University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/36384 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. i The Social and Cultural Impact of the Car in Interwar Britain Sean O'Connell Submitted for the degree of PhD in the Centre for Social History, University of Warwick. November 1995 This dissertation may be photocopied. ii Contents Title Page i Contents ii Tables and Illustrated Material v Acknowledgements viii Summary ix Key to Abbreviations x Introduction xi The Social History of the Car: Previous Work xii Technology and Consumption xix Sources and Methods xxiii Chapter One Motoring, The Motor Industry and 1 the Economic Historian Introduction 1 Demand, Supply and the Diffusion of Car Ownership 4 Conclusion 16 Chapter Two Who Owned Cars and How? 18 Introduction 18 'By Their Cars Ye Shall Know Them': Taste, Status and 20 the Emergence of Middle-Class Motoring 'An Old-fashioned but Powerful Prejudice': 29 Hire Purchase Reassessed The Social Background of Car Owners Reappraised 42 iii Conclusion 51 Chapter Three 'The Right Crowd and No Crowding': Uses of the Car - Its Utilitarian and Symbolic Value 55 Introduction 55 A Golden Age of Motoring or an Era 57 of Privileged Consumption? Conclusion 76 Chapter Four 'A Myth That is not Allowed to Die': Gender and the Car 78 Introduction 78 Who Drove Cars? Men and Women at the Wheel 80 Femininity, Masculinity and the Control of Technology 85 Gender in Interwar Britain 87 Femininity, Masculinity and the Car 90 Manufacturers, Dealers and Gender 105 Conclusion 111 Chapter Five 'These Things will Right Themselves': Discourses of Road Safety 114 Introduction 114 The Historiography of Road Safety 117 'Outside the Brotherhood of the Road': The Construction of Motoring Scapegoats 126 The National Safety First Association and Road Safety 131 The Emergence of an Ideology of Road Safety 136 iv Road Safety and the City: The Manchester Experience 155 Conclusion 164 Chapter Six Old England by Car: Dealing with a Contradiction 168 Introduction 168 Rural England: Image and Reality 169 The Car and the Countryside: The Motorist's Perspective 175 'Beauty Sacrificed on the Altar Of The Speeding Motorist': Preservationist Responses to the Car 182 'I am- Nobody's Good Man for a Shilling a Night': Rural Antagonism Towards the Motorist 190 Rural Uses of the Car 200 Rural Entrepreneurship and the Car 208 Which Areas were Most Affected by the Car? 217 Conclusion 221 Conclusion 224 Appendix One Details of a Sample of Interwar Motorists 233 Appendix Two Drivers' Occupations as Reported in Selected Press Coverage of Accidents, etc 236 Bibliography 242 V Tables and illustrated Material List of Tables Chapter 1 1 Motor Car Ownership 5 2 Proportion of Net Earnings Retained by 'Big Six' 7 Chapter 3 1 Number of Private Car Licenses 1923-31 59 Chapter 4 1 Men and Women in the Professions, 1931 82 2 Women Drivers and their Access to Cars 84 Chapter 5 1 The Involvement of Motor Vehicles in Fatal Road Accidents: By Number and Percentage 1932 and 1933 119 2 Vehicles in Use 1919-1939 120 3 Road Fatalities 1926-38: Numbers and Percentage by Road User Type 122 4 Analysis of 100,000 Traffic Accidents: 1935-6 138 5 Gallup Poll on Road Safety, 1939 145 6 Average Fines for Motoring Offences, 1904-1938 151 7 Manchester Road Casualties 1922-1939 161 Chapter 6-- 1 Estimated Increase or Decrease by Migration (%): Census of 1931 to Mid-Year of Specified Years 204 VII List of Figures Chapter 1 1 Motor Car Ownership: 1924-38 3 2 Falling Prices of Cars 3 3 Annual Growth of Motor Car Ownership 1925-38 10 Chapter 2 1 'By Their Cars Ye Shall Know Them' 24 Chapter 5 1 'Classic Motoring from Punch' 146 2 Persons Tried for Offences Against the Highway Acts: 1900-1933 149 Chapter Six 1 'You Get More Out of Life With a Morris' 180 2 'The Country Garage' 212 3 'The Country Garage' 213 4 'Who'll Buy My Strawberries?' 215 viii Acknowledgements Many people have helped in the production of this thesis. My supervisor Jim Obelkevich offered numerous suggestions on how I might proceed with research and writing. Other members of staff at the Centre for Social History also gave advice, suggestions and encouragement and I would like to offer my thanks to Gwynne Lewis, Tony Mason, Carolyn Steedman and Nick Tiratsoo. I was fortunate enough to arrive at the Centre at a time when there was a very lively cohort of students there and I benefitted intellectually and socially from their friendship. I would also like to thank the Centre's secretary - Ros Lucas - for all the help she has given myself and other students over the years. This thesis was completed whilst I was employed