In the early months of 1980, as the policy agenda of Margaret Thatcher's first government began to take shape, the BBC asked a young scriptwriter, John Sullivan, to come up with a new television show. After rejecting Sullivan's initial proposal, producers seized upon his second: a comedy drama that would follow the life of Derek “Del Boy” Trotter, a duplicitous working-class trader. Only Fools and Horses is now considered one of Britain's most beloved television programs, but when it first aired in 1981, it was something of a slow burner. Initial responses were often lukewarm, and it was not until the 1990s that it reached its peak audience. Perhaps that was because the show's cultural significance could only be appreciated once Thatcher's project had reached maturity. By the 1990s, when television viewers were familiar with images of City bankers carrying their precious Filofaxes through the Stock Exchange, Del Boy seemed to capture some of the complexities of the preceding decade. On the one hand, he seemed to embody the entrepreneurial spirit that Thatcher sought to harness. But on the other, he was a relic of a bygone age who was ill-equipped for the brave new world of financial investment. As Amy Edwards observes in Are We Rich Yet? The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain, “Only Fools and Horses reinforced the message that participating in the financialized world of 1980s Britain required more than just investment in material goods. It also required a genuine investment in financial literacy and financial markets, something that was simply not possible for the Del Boys and Rodneys of the world” (205). It is a brilliant insight, and it captures the essence of Edwards's achievement.
Are We Rich Yet? is a compelling and original study that historicizes investment culture in modern Britain. It is not the first monograph to explore the so-called enterprise culture of the late twentieth century. Almost thirty years ago, in Culture and Consensus: England, Art and Politics since 1940 (1995), Robert Hewison tried to understand the period by exploring the cultural impact of technological and economic change. But by making a fruitful engagement with the field of economic humanities, Edwards complicates and refines many of the stories that Hewison told. Most importantly, she queries the notion that Thatcher, with her mantra of popular capitalism, ushered in a new epoch in British social life. Thatcher's government may have sponsored a deregulation of the financial sector and sold off public assets, but the forces that were shaping the economic landscape had a mixed lineage and were in motion long before 1979. Nor did these forces necessarily run with the grain of Thatcherite thinking. As Edwards demonstrate in chapter 3, the deregulation of the 1980s did create opportunities for private financial investment. Yet, more often than not, it was financial and business elites who determined the nature of these opportunities. There is little evidence of the popular capitalism that was envisioned by the likes of Nigel Lawson.
Edwards also captures the double movement of the social changes that investment culture fostered. In one sense, the increasing availability of investment opportunities and credit did create space for new subjectivities to emerge. But identities were not remade by the sudden availability of credit, and the “discourses and practices associated with investment . . . were as contradictory as they were complementary” (11). In chapter 5, Edwards drives this point home by offering a compelling analysis of the most elusive cultural icon of the eighties: the yuppie. Rather than trying to establish the true identity of this sociological abstraction, Edwards instead uses representations of yuppies to show how investment cultures spilled over into the popular imaginary. What emerges is a complex picture. Few writers and commentators shared a sense of who the yuppie was, and many representations were punctuated by indifference. But the yuppie nonetheless “generated cultural resources through which people could make sense of the world around them” (175).
Edwards distinguishes between two kinds of subject that circulated in financial discourses: the “investor-citizen” and the “investor-shopper” (11). The former was something of an ideal type: an informed consumer who saw the acquisition of financial knowledge as a civic duty. But Edwards claims that in the concrete world of investment, it was the investment-shopper who was more abundant. These individuals tended to be passive participants in the investment process who allowed financial institutions to make decisions on their behalf. According to Edwards, then, the reality of investment culture often undermined the politicized descriptions of investors that tended to circulate in Conservative party literature.
Some readers may question whether we should be so quick to shift focus away from Thatcherism to the extent that Edwards invites us to. After all, there remains a compelling case that Thatcher's project initiated path-breaking policy change that imposed a new trajectory upon the state. But even a skeptical reader will acknowledge the value of this innovative and compelling book. By viewing the economic changes of the late twentieth century through a cultural lens, Edwards has opened up new lines of enquiry that will occupy students and scholars for many years to come. She has also told a lively story that helps us to think more carefully about the way ordinary people navigated Thatcher's decade.
