4993 - Credit, class and community: working class , 1930- 2000.

This document was supplied by the depositor and has been modified by AHDS History

Summary of aims and objectives

The project aimed to collect detailed oral testimony from 40 retired working-class people on their experiences of credit, debt and consumerism. The interviews were to gather innovative historical information on the changing circumstances of financial management in working-class homes over the period from the 1930s through to the 1990s. Information was to be sought on the impact of family gender, generation, neighbourhood, occupation, income, and religion on financial decision making. The project also set out to identify and describe the various forms of credit used by working class consumers in Belfast and to explain changes over time. Forms of long standing credit that information was sort about included money-lending, pawnbroking, mail order catalogues, check traders, retail credit and corner shop ‘tick’. It was also intended to probe interviewees’ experiences of the more recent credit facilities, such as credit unions, credit cards and store cards. The credit union promised to be a particularly interesting topic given the movements success in Northern in comparison with the rest of the United Kingdom. In an estimated 8% of all personal loans are obtained via credit unions in comparison with just 0.1% in for the rest in of the United Kingdom.

The applicant had previously conducted research with records in government and commercial sources and intended to contrast the evidence uncovered therein with the testimony offered by the interviewees. The end results of this strategy were to contribute to historical articles and a monograph and to produce reports and testimony that could be forwarded to the two very different user groups for this project, Provident Financial Plc and Church Action on Poverty.

As very few of the target group of interviewees (those aged 65+) provided detailed testimony on credit unions, it was necessary to conduct a small number of interviews with individuals below retirement age. The thinking behind this decision was that as credit unions have emerged since the 1960s usage of them has been greatest amongst younger individuals than amongst the 65+ age group. This initiative also helped to establish factors of change and continuity within the working class economy of Belfast. Forty-one people were recorded, several more held informal pre-interview conversations with the researcher. But only 32 interviews proved suitable for the final dataset and were with individuals who agreed to sign the appropriate consent forms. This total included interviews with two licensed moneylenders from families with long experience of providing loans to working-class communities in Northern Ireland. Notes of a further, unrecorded, interview with the board of well established credit union are also included in the eventual dataset and provided an insight into the history and operations of credit unions in Northern Ireland.

Significant achievements

The research has created a dataset of interviews dealing with the history of credit, debt and household management in Belfast. They also deal with other previously uncharted aspects of working-class life in that city that will be of value to historians of British and Irish societies. The project results highlight the complex nature of attitudes towards credit and debt and the role that community networks have played in the past and in the present in producing frequently complex and often ambiguous attitudes towards various forms of credit. The interviews demonstrate the various experiences of credit and debt of people with different life histories. They also reveal the existence of separate male and female credit markets that operated in the past and demonstrate the extent to which the working class wife’s recourse to complex money management strategies remained as dependent on her husband’s approach to the family economy in the post-1945 period as it had been in the inter-war decades. The interviews reveal a myriad of resources, often community-based, that were used to make ends meet. This testimony, together with that on ambiguous attitudes to credit/debt will be of interest to those engaged in contemporary social policy debates about debt.

Main research results The major result of this research has been the creation of a database of interviews that address the issue of working-class credit, debt and money management since the 1930s. It provides a unique resource for those interested in this area. Moreover, the interviews represent the only accessible systematic collection of oral history interviews carried out in working-class Belfast and can be used by those with broader interests in gender history or Irish/British social history. As was anticipated the interviews indicate a wide variety of financial experiences and strategies. Less anticipated was the openness with which many interviewees discussed issues such as money-lending and pawnbroking, although there were marked variations in the tone in which these matters were addressed by various respondents.

One of the most interesting findings was the degree to which `credit’ was understood by interviewees. A significant proportion of the female interviewees in particular argued that they had never used credit and had never been in debt: only towards the end of their interviews did information on their use of such forms of credit as provident checks and mail order catalogues emerge. For these women a system involving weekly payments to an agent did not represent credit as they understood it. Rather credit was represented by the more formal, legalistic and longer term agreements represented by hire purchase purchases of furniture and more expensive items. Of course, such agreements consistently required their husband’s signature and thus also represented one point at which the working-class wife’s financial power ebbed away.

