haiven, Cultures of Financialization; Thomas Frank, One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy (New York: Random House, 2000); James Vernon, Modern Britain, 1750 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017),

Notes  |  287

502–514; Léna Pellandini-Simányi, “The Financialization of Everyday Life,” in The Routledge Handbook of Critical Finance Studies, ed. by Christian Borch and Robert Wosnitzer (New York, NY: Routledge, 2021), 278–299). 5. “CH4 Chic,” The Times, 31 May 1986, 26. 6. For more on this see Fiona Allon, “The Feminisation of Finance: Gender, Labour and the Limits of Inclusion,” Australian Feminist Studies, 29 (2014), 12–30. 7. “Big Day for the Small Investor,” Daily Mail, 15 October 1986, 26; Margaret Stone and Roger Beard, “Expert Advice on Buying Shares—and It’s Free!,” Daily Mail, 28 June 1989, 24–25. 8. “Extra . . . Extra . . . Extra!,” Daily Mail, 18 April, 1984, 17. 9. “Daily Mail Share Call,” Daily Mail, 30 December 1987, 24; Margaret Stone, “Hit the Jackpot in Our £10,000 Contest,” Daily Mail, 22 April, 1987, 17. 10. “Don’t Miss This Free Advice,” Daily Mail, 28 March 1979, 21; “How to Have Your Cake and Spend It,” Daily Mail, 5 March 1980, 24–25. 11. Between 1947 and 1976 the Ideal Home Exhibition regularly attracted well over 1 million attendees, the bulk of whom came from the Home Counties. See Geoffrey Richard Warren, “The Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition 1944–1962: Representations of the “Idea Home” and Domestic Consumption” (PhD thesis, Middlesex University, 2001), 4, 104. 12. Deborah S. Ryan, “The Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition and Suburban Modernity, 1908–1951,” (PhD thesis, University of East London, 1995); Deborah S. Ryan, “ ‘All the World and Her Husband’: The Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition, 1908–39,” in All the World and Her Husband: Women in Twentieth-Century Consumer Culture, ed. by Margaret R. Andrews and Mary M. Talbot (London: Cassell, 2000), 10–22, 11–12. 13. “How to Have Your Cake and Spend It,” Daily Mail, 5 March 1980, 24–25. 14. Stone, “Hit the Jackpot in Our £10,000 Contest,” Daily Mail, 22 April 1987, 17. 15. “Win £5,000,” Daily Mail, 20 February 1985, 24. 16. “The Daily Telegraph Has Been Judged Personal Finance Newspaper of the Year,” Daily Telegraph, 28 October 1987, 27. 17. “A New Start, a New Name, and an Expanded Service,” Guardian, 17 April 1982, 22. 18. For more on the Mirror’s financial advice provision see Porter, “ ‘City Slickers’ in Perspective.” 19. “Money Hotline,” Daily Mirror, 30 November 1988, 29. 20. “Private’s Progress: Fair Shares at the Big Sales,” Daily Mirror, 19 October 1988, 26.

288  |  Notes

21. John Plender, “Let’s All Have a Share of the Action,” The Times, 28 June 1984, 12. For a historical analysis of this phenomenon see also Parker, The Official History of Privatisation, vol. 1, 432. 22. Paula Davies, “Watch Out for Tumbling Bears,” Guardian, 16 May 1987, 29. 23. BFI National Archive, London (hereafter BFI), 773677, Channel 4, Moneyspinner, series 1, episode 1, first aired 3 June 1986. 24. Mary Kenny, “The Moneymen’s Sunday Sermon,” Daily Mail, 27 October 1987, 21. The growing popularity of financial advice went hand in hand with the rise of DIY home improvement and property programming in the 1990s and 2000s (see Vernon, Modern Britain, 503–504). 25. BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham (hereafter WAC), T58-­ 170-­1, “Programme as broadcast,” 5 April 1966. BBC copyright content produced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Company. All rights reserved. 26. WAC, R9-­183-­1, Broadcasting Research Department, “The Money Programme: An Evaluation Study, March–April 1983,” 2, 4. 27. Ibid., 1, 3. 28. “Television,” Daily Telegraph, 3 June 1986, 27. 29. Joanna Slaughter, “How to Master the Money Maze,” Observer, 4 May 1986, 32. 30. See files held under BFI, 773677. 31. “Big Bang on the Box,” Observer, 12 October 1986, 41; Minette Marrin, “That’s Not Entertainment,” Daily Telegraph, 11 November 1987, 12. 32. Watchdog was a weekly show that centered on consumer-­related investigative journalism (focusing on rogue traders, product reviews, and complaints from viewers). It started as a regular feature on other programming, before being turned into a stand-­alone show in 1985. 33. By 1996 Jennings had been a Public Interest Member of self-­regulatory organization FIMBRA, a council member of the Insurance Ombudsman, a member of the Consumer Panels of the Pension Transfers, Securities and Investments Board, and a member of the Personal Investment Authority. 34. The Citizens Advice Bureau was initially set up in 1939 to help citizens navigate an emerging welfare state. During the war it helped individuals with home-­front issues like rationing and evacuation, and in the 1970s the charity’s focus shifted again, this time toward consumer protection (“History of the Citizens Advice Service,” Citizens Advice Bureau Website, https://​www​ .citizensadvice​.org​.uk​/about​-­­us​/how​-­­citizens​-­­advice​-­­works​/who​-­­we​-­­are​-­­and​ -­­what​-­­we​-­­do​/history​-­­of​-­­the​-­­citizens​-­­advice​-­­service/ [accessed: 17/07/2020]. 35. Slaughter, “How to Master the Money Maze,” Observer, 4 May 1986, 32.

Notes  |  289

36. Hilton, Consumerism in Twentieth Century Britain, 250. 37. Consumers’ Association, How to Buy, Sell and Own Shares (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989). 38. Alan Aldridge, “Engaging with Promotional Culture: Organised Consumerism and the Personal Financial Services Industry,” Sociology, 31, 3 (1997), 389–408, 396–397. 39. “The Daily Telegraph has Been Judged,” Daily Telegraph, 28 October 1987, 27. 40. “Money Mail Wins Top Award,” Daily Mail, 12 October 1988, 21. 41. Matthew Hilton, “The Female Consumer and the Politics of Consumption in Twentieth-­Century Britain,” Historical Journal, 45, 1 (2002), 103–128, 126; Hilton, Prosperity for All, 250; Johansson and Hvinden, “Welfare Governance and the Remaking of Citizenship,” 109–110. 42. LSE, WSOC, “Constitution of the Wider Share Ownership Council” (undated), 1. 43. LSE, WSOC, Minutes of the Wider Share Council Executive Committee Meeting held 17/01/1984, 3; LSE, WSOC, Minutes of the Wider Share Council Executive Committee Meeting held 16/04/1985, 3; LSE, WSOC, Edgar Palamountain, “Chairman’s Address,” Minutes of the Wider Share Council Annual General Meeting held 31/05/1984; LSE, WSOC, Minutes of the Wider Share Council Executive Committee Meeting held 10/06/1984, 3; LSE, WSOC, Minutes of the Wider Share Council Executive Committee Meeting held 08/05/1984, 5. 44. “Lessons That Point the Buying Way,” Daily Mail, 6 December 1989, 28; Garran Patterson, “How You Can Learn to Invest—with Success,” Daily Mail, 2 September 1987, 20–21. 45. “Discover the Stock Exchange Secrets,” Daily Mail, 7 February, 1990, 19; “Join the Club, Says the Stock Exchange,” Daily Mail, 22 July, 1987, 17. 46. “Wider Still and Wider!,” Daily Mail, 20 April, 1988, 20–21. 47. “Join the Club and Take the Fear out of Share-­Buying,” Daily Mail, 9 December 1987, 26. 48. “Wider Still and Wider!,” Daily Mail, 20 April, 1988, 20–21. 49. Jane Drewett, quoted in “Join the Club and Take the Fear out of Share-­Buying,” Daily Mail, 9 December 1987, 26. 50. Table 4.1, in James Banks and Sarah Tanner, “Household Savings in the UK” (London: The Institute of Fiscal Studies, 1999), 38. 51. In 1996, 67 percent of households did not have asset portfolios that included all three of the following: housing, pensions, and financial assets (Table 3, in Paul Johnson and Sarah Tanner, “Ownership and the Distribution of Wealth,” Political Quarterly, 64, 4 (1998), 365–374, 372).

290  |  Notes

52. Lorna Bourke, “When It Pays to Go It Alone,” Daily Mirror, 2 March 1994. 53. At this time, the Daily Mail noted that around fifteen thousand customers subscribed to CitiService, 60 percent of which were thought to be private investors (“Financial Hotlines,” Daily Mail, 2 September 1987, 32; “When Speed Means Profit,” Daily Mail, 22 July 1987, 20–21; Wayne Asher, “TV Share Prices Blow to the Small Investor,” Daily Mail, 17 April 1991, 25; “Cityserve Savers,” Daily Mail, 7 August 1986, 12). 54. “When Speed Means Profit,” Daily Mail, 22 July 1987, 20–21; Asher, “TV Share Prices Blow to the Small Investor,” Daily Mail, 17 April 1991, 25. 55. Michie, “The Battle of the Bourses?,” 39. 56. London Stock Exchange Council, quoted in Asher, “TV Share Prices Blow to the Small Investor,” Daily Mail, 17 April 1991, 25. 57. Crosthwaite et al., The History of Financial Advice, 3. 58. Waterstone’s Guide to Books 1989/1990 (London: Waterstone & Co., 1989), 21–22. 59. Simon Rose, Fair Shares: The Layman’s Guide to Buying and Selling Stocks and Shares, 2nd edition (London: Mercury Business Books, 1987), 1. 60. Leyshon et al., “Reading Financial Services, 45. 61. Michael Walters, How to Make a Killing in Penny Shares; How to Profit from Your Personal Equity Plan (London: Pan Macmillan, 1987); How to Make a Killing in New Issues (London: Pan Macmillan, 1988); How to Make a Killing in the Share Jungle. 62. Wendy Elkington, Abbey Financial Rights Handbook (London: Rosters, 1987); Make Your Money Work: The New World of Financial Advice (London: Professional And Business Information, 1988). 63. Rosemary Burr, The Share Book; Financial Adviser’s Guide (London: Rosters, 1985); Female Tycoons (London: Rosters, 1986); Fidelity Investor’s A–Z (London: Rosters, 1986); Guide to Personal Equity Plans 1987 (London: Rosters, 1987); Make Your Pension Work: How to Choose the Best Pension to Suit Your Needs (London: Rosters, 1988); Funny Money: A Humorous Guide to the World of Mega Bucks (London: Rosters, 1988); More Shares for Your Money, 3rd edition (London: Rosters, 1993). 64. Roger Hardman, Stocks and Shares: A Practical Guide for the First-­ Time Investor, 2nd edition (London: Telegraph Publications, 1987); Tony Richards, Unit Trusts (London: Kogan Page, 1987). 65. Marie Jennings, The Midland Banking Guide: Women and Money (London: Penguin, 1988); TSB Money Guide: How to Survive in the Money Jungle (London: Collins 1983). 66. Rosemary Burr, Unit Trusts Explained (London: Rosters, 1986).

Notes  |  291

67. Rosemary Burr, Your Personal Money Programme (London: Rosters, 1989); Rosemary Burr (ed.), The Prudential Book of Money (London: Rosters, 1987). 68. Walters, How to Make a Killing in the Share Jungle, 4. 69. “Thatcher’s Choice,” The Times, 14 December 1981, 27; Burr, The Share Book. 70. Burr, The Share Book, 124–201. 71. For more on twentieth-­century self-­help genres see Jill Kirby, Feeling the Strain: A Cultural History of Stress in Twentieth-­Century Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), chap. 1; Ina Zweiniger-­ Bargielowska, “Building a British Superman: Physical Culture in Interwar Britain,” Journal of Contemporary History, 41, 4 (2006), 595–610. 72. Deborah Cameron, “A Self Off the Shelf? Consuming Women’s Empowerment,” in Andrews and Talbot, All the World and Her Husband, 211–223, 210–212; Joanne Entwistle, “Fashioning the Career Woman: Power Dressing as a Strategy of Consumption,” in Andrews and Talbot (eds.), All the World and Her Husband, 224–238. 73. Ulrich Bröckling, “Gendering the Enterprising Self: Subjectification Programmes and Gender Differences in Guides to Success,” Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 6, 2 (2005), 7–25, 8; Cameron, “A Self Off the Shelf,” 213–215. 74. Barbara Cruikshank, “Revolutions Within: Self-­Government and Self-­ Esteem,” Barry et al. (eds.), Foucault and Political Reason, 231–252. See also Heidi Marie Rimke, “Governing Citizens through Self-­Help Literature,” Cultural Studies, 14, 1 (2000), 61–78; Nikolas Rose, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power and Personhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 75. Andrew Leigh, Perfect Decisions (London: Arrow Books, 1994); Andrew Leigh and Michael Maynard, Perfect Presentation (London: Arrow Books, c. 1994); Ted Johns, Perfect Time Management, (London: Arrow Books, c.1994); Andrew Leigh and Michael Maynard, Perfect Communications (London: Arrow Books, 1993). 76. Malcolm Craig, Investing to Survive the ’80s: Vital Inside Information for Businessmen and Investors, revised edition (London: Corgi, 1981). 77. J. T. Stafford, The Share-­Owner’s Guide (Cambridge: Woodhead-­ Faulkner, 1987), back cover. 78. Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, 2nd edition (London: Free Association Books, 1999); Nikolas Rose, “Governing “Advanced” Liberal Democracies,” in Barry et al. (eds.), Foucault and Political Reason, 37–64.

292  |  Notes

79. Bröckling, The Entrepreneurial Self, 5. 80. Burr, The Share Book, front cover. 81. O’Malley, “Risk and Responsibility.” 82. Walters, How to Make a Killing in the Share Jungle, 10. 83. For more on discourses of “ordinary people” in every day political life see Whipple, “Ordinary People’; Lawrence and Sutcliffe-­Braithwaite, “Margaret Thatcher and the Decline of Class Politics.” 84. “£6,000 Profit on the Stock Exchange,” Daily Mail, 12 June 1985, 19. 85. Rosemary Burr and Jenny Harris, Financial Choice for Women (London: Rosters, 1990); Burr, Female Tycoons; Rosanna Spero, Every Woman’s Guide to Personal Finance (Leighton Buzzard: Rushmere Wynn, 1995). 86. The Women’s Financial Letter advertisement, Observer, 11 March 1979, 39. 87. Marie Jennings, Women and Money (London: Penguin, 1988), back cover. 88. Margaret Stone, Money Mail Women and Money 1990 (London: Harmsworth Publications, 1989), 5. 89. Walters, How to Make a Killing in the Shares Jungle, xi; Tony ­Levene, The Shares Game: How to Buy and Sell Stocks and Shares (London: Pan Books, 1987) 92; R. Northedge, “Foreword,” in Hardman, Stocks and Shares, 12. 90. Burr, Funny Money, 7. 91. The inherent paradoxes of self-­help literature is a subject that Ulrich Bröckling addresses in relation to gender and managerial guides (“Gendering the Enterprising Self”) 92. Kevin Goldstein-­Jackson, Share Millions: How to Make Money on the Stock Market (Kingswood: Paperfronts, [1989?]), 38. 93. Rose. Fair Shares, 37. 94. Walters, How to Make a Killing in the Share Jungle, ix. 95. Rose, Fair Shares, 10. 96. Goldstein-­Jackson, Share Millions, 28–30. 97. Walters, How to Make a Killing in the Share Jungle, 61. 98. “Getting Rich Quicker,” Daily Mail, 19 December 1979), 22–23. 99. Stafford, The Share-­Owner’s Guide, 1. 100. “10 Ways to Get Rich,” Daily Mail, 30 September 1987, 22–23. 101. Stories that center on individual personalities encourage readers to read an article for its own sake, regardless of whether they are interested in it as news. Here the lines between news and fiction become increasingly blurred (Colin Sparks, “Introduction: The Panic over Tabloid News,” in Tabloid Tales Tabloid Tales: Global Debates over Media Standards, ed. by Colin Sparks and John Tulloch (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 1–40,

