Refurnishing Homes in a Bombed City: Moral Geographies of the Utility Furniture Scheme in London

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 secondhand 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. keywords Moral geographies, Utility furniture, Furniture industry, Home, London Blitz, Social justice to the materials shortages generated by war as well as to the specific impacts of the London Blitz 1 on the city's households and furniture industry. The bombing of London acted as a catalyst for action: it brought about state control of the entire

Introduction to the Special Issue on Material Cultures of Reconstruction in post-war London

“…In their paper 13 Reimer and Pinch foreground the moral geographies that emerged as part of the Utility furniture scheme's reworking of household provisioning, and of the networks through which material objects of the home were supplied. The immediate need for a pragmatic approach to the crisis of aerial bombardment was shaped by longer-standing moral concerns about furniture production, distribution and consumption grounded in specific discourses surrounding the character of the London furniture trade.…”