Continuing in this theme the interviews reiterate historian’s understandings of the working-class wife’s prime role as financial manager. They demonstrate the complex range of her financial responsibilities within the home. For the working-class woman the choice of husband proved to be as important in post-1945 Belfast as it was for those inter-war women studied by historians. The interviews reveal the danger of assuming that a working-class male’s presence in a skilled job or well-paid employment automatically meant economic security for his family. A high proportion of interviewees indicate the extent to which a working-class male’s involvement with alcohol or gambling regularly forced his wife into complex financial coping strategies, regardless of occupational or income based factors. Amongst the testimonies are two from men who can be considered to have been in this category. One is a reflective interview from a recovering alcoholic, whilst the other is unapologetic in tone. Other testimonies reveal a diverse pattern of economic relations within working-class marriages in Belfast. Many female interviewees professed ignorance of their husband’s wages. Not surprisingly, the majority of this group reported usage of short-term or crisis credit. However, others recalled how their husbands brought home an unopened pay packet each week and this cohort were least likely to record first hand experience of financial struggles.

Whether as a result of low income, their spouse’s spending habits, or family size, many female interviewees provided information about the coping strategies used by their mothers or themselves in making ends meet. In this aspect of the interviews there were clear differences in terms of what people were either prepared to speak about, or to speak about in the first person. In particular interviews with east Belfast Protestant women were least likely to feature first person testimony about credit in general, but particularly provident checks, pawnbrokers, and moneylenders. This may well have simply been a function of that part of the city’s relative prosperity (it hosted the Harland and Woolff’s shipyard and Short’s aircraft factory). However, I also believe it reflected a stronger adherence to classic notions of working-class respectability amongst those interviewees who had lived in east Belfast. This group stood out from both Protestant and Catholic interviewees from other areas of the city. All the latter groups provided testimony, in one form or another, about the use of short-term credit or crisis credit. This testimony was often presented in a humorous tone: the comic element often provided by stories about husbands unexpectedly looking for their best suit, which unknown to them was in the pawnbrokers. However, the interviews reveal that such matters placed a lot of strain on those women involved. The interviews shine a light into the operations of separate male and female credit networks. They provide information on street-based (mainly female) and work-based (mainly male) unlicensed moneylenders, revealing the origins and the methods of these individuals. This aspect of the testimony is one of many examples that demonstrate the mixture of altruistic and instrumental behaviour that operated in working-class neighbourhoods. At the other end of the credit hierarchy the interviews provide evidence of how experiences of credit changed during the twentieth century, with the mortgage and hire purchase replacing experience of pawnbrokers and crisis loans for a significant number of interviewees.

Despite the high use of credit unions in Northern Ireland (in comparison with the rest of the UK) the majority of the older interviewees did not provide testimony on their use. A small number reported being introduced to them by their own children. This was an interesting reverse of one of my initial hypothesis, which was that parents would have played a major role in introducing adult children to forms of credit. Those interviewees who did provide testimony on credit unions revealed a strongly instrumental approach. Several had made use of them for particular purposes and had then left them or (particularly in the case of older interviewees) they objected to the requirement to take out an interest bearing loan rather than simply withdrawing from their own savings. The more altruistic approach, associated with the success of Irish credit unions, was evident in interviews with a younger woman (aged 52) and the board of a successful credit union. Both these interviews highlighted the crucial role of the local Roman Catholic parish in underwriting the trust and the community bond that is necessary to establish a large scale and profitable credit union.