Notes  |  293

21; Helen MacGill Hughes, News and the Human Interest Story (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), xxxi, 25–26). 102. Edwards, “Financial Consumerism: Mass Investment Culture and Thatcherism, ch. 1; Francis, “A Crusade to Enfranchise the Many.” 103. Walters, How to Make a Killing in the Share Jungle, 5. 104. Pauline Skypala, “Now Millions Are Playing, You Can Be a Winner in the Stock Market Snakes and Ladder Game,” Daily Mail, 11 December 1985, 18–19. 105. Levene, The Shares Game, 7, 53, 83; Harold Baldwin, Shares: A Beginners’ Guide to Making Money, 2nd edition (London: Wisebuy 1987), 15; Bill Jamieson, “TV Stocks and Snares,” Sunday Telegraph, 20 March 1988, 17. 106. Carolyn Downs, “Mecca and the Birth of Commercial Bingo 1958– 70: A Case Study,” Business History, 52, 7 (2010), 1086–106, 1088. 107. Walters, How to Make a Killing from Penny Shares, back cover. 108. This included games like SHOC (Chad Valley, 1944), Stocks and Shares (Castel Brothers, 1960), Speculate (Waddington’s Games, 1972), and Fortune (Waddington’s Games, 1979). Many of these were remakes of North American games, redesigned and rereleased for the British market (Jordan Grant, “Board Games Have Been Teaching Us How to Shop for More Than a Century,” Smithsonian, National Museum of American History website, 4 November 2015, https://​americanhistory​.si​.edu​/blog​/board​-­­games​-­­teaching​ -­­us​-­­to​-­­shop [accessed: 18 February 2019]). 109. Ratrace (Waddington’s Games, 1984); Chainstore (Ideas by Sears, 1987). 110. Shocks & Scares (Gibson Games, 1983), box. 111. Insider Dealing (Fantasy Games, 1988). 112. “Insider Dealing the Board Game!,” Daily Telegraph, 19 October 1988, 20. 113. Carol Leonard, “Doctor in the Market,” The Times, 31 August 1988, 21; Jonathan Confino, “Shares Are All in the Game,” Daily Telegraph, 10 April 1989, 28. 114. The Stock Exchange Game (More Games, 1987), box, “Rule Book: Game Play.” 115. Confino, “Shares Are All in the Game,” Daily Telegraph, 10 April 1989, 28. 116. Investor (Lamplight Games International, 1990), box. 117. Investor advertisement, Daily Telegraph, 17 November 1990, 6. 118. Strike It Rich! (Lamplight Games International, 1986), box. 119. For more on gameplay and financialization see Martin, The Financialization of Daily Life, 69–71; Haiven, Cultures of Financialization,

294  |  Notes

ch. 4; Joyce Goggin, “Regulating (Virtual) Subjects: Finance, Entertainment and Games,” Journal of Cultural Economy, 5, 4 (2012), 441–456; Daniel Fridman, “From Rats to Riches: Game Playing and the Production of the Capitalist Self,” Qualitative Sociology, 33 (2010), 423–446; Eli Cook, “Rearing Children of the Market in the “You” Decade: Choose Your Own Adventure Books and the Ascent of Free Choice in 1980s America,” Journal of American Studies, first view, (2020), 1–28, https://​doi​.org​/10​.1017​ /S0021875819001476. 120. Fridman, “From Rats to Riches,” 425. 121. The Stock Exchange Game. 122. Strike It Rich!, box; “Insider Dealing the board game!,” Daily Telegraph, 19 October 1988, 20. 123. Examples of “venture cards” from Strike It Rich! 124. Calamity! (Games Workshop, 1983). 125. Bill Skirrow, “Bang Bang, Your Civilisation Has Been Overthrown,” Guardian, 17 December 1983, 22. 126. Strike It Rich!, box 127. Jamieson, “TV Stocks and Snares,” Sunday Telegraph, 20 March 1988, 17. 128. John Swinfield, quoted in, Margaret Stone, “Could You Fill This Space to Be a City Slicker,” Daily Mail, 23 September 1987, 26. 129. Neil Collins, “Credit Where It’s Due,” Daily Telegraph, 12 January 1988, 10. 130. David Brewerton, “Churning It Up for TV,” The Times, 29 March 1988, 27; Jamieson, “TV Stocks and snares,” Sunday Telegraph, 20 March 1988, 17. 131. John Naughton, “Blankety-­Blank Cheque,” Observer, 31 January 1988, 32. 132. Margaret Stone, “Mr 25 Per Cent Wins,” Daily Mail, 30 March 1988, 23; Lynne Bateson, “This Wonderful Buzz, by a Wife Who Buys, Buys, Buys,” Daily Mail, 27 July 1988, 24. 133. Collins, “Credit Where It’s Due,” Daily Telegraph, 12 January 1988, 10. 134. Brewerton, “Churning It Up for TV,” The Times, 29 March 1988, 27. 135. For an excellent discussion of this in an earlier context see Preda, “The Rise of the Popular Investor.” 136. Leyshon et al., “Reading Financial Services.” 137. Levene, The Shares Game, 8; Hardman, Stocks and Shares, 25. 138. Economics scholarship highlights the dangers of information asymmetries in financial markets whereby certain groups “extract value from the

Notes  |  295

market” to the detriment of less informed ones. This situation arises when various players involved in financial transactions have incomplete or inferior information by comparison to others about the true value of resources and assets. Unsurprisingly, it is small investors who are seen as most vulner­ able to information asymmetries of this kind, leaving them exposed to risk and jeopardizing their long-­term financial security. See J. A. Roels, Information Asymmetries and the Creation of Economic Value (Amsterdam: Delft University Press, 2010), 5, 48; Mark Huberty, “Testing the Ownership Society: Ownership and Voting in Britain,” Electoral Studies, 30, 4 (2011), 784–794, 792.

Chapter 5: Yuppies 1. Alex Brummer, “How to Tell a Drab Mondalean from the Yuppies and Yummies,” Guardian, 15 March 1984, 8; Robert Chesshyre, “Hart in Mondale Country Fights to Keep Hopes Alive,” 8 April 1984, 12. 2. Sam Whimster, “Yuppies: A Keyword of the 1980s,” in Global Finance and Urban Living: A Study of Metropolitan Change, ed. by Leslie Budd and Sam Whimster (London: Routledge, 1992), 314–334, 325. 3. In recent years urban historians have taken the lead in telling this story. See for example: Wetherell, Foundations; Jim Tomlinson, “De-­ industrialization Not Decline: A New Meta-­narrative for Post-­war British History,” Twentieth Century British History, 27, 1 (2016), 76–99; and the recent special issue of Urban History on deindustrialization (47, 2 (2020), 193–396). 4. Short, “Yuppies, Yuffies and the New Urban Order,” 174–175. 5. Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 56. 6. I view this subject as a parallel phenomenon to the entrepreneurial self, as described in Rose, “Governing the Enterprising Self’; Bröckling, The Entrepreneurial Self; Bruni et al., “Entrepreneur-­Mentality”; Kelly, The Self as Enterprise. 7. Frances Bonner and Paul du Gay set out a useful model for this kind of work in their analysis of Thirtysomething, an American television drama that they argue disseminated new regimes of the self associated with the ascent of a particular service-­class fraction (“Representing the Enterprising Self: Thirtysomething and Contemporary Consumer Culture,” Theory, Culture and Society, 9, 2 (1992), 62–92). Existing scholarship on yuppies is sparse, with a notable recent exception being Dylan Gottleib, Yuppies: Wall Street and the Remaking of New York (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, forthcoming). Most scholarship on the subject was produced by contemporaries of the yuppie—cultural theorists, sociologists, political

296  |  Notes

s­cientists, and geographers—who sought to unravel the socioeconomic upheavals of their time. As examples, see: David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1990); Richard Dyer, “Yuppie Culture,” Marxism Today (October 1985), 47–48; Jerry Savells, “Who Are the “Yuppies”? A Popular View,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 27, 3–4 (1986), 234–241; Neil Smith, “Of Yuppies and Housing: Gentrification, Social Restructuring, and the Urban Dream,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 5, 2 (1987), 151–172; Short, “Yuppies, Yuf­ fies and the New Urban Order”; Paul Dekker and Peter Ester, “The Political Distinctiveness of Young Professionals: ‘Yuppies’ or ‘New Class’?,” Political Psychology, 11, 2 (1990), 309–330. 8. MTFW, 108353, Margaret Thatcher, Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture (“Liberty and Limited Government), 11 January 1996. 9. HC Deb, “Transport (Scotland) Bill,” 20 February 1989, vol. 147, cc. 804–809. 10. “All Yuppies Now?,” Socialist Standard, 1000, December 1987; Jeffrey Richard, “These Moral Bankrupts Who Could Destroy Thatcher,” Daily Mail, 5 October 1987, 6; John Biffen, quoted in John Carvel, “Biffen Warns Tories on Danger of Yuppie Image,” Guardian, 11 October 1988, 3. 11. Whimster, “Yuppies.” 12. Russel Ash et al., The Official British Yuppie Handbook (Horsham: Ravette, 1984), 84–85. 13. Interview with Robert Skinner (Bristol, 2017). 14. Aled Davies, “The City of London, the British State, and Neoliberalism,” paper presented at Rethinking British Neoliberalism Conference (University College London, 2017); Jacob Ward, “Financing the Information Age: London TeleCity, the Legacy of IT-­82, and the Selling of British Telecom,” Twentieth Century British History, 30, 3 (2019), 424–446. 15. Social and Community Planning Research, British Social Attitudes: Cumulative Sourcebook: The First Six Surveys (Aldershot: Gower Publishing, 1992), H-­23. 16. Bill Bryson, “Tort Storyteller,” New York Times, 25 November 1990; Jeffrey’s Blog, “#1 New York Times Bestseller,” https://​jeffreyarcher​.co​.uk​/1​ -­­new​-­­york​-­­times​-­­bestseller/ [accessed: 23/12/2018]. 17. For a good analysis of this literature see: Nicky Marsh, “Money’s Doubles: Reading Fiction and Finance Capital,” Textual Practice, 26, 1 (2012), 115–133; Nicky Marsh, “Taking the Maggie: Money, Sovereignty, and Masculinity in British Fiction of the Eighties,” Modern Fiction Studies, 53, 4, (2007), 845–866. 18. Caryl Churchill, Serious Money: A City Comedy, with commentary and notes by Bill Naismith (London: A&C Black, 2002).

Notes  |  297

19. Heinemann, “Popular Investment,” 200. 20. Baz Bamigboye, “Caryl Churchill’s Wonderful Serious Money . . . ,” Daily Mail, 4 April 1987, 7. 21. Michael Davie, “Big Bang Is a Hit on the Knocker,” Guardian, 5 April 1987, 20. 22. Tony Marchant, Speculators (Oxford: Amber Lane, 1988). 23. Kate Kellaway, “Sharp Dealings,” Observer, 13 December 1987, 20. 24. Wall Street¸ dir. Oliver Stone (20th Century Fox, 1987) [on DVD]. 25. “Irony Turns to Base Metal,” Guardian, 30 April 1988, 18. 26. Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities (London: Jonathan Cape, 1988); John Sutherland, “Big Bad Wolfe,” London Review of Books, 10, 4, (1988), 15–16. 27. Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho (New York: Vintage, 1991). 28. Attila Bruni et al., “Doing Gender, Doing Entrepreneurship: An Ethnographic Account of Intertwined Practices,” Gender, Work and Organization, 11, 4 (2004), 406–429, 408. See also, Robert Smith, “Masculinity, Doxa and the Institutionalisation of Entrepreneurial Identity in the Novel Cityboy,” International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, 2, 1 (2010), 27–48; Leslie Salzinger, “Re-­marking Men: Masculinity as a Terrain of the Neoliberal Economy,” Critical Historical Studies, 3, 1 (2016), 1–25. 29. Cain and Hopkins, “Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas II”; Dumett (ed.), Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism. 30. McDowell, Capital Culture, 148–149. 31. Deborah Kerfoot and David Knights, “Management, Masculinity and Manipulation: From Paternalism to Corporate Strategy in Financial Services in Britain,” Journal of Management Studies, 30, 4 (1993), 659–677, 667, 671–672. 32. Entwistle, “ ‘Power Dressing,” 318; for more on corporate masculinity see Michael Roper, Masculinity and the British Organisation Man since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 33. “Billion Dollar Day,” Commercial Breaks, BBC Two, first broadcast: 16 August 1985, 9.30 p.m. 34. Churchill, Serious Money, 11, 18, 20. 35. Marchant, Speculators, 41. 36. Clive Wolman, “Ethnic Minorities and the City,” Financial Times, 1 September 1986, 4; Clive Wolman, “Jobber Quits and Threatens Action,” Financial Times, 29 August 1986, 8. 37. Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn, Class and Contemporary British Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013), 36. 38. Frank, One Market Under God, 6, 10. 39. “Billion Dollar Day.”

298  |  Notes

40. Courtney and Thompson, City Lives, 115–117. For more on the impact of technology on the culture of financial markets see William Deringer, “Michael Milken’s Spreadsheets: Computation and Charisma in Finance in the Go-­Go ’80s,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 42, 3 (2020), 53–69. 41. McDowell, Capital Culture, 166–167 42. Ibid., 47–50; Ranald Michie, “Insiders, Outsiders and the Dynamics of Change in the City of London since 1900,” Contemporary British History, 33, 4 (1998), 547–571, 552; Barrett, “King Caz.” 43. Ward, “Financing the Information Age.” 44. “Billion Dollar Day.” 45. Marchant, Speculators, 30. 46. Ash et al., The Official British Yuppie Handbook, 31. 47. Lionel Wee and Ann Brooks, “Negotiating Gendered Subjectivity in the Enterprise Culture: Metaphor and Entrepreneurial Discourses,” Gender, Work and Organization, 19, 6 (2012), 573–591, 577. 48. Biressi and Nunn, Class and Contemporary British Culture, 35; Smith, “Masculinity,” 32. 49. For more on risk and modernity see Anthony Giddens, “Risk and Responsibility,” Modern Law Review, 62, 1 (1999), 1–10, 3–4. 50. Dealers, dir. Colin Bucksey (Euston Films, 1989), [on DVD]. 51. Simon Sebag Montefiore, quoted in Giddens, “Risk and Responsibility,” 2; Neil Collins, “Similarity Is Pure Genius,” Daily Telegraph, 30 March 1987, 14. For more on “frontier” economies and constructions of risk-­taking see Fabian, Card Sharps, 6–7. 52. Collins, “Similarity Is Pure Genius,” Daily Telegraph, 30 March 1987, 14. 53. “Billion Dollar Day.” 54. Marchant, Speculators, 62. 55. Howard Kahn and Cary L. Cooper, “Mental Health, Job Satisfaction, Alcohol Intake and Occupation Stress among Dealers in Financial Markets,” Stress Medicine, 6 (1990), 285–298, 295–297; “The Potential Contribution of Information Technology to the Mental Ill Health, Job Dissatisfaction, and Alcohol Intake of Money Market Dealers: An Exploratory Study,” International Journal of Human Computer Interaction, 4, 3 (1991), 321–338, 333–334. 56. Martin Bailey, “Only Black with a Share in the Stock Exchange,” Observer, 21 September 1986, 7. 57. While 41 percent of City employees were women by 1992, more than 70 percent of them were classified as clerical workers, and just 3 percent as managers or directors (McDowell, Capital Culture, 72).

Notes  |  299

58. For more on race in late-­twentieth-­century British society see Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack (London: Routledge, 1992); William “Lez” Henry, “Reggae, Rasta and the Role of the Deejay in the Black British Experience,” Contemporary British History, 26, 3 (2012), 355–373; Gavin Schaffer, The Vision of a Nation: Making Multiculturalism on British Television 1960–1980 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Kennetta Hammond Perry, London Is the Place for Me: Black Britons, Citizenship and the Politics of Race (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Rob Waters, Thinking Black: Britain 1964–1985 (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019); Connell, Black Handsworth; Simon Peplow, Race and Riots in Thatcher’s Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020). 59. Quoted in Bailey, “Only Black with a Share in the Stock Exchange,” Observer, 21 September 1986, 7; “Demotion Not Racial, Bank Says,” The Times, 30 August 1986, 3. 60. Angus Phaure, quoted in Bailey, “Only Black with a Share in the Stock Exchange,” Observer, 21 September 1986, 7. Interestingly, a month later in a letter to the Financial Times, Phaure took a very different tone, defending the record of the Stock Exchange, calling it “one of the world’s greatest meritocracies” and asserting that he had “never once encountered anything which could remotely be construed as racial prejudice” (“Blacks and the Stock Exchange,” Financial Times, 16 September 1986, 17). 61. Robert Digby, quoted in Wolman, “Ethnic Minorities and the City,” Financial Times, 1 September 1986, 4. 62. David Pallister, “Race Row at Stock Exchange,” Guardian, 30 August 1986, 2; Wolman, “Ethnic Minorities and the City,” Financial Times, 1 September 1986, 4; Wolman, “Jobber Quits and Threatens Action,” Financial Times, 29 August 1986, 8. 63. Bailey, “Only Black with a Share in the Stock Exchange,” Observer, 21 September 1986, 7. 64. “Billion Dollar Day.” 65. Ash et al., The Official British Yuppie Handbook, 16. 66. Ibid., 17. 67. Frank Mort, Cultures of Consumption: Masculinities and Social Space in Late Twentieth-­Century Britain, (London: Routledge, 1996), 205; Angela McRobbie, Feminism and Youth Culture: From “Jackie” to “Just Seventeen” (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991). 68. Psychographic profiles (or market segments) were intended to identify a demographic’s personality traits, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. See Alan J. Bush and David J. Ortinau, “Services Marketing to Yuppies,” Journal of Services Marketing, 2, 2 (1988), 19–28. 69. Ibid., 20.

