Refurnishing homes in a bombed city: moral geographies of the Utility furniture scheme in London

Reimer, Suzanne and Pinch, Philip (2020) Refurnishing homes in a bombed city: moral geographies of the Utility furniture scheme in London. The London Journal, 1-35. (doi:10.1080/03058034.2020.1753350).

Record type: Article

Abstract

The London Blitz was a catalyst for national state control of the entire commodity network for furniture; the only wartime commodity for which this was done. The Utility furniture scheme sought to manage material shortages and combat profiteering in the markets for new and second-hand furniture. It also responded to the vulnerability of the nation’s furniture producers, which were disproportionately concentrated in and around London. Set against the immorality of indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations and illegal practices on the ‘black market’, the Utility scheme prescribed new moral geographies of equitable distribution based on need; of consumer rights protection; and of improvements to labour conditions and wages. The paper intervenes into debates about the social construction of moral geographies by examining the collective institutional response of the Utility scheme and the manner in which it sought to provision wartime homes.

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Accepted/In Press date: 3 April 2020

e-pub ahead of print date: 1 May 2020

Additional Information: Part of a forthcoming special issue. The London Journal was founded in 1975. Its first editor, Valerie Pearl, was then Reader in the History of London at UCL, but from the outset, the journal embraced the arts and politics as well as the history of London. The initial list of editorial advisers included Jonathan Miller, Sir John Summerson, and New Society editor Paul Barker, along with leading academics such as Peter Hall and Eric Hobsbawm. For its first thirty years, the journal was published biannually by its founders, The London Journal Trust, under the editorship of a succession of leading scholars of London society, planning, architecture and history: architectural historian Michael Port, planner and geographer John M. Hall, economic historian Negley Harte, Victoria County History editor Patricia Croot, contemporary planning historian Patricia Garside and historical geographer David Green.

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