Full report of research activities and results

BACKGROUND

The research drew upon insights from existing histories of pawnbroking, saving and spending, and family finances that had made important contributions to our understanding of credit use by working-class families [Tebbutt; Johnson; Ayers]. The main focus of each of these studies was pre-1939. My study was designed to build upon this research by employing oral history, to ask questions about credit and debt in the round and to take the historical narrative and analysis beyond 1945. During the course of the research Avram Taylor’s work, using oral history to examine working-class credit in north-east England was published and this presented an extremely helpful contribution to the historiography that allowed me to assess developments in post-war England alongside those in Belfast. It also posited a number of explanatory models that drew upon sociological models of community and neighbourhood relationships to explain working-class credit networks. The project also drew upon my research on mail order retailing, which demonstrated how it achieved success by offering instalment facilities to customers, mainly working class and female, whose access to credit was otherwise limited. It also investigated how the position of mail order agents in locally- based social networks enabled catalogue retailers to trade profitably in working-class communities whilst minimising bad debt [Coopey, O’Connell and Porter: 1999 and forthcoming, 2004]. Due to limitations on time and resources, the mail order project did not involve a significant amount of oral history. There was much to be learned about the role of the catalogue in the working-class home and the project pursued this. The project also presented an opportunity to test theories about social memory and oral history within the context of working-class Belfast. The city has been poorly explored by social historians and the aim was to use this opportunity to explore factors such as gender, the family economy, affluence and poverty through the proposed interviews.

METHODS

The initial aim was to identify a sample of 40 interviewees that was were broadly representative (occupationally) of working-class Belfast. The 1951 census and academic re-working of it was to be used to assist this process. However, for reasons outlined in the major difficulties section only 30 appropriate interviewees, were found, recorded and then agreed to sign the copyright form. Eleven of these were male (above the target of 10) and 19 were female (below the target of 30). They originate from all parts of the city and reflect a range of occupational backgrounds and income levels. Fifteen are from Roman Catholic backgrounds and the same number are from various Protestant traditions.

On reflection the project was over reliant on day centres and would have benefited from the establishment of connections with a number of community groups before the commencement of the fieldwork. Moreover, the age profile of the day centre users was slightly older than I had envisaged. The option to take the day centre approach reflected the intellectual rational that I was looking for interviewees in the 65+ age group. It also, however, reflected a degree of nervousness in undertaking an oral history project in a city like Belfast where – understandably - outsiders can be treated with suspicion in working- class areas. It is sad to say it but I would probably recommend that any future researcher with a name that readily identified with one side of the community or another teams up with (or gets a researcher) from the other tradition. A Billy McConnell rather than a Sean O’Connell may well have managed to secure some interviews in the loyalist estate on the edge of North Belfast.

The method of analysis has been that associated with contemporary oral historical approaches. The transcripts have been explored to excavate what they reveal about issues surrounding various forms of in the past and to chart what they might tell us about social memory in working-class Belfast. Thus they have been assessed in order to provide original insights into how subterranean forms of credit such as unlicensed money-lending have operated in the past. At the same time the interviews have been read and re-read to probe how respondents have spoken to me. The analysis has asked to what extent have they presented a past which is presented in the form of what Giles calls `a good old days myth’ because that is a means through which to simplify a complex story. It has also sought to identify what `significant silences’ appear within the testimonies and to come to conclusions about what they tell us about notions of respectability both in the past and in the present and of what they tell us about what people are prepared to reveal about personal finances. In the process, the transcripts have not been subjected to any form of analysis by a computer package, other than using word searches to identify respondents who have discussed similar material.

OBJECTIVES AND RESULTS OF ANALYSIS AT PRESENT

1. The initial objective was to record 40 working-class interviews with individuals who were in the 65+ age group. For a number of reasons (outlined in the section on major difficulties) a total of 30 interviewees have agreed to be included in the dataset. The opportunity arose to record interviews with 2 licensed moneylenders to learn their views on working-class credit and debt and transcripts of their interviews will be included in the dataset. A further unrecorded interview (notes of which to be included in the dataset) took place with the board of a long established credit union.