300  |  Notes

70. Bonner and du Gay, “Representing the Enterprising Self,” 75 71. Craig N. Owens, “The Bond Market,” in Ian Fleming and James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007, ed. by Edward Comentale et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 107–128, 118–119. 72. Mort, Cultures of Consumption, 3, 6, 134–145. 73. Sean Nixon, “Advertising Executives as Modern Men: Masculinity and the UK Advertising Industry in the 1980s,” in Nava et al. (eds.), Buy This Book (Abingdon: Routledge, 1997), 103–120, 108. 74. “High Power Mags Load Up for Triple Male Shot,” Guardian, 22 Oct 1984, 11. 75. John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-­Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007); Laura King, “Hidden Fathers? The Significance of Fatherhood in Mid-­ Twentieth-­Century Britain,” Twentieth Century British History, 26, 1 (2012), 25–46. 76. We can connect this to wider shifts in the status of singleness in postwar Britain. See Zoe Strimpel, “In Solitary Pursuit: Singles, Sex War and the Search for Love, 1977–1983,” Cultural and Social History, 14, 5 (2017), 691–715; Emily Priscott, Singleness in Britain, 1960–1990: Society, Gender and Social Change (Wilmington: Vernon, 2020). 77. Ash et al., The Official British Yuppie Handbook, 91–93. 78. McDowell, Capital Culture, 139–140. 79. Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Abingdon: Methuen, [1979] 1988), 52. 80. Jane Gordon “Bold Front,” Daily Telegraph, 23 May 1987, ii. 81. McDowell, Capital Culture, 189. 82. Entwistle, “Power Dressing,” 313. 83. A pioneering work in this area was John T. Molloy’s self-­help manual, Women: Dress for Success. First published in America in 1975, Dress for Success went through numerous editions and reprints and became a best-­ seller on both sides of the Atlantic. 84. Joanne Entwistle, “Fashioning the Career Woman: Power Dressing as a Strategy of Consumption,” in Andrews and Talbot (eds.), All the World and Her Husband, 226, 236; Entwistle, “Power Dressing,” 312. 85. Gail Rolfe, “My Kind of Look,” Daily Mail, 6 October 1986, 12. 86. “The Pop-­Up Doctor,” Daily Mail, 25 October 1984, 13. 87. Bryan Appleyard, “Karung: Find It in Your Filofax,” The Times, 22 December 1986, 10. 88. The oldest personal filing system of this kind was, in fact, Lefax. Devised in 1910 by American engineer, J. C. Parker, it was imported into Britain in 1921 by Norma & Hill plc (which was later sold to Filofax).

Notes  |  301

(George McMurdo, “Filofax, Personal Organizers and Information Society,” Journal of Information Science, 15, 6 (1989), 361–364, 361–362). 89. For example, see McGuigan, Neoliberal Culture; Keat and Abercrombie (eds.), Enterprise Culture; Haiven, Cultures of Financialization. 90. Filofax Financial Inserts advertisement, Daily Mail, 21 March 1990, 7. 91. Filofax UK Catalogue (1988), 1, https://​philofaxy​.com​/filocatalogue​/1988​ /11​/filofax​-­­uk​-­­full​-­­catalogue​-­­1988​/​#jp​-­­carousel​-­­912 [accessed: 14/01/2020]. 92. Filofax Winchester Personal Organiser advertisement, Daily Mail, 3 July 1990, 19. 93. As described in chapter 2, the image of the cowboy was also used to discredit traders of the OTC, seen as too unruly and unregulated to be tolerated by the City establishment. Here we can see how these terms and images took on different meanings depending upon to whom they were applied. 94. Filofax UK Catalogue (1989), 2, https://​philofaxy​.blogspot​.com​/2014​ /06​/filofax​-­­catalogue​-­­1989​.html [accessed: 06/04/2020]. 95. Filofax UK Catalogue (1990), 37, https://​philofaxy​.blogspot​.com​/2014​ /11​/filofax​-­­catalogue​-­­1990​.html [accessed: 15/07/2020]. 96. Filofax UK Catalogue (1987), 3, https://​philofaxy​.com​/filocatalogue​/1987​ /11​/filofax​-­­uk​-­­full​-­­catalogue​-­­1987​/​#jp​-­­carousel​-­­760 [accessed: 12/05/2020]. 97. Filofax UK Catalogue (1988), 1. 98. “Putting Your Life in Your Hands,” The Times, 2 November 1985, 33. 99. Pearson Phillip, “Sans Fax, Sans Everything,” The Times, 4 August 1987, 10. 100. Martin, The Financialization of Daily Life, 43; Wee and Brooks, “Negotiating Gendered Subjectivity,” 577. For more on industrial capitalist and neoliberal time discipline see Mark D. Fleming, “Mass Transit Workers and Neoliberal Time Discipline in San Francisco,” American Anthropologist, 118, 4 (2016), 784–795; E. P. Thompson, “Time, Work-­Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present, 38, 1 (1967) 56–97. 101. McMurdo, “Filofax, Personal Organizers and Information Society,” 362. 102. Filofax advertisement, Daily Mail, 14 February 1990, 38; Filofax advertisement, Daily Mail, 20 March 1990, 4. 103. “Putting Your Life in Your Hands,” The Times, 2 November 1985, 33. 104. Barclays advertisement (c. 1988), IainLucey1972, YouTube upload, 3 August 2016, https://​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=​7G3J5cUdUpE [accessed: 26/11/2017]. 105. Carol Leonard, “Filofacts,” The Times, 8 April 1987, 21. 106. The Grumpy Guide to . . . the Eighties, BBC Two, first broadcast: 10 May 2010, 9 p.m.; Penny Perrick, “Files Which Bind,” The Times, 23 March 1987, 11.

302  |  Notes

107. Market Facts Inc., quoted in Bush and Ortinau, “Services Marketing to Yuppies,” 20. 108. Famous Grouse advertisement, Daily Mail, 24 June 1987, 27. 109. Cadbury’s Boost advertisement, Daily Mirror, 21 October 1987, 12. 110. Alwyn W. Turner, A Classless Society: Britain in the Nineties (London: Autumn Press, 2013), 11–12. 111. Suzy Menkes, “New York Fashion,” The Times, 8 May 1984, 11. 112. Gordon, “Bold Front,” Daily Telegraph, 23 May 1987, ii. 113. McDowell, Capital Culture, 159. 114. Graeme Turner, “The Mass Production of Celebrity: “Celetoids,” Reality TV and the “Demotic Turn,” International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9, 2 (2006), 153–165, 153; Graeme Turner, Understanding Celebrity (London: SAGE, 2004), ch. 4; Table 4, Curran and Seaton, Power without Responsibility, 98–99. 115. For more on Spandau Ballet’s relationship to Thatcherism see Kari Kallioniemi, “ ‘The Sound of Thatcherism on Vinyl’: New Pop, Early Neo-­ right Aspirations and Spandau Ballet,” Journal of European Popular Culture, 8, 2 (2017), 125–138. 116. Appleyard, “Karung,” The Times, 22 December 1986, 10. 117. Jo Littler, “Celebrity CEOs and the Cultural Economy of Tabloid Intimacy,” in Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader, ed. by Sean Redmond and Su Holmes (London: SAGE, 2007), 230–243; Eric Guthey et al. (eds.), Demystifying Business Celebrity (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009). 118. Peter York, “Youth and the City,” Observer, 22 February 1987, 53. 119. Michael Walters, “Love Me Tender Says Virgin Boss Branson,” Daily Mail, 5 November 1986, 21. 120. Littler, “Celebrity CEOs,” 236, 239. 121. Stone, “Mr 25 Per Cent Wins,” Daily Mail, 30 March 1988, 23. 122. Paul Giles, “History with Holes: Channel 4 Television Films of the 1980s,” in Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, 2nd edition, ed. by Lester Friedman (London: Wallflower Press [1993], 2006), 58–76, 59; Alan Bennet et al., “British Cinema: Life before Death on TV,” Sight and Sounds, 53, 2 (1984), 115–122, 121. 123. Adrian Furness, “And They Call It Yuppie Love,” TV Times, September 1989. 124. Lindsay Vincent, “A City Tale of Yuppie Folk,” Observer, 1 October 1989, 27; Deborah Ross and Frances Hardy, “Trading Places,” Daily Mail, 5 October 1989, 26–27. 125. Rafaella Barker, “Money Loses Its Sex Appeal,” Daily Telegraph, 15 November 1989, 17.

Notes  |  303

126. Vincent, “A City Tale of Yuppie Folk,” Observer, 1 October 1989, 27. 127. Thames TV promotional blurb, cited by Vincent, “A City Tale of Yuppie Folk,” Observer, 1 October 1989, 27. 128. Barker, “Money Loses Its Sex Appeal,” Daily Telegraph, 15 November 1989, 17. 129. “Soap Bid Won’t Wash,” The Times, 20 November 1989, 27; Bonner and du Gay, “Representing the Enterprising Self,” 71. 130. “Max in Space,” Capital City, Euston Films (ITV), first broadcast: 28 November 1989. 131. Peter Paterson, “Sometimes We Go Too Far,” Daily Mail, 25 October 1989, 31. 132. Herbert Kretzmer, “TV Mail: Cheap Sell for a “Rich” Drama,” Daily Mail, 6 January 1986, 19. 133. WAC, R9/1,095/1, Janet Root, TV Audience Reaction Report: Strike It Rich, 14 July 1987, 1. 134. “Yuppy Love,” Only Fools and Horses, BBC 1, first broadcast: 1 January 1989. 135. Ibid. 136. For more on “Essex Man” see Biressi and Nunn, Class and Contemporary British Culture, 33–37; Robert Smith, “Documenting Essex-­Boy as a Local Gendered Regime,” International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, 5, 2 (2013), 174–197. 137. “Top Ten Discs,” Daily Mail, 16 May 1988, 24; “Harry Is Taking Away Loadsamoney,” Daily Mail, 23 April 1988, 7; Richard Wallace, “Top Ten TV Ad Earners,” Daily Mail, 21 January 1989, 21. 138. Catherine Bennett, “How to Cash In,” The Times, 25 April 1988, 16. 139. “Irony Turns to Base Metal,” Guardian, 30 April 1988, 18. 140. Robert Worcester, “Yuppies: Just a Marketing Myth,” The Times, 15 April 1987, 26. 141. Tania Shakinovsky, “Play Celebrity Footsi£,” Daily Mail, 27 February 2003, 24–25.

Chapter 6: Are We Rich Yet? “Are we rich yet?’ comes from the cover image of Brooke Harrington’s Pop Finance: Investment Clubs and the New Investor Populism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 1. Rosanna Spero, “If You Want to Play the Market, Join the Club,” Daily Mail, 25 August 1999, 40–41. 2. “Share Clubs Boom,” Financial Times, 8 August 1987, 4.

304  |  Notes

3. Information is further limited for the significant proportion of clubs (at least half at any time) that never affiliated with any official body. For these clubs, it is unclear by what rules they functioned, or through which services they conducted their business. Tracking down former club members who were active in the 1980s has also proved challenging. As a result, developing a concrete and consistent picture of the movement’s scale is almost impossible. 4. Little has been written on Britain’s investment clubs. However, economic sociologist Brooke Harrington has undertaken an extended and highly informative study of the larger American movement which consisted of 11 percent of the US population at its 1998 peak (approximately twenty million individuals). See Brooke Harrington, Pop Finance: Investment Clubs and the New Investor Populism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008, 3; “Scenes from a Power Struggle: The Rise of Retail Investors in the US Stock Market,” Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 34 (2012), 233–260; “Capital and Community: Findings from the American Investment Craze of the 1990s,” European Economic Sociology Newsletter, 8, 3 (2007), 19–25. 5. “Investment Clubs’ Funds Now Total Over £313,000,” The Times, 28 October 1960, 20. 6. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). Harrington similarly situates American investment clubs within a history of twentieth-­century social movements and collective action (Pop Finance). 7. Justin Urquhart Stewart, “Investors Are Slowly Joining the Club,” Independent, 3 June 1995. 8. Mary Alexander, “Strength in Numbers When It Comes to Playing the Market,” Guardian, 18 November 1995, A6; Alison Eadie, “When Small Is Beautiful,” Daily Telegraph, 11 October 1997, B13. 9. The 1981 Investment Club is a rare example of an investment club for which records have been deposited at an archive. Set up in 1981, the club wound up in 2011, and over time had a fairly large rotation of members, all of whom were introduced by existing members. One of the major sources of information about the 1981 Investment Club comes from a self-­published book created by members at the point of the Club’s cessation. It contains testimonies from a large number of the club’s members across the years, written and submitted in each member’s own words Glasgow Women’s Library, Glasgow (hereafter GWL), 2011–1, Box 4, Maryel FitzRandolph and Helen Watson (eds.), The 1981 Investment Club: 1981–2011 (Gray’s Graphics, c. 2011), 26–27, 29, 34) 10. GWL, 2011–1, FitzRandolph and Watson (eds), The 1981 Investment Club, 72–73.

Notes  |  305

11. The total percentage of shares owned by individual investors fell from 28.2 percent in 1981, to 21.3 percent in 1989. By comparison, the percentage of equities owned by pension funds had risen from 16.8 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 1989. In 1993, more than 70 percent of the share-­owning population held equity in only one or two companies (Kevin Goldstein-­ Jackson, “More Help for Small Shareholder,” Financial Times, 31 July 1993, vi; ONS, “Ownership of UK Quoted Shares: 2018,” 8; ONS, “Ownership of UK Quoted Shares: 2014,” 13, https://​www​.ons​.gov​.uk​/economy​ /investmentspensionsandtrusts​/ bulletins​/ ownershipofukquotedshares​ /2015–09–02#tab-­Main-­points [accessed: 25/08/2018]). 12. Oldham, “TAURUS and the Private Shareholder,” 20. 13. Kevin Goldstein-­Jackson, “Time for a shareholders’ charter,” Financial Times, 3 August 1996, 2; Mary Brasier and Peter Rodgers, “Capitalism Catches a Chill,” Guardian, 21 Oct 1987, 27; Wayne Asher, “Spring into Action with an ‘Army’ to Fight for Your Own Good Cause,” Daily Mail, 1 November 1995, 40–41; Frank Kane, “Small Shareholders Deserve Better Service from Big Boys,” Guardian, 27 November 1993, 36. 14. Patrick Lynch quoted in “Thrills, Spills, Crashes and Hurricanes,” Daily Mail, 20 April 1988, 20–21. 15. Paul Tolhurst quoted in Rosanna Spero, “Schoolfriends Share the Ups and Downs,” Daily Mail, 21 September 1994, 43. 16. John Husband, “Club Toast for £1,000 Prize,” Mirror, 17 March 1999. 17. GWL, 2011–1, FitzRandolph and Watson (eds), The 1981 Investment Club, 18. 18. Garran Patterson, “The Kiss-­and-­Run Brokers!,” Daily Mail, 5 August 1987, 18–19. 19. LSE, WSOC, “The Future of the Wider Share Ownership Council,” (c. June 1990), 1. 20. Simon Rose, The Shareholder: The Truth about Wider Share Ownership (London: Mercury, 1989), 24. An interesting product of the financial services market of the 1980s, investment referees were responsible for settling disputes between investment advisers and clients (Richard Youard, quoted in Diane Bolivar, “New Movement Established to Promote Wider Share Ownership,” Guardian, 5 June 1991, 12). 21. Historians of consumption frequently highlight anxiety as a common experience for consumers entering new markets (Lawrence Black, Redefining British Politics: Culture, Consumerism and Participation, 1954–1970 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2010); Matthew Hilton, “The Polyester-­ Flannelled Philanthropists: The Birmingham Consumers’ Group and Affluent Britain,” in Black and Pemberton (eds), An Affluent Society, 149–166).

