Nine - Vauxhall and Luton 1950–1970: Boom and Affluence

Summary

At the end of the Second World War there was considerable fear that the recession of the 1930s could possibly return. The commitment to the creation of the welfare state and huge spending to repair a war-torn economy stimulated government spending that, along with Marshall Aid (from the USA), gave enormous impetus to the economy. Once the hardships of the years of‘austerity’ in the 1940s were left behind, the 1950s witnessed a boom that was to spread gradually over the country in the following two decades. Luton was to become one of the foremost symbols of this boom with considerable media and academic attention focused on the effects on the working population.

The growth of Vauxhall 1950-1970

As we have already seen, the seeds of this growth had been sown in the 1930s and before with the arrival in Luton of ‘new industries.’ Vauxhall was the most prominent of these and was to continue to lead the upswing in the local economy. Indeed, the motor vehicle industry in general came to symbolise the new consumerism, heralding the age of mass consumption, and Luton in that sense became a boom town.

In the immediate post-war years and in the early 1950s the motor vehicle industry was heavily bound up with the government drive for exports to rebuild the economy. As a result Britain became the leading car exporter in the world for a brief period and in 1950 75 per cent of all cars and 60 per cent of all commercial vehicles were exported. This age of austerity witnessed the continuation of rationing and home markets were starved of consumer goods in the drive for exports to balance trade and pay war debts. British industry was in a prime position to take advantage of this situation as the USA was very much concerned with providing for its huge home market, and later rivals, such as Germany and Japan, had yet to rebuild their post-war economies. Car production rose from 219,000 in 1946 to a million in 1958. This was a period when Britain enjoyed a brief ascendancy in the world car industry that, unfortunately, provided false hopes for its continuation and reinforced previous poor managerial and industrial practices.

By the mid-1950s most rationing had been removed, the country began to throw off the immediate post-war gloom and enjoy the beginnings of what later became called ‘the age of mass consumption.’