2. Belfast was chosen as the site of the research because Northern Ireland has an important role in social policy debates about credit and debt in the UK. In the UK in general credit unions provide 0.1% of all personal loans, but in Northern Ireland they provide 8% of the total and have operated widely since the 1960s [Berthoud and Kempson; Quinn]. By exploring the respondents’ experiences of credit unions, in a city where their history and membership lists are lengthy, it was intended that the project probe the merits of what are frequently posited as a solution to the financial problems of low-income families (particularly those associated with expensive personal loans). Each interviewee was asked about their experiences of credit unions or attitudes towards them. Nine out of the total thirty-two interviews talked about credit unions. Six of these were Catholic, one was a Protestant and two were licensed moneylenders who were asked about the impact of credit unions on their business. Ironically one of the latter two was also a member of a credit union and spoke approvingly about their role in working-class west Belfast. However, both he and his fellow moneylender felt that credit unions had not removed the need for the service that they offer. They agreed that the loans they offered were costly, arguing that doorstep collection, intermittent missed payments, and the costs of bad debt were amongst the factors that resulted in high APRs for personal loans. They argued that many of their customers either could not afford to save with credit unions or used their money-lending services at times when they had reached their credit limits with the local credit union. They also provided a good deal of testimony on how they recruited customers; on the longevity of relationships with customers; on the history of their businesses (both came from families with a long history of money- lending); and on the nature and scope of their businesses.

Two further interviewees provided detailed information on credit unions. The first, a woman in her fifties, was very much in favour of them. She told me that

the credit union to my mother was her salvation … you were putting into it, you were part of something, you weren't borrowing something and being a debt or a loan or anything, you were part of something that when your money was going in somebody else was getting it and it’s a very, very strong community thing. Credit unions are very, very popular in west Belfast. I don't know anybody that is not in a credit union and would not go to a credit union before they go to a bank. Everybody I know would go to a credit union before they'd go to a bank.

The second interviewee, a man in his late sixties, was less impressed by developments in his local credit union, and thought that credit unions `have become almost as bad as the banks’. The majority of other respondents provided brief testimony on credit unions, revealing how they had made use of them for particular functions, such as a loan to buy a car or for holiday spending money. Others commented that they disliked the fact that credit unions preferred them to take out a loan rather making withdrawals from their savings. Thus much of this testimony was instrumental in tone rather than altruistic and there was little sense, in the majority of cases, that credit unions were important to the interviewee’s sense of community. This is not altogether surprising given that all the interviewees in the 65+ category tended to locate the concept of `community’ as something that existed in the past tense. A further unrecorded interview with the board of one credit union, which has operated since the late 1960s, indicated the important role of the local Roman Catholic parish in instigating credit union formation and underwriting the element of trust that is required to establish any such credit rotation society. It was clear from this interview (and the secondary literature on credit unions in Ireland) that the local parish has provided the connection between the working-class groups, who are often the beneficiaries of credit unions, and the educated and self-confident middle class individuals who are most commonly the volunteers who operate them. Schoolteachers feature most prominently in this latter category. Clearly this is a common bond which is difficult to replicate in the culturally diversity of many inner cities in the rest of the UK, where council house sales and suburban development make the development of cross-class common bond much less likely. Evidence on the role of the Roman Catholic’s involvement in credit and debt before the emergence of credit unions also emerged from two separate sources (a moneylender and a former customer of moneylenders) who reported cases of parish priests discussing interest rate levels with Catholic moneylenders, who then adjusted their rates or repayment schedules according to the clerical advice they had received.

This pragmatism demonstrates the often ambivalent attitudes that have circled the issue of credit and debt. Whilst debt was often criticised and credit providers, of various types, depicted as rapacious and exploitative, credit was a fact of life. The interviews reveal the extent to which altruism and instrumental motives existed for members of communities to involve themselves in various credit networks. Sometimes the interviews reveal the nature of such motives, at other times they remain hidden. Thus, for example, one interviewee describes her part-time work as a mail order agent and how she raised small amounts of cash through this activity. Less straightforwardly, and more puzzingly, another three interviewees discuss recruiting customers for moneylenders and claim that no remuneration was involved. One interview in particular (Johnny) serves as a metaphor for the complex mixture of social relations that make up working-class community. He talks about moneylenders as bloodsuckers, discusses whether or not members of this profession have a more callous personality and then goes on to describe one individual moneylender as a `lovely woman’ and reveal his own family’s involvement in the business.