306  |  Notes

22. Rosanna Spero, “The Fast Breeders Give the Babies a Break—and Invest,” Daily Mail, 8 June 1994, 34. 23. “The Street That’s Paved with Gold: Share Club Neighbours Hit Top Spot,” Daily Mirror, 16 December 1998. 24. Alison Eadie, “Remaining Calm on the Home Front and Abroad,” Daily Telegraph, 22 November 1997, B16. 25. Lynne Bateson, “Club Class,” Evening Standard, 27 March 1998. 26. For more on risk in the twentieth century, see Moores, “Thatcher’s Troops?”; Ulrich Becker, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: SAGE, 1992); Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-­Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), ch. 4; O’Malley, “Risk and Responsibility.” 27. GWL, 2011–1, FitzRandolph and Watson (eds), The 1981 Investment Club, 27, 30. 28. Spero, “Schoolfriends Share the Ups and Downs,” Daily Mail, 21 September 1994, 43. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., Rosanna Spero, “Fun and Shares in the Royal Oak,” Daily Mail, 30 November 1994, 56. 31. John Brewer and Frank Trentmann suggest that although people frequently consume without conceptualizing themselves as doing so, “at certain historical moments they can also acquire a voice and identity as consumer.” The 1980s proved just such a moment for some investors. See Frank Trentmann, “Bread, Milk and Democracy: Consumption and Citizenship in Twentieth-­ Century Britain,” in The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America, ed. by Martin Daunton and Matthew Hilton (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 129–164; John Brewer and Frank Trentmann, “Introduction: Space, Time and Value in Consuming Cultures,” in Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges, ed. by John Brewer and Frank Trentmann (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 1–13, 1. 32. Black, Redefining British Politics, 14. Descriptions of Neighbourhood Watch as peopled by “successful, self-­reliant, enterprising, consuming and property-­owning” individuals engaged in a “mutual self-­protection club” also provide a comfortable fit for investment clubs, placing them in a middle-­ class associational life milieu (Moores, “Thatcher’s Troops?,” 231). 33. Aldridge, “Engaging with Promotional Culture,” 397. 34. Nigel Williamson, “Goodbye Old Cloth Caps, Hello Filofaxes,” Guardian, 4 January 1988, 9. 35. “Investment Clubs’ Funds Now Total Over £313,000,” The Times, 28 October 1960, 20; John Husband, “Aunt We Brilliant,” Mirror, 21 July 1999. Comparative data for the late 1990s from the American National

Notes  |  307

Association for Investors Corp indicated that around 60 percent of its club membership were women and that three out of four newly formed clubs were women-­only (Lauren Chambliss, “More Ladies in Wall St’s Clubhouse,” Evening Standard News, 21 April 1998). 36. Rosanna Spero, “Success for the Women in a Man’s World,” Daily Mail, 4 May 1994, 36. 37. Alison Mitchell, “The Petticoat Push,” Daily Mail, 16 September 1987, 22–23. 38. Cited in Dawn Burton, “Women and Financial Services,” International Journal of Bank Marketing, 13, 8 (1995), 21–28, 21. 39. “£6,000 profit on the Stock Exchange,” Daily Mail, 12 June 1985, 19. 40. Ben Jackson, “Free Markets and Feminism: The Neo-­liberal Defence of the Male Breadwinner Model in Britain, c. 1980–1997,” Women’s History Review, 28, 2 (2019), 297–316, 297–298. For more on the interactions between feminism and neoliberalism see: Melinda Cooper, Family Values: Between Neo-­ liberalism and the New Social Conservatism (New York: Zone, 2017), 58–63; D-­M Withers, “Enterprising Women: Independence, Finance and Virago Press, c.1976–93,” Twentieth Century British History, 31, 4, (2020), 479–502. For debates about feminism as the handmaiden of neoliberalism see Nancy Fraser, Fortunes of Feminism: From State-­Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (London: Verso, 2013). 41. GWL, 2011–1, Box 2, Accountant’s Magazine, September 1988, 53. 42. Club members have been given pseudonyms. Furness Park Investment Club was a mixed-­sex club founded in 1987. It remained active until the early 2010s (Cumbria Archives and Local Studies Centre, Barrow (here­ after CALSC), BDSO 148/1–3, Book 1, “Minutes of the Inaugural Meeting,” 4 November 1987; “Minutes of the 4th Meeting,” 24 February 1988. See also subsequent meetings from Book 1. 43. GWL, 2011–1, FitzRandolph and Watson (eds.), The 1981 Investment Club, 16, 27. 44. FitzRandolph and Watson (eds.), The 1981 Investment Club, 11–12. 45. Spero, “Success for the Women in a Man’s World,” Daily Mail, 4 May 1994, 36. 46. Elkington, “Why Clubs Are the Trumps,” Daily Mail, 20 April 1988, 22–21. 47. GWL, 2011–1 FitzRandolph and Watson (eds.), The 1981 Investment Club, 11–12, 20, 39–40. 48. Katrina-­ Louise Moseley, “Slimming One’s Way to a Better Self? Weight Loss Clubs and Women in Britain, 1967–1990,” Twentieth Century British History, 31, 4 (2020), 427–453. 49. Burton, “Women and Financial Services,” 21, 26.

308  |  Notes

50. Allon further argues that women’s reconstitution as financial subjects transformed notions of what women could or couldn’t be, albeit it in ways that reinscribed existing gender-­based economic inequalities (“The Feminisation of Finance”). 51. Allon, “The Feminisation of Finance,” 13. Although limited in scope, and largely focused on the United States, research has generally demonstrated women to be more cautious when investing (or men more overconfident and prone to speculation) (Brad M. Barber and Terrence Odean, “Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116, 1 (2001), 261–292; Janette Rutterford and Josephine Maltby, “ ‘The Nesting Instinct’: Women and Investment Risk in a Historical Context,” Accounting History, 12, 3 (2007), 305–327). 52. Mitchell, “The Petticoat Push,” Daily Mail, 16 September 1987, 22–23. 53. Margaret Stone, “Could You Fill This Space to Be a City Slicker?,” Daily Mail, 23 September 1987, 26. 54. Lynne Bateson, “This Wonderful Buzz by a Wife who Buys, Buys, Buys,” Daily Mail, 27 July 1988, 24. 55. Madelaine Cohen, quoted in Bateson, “This Wonderful Buzz,” Daily Mail, 27 July 1988, 24. 56. Joan Ford, quoted in Husband, “Aunt We Brilliant,” Mirror, 21 July 1999. 57. Harrington further argued that for many investors individual stock purchases provided “not only an economic opportunity but also an imaginative one’ (Pop Finance, chapter 3). 58. “The Growing Band of £4 a Month Investors,” Financial Times, 15 May 1962, 11; “Investment Clubs’ Funds Now Total Over £313,000,” The Times, 28 October 1960, 20; “Congenial Talk about Money: Investment Clubs in Conference,” The Times, 26 September 1960, 9. 59. “Clubs for Small Capitalists,” The Times, 5 September 1960, 11. 60. CALSC, BDSO 148/1–3, Minute books. 61. Terry Bond, The Company of Successful Investors: Profit from the Power of Investment Clubs (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2002), xii, 36. 62. The Beardstown Ladies investment club was formed by a group of women from Illinois in 1983. Their initial success drew the interest of the national press, and they went on to produce a series of best-­selling books. 63. Aldridge, “Engaging with Promotional Culture,” 399–400. 64. For examples of this in other non-­investment-­related contexts see Sarah Stoller, “From Equality to Diversity: Local Government and the Emergence of the ‘Family Friendly’ Private Sector in Britain,” paper presented at the North American Conference on British Studies (Providence, RI, 2018);

Notes  |  309

Helen McCarthy, Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood (London: Bloomsbury, 2020); Johanna Kantola and Judith Squires, “From State Feminism to Market Feminism?,” International Political Science Review, 33, 4 (2012), 382–400; Helene Ahl et al., “From Feminism to FemInc.ism: On the Uneasy Relationship between Feminism, Entrepreneurship and the Nordic Welfare State,” International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 12, 2 (2016), 369–392. 65. Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-­ Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 237. 66. Goldstein-­ Jackson, “More Help for Small Shareholder,” Financial Times, 31 July 1993, vi. 67. For more on the WSOC see chapter 1. 68. LSE, WSOC, The Wider Share Ownership Council, Future Policy (November 1987), 2. 69. Spero, “Fun and Shares in the Royal Oak,” Daily Mail, 30 November 1994, 56. 70. Lindsay Vincent, “ProShare’s fair promoter: Gillian Nott,” Observer, 27 February 1994, A7. 71. Alexander Garrett, “A New Voice for Private Investors,” Observer, 23 February 1992, 34; Bolivar, “New Movement Established,” Guardian, 5 June 1991, 12; Peter Sharples, “Why Investors Are Joining the Club,” Manchester Evening News, 22 July 1999. 72. Teresa Hunter, “The Shareholders Who Could Be Left in a Deep Hole,” Guardian, 14 May 1994, 43; Alexander, “Strength in Numbers,” Guardian, 18 November 1995, A6. 73. Stuart Valentine, quoted in Peter Willis, “Clubbing Together for a Killing,” Evening Standard, 2 March 1994. 74. “Savers Who Are Caring, and Sharing,” Financial Times, 20 November 1993, iii. 75. Rosanna Spero, “Teenage Tycoons,” Daily Mail, 29 March 1995, 47. 76. “How a Village Beat the City,” Evening Standard, 14 February 1996. 77. Sharples, “Why More Investors Are Joining the Club,” Manchester Evening News, 22 July 1999. 78. GWL, 2011–11, FitzRandolph and Watson (eds), The 1981 Investment Club, 21. 79. Teresa Hunter, “High Street Advisers Happy to Help with the Loan Club Books,” Guardian, 20 November 1993, 33; Rosanna Spero, “Engineering a Share of Success,” Daily Mail, 16 February 1994, 28. 80. John Husband, “Join the Mirror’s Club and Cash In,” Daily Mirror, 22 July 1998; “Share in the Fun,” Daily Mirror, 16 September 1998; “If You

310  |  Notes

Want to Blaze a Trail . . . Join Our Clubs, Share in an Investment,” Daily Mirror, 10 March 1998. 81. Mold, “Patient Groups and the Construction of the Patient-­Consumer in Britain,” 517–518. 82. Rosanna Spero, “The White Hart Fun Club Beats the Blue Chips,” Daily Mail, 13 April 1994, 43. 83. Rosanna Spero, “ ‘Monkey’ Club Has a Stab at Buying Shares,” Daily Mail, 16 March 1994, 35. 84. CALSC, BDSO 148/1–3, “Minutes of the 4th Meeting’. 85. The Club started dealing with McNally Montgomerie & Co., which became Parsons Penney & Co., later to become Penney Easton & Co. in a 1983 merger. The company then joined Allied Provincial in 1988. Allied Provincial was taken over to become part of Greg Middleton, then Gerrard’s in 2000 before finally becoming part of Barclay’s Wealth (GWL 2011–11, FitzRandolph and Watson (eds), The 1981 Investment Club, 50). 86. Bond, The Company of Successful Investors, xii. 87. “Savers Who Are Caring, and Sharing,” Financial Times, 20 November 1993, iii; Roger Taylor, “The Cost of Having a Say,” Financial Times, 20 April 1996, 16; “Seminar is aiming to provide expert advice,” Manchester Evening News, 22 July 1999. 88. Goldstein-­ Jackson, “More Help for Small Shareholder,” Financial Times, 31 July 1993, vi; Gill Nott, quoted in William Lewis, “Small Investors Demand Their Say,” Financial Times, 22 June 1996, 1. 89. Teresa Hunter, “Timely Warning for Small Investors Who Think Big,” Guardian, 17 October 1992, 30. 90. Rosanna Spero, “Guarding Small Investors,” Daily Mail, 13 September 1995, 40; “Sid the Stag-­Chaser No Longer Runs with the Hounds,” Daily Telegraph, 17 August 1995, 21. 91. Lisa Buckingham, “Why Crest Is a Marginal Proposition for Private Investors,” Guardian, 18 June 1994, 37; “The London Stock Exchange’s Race against Time,” Economist, 2 April 1994, 85; Richard Northedge, “Crest Stalls over Increase in Costs,” Daily Telegraph, 5 October 1995, 23. 92. A nominee account is one in which a broker (or bank, building society, etc.) holds a client’s shares, making buying and selling easier and less administratively burdensome. 93. “Unanswered Questions’ Financial Times, 30 April 1994, vi. 94. Buckingham, “Why Crest Is a Marginal Proposition,” Guardian, 18 June 1994, 37. 95. Taylor, “The Cost of Having a Say,” Financial Times, 20 April 1996, 16. 96. Kane, “Small Shareholders Deserve Better,” Guardian, 27 November 1993, 36.

Notes  |  311

97. UKSA website, http://​www​.uksa​.org​.uk/ [accessed: 13/11/2016]. 98. Donald Butcher, quoted in Hunter, “Timely Warning,” Guardian, 17 October 1992, 30; Asher, “Spring into Action,” Daily Mail, 1 November 1995, 40–41; UKSA quoted in Goldstein-­Jackson, “More Help for Small Shareholder,” Financial Times, 31 July 1993, vi. 99. Donald Butcher, quoted in Lewis, “Small Investors Demand Their Say,” Financial Times, 22 June 1996, 1. 100. Taylor, “The Cost of Having a Say,” Financial Times, 20 April 1996, 16; William Davis, “High Time Big Shareholders Wielded More Clout,” Evening Standard, 8 July 1996. 101. Nicholas Hildyard and Mark Mansley, Campaigners’ Guide to Financial Markets (Sturminster Newton: Cornerhouse, 2001), 91–92. 102. Davis, “High Time Big Shareholders Wielded More Clout,” Evening Standard, 8 July 1996. 103. Taylor, “The Cost of Having a Say,” Financial Times, 20 April 1996, 16. 104. Luke Blair, “Gas Chief’s Deal Takes Heat out of Angry Investors,” Evening Standard, 31 May 1995. 105. Davis, “High Time Big Shareholders Wielded More Clout,” Evening Standard, 8 July 1996. 106. Spero, “Guarding Small Investors,” Daily Mail, 13 September 1995, 40. 107. Donald Butcher, quoted in Lewis, “Small Investors Demand Their Say,” Financial Times, 22 June 1996, 1. 108. Hunter, “Timely Warning,” Guardian, 17 October 1992, 30. 109. Rose, The Shareholder, 5–8. 110. Benyon previously founded the action group Gooda Walker, which campaigned for loss-­hit Lloyd’s of London Names. He also went on to set up action groups for shareholders at other companies, including the Mountleigh Group, Stanhope property company, and Barings Bank. Action group members were charged a fee (in the case of Mountleigh this was £70 per person) (Charles Pretzlik, “Benyon Starts Mountleigh Shareholders’ Action Group,” Daily Telegraph, 14 March 1995, 24; Charles Pretzlik, “Duo Set Up Action Groups for Stanhope and Barings,” Daily Telegraph, 10 May 1995, 23; Asher, “Spring into Action,” Daily Mail, 1 November 1995, 40–41). 111. Tom Benyon, “Boardrooms Need Tigers Not Toadies,” Financial Times, 9 December 1995, 2; Lewis, “Small Investors Demand Their Say,” Financial Times, 22 June 1996, 1. 112. Tom Benyon, quoted in, Spero, “Guarding Small Investors,” Daily Mail, 13 September 1995, 40. 113. Edmond Jackson, “Watch Your Step on a Slippery Slope,” Sunday Telegraph, 30 May 1999, 4B.

312  |  Notes

114. Lewis, “Small Investors Demand Their Say,” Financial Times, 22 June 1996, 1. 115. Spero, “Guarding Small Investors,” Daily Mail, 13 September 1995, 40. 116. Asher, “Spring into Action,” Daily Mail, 1 November 1995, 40–41. 117. For more on this see Franak Miraftab, “Making Neo-­liberal Governance: The Disempowering Work of Empowerment,” International Planning Studies, 8, 4 (2004), 239–259. 118. Harrington similarly concedes that America’s investment clubs “played into” neoliberal rhetoric that transferred responsibility and risk onto the individual in the guise of “empowerment” attained through exercising choice in investment decisions (Harrington, “Scenes from a Power Struggle,” 255).

Conclusion 1. Adkins et al., The Asset Economy. 2. Tooze, Crashed. 3. Adkins et al., The Asset Economy, 2–3.

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Archives Bank of England Archive, London (BOEA). EID: Economic Intelligence Department Files Barclays Group Archive, Manchester (BGA). BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham, Reading (WAC). BFI National Archive, London (BFI). British Library, London (BL). SA, City Lives: Sounds Archive National Life Stories, City Lives Collection. British Telecom Archives, London (BTA). TCC: Records created and used by the Post Office Corporation (Tele­ communications division). TCB: Records created and used by the Post Office telegraph and telephone service. Privatisation Box: Miscellaneous Material. Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge (CAC). THCR: Thatcher Papers. Conservative Party Archive, Bodleian Library, Oxford University (CPA). CRD: Conservative Research Department Files.

313

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Poster: Poster Collection. PUB: Library of Printed and Published Material. Cumbria Archives and Local Study Centre, Barrow, Cumbria (CALSC). Glasgow Women’s Library, Glasgow (GWL). Lloyds Banking Group Archive, London and Edinburgh (LBGA). London School of Economics Library, London (LSE). WSOC: Wider Share Ownership Council Collection. At the time of study, this collection remained uncataloged. As much detail about the material as possible is given, but there are no available reference numbers. The National Archives, Kew Gardens, Surrey (TNA). BS: Records of defunct temporary bodies. BT: Records of the Board of Trade and of successor and related bodies. Digital Archives Hansard record of Parliamentary debates online: https://​hansard​.parliament​ .uk/. HC Deb: House of Commons Debates. HL Deb: House of Lords Debates. Margaret Thatcher Foundation Website (MTFW): Margaret Thatcher online archive: www​.margaretthatcher​.org. Citations from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website use the following format: MTFW [unique document ID]. This ID number can be used to locate the document on the website by typing it into the search box, or by affixing it to the URL www​.margaretthatcher​.org​/document/. Office for National Statistics (ONS): www​.ons​.gov​.uk.

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Oral Histories (conducted by the author) Paul Killik (London, 17 November 2014). Gavin Oldham (Aylesbury, 2 October 2014). Robert Hodge (Birmingham, 29 September 2014). Robert Skinner (Bristol, 26 June 2017).

