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Abstract
Detailed accounts of the social role of the independent shopkeeper rarely go beyond 1914. This article identifies a perception that his value in providing both a personal and community service endured beyond this date. Consultation of a variety of documentary sources from the 1930s and 1940s demonstrates that the independent shopkeeper remained an integral part of retailing and society in Britain in this period. More widely, the article contextualizes the continued support for the small shopkeeper in relation to theories of retail institutional change derived from the marketing literature. Acknowledging an open-systems perspective, it assesses the influence of the social and political environment in explaining the persistence of small shopkeeper support.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the Nuffield Foundation for its generous funding of this research through its Social Sciences Small Grants Scheme.
Notes
1 Liberal Independent Trader Committee, Fair Play for the Small Man, 10.
2 Jefferys, Retail Trading in Britain; Benson and Shaw, The Evolution of Retail Systems; Benson, Rise of Consumer Society; Benson and Ugolini, A Nation of Shopkeepers; Alexander et al., “Action and Reaction,” 245.
3 Cassis, Big Business; Chandler, Scale and Scope; Freyer, Regulating Big Business; Hannah, Rise of the Corporate Economy; Mercer, Constructing a Competitive Order; Wrigley, “Antitrust Regulation,” 727.
4 Hosgood, “The “Pigmies of Commerce”,” 440.
5 Hilton, “Retailing History as Economic and Cultural History,” 131.
6 Crossick, “The Petite Bourgeoisie in Nineteenth-century Britain,” 81. See also Benson, The Penny Capitalists; Mitchell, “The Development of Urban Retailing”; Shammas, The Pre-Industrial Consumer; Vigne and Howkins, “The Small Shopkeeper in Industrial and Market Towns”; Winstanley, The Shopkeeper's World.
7 Crossick, “The Petite Bourgeoisie,” 88.
8 Parker, “The Independent Worker and the Small Family Business,” 545.
9 De Grazia, “Changing Consumption Regimes in Europe,” 69, 73.
10 Alexander, “Retailing and Consumption,” 39; Glennie, “Consumption within Historical Studies”; Miller et al., Shopping, Place and Identity, ix–x; Wrigley and Lowe, Retailing, Consumption and Capital, 16.
11 Brown, “The Wheel of the Wheel of Retailing,” 16; idem, “Variations on a Marketing Enigma,” 131; Savitt, “Comment,” 38.
12 Brown, “Variations on a Marketing Enigma.”
13 Etgar, “The Retail Ecology Model,” 41; Roth and Klein, “A Theory of Retail Change,” 168; Davies, “Applying Evolutionary Models to the Retail Sector,” 165.
14 Roth and Klein, “A Theory of Retail Change”; Brown, “Variations on a Marketing Enigma”; Etgar, “The Retail Ecology Mode.”
15 In relation to retail history, see Hollander and Omura, “Chain Store Developments,” 299; Morris, Political Economy of Shopkeeping in Milan; Coles, ‘Competition,’ 275; Shaw et al., “Evolving Culture,” 1977.
16 Shaw et al., “Evolving Culture.”
17 Benson, Penny Capitalists, 4–5.
18 United Kingdom, Board of Trade Retail Trade Committee, Impact of the War on the Retail Trades, Part I, 3–5.
19 Liberal Inquiry Committee, War and the Independent Trader, 1.
20 See also Jefferys, Retail Trading in Britain.
21 See Liberal Inquiry Committee, War and the Independent Trader, 8C. See also Hall, “The Butcher, the Baker,” Parker's survey of Merseyside found that 45 per cent of shopkeepers and over half the total members of the family employed in small businesses were women. Parker, “The Independent Worker and the Small Family Business,” 535.
22 Braithwaite and Dobbs, Distribution of Consumable Goods, 241.
23 See also Winstanley, The Shopkeeper's World, 200, 213.
24 Braithwaite and Dobbs, Distribution of Consumable Goods, 262–3.
25 Neal, Retailing and the Public, 5–6.
26 W.S. Edgson, “Some Aspects of Shop Property”, Auctioneers' and Estate Agents Institute of the United Kingdom, cited in Braithwaite and Dobbs, Distribution of Consumable Goods, 262–3. See also Ford, “Competition and the Number of Retail Shops,” 502.
27 Howson and Winch, Economic Advisory Council, 1.
28 Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), CAB58/153, Economic Advisory Council (EAC) Memoranda of Committee: Marketing and Distribution 1930–31, vol. II.
29 PRO, CAB58/152, EAC Memoranda of Committee: Marketing and Distribution 1930–31, vol. I, 41, para. 156.
30 The notion of retail productivity as a consumer-mediated phenomenon is explained in a recent report on the contemporary UK retail sector: Oxford Institute of Retail Management Assessing the Productivity of the UK Retail Sector.
31 PRO, CAB58/153, Memorandum by Sir Arnold Wilson, EAC (M.D.21), 6–7.
32 Preceding enquiries included Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, “Report on the Pork and Bacon Trades”; idem, “Report on the Marketing of Cattle and Beef ”; Committee on Industry and Trade, Factors in Industrial and Commercial Efficiency, Parts I and II.
33 PRO, CAB58/152, 40, para. 155.
34 PRO, CAB58/153, Report Sir Edward Penton to Wilson, 11–12.
35 The Report of the Marketing and Distribution Committee has been described as ‘among the more useful pieces of applied economic research produced in this period’. However it should be noted that it was never discussed by the main body of the EAC and was not a focus of Parliamentary discussion. Howson and Winch, Economic Advisory Council, 37.
36 PRO, BT55/52/1, Committee on Restraint of Trade, Suggested Questionnaire for Manufacturers and Suggested Questions to be put to Various Witnesses (1930–31).