in the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Liverpool, where I was fortunate enough to be granted sufficient time to fulfil the task. For this I am grateful to Robert Lee and Henry Finch. Others in the department have read my work and offered valuable suggestions for its improvement. Garthine Walker and Andy Wood enter this category and deserve my sincere thanks, but my greatest debt of gratitude in this respect is owed to Andy Davies and Mike Tadman who have offered excellent advice on the thesis and much more. I am also indebted to librarians and archivists - wherever my research has taken me - who have always proved helpful. I would particularly like to note the efficiency of Richard Storey and his staff at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. I am extremely grateful to Chris Reid who read the entire thesis, suggested many improvements and helped with tabulation. He also, very generously, gave up a weekend to oversee the printing of the thesis. However, my greatest debt is to Jill Greenfield whose love, support, intelligence, and cheeky wit have helped me get through the tortuous process of writing up this thesis. Jill, this thesis is dedicated to you. ix Summary This study argues that society's choices between possible technological developments are highly reflective of patterns of political, social, and economic power. Employing insights from recent historical and sociological work on class, gender, consumption and technology the processes by which social relations shaped the design, marketing and uses of the car are explained. In turn, it is argued that the legal and physical infrastructure which developed in the car's wake were extremely expressive of class and gender relations. The interwar years are studied because it was during this period, when the car as a technology was still open to contestation, that the British car culture was defined. This was so because it was during the 1920s and 1930s that car ownership became a reality for millions of middle-class Britons. An analysis of the symbolic, as well as the utilitarian, benefits of ownership is offered and reveals the car's role in the expression of social and gender identity. The extent to which these factors impinged upon the actions of car manufacturers and motor dealers is also related. This perspective and the use of oral evidence has unearthed significant new evidence about the composition of the motoring community. The process through which influential sections of opinion reached a concordance with the car is explained. As it became increasingly useful for them, the professional and commercial middle-classes swung against significant restrictions on car use. Pre-1914 they were often outraged by the danger and inconvenience that were inevitable side effects of rising car ownership. However, once owners themselves they were increasingly attracted to new ideas about road safety which placed more and more emphasis on the education and segregation of other road users. The influential pro-motoring lobby manipulated these developments, a factor which is investigated here for the first time. Key To Abbreviations AA Automobile Association ASC Auxiliary Service Corps CPRE Campaign for The Preservation of Rural England SMMT Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders UDT United Dominions Trust RAC Royal Automobile Club PEP Political and Economic Planning NSFA National Safety First Association Introduction xi Introduction Next year, in 1996, Britain will celebrate a centenary of motoring." This event will undoubtedly be recorded with the publication of a plethora of popular histories marking the car's benefits and achievements. This, therefore, seems an opportune moment to record the findings of four years of research, driven by a desire to offer rather more of a critique of motoring's evolution than has usually been the case. British social historians have largely neglected the history of motoring. Of those who have broached the subject the best have been weakened by an over-ambitious scope, seeking to cover a century of every aspect of motoring. The less rigorous studies have revealed an almost boyish enthralment with their subject, which is misplaced in a serious academic study. This thesis will argue that the car must be viewed as a technology that was subject to contestation amongst a variety of social, economic and political factors. The approach taken here is, therefore, motivated by a desire to overcome the problems found in earlier work. Although there is much still to say about the social history of the car in Britain, it cannot all be related here.