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Index

Note: figures are indicated by page numbers followed by fig. Abbey National Building Society, 130fig., 132 Ackrill, Margaret, 115 Acorn, 19 Aczel, Paula, 220 Adeleke, David, 188 advertising: brand recognition and, 127; Filofax and, 194–96; financial bookmakers and, 85–87, 91; financial institutions and, 117, 119–22, 124, 127–28, 243; financial journalism and, 30; government bonds and, 33; investment culture and, 1–2, 2fig., 10, 45–46, 121fig., 198–200; London Stock Exchange and, 38; newspaper revenue and, 33, 44–46; privatization and, 5; retail banking and, 75, 117, 119–20, 120fig., 123, 125fig., 284n117; share

dealing and, 71; share ownership and, 126fig.; spread betting and, 83–84; telebroking and, 110; yuppies and, 190; yuppie-­trader and, 198–99 Afcor Investment Limited, 60–61, 66–67, 69 AGM. See annual general meetings (AGMs) Albert E. Sharp, 285n144 Aldridge, Alan, 226 Allen, Woody, 200 allfinanz, 282n89 Allied Provincial, 310n85 Allon, Fiona, 222, 308n50, 308n51 Allstate, 105 Alternative Investment Market (AIM), 80 American Psycho (Ellis), 180, 192 Amersham International, 124 Amis, Martin, 178 Amstrad, 14, 75

343

344  |  Index

Anglia Building Society, 109 annual general meetings (AGMs): employee attendance and, 34; individual investors and, 97, 234; investor activism and, 235–36; shareholder resolutions and, 235–36; share perks and, 98, 101; women’s voting rights and, 25 Antiques Roadshow, The, 144 Apprentice, The, 14, 208 Archer, Jeffrey, 178 Arrow Business Books, 152 Asher, Wayne, 238 Association of Futures Brokers and Dealers, 90 Association of Investment Clubs Ltd. (AIC), 47 Association of Licensed Dealers in Securities (ALDS), 273n70 Baden-­Powell, Roger, 69 Badger Inc., 10 Bailey, Martin, 187 Baldwin, Harold, 161, 163fig. Balfour Beatty, 235 Ball-­Wilson, Harry, 41 banking industry: competition for retail customers, 5, 9–10, 42, 95–96, 116–17, 119, 122–24, 127, 133; consumer society and, 38, 113–14; credit/debit transactions and, 115, 286n151; cross-­selling of financial products, 123–24; data gathering and, 121–22, 284n121; democratization of investing and, 119; domestic markets and, 115; investment advice and, 147; marketing and, 119–22, 127–28; mortgage markets and, 286n151; regulation of, 114; relationship marketing and, 284n121; share dealing and, 114–17; share exchange schemes, 128, 131; share ownership and, 114, 123–24, 133; spread betting and, 90; targeted marketing and, 122; telecommunication and, 121. See also clearing banks; financial institutions; retail banking Bank of England, 60, 70 Bank of Scotland, 132

Barbarians at the Gate, 179 Barclays Bank: BT shares and, 132; consumer choice and, 122; customer gifts and, 198; investment clubs and, 229–30; marketing and, 123–24, 127; merchant banking and, 283n98; one-­stop shopping and, 285n129; retail stockbroking and, 116–17, 119, 122; share shops and, 114–15; small investors and, 75, 119; spread betting and, 90; unit trust marketing and, 127; voucher schemes and, 122 Barclays Bank Trust, 40 Barclays Certified Share Dealing Service, 122 Barclays de Zoete Wedd (BZW), 115–16, 183, 188 Barclayshare, 10, 116–17, 122, 124, 131–32, 229, 231 Barclayshare Advisory Service, 122 Barclayshare Dealing Service, 122 Barclays Merchant Bank (BMB), 115–16, 283n98 Barclays Wealth, 231, 310n85 Bateman, Patrick, 180, 192, 208 Bateson, Lynne, 216 BBC, 6, 142–44, 149, 182, 198, 201–3, 208 BBC Scotland, 142 Beardstown Ladies, 226 Belcombe Investment Club, 212, 216 Bellringer, Christopher, 269n2 Bennett, Peter, 109 Benyon, Tom, 237–38, 311n110 BES. See Business Expansion Scheme (BES) Betting and Gambling Act, 81 betting shops, 81 Bevan, Timothy, 113–15 BIDS. See British Institute of Dealers in Securities (BIDS) Big Bang: automated price quotation system, 56; closure of share shops, 107; computerized trading and, 9, 183; deregulation and, 75–76; disruption to traditional trading, 183; London Stock Exchange privatization and, 9, 55; OTC and, 75, 77–78; outside finance houses and, 115; political

Index  |  345

decision-­making and, 57; small investor vulnerability and, 227. See also London Stock Exchange “Billion Dollar Day”, 182–84, 186, 189, 200 Birmingham Stock Exchange, 108 Black, Sheila, 155 Blair, Luke, 236 Blue Peter, 198 B.O.A.C-­B.E.A. pilot’s club, 267n130 Body Shop, 14, 75 Bond, Terry, 225, 232 Bonfire of the Vanities (Wolfe), 180 Bonner, Frances, 295n7 Book of Money (Burr), 151 Boots, 107 Bradford & Bingley Building Society, 145 Braithwaite, John, 39 Branson, Richard, 200 Brewer, John, 306n31 Brewerton, David, 168–69 Britain: celebrity culture and, 14, 199–200, 208; City of London and, 174–75, 177–78, 207; consumerism and, 3, 9, 33, 44–45, 249n12; contemporary diversity in, 17, 255n43; cultural archetypes in, 174; democratization of savings in, 36–37; financialization of, 4, 7, 11, 20, 85, 218, 241, 244–45; financial reform in, 92, 175, 240, 243, 245; government-­backed centralization and, 36; government bond sales, 33; household assets and, 148, 289n51; interwar investing in, 32–37; investment clubs and, 46–47; investment culture and, 6–12, 16, 210; loss of social compartmentalization in, 196–97; marketing demographics and, 190; neoliberalism and, 4, 16, 18; new technology and, 196–97; New Times and, 254n42; 19th century investing, 24–32; political economy and, 3, 218; political transformation in, 18; postwar investing and, 37–52; postwar society, 3–4, 16–18, 22, 249n12; property-­ owning democracy and, 23, 34, 261n51; social activism and, 17;

systemic racism and, 187, 299n58; total market value of shares, 8fig.; war savings certificates, 33 British Aerospace, 107, 124 British Airways (BA), 99 British and Irish Press Guide, 29 British Gas, 71, 99, 107, 235–36 British Institute of Dealers in Securities (BIDS), 69, 74, 77, 273n70 British Investors Club, 267n130 British Steel, 141 British Telecom (BT): flotation of, 99, 280n47; privatization of, 1–2, 71, 124; ShareLink and, 229; share ownership and, 131–32; share shops and, 107; unit trusts and, 127; voucher schemes, 278n11 Bröckling, Ulrich, 292n91 Bromwich, Peter, 216 Bruni, Attila, 181 Bubble Act, 24 bucket shops, 27–28, 35, 258n17 building societies: competition for retail customers, 5, 9–10, 95–96, 117, 123–24; financial advertising and, 129fig., 130fig.; as financial supermarkets, 115, 282n89; first-­time investors and, 123–24, 127–28, 131; investment advice and, 147; property ownership and, 42; share ownership and, 123–24; small investors and, 112–13 Building Societies Act, 9, 56, 115 Building Society Movement, 42 Burr, Rosemary, 100, 150–51, 153, 155–56 Burton, Dawn, 120–21 Burton Group, 113, 282n85 Bush, Alan, 190 business celebrities, 14, 200 Business Expansion Scheme (BES), 63, 76 Butcher, Donald, 234–35, 237 Buzby Babes, 136 Cable & Wireless, 124 Cadburys, 199 Calamity! (game), 166–67 Callaghan, James, 64 Capital City, 201–2

346  |  Index

capitalism: American, 15–16; ethical, 14; fidelity, 102, 284n121; free-­market, 158–59, 226; gentlemanly, 23, 25, 179, 181; industrial, 196; investment culture and, 208; local and global nature of, 20; property ownership and, 40–41; share ownership and, 40; share perks and, 102; work/life distinction and, 196; yuppies and, 176. See also financial capitalism; popular capitalism capital markets: business elites and, 135; financial institutions and, 93; financial supermarkets and, 115; gameplay and, 169; institutional investment and, 9; middle-­and working-­class customers, 91; public participation in, 33, 79; social mobility and, 207. See also financial markets Carroll, Terry, 124 Cazenove & Co, 40 Ceefax, 149 Celebdaq, 208 celebrity culture, 14, 199–200, 208 Centre for Policy Studies, 98 Channel 4, 142–44, 167, 201, 223 Chappell, Philip, 98 Charles Stanley, 111 Chartwell, 60 Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society, 112 Childers, Erskine, 143 Churchill, Caryl, 178–80, 182, 186 CitiService, 109, 148, 290n53 Citizens Advice Bureau, 145, 288n34 City Index, 84–85 City Investment Centres, 106–7, 112 City Lives oral history project, 183, 263n74 City of London: British economy and, 177–78, 207; celebrity culture and, 200; class-­based discourse and, 35, 72–73, 182–83; Conservative Party and, 178; cultural authority of, 198; defining, 57; deregulation and, 56, 91; dismissal of OTC, 59, 71–72, 72fig., 75; as fashion inspiration, 199; financial bookmaking and, 90–91;

financial capitalism and, 25–26; financial journalism and, 44–45, 139, 141–42; financial services and, 59; government lobbying and, 177–78; London Stock Exchange and, 35–36; marketing and, 198–200; masculinity and, 189; popular culture and, 174–75, 177–80, 182–83, 200–208; racism and, 187–88, 299n60; regulation of, 76, 79, 81, 89–91; renegotiation of power structures, 181–83; respectability and, 50, 70, 73, 88–90, 105, 182–83; share shops and, 109; small investors and, 39–40, 42, 53, 71, 95; socioeconomic hierarchies and, 72, 78, 80, 91, 189; speculation and, 28; spread betting and, 81–83, 88–89; stock market investment and, 87; television broadcasting and, 200–206; threat of OTC to, 64; traditional stockbroking and, 69, 73, 82, 94, 104, 177, 183–84, 189; upper-­class male-­dominated elite, 36, 49, 53, 64, 72–73, 184; veneration of work ethic in, 183; women employees, 193, 298n57; workplace attire and, 192–94, 199–200; yuppies and, 174, 177; yuppie-­trader and, 182–83, 187–90, 192, 197–98 City Programme, The, 142 City Telecommunications Subcommittee, 177 class: City of London and, 35, 72–73, 182–83; financial asset ownership and, 4, 14; financial bookmakers and, 88–89, 91; financial exclusion and, 11–13, 251n28; investment culture and, 11, 23, 27–29, 106; rentier, 25, 42; share shops and, 106; working-­class investment and, 27–28, 34; yuppie-­ trader and, 182–83. See also middle-­ class; upper-­class; working-­class Claughton Ladies Investment Club, 49 clearing banks: competition for retail customers, 9, 95, 110, 114; deregulation and, 110; financial consumerism and, 120–22; as financial supermarkets, 115–17, 123, 131, 282n89; marketing

Index  |  347

and, 121; share dealing and, 114, 116; social affirmation and, 124, 127 Clink Farm, 90–91 Cohen, Laurence, 223 Cohen, Lizabeth, 252n30 Cohen, Madeline, 168, 223 Coldwell Banker & Company, 105 Collins, Neil, 186 Collischon, David, 198 Comet, 109 Commercial Breaks, 182 Commercial Union, 112 Committee on Invisible Exports, 177 Companies Acts, 26, 274n86 company promoters, 30, 33 Confederation of British Industry, 63 Conservative Party: citizenship and, 3–4; City of London and, 178; deregulation and, 52, 55–56, 238, 269n2; individualization of risk and, 185; investment culture and, 5; investment guides and, 151; investor-­citizen and, 12; journalism and, 44; long-­term investment and, 92; neoliberalism and, 17; political economy and, 185; popular capitalism and, 35, 159–60, 214; privatization and, 2, 131, 141; profit-­sharing and, 34; property-­owning democracy and, 34, 41–42, 68, 139, 261n51; pro-­small business agenda, 63, 67, 270n20; share ownership and, 41, 52, 67, 98, 132, 241, 261n51, 264n87; share shops and, 105, 110. See also Thatcherism consumerism: activism and, 146; anxiety on entering new markets, 305n21; aspirational, 103, 139; Citizens Advice Bureau and, 145, 288n34; credit industry and, 3; democratization and, 92; of financial services and products, 7, 9, 38, 53, 251n26; identity formulation and, 96, 190, 306n31; investment and, 9, 46, 95–97, 144–45, 243–44; investment clubs and, 49–50, 224, 230–31; investment subjects and, 13–14, 252n30; journalism and, 44–45; masculinity and, 190–91; postwar British society and, 3, 9, 44–45, 146,

190, 249n12; retail banking and, 120; women investors and, 33–34, 190, 224–26; yuppies and, 190–94, 199, 206–7. See also financial consumerism Consumers’ Association (CA), 145–46, 218, 222 Cook, Lindsay, 140 Cooper, Cary L., 187 Copley-­Smith, Richard, 94 Coral, 81–82, 84 Coral Index, 82, 84, 87 Cosmo Man, 191–92 cosmopolitanism, 25 Cotham Hill, 71 cowboy imagery, 71–72, 72fig., 77, 195, 301n93 Craig, Malcolm, 152 credit industry, 3–4, 9, 38, 115, 222 CREST (Certificateless Registry for Electronic Share Transfer), 233 Crisis of Capitalism in Britain and Corporate Governance, The (WSOC), 40 Crook, Diana, 154 Curran, James, 266n107 Daily Express, 33, 42, 45 Daily Mail: Conservative Party rhetoric and, 139; financial bookmaking advertising, 85, 87; financial news and, 33; Ideal Home Exhibition and, 139–40; investment advice and, 45, 140, 142, 150, 159–60; on investment clubs, 47–48; Money Makers column, 159; oligopoly in press ownership and, 266n107; on share perks, 102, 279n24; shares competitions, 213; on Wilmot, 62, 77; on women and money, 223 Daily Mail/Associated Newspapers, 266n107 Daily Mirror, 33, 44, 49. See also Mirror Davidson, Alexander, 72 Davie, Michael, 179 Davies, Aled, 9, 177 Davis, William, 51, 143 Dealercall service, 109 Dealers, 178, 185, 187 Dean Witter Reynolds, 105

348  |  Index

Debenhams, 10, 106–7, 109, 111, 113, 280n47 Debenhams Investment Services (DIS), 113 Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), 55, 58–59, 77, 107, 228, 274n86 deregulation: Big Bang and, 75–76; clearing banks and, 110; Conservative Party and, 52, 55–56, 238, 269n2; financial services and, 55–56, 92, 241; global financial markets and, 20; investment culture and, 213; London Stock Exchange and, 60, 79, 91; neoliberalism and, 249n17; OTC and, 75–76, 79, 104; policy aims and, 256n46, 269n2; share shops and, 104; single-­capacity trading and, 60; stock market and, 149, 176, 179; Thatcherism and, 15 de Zoete and Bevan, 115 DFS-­Dorland, 283n100 Dibben, Margaret, 141 Digby, Robert, 188 discretionary managed accounts, 66, 271n40 Douglas, Michael, 180 Dow Jones, 82, 85 Drewett, Jane, 148 DTI. See Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) dual-­capacity trading, 60–61, 61fig., 76 du Cann, Edward, 41–43 du Gay, Paul, 295n7 Dundee, Lord Ritchie of, 39 Durlacher, Esmond, 40 Eastenders, 198 Economist, 85 Edwards Investment Club, I can feed the family for £9.99 and, 60 Elkington, Wendy, 150 Ellingham, Christine, 214, 215fig. Ellis, Bret Easton, 180 Ellis, Frederick, 45 Emmerdale Farm, 202 employee share ownership, 34, 36, 40, 98 Enfield, Harry, 205 entrepreneurialism, 67, 73, 174, 181, 200, 245

entrepreneurial self, 252n32, 295n6 Entwistle, Joanne, 193 equity markets: democratization of, 135; high-­risk, 56, 63–64, 67, 69–70, 74–75; individual investors and, 7, 246; information asymmetries in, 232; institutional investors in, 7, 9, 36–37; OTC and, 59, 67, 69–70, 74–75; pension funds and, 52; small and medium-­sized companies, 65 Essex Man, 205 European Ferries, 100 Fair Shares (Rose), 150, 158 Falkland, Lord, 41 Family Money, 142 Famous Grouse, 199 Farley, Alan, 231 Fenn-­Smith, Clive, 151 fidelity capitalism, 102, 284n121 Filofax: around the clock work and, 196; brand-­image and, 194–95; celebrity endorsements and, 200; cowboy imagery and, 195; Lefax and, 300n88; masculinity and, 195, 197; in popular culture, 198; as status symbol, 194–98; women and, 197; youth market and, 198; yuppies and, 194–98 FIMBRA. See Financial Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Regulatory Association (FIMBRA) Finance Act (1983), 63 financial advice industry: consumer-­ oriented, 44–46, 136–47, 171–72; costs of personalized, 148–49; decline in availability of, 133; educational initiatives and, 137, 146–47; entertainment and, 136–37, 140–41, 157, 160–61, 164–69; exclusivity and, 148; financial advertising and, 137–38; financial institutions and, 147; financialization of daily life and, 137, 169–70, 286n4; financialized subjectivities and, 153; financial journalism and, 44–46, 138–45, 148–51, 155, 159–60; gameplay and, 137, 140, 157, 160–61, 162fig., 164–69, 213, 293n108;