37 PRO, BT55/52/3, Part 2, Committee on Restraint of Trade, Committee Memoranda No. R.T.58 (1930–31).
38 Braithwaite and Dobbs, Distribution of Consumable Goods, 241–2; see also Mathias, Retailing Revolution, 106; Plant, Some Modern Business Problems, 320–21.
39 Winstanley, The Shopkeeper's World, 182–98; Tebbutt, Making Ends Meet; Johnson, “Credit and Thrift,” 147–70.
40 Roberts, The Classic Slum, 81–3.
41 See Shaw et al., “The Evolving Culture of Retailer Regulation.”
42 Ross McKibbin sees managers of multiple shops as part of a non-traditional middle class who were newcomers to a community and had little interest in existing commercial arrangements. McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 104.
43 Crossick, “The Petite Bourgeoisie,” 82.
44 Listener, 27 Jan. 1937, 146.
45 Ibid., 48, 180; Hansard Parliamentary Debates, vol. 319 (1936–37), col. 1207; Journal of The Independent Trader, Feb. 1937, 183.
46 Hansard Parliamentary Debates, vol. 319 (1936–37), cols. 1213–14.
47 Listener, 27 Jan. 1937, 147–8.
48 Ibid., 181.
49 Board of Trade Retail Trade Committee, First Interim Report on the Opening of New Shops, para. 2.
50 Board of Trade Retail Trade Committee, Third Report: Concentration in the Retail Non-Food Trades, Part VII, 26–9, paras. 108–23.
51 Madge, “War and the Small Retail Shop,” 1.
52 Hansard Parliamentary Debates, vol. 380 (1941–42), cols. 435–6, 21 May 1942.
53 Retail Trades Committee Third Report, Second Addendum, 22 June 1942, 30–31.
54 Board of Trade Retail Trade Committee, First Interim Report, para. 1.
55 Hansard Parliamentary Debates, vol. 371 (1940–41), col. 1069.
56 PRO, BT64/252, Board of Trade Retail Trade and Distribution Policy, Miscellaneous Papers, c. 1946.
57 Jefferys, Retail Trading in Britain, 101.
58 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain.
59 Winstanley, The Shopkeeper's World, 20–30, 96–103; Crossick, “The Petite Bourgeoisie,” 71–8.
60 Liberal Independent Trader Committee, Fair Play for the Small Man, 1.
61 Liberal Inquiry Committee, War and the Independent Trader, 12.
62 Liberal Independent Trader Committee, Fair Play for the Small Man, 48 (italics original).
63 Ibid., 8 (italics original).
64 Mass Observation TC 4/1/E; FR 3108; FR661, 2, cited in Alexander, “Retailing and Consumption,” 51.
65 Liberal Independent Trader Committee, Fair Play for the Small Man, 30.
66 Liberal Inquiry Committee, War and the Independent Trader, 5.
67 National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, The Independent Traders, 1.
68 Conservative Party Post-War Problems Committee on Industry, quoted in Conservative Party, General Election 1945, 4–5.
69 Erskine-Hill, The Future of the Small Trader, 9.
70 London School of Economics Archives (hereafter LSE Archives), File DALTON/9/5, Labour Party Distribution Subcommittee, ‘Nation of Shopkeepers,’ R.D.123/June 1948, 5.
71 PRO, BT64/252, Retail Trade and Distribution Policy, Memo 11 Feb. 1943.
72 LSE Archives, Liberal Party Papers Ref. 9/1, 1945 General Election: Liberal Candidates Handbook, Section 2, Part 1, 120–21.
73 Shaw et al., “The Evolving Culture,” 1983.
74 PRO, HLG/71/762, Multiple Shops Federation, Memoranda on Certain Aspects of Town Planning, 1943–53, Letter 20 Jan. 1944 from Frank Gratinck, Secretary Retailers' Advisory Committee on Town Planning to Lawrence Neal, Ministry of Town Planning.
75 PRO, HLG79/133, Reconstruction of Shopping Precinct, Coventry: General Correspondence 1948–50. See also Hasegawa, Replanning the Blitzed City Centre.
76 PRO, HLG71/11, Planning Technique, City of Plymouth 1943–49, P.P.C.22, A Review of Progress in the Reconstruction of the County Borough of Plymouth, 1946.
77 PRO, HLG79/268, Redevelopment Proposals, Location of Shopping Area, Kingston-upon-Hull, 1947–48.
78 Hasegawa, Replanning the Blitzed City Centre.
79 Liberal Independent Trader Committee, Fair Play for the Small Man, 36, 43, 45.
80 Independent Traders' Alliance, Town Planning and the Independent Shopkeeper, 3–4.
81 Wade, Shopkeeper, 23.
82 PRO, HLG/71/762, Multiple Shops Federation, Memoranda on Certain Aspects of Town Planning, 1943–53; Resolution 23 April 1945 cited in letter from F. Porritt, General Secretary Independent Traders Alliance to Minister of Town and Country Planning, 4 May 1945.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid.
85 Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population, Report.
86 PRO, HLG/81/47, Uthwatt Report, Comments by Multiple Shops Federation, 1943.
87 Hilton, Consumerism in Twentieth-Century Britain.
88 Shaw et al., “The Evolving Culture of Retailer Regulation;” Ritschel, The Politics of Planning, 221–2.
89 See for instance Bechhofer et al., “Small Shopkeepers,” 465; Dawson and Kirby, Small Scale Retailing; see also Baron et al., “Beyond Convenience,” 395.
90 Shaw et al., “Selling Self Service,” 568.