3. A further objective was to focus in interviews on continuity and change in the channels of credit utilised by working-class people either to cover immediate financial needs or to obtain the growing number of consumer goods that were available on instalment payments. Historically most working-class families were familiar with one or more of a list of credit providers which included corner-shop `tick’, credit drapers, pawnbrokers, tallymen, check traders, mail order agents, neighbourhood moneylenders, and hire purchase traders. Yet most of these credit channels have received little historical attention. Tebbutt’s excellent study of pawnbroking most obviously informed the research through its discussion of the commercial, economic and social explanations for pawnbroking’s long decline. Johnson’s study suggested, crucially, that credit channels were linked via social hierarchies that were established in the minds of their users and critics alike. This ensured that credit use had social as well as economic costs.

The strongest element of continuity within the testimony collected was that all the interviewees had a preference for cash purchases wherever possible. Several had even bought for their former Housing Executive homes with cash (often via a redundancy or retirement settlement). They were almost universally critical of those who got themselves into debt that they could not repay. Thus the critique of `bad management’ continues to be a theme today as it was in the early twentieth century. Obviously many of the channels of credit used by interviewees have declined in importance or virtually disappeared. The interviewees provide some demand side explanations for this including such factors as the retirement of a long standing agent for a credit company leading to the termination of a credit network which was clearly dependent on a personal relationship. His replacement was younger and female and the custom was lost. In this case the credit network appears to have been kept up as much out of habit and a sense of obligation to the agent who was deemed to helped the customer out in the past. Raising personal affluence did not break the network: it was only broken by the retirement In the same way the decline in the number of part-time female catalogue agents explains the decline of home shopping’s overall importance. Other forms of credit have continued. Money-lending is still a lucrative business, particularly for larger enterprises such as Provident Financial, but also for the significant number of smaller local firms who operate in Northern Ireland. Their success does not appear to have been impeded by credit unions. The unlicensed street-based or work-gate moneylenders who many of the interviewees provide testimony on have been largely removed. In working-class nationalist areas the IRA is known to police loan-sharking and to take action against those who engage in practises such as taking benefit books from borrowers to enforce repayment of loans at very high rates of interest. However, loan- sharking does appear to be more prominent on estates where loyalist paramilitaries have a presence. Only one interviewee provided testimony on this and it may have been for this reason that I had some problems finding interviewees under 65 in certain areas, who would not have wished to discuss such matters with me, or to be thought by others to be doing so (see major difficulties section). Rising affluence was recorded in the interviews. A consistent theme was that many retirees felt more prosperous than they had during their working years. This was particularly the case for those with occupational pensions and who had paid off mortgages. There was clearly a sense in which the expansion of the Welfare State had impacted positively on the finances of these interviewees. Many interviewees implicitly compared the benefits they had received from child allowance through to disability living allowance with the lack of support available before the Second World War.

4. The project was also designed to unearth the obscure histories of money-lending, credit drapers, check traders, hire purchase and other forms of credit, all of which were significant in working-class communities. Existing histories carry important commentary on a number of these credit channels, but in each case these trail off in either 1939 or 1945. In this respect the project was extremely successful in identifying a lengthy list of credit networks and associated coping strategies.

The interviews provided a great deal of information on moneylenders (licensed and unlicensed), Provident checks, retailer’s tick books, co-operative retail credit, hire purchase, credit clubs and many other aspects of making ends meet. A factor which was not considered in my initial application was the role of the large Co-operative store in Belfast’s York Street in terms of local credit networks. Almost every interviewee it seemed mentioned the `Co-quarter’: the quarterly distribution of the dividend to co-operative members. In order to receive the dividend a member’s debts had to be cleared in full, leading to a great re-allocation of working-class budgets across the city in the week leading up to ‘divi day’. Inevitably it left many other creditors unpaid for that particular week, such as the retired milkman who was one of the interviewees. Moreover the `Co’ also proved significant because of the widespread practice of lending out membership books to friends, family or neighbours. This enabled them to buy goods on credit from the Co-op and to repay the book’s owner when the `Co-quarter’ was due. The book’s owner benefited through the addition of a few more pennies on their dividend. This example neatly exemplifies the often simultaneous instrumental and altruistic factors that lay behind neighbourhood credit arrangements.