Index  |  349

investment culture and, 17, 137–45; investment guides and, 149–61, 171; investor-­citizen and, 146; mass-­market-­ oriented, 136–38, 145–48, 151–54, 156–58, 169–72, 213, 286n2; normalizing of investment by, 138; radio broadcasting and, 142; small investors and, 42–46; Stock Exchange and, 147–48; success tales and, 154, 158–61, 171–72; teletext services and, 149; television broadcasting and, 142–44, 167–69, 288n24; women investors and, 154–55; WSOC and, 145–46 financial bookmakers: acceptance of, 88, 91; advertising and, 85–86, 91; betting firms and, 81–82; class dynamics and, 88–89, 91; competition for clients, 88; as execution-­only dealers, 90; financial services and, 88; gold indices and, 85; middle-­and working-­class customers, 83–84; social structures and, 89–91; speculation and, 57–58, 80, 84–87, 90; sports bookmaking and, 87; spread betting and, 80–86; stock market imagery and, 86–87, 92; stock market movement and, 56; trading practices and, 56–57. See also spread betting financial capitalism: elite masculine power and, 26–27, 181; financial consumerism and, 135; hypermasculinity and, 222, 224, 239; investment clubs and, 240; popular investment and, 24, 245–46; social mobility and, 174; socio­ economic hierarchies and, 189; UK securities market and, 104 financial consumerism: clearing banks and, 114–17, 120–22; collective investing and, 217–18; cultural norms and, 207; development of, 9–11, 251n26; financial advertising and, 117, 118fig., 119–20, 124, 127–28; financial advice industry and, 136–47, 171–72; financial capitalism and, 135; financial supermarkets and, 114–17, 122–24, 127–28, 131, 243–44; institutionalization of, 4–5, 13, 96–97, 135; investment culture and, 21, 96–97, 132;

investment fairs and, 94; managed funds and, 213; one-­stop shopping and, 123–24, 127, 134; personal finance and, 94–95, 138; popular culture and, 17; popular investment and, 94–96; postwar British society and, 23; product standardization and, 122, 134; share ownership and, 4, 7, 116–17, 119; share perks and, 97–103; share shops and, 103–13; social affirmation and, 124, 285n134; telebroking and, 109–11; unit trusts and, 128, 131 financial institutions: accessibility of, 10; advertising and, 117, 243, 283n100; authority of, 93; competition for clients, 122–23, 133; consumer society and, 10, 38; control of market access, 58; co-­option of investment clubs, 227–32, 239; deregulation and, 55–56, 269n2; elite control of, 14, 25–26, 42, 53; equity markets and, 7, 9; female customers and, 222; financial consumerism and, 9, 96–97; government bail-­out of, 245; individual disempowerment and, 9, 12–13, 21; investment culture and, 5–6, 17, 53; investment guides and, 151; middle-­ class and, 36–37; popular investment and, 230–31; share ownership and, 7–8, 38, 53, 57, 62, 133; small investors and, 42, 54, 75, 104; social relations and, 15; working-­class and, 36–37 Financial Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Regulatory Association (FIMBRA), 77, 288n33 financialization: cultural processes and, 207; definition of, 248n6; financial advice industry, 170; financial advice industry and, 169; gendered process of, 181, 187, 189, 194, 218, 222–24; income inequality and, 20, 257n51; institutional investment and, 14; neoliberal, 2, 4; political economy and, 7, 11, 20; postwar British society and, 4, 7, 11, 20, 85, 218, 241, 244–45; social relations and, 4, 14, 18; sociocultural transformation and, 208

350  |  Index

financialized subjectivities: financial advice industry and, 138, 153; investment board games and, 165; investment clubs and, 218; investment culture and, 11–14, 174, 244–45; investment-­ oriented subject, 11, 13–14, 174, 193, 223, 252n32; investor-­citizen, 11–14, 23, 39, 47, 53, 67, 97–98, 131, 146, 174, 210, 218, 234–35, 239; investor-­ shopper, 11, 13–14, 96–97, 101, 131–33, 174; investor subject models, 11; material performance and, 192; neoliberalism and, 245; popular culture and, 205; share ownership and, 4; yuppie-­trader and, 174 financial journalism: American influence on, 3, 30; financial advertising and, 5, 30, 33, 45, 69; on financial bookmaking and speculation, 87, 89; gameplay and, 45; Ideal Home Exhibition and, 139–40; investment advice and, 44–46, 138–42, 144–45, 148–51, 155, 159–60; investment clubs and, 209–10; investment guides and, 100, 150–51; investor activism and, 238; market indices and, 85; mass-­market-­oriented, 138–39; money pages, 44–46, 138–39, 144, 154; 19th century expansion of, 29–31; Polly Peck mythologies and, 69; popular investment and, 22, 30–31, 52; price information and, 29; promotion of share perks, 100–102, 279n24; radio broadcasting and, 142; on share shops, 108, 119; shares hotline and, 139; small investors and, 5, 45; standardization and abstraction of the market by, 30–31; success tales and, 159–60, 292n101; on suitability of public share ownership, 73; television broadcasting and, 142–45; women in, 155 financial literacy: bank exploitation of limited, 123; financial advice industry and, 145–47; financial supermarkets and, 131; investment clubs and, 49, 214–18, 221–22; investment culture and, 205; investor activism and, 232; small investors and, 214–16, 227–28, 240

financial markets: analysis of, 31; banking industry and, 286n151; British society and, 3, 16, 20–22; deregulation and, 207; er, 195; exclusion from, 11, 14; globalization of, 196–97; information asymmetries in, 172, 294n138; investor relationship with, 154; labor in, 177; masculinity and, 174, 180–87; oligopoly in, 135; patriotism and, 33; physical toll of, 186–87; political economy and, 11, 20; popular culture and, 14, 26–27, 178–80, 182–84, 186–87; public participation in, 180, 242, 244–46; risk-­taking and, 185; socioeconomic hierarchies and, 11, 28, 72, 78, 80, 91; working-­class investment and, 27 Financial News, 29–30, 33, 36, 44 financial services: Building Societies Act and, 56; colonial expansion and, 25; consumer society and, 7, 9; customer inertia and, 123; deregulation and, 55–56, 92, 241; expansion of, 73; financial bookmakers and, 88; financial supermarkets and, 114; inequalities in, 284n120; investment culture and, 13; investment referees and, 216, 305n20; legitimacy and, 244; politicization and, 217–18; private ownership and, 3; regulation in, 71; retail environments and, 105, 113, 279n42–80n42, 282n85; spread betting and, 81, 90–91; supply-­oriented approach, 119; women in, 193; working-­class and, 51; workplace attire and, 192–93, 300n83 Financial Services Act of 1986, 9, 56, 76–78, 90, 181, 218 financial supermarkets: building societies as, 115, 282n89; capital markets and, 115; clearing banks as, 115–17, 123, 131, 282n89; cradle-­to-­grave service and, 122–23; credit/debit transactions and, 115, 286n151; failure to educate investors, 123, 131–33; financial consumerism and, 114–16, 243–44; first-­time investors and, 123–24, 127–28, 131; investment clubs and,

Index  |  351

228–31; investor-­shopper and, 131–33; marketing models, 117; safe investing and, 127–28, 131; share dealing and, 114–17; small investors and, 113–17, 123–24, 127–28, 131–34; stockbroking and, 116 Financial Times, 29, 38, 44, 47, 50–51, 69, 85 Finstat, 149 First Investment Club of Great Britain, 47 Fleet, Kenneth, 45, 76 Fleming, Ian, 191 Fletcher, Alex, 105 football pools, 83–84 Force, Veronica, 312 Ford, Joan, 224 Fortune (game), 293n108 Foster, Ann, 109 Fox, Sam, 136 Fox Milton, 60 Frank, Thomas, 183 Fraud (Investments) Act, 1984, 273n70 free-­market capitalism, 158–59, 226 free market meritocracy, 182, 189 Friends of the Earth, 235 Frome, 89 FT-­30, 82–85 Fuller, Ivan, 168 Funfax Ltd., 198 Funny Money (Burr), 156 Furness Park Investment Club, 220, 225, 231, 307n42 futures trading, 259n21 gambling: association with investment, 69, 87–89, 97, 157, 160–61, 168; financial bookmakers and, 57–58; football pools and, 83–84; investment guides and, 160–61, 162fig., 163fig.; middle-­class and, 89, 92; off-­course betting shops and, 81; postwar British society and, 81, 160; speculation and, 28, 31, 84, 259n21; spread betting and, 81–83, 87, 90; stock market and, 86–87; working-­class and, 27–28, 89, 92 gameplay: brokerages and, 110; financial advice industry and, 137, 140, 157,

160–61, 164–69; financial journalism and, 45; imaginative quality and, 166; investment board games and, 6, 161, 164–67, 213, 293n108; investment gameshows and, 167–69, 223; London Stock Exchange endorsement of, 164–65; shares competitions, 169, 212–13 gamesmanship, 137 Gas Shareholders Campaign, 235 gay men, 189 Gekko, Gordon, 180, 204, 208 gentlemanly capitalism, 23, 25, 179, 181 gentlemanly financiers, 2–3, 23, 27, 181 Gerrard’s, 310n85 Gibbons Road, 12–15 “Giddy Aunts” investment club, 224 gold indices, 85 Goldstein-­Jackson, Kevin, 156, 158, 227 Gooda Walker, 311n110 Gooding, Kenneth, 38 Goodison, Nicholas, 105 government bonds, 33 Grand Metropolitan, 99 Granville & Co., 59, 69, 74, 79 Gray, Geoff, 128 Greg Middleton, 310n85 Grey, Christopher, 71, 285n134 Guardian, 51, 87, 100–101, 141–42, 266n107 Guardian Media Group, 266n107 Guild of Shareholders, 237–38 Hales, Chris, 84 Halifax Building Society, 85, 90, 117, 118fig., 129fig. Hall, Catherine, 20 Hall, Stuart, 254n42 Hanham, 16–22 Hannah, Leslie, 115 Harlsey Group Investment Club, 216 Harrington, Brooke, 224, 304n4, 304n6, 308n57, 312n118 Harrison, Joy, 221 Hart, Gary, 173 Harvard Securities Limited, 59–62, 65, 67, 69–71, 74, 76–77, 79

352  |  Index

Harvey-­Jones, John, 39, 165, 228 Harwin, Tony, 77 Heinemann, Kieran, 35 Henderson Unit Trust Management, 140 Hill, Richard, 182–83, 189 Hoare Govett, 106, 109 Hodge, Robert, 105, 111 Homelink, 110 Hornby, Anthony, 40 House of Fraser, 282n85 How to Make a Killing in the Shares Jungle (Walters), 158 How to Win at Financial Spread Betting (Vintcent), 90 Humberstone, Sheila, 214 Hunter, Teresa, 236 Ideal Home Exhibition, 139–40, 155, 287n11 IG Index, 84–87, 89–90 IG Index Dealing Card, 86 Imperial Chemical Industries, 40 Insider Dealing (game), 161, 164, 166 insider trading, 74 Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market (Wilmot), 62, 75–76 Institute of Directors, 236 institutional investment: capital markets and, 9; concentration of capital and, 104; equity markets and, 7, 9, 36–37; financial bookmaking and, 82; financial elite and, 14; financialization and, 14; impact on social democracy by, 9; investment process and, 96–97, 103, 214; investor activism and, 232–33, 235–36, 238; NASDAQ and, 58; power of, 37, 103, 215, 232–33; privatization and, 141–42; social relations and, 9, 14. See also financial institutions insurance companies: decline in separate services, 133; employment in, 73; institutional investment and, 38, 68, 142, 242, 250n19; investment board games and, 166–67; investment clubs and, 221; one-­stop shopping and, 105, 123, 134; public and, 51; share ownership and, 7, 36 Investapools, 83–84, 87

Investing to Survive the ’80s (Craig), 152 investment advice services, 42–43 investment clubs: affiliations and, 304n3; American, 46, 224, 226, 304n4, 304n6, 312n118; benefits of, 46–47; blue-­collar workers in, 49; capital gains tax and, 50–51; competition with unit trusts, 51; consumerism and, 49–50, 224, 230–31; co-­option by financial institutions, 227–32, 239; decline in, 51; expansion of, 47, 211–12, 267n126; financial empowerment and, 218–19; financial journalism and, 209–10; financial literacy and, 214–18, 221–22; financial supermarkets and, 228–31; founding of, 46–47; gendered shares purchases, 224; group activities and, 212–13; group decision-­making in, 212, 239; imaginative purchases and, 308n57; investment culture and, 210, 214; investor activism and, 211–12, 304n6; investor-­citizen and, 47, 210, 218, 239; as limited companies, 267n130; local company stocks and, 224–25; London Stock Exchange and, 68; member engagement in, 47–49; middle-­class associational life and, 49, 218, 306n32; NAIC and, 209, 219, 228; neoliberal rhetoric and, 312n118; politicization and, 217–18; popularity of, 209–10, 217; risk management and, 216–17, 240; shares competitions and, 212–13; social aspirations and, 49; social democracy and, 212; social knowledge and, 226; social relations and, 50, 212, 216, 220–21, 229, 239; Stock Exchange opposition to, 50; women and, 49, 212–13, 217, 219–27, 306n35, 307n42 investment culture: advertising and, 1–2, 10, 45–46, 198–200; class and, 11, 23, 27–29, 106; commodification of, 200–201; consumer society and, 50, 95, 175; cultural production and, 6–7, 13–14; disempowerment of individuals, 21, 97; female empowerment and, 137, 219–24, 226; financial advice industry and, 17, 137–58; financial consumerism and, 94–101; financial exclusion and,

Index  |  353

11–13, 251n28; financialized subjectivities and, 11–14, 174, 210–11; financial literacy and, 205; free market competition and, 194; gambling and, 27–28, 31, 57–58, 69, 81, 83–85, 87–89, 97, 160–61, 168; gendered expectations and, 187, 189, 223–24; historical framework for, 23–24; institutionalization of, 5–6, 96–97, 103–4, 135, 242–43; investment clubs and, 210, 214; investor subject in, 11–15, 23; masculinity and, 174, 180–87, 239; mid-­1980s, 18–19, 24; neoliberalism and, 2, 11; 1980s, 1–10, 12–14, 17–19, 24, 94–95, 134–35; 1990s, 6–7, 10, 12, 17; phone apps and, 19; popular culture and, 207, 242; postwar British society and, 16, 21, 37, 51–54; retail banking and, 286n151; share perks and, 97–102; share shops and, 103–13; social acceptability and, 172; social aspirations and, 9, 49, 103; social transformation and, 207–8, 241–46; speculation and, 28, 31, 83–85, 87, 97; television broadcasting and, 142–45, 167–69, 200–206; variation in, 171–72; whitewashing of, 188–89; women and, 49, 137, 154–55, 187; work/life distinction and, 195–97; yuppie-­trader and, 6, 174–90, 206–8 investment fairs, 94 investment guides: author expertise and, 152–53; charities and, 146; Conservative Party and, 151; consumer protection and, 145; democratization discourse in, 155–56, 171; entertainment and, 157–59; financial advice industry and, 137, 145, 149–57; financial institutions and, 151; financial journalism and, 100, 150–51; gambling associations and, 160–61, 162fig., 163fig.; London Stock Exchange and, 147; paradoxes in, 156–57; personal finance and, 151–52; popular market for, 150, 156–57; responsibalization and, 153–54; risk-­takers and, 158–59; self-­education and, 151–54, 156–57, 292n91; share ownership and, 156,

171; share shops and, 111; women investors and, 155 investment-­oriented subject, 11, 13–14, 174, 193, 223, 252n32 investment referees, 216, 305n20 investment trusts: definition of, 265n104; institutional investment and, 35–36; as mediated investment, 43; small investors and, 26, 42, 242 Investor (game), 164–65 investor activism: action groups, 234–36, 311n110; AGM shareholder resolutions and, 235–36; concern with wider share ownership, 236–37, 240; consumer society and, 146, 210; environmental groups, 235; fee-­paying services, 237–38, 311n110; financial journalism and, 238; government lobbying and, 232; institutional investment and, 232; investment clubs and, 210–12, 304n6; small investors and, 234–38 investor-­citizen: educational tools for, 12; financial advice industry and, 146; financial literacy and, 131; financial subjectivities and, 11; idealized image of, 12–13, 23, 53, 98, 146; investment clubs and, 47, 210, 218, 239; investor activism and, 234–35; middle-­class investment and, 39; OTC and, 67; political discourse and, 12, 14; share ownership and, 27, 97–98, 174 Investor Club, 147–48 Investors’ Chronicle, 149–50 investor-­shopper: financialized subjectivities and, 11; financial supermarkets and, 131–33; investment culture and, 14, 96–97, 174; passivity and, 13; share ownership and, 174; share perks and, 101 investor-­subject, 11, 13–15 Isagba, Bernard, 187 ITV, 142, 149, 167, 201–2 Jackson, Ben, 219 Jacques, Martin, 254n42 JC Penney Co., 280n42 Jennings, Marie, 145, 151–52, 155, 288n33 joint-­stock banks, 36

