The Politics of Wider Share Ownership

The question of whether ordinary people should own stocks and shares has a long political trajectory in Britain. When the idea of creating a property-owning democracy of small shareholders took shape in the interwar period, there was still a consensus among Britain’s political elites that ordinary people should stay away from the stock market. By the end of the century, however, politicians welcomed the fact that there were more private shareholders in Britain than trade union members. In the post-war decades, wider share ownership had some supporters in all major parties, but no government took legislative action because schemes were difficult to reconcile with the mixed economy. Eventually, the economic hardship of the 1970s brought a noticeable shift in attitudes towards mass participation in the stock market. Conservative politicians, journalists, and businessmen of the increasingly influential New Right advocated a return to economic individualism that was motivated by a perceived decline of allegedly middle-class, bourgeois, or ‘Victorian’ values. This ‘declinism’ shaped Thatcherite plans in opposition for a new tax code that would encourage direct involvement with capitalist enterprise. Throughout the decades, however, policymakers and advocates of wider share ownership realized that stock market investment not only lent itself to an exercise in bourgeois values of thrift and deferred gratification, but could also foster speculation and gambling. The line between prudent saving, beneficial investment, and speculative risk-taking always proved difficult to draw and crossing it demanded careful communication.