Other strategies reported in testimony included the selling on of Provident checks at a discount to raise immediate cash, the purchasing of `clean’ rent books from Woolworths in order to impress a moneylender of one’s ability to meet rental payments regularly, and the strategies deployed by moneylenders to ensure repayments. Public shaming of non- payers rather than violence appearing to be the preferred option in most cases, a finding which concurs with Avram Taylor’s interviews in north-east England. However, it is noteworthy that a large proportion of Belfast’s dock-gate moneylenders appear to have included time spent as a professional boxer on their curricula vitae.

5. The oral history project provided an opportunity to develop the themes outlined by Tebbutt and Johnson, employing a methodology not employed in the primary research of these authors. It also continued the investigation of themes probed in important work on marriage relations and money in inter-war Liverpool [Ayers and Lambertz]. A particular concern was to probe the extent to which secrecy about financial matters was common within working class marriages, and neighbourhoods, in post-war Belfast, as it had been in pre-war Liverpool. This aspect of the research was also informed by important work on money management in contemporary households [Pahl]. The prospective oral history interviewees were to be in the 65+ age group to enable money management to be analysed over the adult life cycle. Credit is used much less frequently by individuals of retirement age and a premise of the research was that their perspectives would be distanced from current involvement in credit and debt and the considerable `self- delusion’ about the issue reported by contemporary surveys [Berthoud and Kempson]. However, it was anticipated that the personal narratives constructed by interviewees would be framed within their own historical notions of status and respectability and by their expectations of what views others might hold about personal finances. Existing histories describe the complex cultural, economic and moral concerns that have surrounded credit. An understanding of the extent to which concerns about status and respectability entered into financial decisions in working-class communities led to the claim that: `[the aim] of most households was not just to balance income and expenditure to make ends meet, but to do so in a way that brought various social benefits in an intensely competitive world in which position or status had constantly to be reasserted’ [Johnson]. This insight, it was argued, must inform the approach to an oral history project investigating personal finance.

In developing a strategy to analyse such problematic territory the work of Judy Giles proved particularly apposite. Describing interviews with working-class women (born between 1900 and 1939) she noted the high levels of investment they made in adhering to `respectable’ values. They frequently articulated a `good old days’ myth that transformed a complex past into a simplified and acceptable form for narration in the present. As described by Giles, the attainment of `respectable’ womanhood involved a rejection of attributes identified with girlishness and immaturity. Success or failure was demarcated by opposing terms and of particular significance to this project is that thrift and the avoidance of credit were opposed to extravagance and indebtedness. However, Giles argues that there was a distance between what her interviewees actually did as young mothers to manage family finances, and the way in which they remembered it. These contradictions arose in interviews, either through the detailed narration of examples from everyday life or at moments when silence became `significant as articulation’. Her main point is that oral testimony not only provides `facts’ about people’s lives, it also offers valuable information on how people interpret their past and their present. In developing Giles’ approach, the intention was not to overstate the `fictionality’ of oral history. In fact it was argued that this source is no more `fictional’ than archival sources and that the construction of each source must be probed. Thus a further theoretical aim of the project was to probe the nature of social memory and oral narratives in Belfast in the context of the potentially problematic context of credit and debt.

What the interviews revealed in this respect is that `credit’ and `debt’ were often defined differently by the interviews from the understandings that I had. A number of female interviewees conformed to the `respectable’ womanhood model identified by Giles and told me that they had never been in debt and had always paid cash. It was only at the conclusion of many such interviews when I asked about individual forms of credit such as Provident checks or mail order catalogues that their use was acknowledged. But they did not comprehend the arrangements offered by these channels as involving them in debt of any kind. Their own precise definition of debt was never fully articulated (it is, of course, likely that they have never analysed this aspect of their lives) but it appears that for many interviewees credit/debt was associated with signing agreements for larger items (hire purchase) or when one was unable to meet payments. In interviews with females they were less likely to use the first person to talk about such as things as pawnbrokers or moneylenders. This was particularly true of Protestant females from east Belfast. Those who were most open about their own or their family’s use of moneylenders and pawnbrokers were male. Indeed much of the testimony from male interviewees was a long way from the respectability identified by Giles. In particular a number of men were keen to narrate tales about masculine activities away from the home that endangered their wife’s efforts to keep the family ‘respectable’. A minority of the men also openly challenged the `good old days’ myth described by Giles, although the majority of both genders subscribed to it.