354  |  Index

joint-­stock companies, 24, 36 journalism, 44–46, 266n107, 266n110, 288n32. See also financial journalism Kahn, Howard, 187 Kane, Frank, 234 Kane and Abel (Archer), 178 Keaton, Diane, 200 Kennett, John, 110 Kenny, Mary, 142 Kershaw, Alan, 231 Keynesianism, 37, 41 King, Laura, 191 King, Lord John, 99 Kingstanding Road, 14–16 Kleinwort Benson, 283n100 Kleinwort Grieveson, 110–11 Knights, David, 119–20 Knill-­Jones, Jenny, 221 Kuenssberg, Sally, 229 Kynaston, David, 29 Labour Party, 37, 41, 44, 64, 218 Ladbroke Index, 85, 87, 90 Ladbrokes, 81, 84–86, 88, 99 Ladies of Goring Investment Club (LOGIC), 221 Laing and Cruikshank, 107 Lawson, Nigel, 151 LBC Radio, 142 Lefax, 300n88 Leighton, Jeremey, 145 Levene, Tony, 160, 162fig. Leyshon, Andrew, 251n28 Liberalisation of Trade in Services Committee, 177 Liberal Party, 34, 41, 261n52 licensed dealers: advertising and, 69, 71; as agents of reform, 57, 64; City regulation and, 79; cultural and material anxieties, 73; discount broking and, 67; dismissal of, 65, 88, 92; dual-­capacity trading, 60–61, 61fig.; exclusion from London Stock Exchange, 75–79; legitimacy and, 63–64, 69–71; locations of, 70fig.; market making and, 60, 61fig., 65–66; OTC and, 56–63, 69; regulation of,

73–74, 273n70; single-­capacity trading, 60, 60fig.; trading practices and, 56; unlisted securities and, 58 Licensed Dealers (Conduct of Business) Rules 1960, 71 Life and Unit Trust Intermediaries Regulatory Organization, 77 LIFFE. See London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE) limited liability, 26–27, 32 Limited Liability Act of 1855, 26–27 listing requirements, 59, 80, 270n9 literature: financial advice, 146, 155, 158, 206; financial markets in, 26–27, 178–80; investment marketing, 122–23; self-­help guides, 152; yuppie-­trader in, 176, 178–80 Littler, Jo, 200 Lloyds Bank: BT shares and, 132; financial advertising and, 117, 123–24, 127; high-­interest checking account advertising, 1, 2fig., 6, 10, 125fig.; investment advice service and, 42; investor-­shopper and, 13, 19, 127; Sharedeal advertisement, 126fig.; share dealing and, 114, 116; Unit Trust Regular Savings Scheme advertisement, 128fig. Lloyd’s of London Names, 311n110 Lloyd Webber, Andrew, 167 Loadsamoney, 205–6 London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE), 88, 178 London Stock Exchange: Big Bang and, 9, 55–56; bucket shops and, 28; City elite and, 50, 64, 71–72; computerized trading and, 9, 56; control of price information, 259n24; deregulation and, 60, 79, 91; discretionary managed accounts and, 66, 271n40; disinterest in small investors, 35, 38, 53, 66, 214, 215fig., 233; domestic markets and, 57–58; domestic securities monopoly, 35–36, 38; dual-­capacity trading, 60–61, 61fig.; endorsement of board games, 164–65; exclusion of licensed dealers, 75–79; failure to support

Index  |  355

start-­ups, 64–65; financial bookmakers and, 88; high-­risk equity markets and, 64; insider trading and, 74; institutional share ownership and, 8, 36; internationalization of, 7; investment advice and, 147–49; Investors’ Club and, 147–48; liberalization of, 56; listing requirements, 59, 80, 270n9; OFT inquiry and, 55; opposition to investment clubs, 50; paperless trading and, 233; as political advocate for small investors, 58, 68; price information and, 149; as private limited company, 55–56; ProShare and, 228; protection of members, 35, 38; Public Affairs Department, 68; racism and, 188; regulatory authority and, 58–59, 114–15; Retail Development Advisory Committee, 68; share shops and, 104; single-­capacity trading, 60, 60fig.; speculation and, 92; spread betting and, 82; targeting of OTC, 61–62, 64–65, 68–69, 75–80; Third Market and, 79; USM and, 65, 79–80; women and, 187. See also Big Bang London Times, 29 Longbridge Moonrakers Investment Club, 49 Loussouarn, Claire, 80 Low, Toby, 41 Lusardi, Linda, 136 Maclear, Andrew, 201 Macmillan, Maurice, 41 Mail Investment Extra, 139 Mail on Sunday, 141, 266n107 Marchant, Tony, 179, 182, 187 Marckus, Melvyn, 99 Margetts & Addenbrooke, 107, 112 market indices, 82, 84–85 market populism, 183 Marks, Henry, 30 Marks & Spencer, 10, 107, 110, 282n85 Married Women’s Property Acts, 25 masculinity: City of London and, 49, 53; competitive, 181–82; consumerism and, 190–92; entrepreneurship and, 181;

Essex Man, 205; Filofax and, 195, 197; financial capitalism and, 26, 174, 180–87, 222, 224; frontiersman and, 181, 186; gentlemanly financiers and, 181; investment culture and, 174, 180–87, 239; middle-­class financial, 182, 184; popular culture and, 182, 239; risk-­taking and, 185–86; self-­made men and, 181–82, 185; working-­class financial, 182, 184; yuppie-­trader and, 174, 180–87, 190–91, 195, 197, 207 McDowell, Linda, 181, 192 McEwan, Fiona, 117 McKechnie, Sheila, 145 McKenna, Gail, 136 McNally Montgomerie & Co., 310n85 Mecca, 81, 83 Menkes, Suzy, 199 Michie, Ranald, 269n2 middle-­class: capital markets and, 91; financial institutions and, 36–37; financial masculinity and, 182, 184, 190; gambling and, 89, 92; industrial equity and, 12; investment advice and, 46; investment clubs and, 49; investment culture and, 6, 11–12, 25, 51, 106; as investor-­citizens, 39; private investment and, 10, 12; share ownership and, 14, 21, 28, 32, 35–36, 108, 111 Midland Bank, 113–14, 116, 132, 151 Mirror, 45, 141, 159, 266n107. See also Daily Mirror Mirror Group, 266n107 Mitchell, Alison, 222–23 Mitchell, Colin, 99 M. J. H. Nightingale & Co., 59–60, 64, 91 Moate, David, 50 Molloy, John T., 300n83 Money (Amis), 178 Money, Phillip, 99–100 Money, Stella, 217, 220 Money Centre, 105–9 Moneyline, 142 Money Management Council, 144–46 Money Matters, 142 Money Observer, 150

356  |  Index

money pages, 44–46, 112, 138–39, 144, 154 Money Programme, The, 142–44 Moneyspinner, 142–44, 223 Money Which? 141 Monopoly, 161 Montefiore, Simon Sebag, 186 Montgomery, David, 266n107 Montgomery Ward & Company, 279n42 Moores, Chris, 17 More, Abhay, 164 Morgan, Glen, 119 Mori, 206 Morning Chronicle, 29 Morris, Graham, 85 Moseley, Katrina-­Louise, 222 Mulberry, 198 Munting, Roger, 81 Murdoch, Rupert, 266n107 mutual funds, 42–43, 265n104 NASDAQ, 58–59, 79 NASDIM. See National Association of Securities Dealers and Investment Managers (NASDIM) National and Provincial Building Society, 124 National Association of Investment Clubs (NAIC), 47–49, 51, 209, 219, 228 National Association of Investors Corporation, 46, 306n35 National Association of Securities Dealers and Investment Managers (NASDIM), 74, 76, 273n70 National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations market (NASDAQ). See NASDAQ National Westminster (NatWest), 114, 116, 119, 132, 231 Naughton, John, 168 Naylor, Margot, 43, 82 Neighbourhood Watch, 306n32 neoliberalism: deregulation and, 249n17; empowerment rhetoric and, 312n118; existing structures and, 23; financialization and, 2, 4, 11, 18; investment culture and, 2, 11; key policy tenets of, 249n17; New Right and, 17; political thought

collectives and, 249n17; postwar British society and, 4, 16, 18; responsibalization and, 153; in situ study of, 256n47; work/life distinction and, 196 New Right, 17, 256n45 News Corporation, 266n107 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), 46, 58, 263n76, 279n42 New Zealand, 20 Next, 225–26 Nicholson, George A., Jr., 46 Nightingale, M. J. H., 59 1981 Investment Club, 212–13, 217, 220, 229, 231, 304n9, 310n85 nineteenth century: bucket shops and, 27–28; class-­based anxieties and, 27–29; democratization of investing, 32; disposable income and, 25; financial journalism and, 29–31; literature and, 26–27; railway investment and, 24; share ownership and, 25–26, 54; tickertape and, 259n24; transmission of price information and, 29, 259n24; women and, 25, 32 nominee accounts, 233–34, 310n92 Norma & Hill, 300n88 Norwich and Peterborough Building Society, 132 Nott, Gill, 232 Nottingham Building Society, 110 Observer, 43, 101, 142, 266n107 Office of Fair Trading (OFT), 55, 62 Official British Yuppie Handbook, The (Russel Ash), 176, 185, 189, 191 Oldham, Gavin, 117, 132–33, 214 Oldman, Gary, 179 O’Malley, Pat, 153 Only Fools and Horses, 6, 203–4 Oracle, 149 Ortinau, David, 190 OTC. See over-­the-­counter markets (OTC) Other People’s Money, 179 Ott, Julia C., 261n51 over-­the-­counter markets (OTC): BES and, 63, 76; BIDS and, 74, 77; class-­based discourse and, 72–73; Conservative Party and, 63–64; cowboy imagery and,

Index  |  357

71–72, 72fig., 77, 301n93; deregulation and, 75–76, 79, 104; discount broking and, 67; dual-­capacity trading, 60, 76; entrepreneurial culture and, 67, 73; equities and, 59; financial press advertising and, 69; Financial Services Act of 1986 and, 76–78; free market and, 60, 64, 79; hard-­sell approach, 71, 74; high-­risk equities and, 56, 63–64, 67, 69–70, 74–75; insolvency and, 77–79; investor-­citizens and, 67; licensed dealers and, 56–61, 69; market makers on, 60–61; NASDIM and, 74; regulation of, 73–74, 76–77, 273n70; reputation concerns, 61–62, 64, 69–72, 72fig., 73–74, 76, 89, 92; self-­regulatory systems and, 69, 74, 76–78; small business support, 62–63; small investors and, 57, 59, 66–71, 76, 78; as threat to London Stock Exchange, 61–62, 64–65, 68–69, 75, 79; untested companies and, 61, 63–64; USM shares and, 65, 71 Owens, John, 62–63 P&O Ferries, 99–100, 107 Pagano, Margareta, 105 Palamountain, Edgar, 39, 145 Paribis, 112 Parker, Helen, 145 Parker, J. C., 300n88 Parkhouse, Sam, 101 Parsons Penney & Co., 310n85 patriotism, 33 Patterson, Garran, 215 Pavlou, Chris, 182, 186 Peck, Jamie, 17 Peninsula Club, 221 Penney Easton & Co., 310n85 penny shares, 56, 69, 75, 78–79, 272n56 pension funds: equity markets and, 52; financial advice industry and, 138; institutional investment and, 68, 134, 242; popular investment and, 9, 19, 51; retail banking and, 123; share ownership and, 7–8, 128, 250n19, 305n11 Perfect Personal Finance (Jennings), 152 Personal Equity Plans (PEPs), 117, 284n108

personal finance: financial consumerism and, 94–95, 138; financial journalism and, 138, 140, 145; financial literacy and, 19, 145–46; investment guides and, 151–52; media awards, 145–46; women journalists and, 155 Phaure, Angus, 188, 299n60 Phelps, Barry, 88–89 Phillip, Pearson, 195 Phillips & Drew, 110 Plender, John, 142 political economy: Conservative Party and, 185; credit industry and, 3; demand-­ side, 37; economic life and, 16; entrepreneurial, 67, 73; financialization of, 7, 11, 20, 218; neoliberalism and, 16–17; risk-­taking and, 185 Polly Peck, 69, 272n56 popular capitalism: Conservative Party and, 35, 159–60, 214; financialization and, 19; individual investors and, 213, 305n11; public participation in, 245–46; speculation and, 269n155; Thatcherism and, 12, 23, 96, 99, 106, 141–42, 245 popular culture: celebrities and, 199–200; City of London in, 174–75, 177–80, 182–83, 200–208; Filofax and, 198; financial markets in, 178–80, 182–84, 186–87; financial-­themed films and, 178–80, 182–83; gambling and, 81, 92; investment board games and, 164–67; investment culture and, 207, 242; investment gameshows and, 167–69; masculinity and, 182, 239; stock market imagery and, 174–75, 199–200; yuppies in, 174–76, 191–92; yuppie-­trader in, 178–80, 182–83, 201–6, 208 popular investment: access to capital and, 24–25; affordability and, 22–23; brand recognition and, 127; bucket shops and, 27–28, 35, 258n17; class-­based anxieties, 23, 27–29, 106; company promoters and, 30; consumerism and, 9, 46, 95–96, 144–45, 243–44; decline in British, 7–8; expansion of, 2–3, 5–7, 22, 24, 91; financial institutions and,

358  |  Index

popular investment (continued) 230–31; financialized subjectivities and, 244–45; financial journalism and, 22, 30–31, 46, 52; individual investors and, 305n11; individualism and, 69; interwar Britain, 32–33; investment clubs and, 209–14; investment personalities and, 158; limited liability and, 26–27; local company stocks and, 36; middle-­class and, 35–36; mining booms and, 25; motivations for, 6; 19th century, 24–32, 52; popular culture and, 26–27; railway investment and, 24; regulations and, 35; retail banking and, 10, 42, 123–24; social acceptability and, 22–23, 26; social structures and, 89–90; stockbrokers and, 94–95; tradition relationships and, 92–93; transmission of price information and, 29; women and, 25, 32–33; working-­ class and, 27–28, 34–36. See also share ownership; share shops; small investors postwar Britain: celebrity culture and, 199; consumerism and, 44–45, 53, 146, 190, 249n12; credit industry and, 3; economic growth in, 37–38; financial journalism and, 5; financial marketing and, 119–20; gambling and, 81, 160; institutional investment and, 9, 23, 37, 243; investment clubs and, 49, 227, 229, 239; investment culture and, 37–54, 83, 91; mass affluence and, 23, 49, 53; singleness in, 300n76; social activism and, 17; social democracy and, 9, 16, 80, 212; supply-­oriented approach, 119; working-­class investment and, 267n129 Powell, Ellis, 29, 33 power dressing, 193–94 Prestel, 109, 148, 281n65 Prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act, 35–36, 58, 71 Prior Harwin, 77, 274n86 private investors: discouragement of, 38, 172, 214, 233; economies of scale and, 116, 134; financial institutions and, 243; financial journalism and, 139,

142; financial supermarkets and, 132, 134; investment clubs and, 218, 225, 232; investor activism and, 234–35; middle-­and upper-­class, 10, 12, 32; OTC and, 66, 68, 80; ProShare and, 228, 232; share perks and, 97–98; share shops and, 104, 107, 112–14, 116; wider share ownership and, 53, 227–28. See also share ownership; small investors privatization: banking industry and, 131–33; British Airways (BA) and, 99; British Gas and, 71, 99, 107; British Telecom (BT) and, 1–2, 71, 99, 131–32; Conservative Party and, 2, 131–32, 141; government policy and, 3–4, 132; institutional investment and, 141–42; neoliberalism and, 249n17; OTC and, 71; potential riches and, 159; share ownership and, 99, 107, 131–33, 137; share perks and, 99; Thatcher government and, 2–3, 5, 15, 142, 210, 247n4 profit-­sharing, 34, 262n53 property ownership, 306n32 property-­owning democracy: Conservative Party and, 34, 41–42, 68, 139; financial institutions and, 5; limitations on, 36; political parties on, 40–41, 237; Thatcherism and, 23, 34 ProShare, 227–32, 234 ProShare Investment Clubs, 228–29 Prudential Unit Trust Managers Ltd., 151 Publishing Holdings, 124 Quicksilver, 179 Quilter Goodison Co., 105–7, 109–14, 116 racism, 187–89, 299n60 radio broadcasting, 142 railways, 2, 24, 31 Ralph Lauren, 199 Ramsden, Harry, 99 Ravendale Group, 107 Ravendale Securities, 63–64, 69, 77, 107 Reagan, Ronald, 173 Reaganomics, 20

Index  |  359

rentier class, 25, 42 Representation of the People Act (1918), 34 retail banking: competition for clients, 116–17, 123–24, 127; consumer society and, 38, 120–22; democratization of investing and, 119; financial advertising and, 75, 117, 119–20, 120fig., 284n117; first-­time investors and, 123–24, 127–28, 131; investment culture and, 286n151; 1990s transformation in, 277n4; one-­stop shopping and, 123–24, 127, 134; share dealing and, 114–17, 122; small investors and, 10, 42 Retail Development Advisory Committee, 68 retail stores: financial services and, 10, 105, 113, 279n42–80n42, 282n85; remote access and, 109; share dealing and, 103–13, 280n47; share ownership and, 107, 110 Richards, Christine, 217 R. J. Goerke, 279n42 Robinhood, 19 Roddick, Anita, 14, 200 Roeber, Joe, 143 Rogernomics, 20 Rolfe, Gail, 193 Rooney, Dick, 266n110 Rose, Simon, 150, 156, 158, 215, 237 Rothermere, Lord, 266n107 Russell, Frederick C., 46 Sainsbury’s, 10 Satia, Priya, 20 Save & Prosper, 119, 127, 151 Save and Invest, 108 Schlapfer, Ronnie, 182 Scott, Helen, 221 Scott Trust, 266n107 Sears, Roebuck & Co., 105 Seaton, Jean, 266n107 second-­wave feminism, 219–20, 222 Secret of My Success, The, 179 Securities and Investments Board (SIB), 56, 77, 90 Securities Association, 77 Seear, Lady, 41

self-­help: genres of, 152, 193, 291n71; guides, 12, 149, 152–56, 193, 292n91; investment clubs and, 213, 231; Samuel Smiles and, 34; women and, 193, 197 self-­regulatory organizations (SROs), 56, 76 Selfridges, 33, 112 Sergeant, Patrick, 45, 98 Serious Money (Churchill), 178–80, 182, 186 Sex Discrimination Act (1975), 219 Seymour Pierce Butterfield, 100 Shamash, David, 108 Shane Longman, 201 Share Book, The (Burr), 100, 151, 153 ShareCall, 10, 110–11 Share Centre, The, 132 Sharedeal, 1, 126fig. share exchange schemes, 128, 131 shareholder democracy, 21, 131, 261n51 Shareholders’ Charter, 237 ShareLink, 132, 229, 285n144 Share Millions (Goldstein-­Jackson), 158 share ownership: affordability and, 22, 26, 148; capitalism and, 40; class and, 4, 98; class-­based anxieties, 23, 27, 35, 57, 73; competing visions of, 62; Conservative Party and, 41, 52, 67, 98, 132, 241, 261n51, 264n87; decline in individual, 51–52, 116, 135, 242; democratization of, 5, 11, 32, 39–43, 48, 50, 52–53, 57, 67, 98, 110, 119, 131, 134–35, 172, 242; elite social status and, 87, 134, 156–57; employees and, 34, 36, 40, 98; financial consumerism and, 4, 7, 53; financialized subjectivities and, 4; institutionalization of, 7–8, 10, 38, 53, 57, 114, 250n19; investment guides and, 156; investor-­ citizen and, 27, 97–98, 146; investor-­ shopper and, 96–98; overseas investors and, 7; political parties on, 40–41, 52, 264n87; privatization and, 1–2, 4, 131–32, 137; promotion of, 5–6, 10, 38; public participation in, 34; rejection of wider, 236–37; retail stores and, 107, 110; share perks and, 98–103; as strike protection, 34; wealthy and, 32;

360  |  Index

share ownership (continued) working-­class and, 28, 34–36, 53. See also popular investment; private investors; small investors share perks: conspicuous consumption and, 101–3; decline in, 133–34; expansion of, 99, 103; fidelity capitalism and, 102; financial consumerism and, 97–103; investment guides and, 100; journalist promotion of, 100–102, 279n24; privatization and, 99; promotion of share ownership and, 98–103; restrictions on, 98; tax free status of, 97–98; voucher schemes, 99, 122, 278n11 share-­pushing, 28, 35 Shares (Baldwin), 163fig. shares competitions, 169, 212–13 Shares Game, The (Levene), 160, 162fig. share shops: American influence of, 103, 105; City Investment Centres and, 106–7; class-­based anxieties and, 106; clearing banks and, 114; Conservative Party and, 105, 110; deregulation and, 104; descriptions of, 108–9; failure of, 112–13, 133; financial consumerism and, 103–13; first-­time investors and, 104; London Stock Exchange and, 104; middle-­and working-­class customers, 108, 111; profitability and, 110–11; Quilter Goodison Money Centres and, 105–9, 112; retail banks and, 114–17; retail environments and, 103–13, 280n47; Sunday trading and, 107; transition to building societies, 112–13; window-­shopping and, 112 Shawcross, Lord, 73 Shields, Brooke, 200 SHOC (game), 293n108 Shocks and Scares, 161, 293n108 SIB. See Securities and Investments Board (SIB) Singh, Kunwar Chander Jeet, 106–7, 112 single-­capacity trading, 60, 60fig. Sirens club, 212 Skelton, Noel, 34, 40, 261n52 Skinner, Robert, 177

Skirrow, Bill, 167 Skypala, Pauline, 160 Small Business Bureau, 270n20 small investors: access to market, 132; AGMs and, 97, 234–36; anxiety on entering new markets, 216; brand recognition and, 127, 132; building societies and, 112–13, 127, 132; competition for, 88, 92, 123–24; discouragement of, 35, 38–39, 53, 66, 214, 215fig., 240, 264n82; disempowerment of, 21, 97, 103, 233; education of, 13, 33, 43, 68; financial institutions and, 42, 54, 75, 104; financial journalism and, 5, 45; financial literacy and, 214–16, 227–28, 240; financial stability and, 127; financial supermarkets and, 114–17, 123–24, 127–28, 131–34; gambling culture and, 57–58; information asymmetries in relation to, 172, 214, 232, 295n138; investing risks and, 26; investment advice and, 42–46, 146–48; investor activism and, 234–38; Investors’ Club and, 147; local company stocks and, 36, 224–25; London Stock Exchange advocacy for, 58, 68; mailing lists and, 124; managed funds and, 123, 127–28, 134, 213; nominee accounts and, 233–34, 310n92; NYSE marketing to, 263n76; OTC and, 57, 66–71, 76, 78; paperless trading and, 233; passivity and, 43, 131, 135, 237, 244; penny shares and, 56, 78–79; protection of, 35; retail banking and, 123–24, 127–28, 132; risk avoidance and, 127–28, 131–32, 134, 243; risks of, 172, 227, 295n138; share-­pushing and, 35; share shops and, 103–17; social structures and, 89; telebroking and, 109–11; unit trusts and, 41–42. See also popular investment; share ownership Smiles, Samuel, 34 Smith Brothers, 84, 88 social democracy, 9, 16, 80, 212 social mobility: capital markets and, 207; competition and, 182; financial journalism and, 159; stock market

Index  |  361

success and, 159, 189; yuppie-­trader and, 174, 183–85, 189–90, 205, 207 Spandau Ballet, 199 Sparke, Jonathan, 84, 88, 90 Spectator, 50 Speculate (game), 293n108 speculation: Conservative Party rhetoric and, 159; Coral Index and, 87; financial bookmakers and, 57–58, 80, 84–87, 90; gambling and, 28, 31, 84, 259n21; high-­risk investing and, 69; informal, 52; London Stock Exchange and, 92; market indices and, 82, 84–85; OTC and, 57, 69; popular capitalism and, 269n155; railways and, 2, 24, 31; spread betting and, 81–83; success tales and, 161 Speculators (Marchant), 179, 182, 184, 187 Spencer, Michael, 88 Spencer Thornton, 111 Spero, Rosanna, 209–10, 219, 238 Spielberg, Steven, 200 Sporting Index, 87 sports bookmaking, 87 spread betting: banking industry and, 90; City elite and, 82–83, 88; competition for clients, 88; Coral Index and, 82, 275n102; financial bookmakers and, 80–86; financial services and, 81, 90–91; gambling and, 81–83, 87, 90; gold indices and, 85; popularity of, 83, 85; public participation in, 83–85; regulation of, 89–90; respectability and, 89–91. See also financial bookmakers Stabmonk Investment Club, 231 Stafford, J. T, 153 Stewart, Justin Urquhart, 212 stockbrokers: competition for retail customers, 114; investment advice and, 147; investment clubs and, 49; licensing and, 58; nominee accounts and, 233–34, 310n92; phone-­dealing services and, 10, 116; physical toll on, 186–87; private portfolio management and, 94–95; racism and, 187–89; single-­capacity trading and, 60, 60fig.; telebroking and, 109–10; women as, 187

Stock Exchange Council, 38, 68, 73, 78 Stock Exchange Game, The, 164, 166 Stock Exchange Gazette, The, 42 Stock Exchange Investors Club, 68 stockjobbers, 60, 60fig., 84, 88 stock market: City elite and, 87; crash of 1929, 35; crash of 1966, 51, 209; cultural production and, 6–7; deregulation and, 149, 176, 179; direct individual ownership in, 51; financial bookmakers and, 56–57, 87; gambling and, 86–87; LIFFE and, 88; managed funds in, 10; mass participation in, 8, 24, 28, 35, 38, 40, 42; OTC and, 57; privatization and, 2; telecommunication and, 184–85. See also investment culture; London Stock Exchange; popular investment; share ownership Stocks and Shares Show, The, 167–69, 170fig., 223 Stone, David, 109 Stone, Margaret, 200, 223 Stone, Oliver, 178, 180 Strike It Rich (game), 165–67 Strike It Rich (tv series), 202–3 Sturdy, Andrew, 119 Sugar, Alan, 14, 200 Sullivan, Jon, 203 Sun, 44–45, 136, 141 Sunday Express, 33 Sunday Telegraph, 266n107 Sunday Times, 38, 43, 45 TAURUS (Transfer and Automated Registration of Uncertified Stock), 233 Taylor, Donovan, 168 Taylor, James, 30 Tebbit, Norman, 56, 115 Teignmouth Road, 11–12 telebroking, 109–11, 133 telecommunications, 55, 121, 184–85 Telegraph, 140, 266n107 television broadcasting: British channels, 201; family money programming, 142–44; financial advice industry and, 142–45; financial fact sheets and, 144; investment culture and, 200–206;

362  |  Index

television broadcasting (continued) investment gameshows and, 167–69; property programming and, 288n24; specialist audiences, 142–43; yuppie-­trader in, 182, 200–206 Thain, Greg, 124 Thames Television, 201 Thatcher, Margaret, 34, 52, 67, 175–76, 241 Thatcher, Mark, 200 Thatcher government: popular capitalism and, 12, 23; privatization and, 2–3, 5, 142, 210, 243, 247n4 Thatcherism: entrepreneurial culture and, 73; free-­market meritocracy and, 182, 189; ideology of, 15–17, 256n46; investment culture and, 23; limitations of, 18; opposition to, 17; popular capitalism and, 12, 23, 96, 99, 106, 141–42, 245; property-­owning democracy and, 23, 34; yuppies and, 175–76 Third Market, 79 Thirtysomething, 295n7 Tickell, Tom, 141 tickertape, 29, 259n24 Times, 47–49, 101 Times Literary Supplement, 146 Tolhurst, Paul, 214, 217 Tory Democrats, 34, 40 Tosh, John, 191 Trading Places, 179 Trentmann, Frank, 306n31 Trotter, Derek ‘Del Boy’, 6, 203–6 Trustee Savings Bank (TSB), 107 TSB, 128, 151 TV-­am, 142 UK Shareholders’ Association (UKSA), 234–38, 240 Ultravox, 199 Unicorn Smaller Companies Trust, 75 Unicorn Trust, 42, 151 Unionists, 34, 40 United States: bucket shops and, 258n17, 259n20; financial journalism and, 3, 30; investment clubs and, 46, 224, 226,

304n4, 304n6, 312n118; investment culture and, 158; New Right and, 256n45; off-­exchange trading, 58; popular investment and, 7–8; Reaganomics and, 20; shareholder democracy in, 261n51 Unit Trust Association, 39, 151 unit trusts: definition of, 265n104; first-­time investors and, 128, 131; marketing and, 127; as mediated investment, 43; national schemes, 41; popular investment and, 8–9, 51; small investors and, 41–43 Unit Trusts Explained (Burr), 151 unlisted securities, 56, 58, 64–65 Unlisted Securities Market (USM), 65, 71, 75, 79–80 upper-­class: gentlemanly financiers, 27; industrial equity and, 12; investment culture and, 14, 25, 51, 88–89, 91–92; private investment and, 10, 12, 32 USM. See Unlisted Securities Market (USM) Valentine, Stuart, 68, 147, 228 Vaux Breweries, 101 venture capital markets, 48, 56, 64, 75, 80 Vernon, James, 31, 102, 256n47 Villiers, Charles, 119 Vincent, Lindsay, 228 Vintcent, Charles, 90 Virgin Records, 200 Waddingtons, 199 Wainwright, Richard, 41 Wall Street, 178, 202 Walters, Michael, 67, 74, 77–79, 95, 150–51, 154, 161, 200 Warburg, Siegmund, 40 Ward, Jacob, 177 war savings certificates, 33 Watchdog, 144, 288n32 Waters, Richard, 112 Watson, Matthew, 252n31 Wealthify, 19 Weatherhead, Foye, 221 Wedd Durlacher Mordaunt, 115 Weinberg, Mark, 8

Index  |  363

What Investment? 150 What Mortgage? 150 Wheatcroft, Patience, 74–75 Wheeler, Stuart, 84, 90 Which? (Consumers’ Association), 145–46 Whipple, Amy, 17 White Hart Investment Club, 231 W H Smith, 109 Wider Share Ownership Council (WSOC): dissolution of, 227; educational initiatives and, 146; employee share ownership and, 40; financial advice industry and, 145–46; investment clubs and, 48; on investor financial literacy, 215, 227–28; shareholder democratization and, 39–41, 43, 67, 73, 264n87 Wilkinson, R. F. M., 50 William Hill, 81 Williams, Kipper, 169, 170fig. Wilmot, Tom: Harvard Securities Limited and, 59–60, 62, 76–77; high-­risk investing and, 69, 75–76; Inside the Over-­the-­Counter Market, 62, 76; prison sentencing and, 78; rivalry with London Stock Exchange, 62; small investors and, 63, 66–67 Wilson, Harold, 51 Wirral Investment Club, 47 Wolfe, Tom, 180 Wolverine Worldwide, 226 women: annual general meetings (AGMs) and, 25; City of London employment, 193, 298n57; company promoters and, 33; consumerism and, 33–34, 190, 224–26; entrepreneurship and, 181; female autonomy and, 222; Filofax and, 197; financial empowerment and, 137, 219–24, 226; financialized subjectivities and, 222, 308n50; interwar investing and, 33; investment clubs and, 49, 212–13, 217, 219–27, 306n35, 307n42; investment culture and, 187, 219–24; investment gameshows and, 223; investment success and, 154–55; London Stock Exchange and, 187; nineteenth century investing and, 25, 32; power dressing

and, 193–94; reproductive cycles and, 194; risk-­taking and, 222, 308n51; second-­wave feminism and, 219–20, 222; self-­help genre and, 152; workplace attire and, 193–94, 300n83 Women and Money (Jennings), 155 Women: Dress for Success (Molloy), 300n83 Women’s Financial Letter, The (Black), 155 Wong, William, 182, 184, 189 Wood, Andrew, 167 Worcester, Robert, 206–7 working-­class: bucket shops and, 27–28; business class and, 183; capital markets and, 91; exclusion from investment, 27, 39; financial institutions and, 36–37, 51; financial masculinity and, 182, 184, 190; gambling and, 27–28, 89, 92; investment advice and, 46; investment clubs and, 49; investment culture and, 106; as investor-­citizens, 12, 27; share ownership and, 28, 34–36, 53, 108, 111; yuppie culture and, 205 Working Girl, 179 workplace attire, 192–94, 199–200, 300n83 World Federation of Investment Clubs, 225 WSOC. See Wider Share Ownership Council (WSOC) York, Peter, 200 Youard, Richard, 216 Your Personal Money Programme (Burr), 151 yuppies: City of London and, 174, 177; class-­based discourse and, 73; consumerism and, 190–94, 199, 206–7; cultural construction of, 6, 174, 176–77, 194; female power-­dressing and, 193–94; Filofax and, 194–96; investment culture and, 6; marketing and, 190; office supplies and, 194, 198; popular culture and, 174–76, 191–92; pregnancy and, 194; psychographic profile of, 190, 299n68; scholarship and, 175, 295n7; sociocultural transformation and, 208; success tales and, 14; terminology and, 173;

364  |  Index

yuppies (continued) Thatcherism and, 175–76; unfettered capitalism and, 175–76; workplace attire and, 193–94 yuppie-­trader: advertising and, 199; as City elite, 198; consumer masculinity and, 190–92; cultural trope of, 176–77, 180, 183–84, 207; Filofax and, 195–97; gay men as, 189; investment culture and, 174–90, 206–8; long hours and, 183; luxury goods and, 197; marketing and, 198; masculinity and, 174, 180–87, 190, 195, 197, 207; mobile phones and laptops, 196–97; in popular culture,

178–80, 182–83, 208; racialized assumptions and, 187–90; respectability concerns and, 182–83; risk-­taking and, 185–86, 207; as self-­made man, 181–82, 185; social aspirations and, 203–4; social mobility and, 174, 183–85, 189–90, 205; socioeconomic hierarchies and, 189; telecommunication and, 184–85; television broadcasting and, 200–206; whiteness and, 188–90; working around the clock, 196–97; workplace attire and, 192–94, 197, 199–200; youthful portrayal of, 187

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