The interviews suggest that post-war working-class Belfast featured a very traditional family economy. What was very striking was the extent to which the choice of a spouse continued to dictate whether or not a working-class woman could expect to find herself struggling to cope financially. Thus the danger of assuming that a husband’s skilled job or well-paid employment meant security and avoidance of making ends meet strategies for his wife. A husband’s drinking or gambling habits could ensure that his wife found herself using short term or crisis credit. Testimony of this nature arose in almost a third of the interviews: in two cases the information is from the lips of the alcoholic husband (one of whom is reformed, the other takes pleasure in accounts of drinking and leaving money management to his wife.) There is also evidence suggesting that a significant proportion of working-class wives continued to be unaware of their husband’s earnings. There is also a great deal of evidence about women hiding various aspects of their coping strategies from husbands. Often this is treated comically as in regular tales about husbands unexpectedly looking for suits that are in the pawnbrokers. However the strain placed on working-class women through such activities is brought home graphically in one tale of a wife’s eventual breakdown after years of coping with a large family and a husband who handed over only 50% of his weekly wage.

Interviews

Each of the following files contain word formatted transcripts of oral history interviews Mrs R Mary Rebecca Lily Jill Philomena Peter Kathy Bridie Joan (Annie and Doris) Norman Johnny Bob Dot Benny Jim Trevor Penny Seamus Pat Patricia Ethel Harry and Dermot Elspeth Harriet Anne-Marie Agnes Moneylender 1 Moneylender 2

Glossary of terms used in O’Connell’s interviews in Belfast

Brave Long: as in `It’s a brave walk’

Bring Take

Broo State benefits/the dole

Brought Took

Chara Vehicle/cart

Childer Children

(The) Co Co-operative retail store

Co-quarter The Co-op paid out dividends and finalised credit payments on a quarterly cycle.

Dander Walk/stroll

Great with Friendly with

(The) Jig The dance hall

Homer A job taken up by a trademan without paying tax or not through his regular employer.

I mind I remember

Leave/Leaving Take/taking

Messages Shopping

Pogroms Events in 1920/1 and 1935 when people (mainly Roman Catholic) were forced from their jobs and homes

Put on Dressed

Quare Good

Raker Bad person (wild)

(A) roughness A sum of spare cash

Til To

Up Raised: as in `When the childer were up’.

Yarn Chat (talk)

Youse You (singular or plural) Dissemination

Publication and dissemination will take place in the following ways:

Two articles have been submitted to refereed journals (Economic History Review and Essays in Business and Economic History). These articles make use of the findings from this project within the context of my broader research project on working-class credit. The articles provide statistical analysis of Provident Financial’s dealings with its working-class customer base between the 1920s and 1960s. Material from the Belfast interviews on Provident’s relationships with its customers and working-class understandings of credit and debt have strengthened the analysis of the econometric data in both these articles by providing details of the social relationships between customer and Provident agent which lay behind the statistical data. The article submitted to Essays in Business and Economic History has now been accepted for publication. The editors of Economic History Review have asked for minor revisions of the article submitted to that journal.

A chapter has been published in an edited collection (`Listening to the voices of Belfast’s past’, in E. Longley, E. Hughes and D. O’Rawe (eds.), Ireland (Ulster) Scotland: concepts, contexts, comparisons), that drew upon the early interviews in this project to make important observations about the nature of social memory in working-class Belfast and the need for a more nuanced approach to oral history in the Irish context.

A further article is to be submitted to a refereed journal (Social History) that will compare the growth of credit unions in Britain and Ireland. This will employ findings from the Belfast interviews to probe the important role of the Roman Catholic Church in promoting credit unions in the and in Northern Ireland and to explore the interviewees perceptions of credit unions and their place within the general history of credit, debt and financial management.

The most exhaustive treatment of the interviews collected from this project will feature in my Oxford University Press monograph, Class, credit and community in the UK since 1880. I hope to submit this monograph by December 2005.