Spending big on the poverty line

Press, 15 August 1984, Page 15

Spending big on the poverty line

ROBERT ELMS,

in the London “Observer,”

looks at the social phenomenon of conspicuous consumption among youth in depressed Britain.

As Woody Allen said, “Money is better than poverty if only for financial reasons.” For financial reasons, poverty in many parts of the country is becoming worse than at any time since the Thirties.

Yet money is to be found in the most unlikely places, and surprisingly large sections of young England are conspicuously consuming their way through Thatcher’s depression. Every time wandering anthropologists stumble upon a football hooligan, a teenage drug fiend, or an unemployed Bermondsey boy, they express naive surprise at the fact that he’s wearing designer sportswear that sets you back two month’s “social.” But down in council estate Britain you have to show you have money to spend — or at least look like you’re living the life. The art is one of stealing good times from hard.

Ask a London cab driver about his best earner and, like as not, he’ll tell tales of cruising Bethnal Green and Hackney on a Friday or Saturday night to convey

local hedonists from one lime green and pink pub turned piano bar to the next for the length of a long drinking night “They could walk, but they think the cab looks flash,” said one amazed but happy cabby. With awnings that beckon like false eye-lashes these bars attract hordes of boys and girls in search of the dolce vita.

The boys wear designer labels and talk of Porsches, and the girls all boast suntans and down drinks of many colours. In one depressed and dilapidated Southwark estate with among the worst unemployment in London there are now seven stainless steel and glass menageries with names like EJ’s, Gillies, and Uncles, and a tarted-up burger bar called Southsides where they sell Dom Perignon at £3O a throw.

A bottle sent to the table is the polite precursor to an attempted pull.

Next door in Tower Bridge Road is Moda 3, one of a trio of chic clothes shops where a shirt will set you back 60 to 70 quid.

And on a Saturday afternoon they have to employ bouncers to keep the kids out.

“You need expensive clothes to wear in expensive pubs,” explained Tony Yussuf, who owns Le Pel in Tower Bridge Road, and two other exclusive and expensive clothes shops in south east London.

According to him, the trend has been going on for a couple of years, and it’s growing all the time.

In his recently opened women’s shop he stocked two jackets which retailed at ?770, “just to see how they went.” They went very quickly indeed.

Style used to be something slightly dodgy that Europeans and homosexuals did while we here in Britain had more solid Anglo-Saxon values such as hard work and thrift.

But unemployment made hard work a redundant aspiration. The inflation which

preceded it made thrift a valueless virtue. Since 1978 the percentage of disposable national income which remains unspent has fallen by 6 per cent, while the amount spent on clothing has risen every year. Instead of going under people’s teds, it’s going on their backs.

In 1984, with at least 3.5 million out of work, many young people have decided that if there’s no future for them they’ve got to live for today, whatever the cost. One of the costs is undoubtedly the rising crime rate as kids in search of prestige goodies relieve other people of theirs. There are pubs and clubs in most cities which serve as impromptu markets, and when a boy buys a Cashmere sweater for his favourite girl chances are he didn’t get it from Harrods, although someone else might have done. One of the latest developments is shoplifting to order, where the “tea-leaf” (thief) has replaced the tally-man as the purveyor of cheap merchandise.

“You want a Burberry, what size?”

Mrs Thatcher preaches self help, and there’s a lot of kids helping themselves. A Liverpool councillor recently said that despite the very real and appalling deprivation which his city had suffered, you’d be underestimating the resourcefulness of Liverpudlians if you thought they were just bowing down and accepting the depression; they find ways to get by. Getting by has become a byword for the times, but not all of those who refuse to accept their allotted place in the slump are part of the new piracy of smallscale urban crime.

Those with jobs labour every hour to get every possible penny, and a plumber with overtime can pull a fair screw. Those without pull ‘strokes.” In south London street parlance it’s called “ducking and diving” and it’s the one section of the economy which the Government has actually been successful at boosting. The black economy is booming, so they’ve in-

vented a new euphemism: “the informal sector” — considering the amount of expensive sports wear they’re buying perhaps casual might have been a better word.

“My girlfriend’s hands are laden with gold.” There’s pride in Sean Doherty’s voice, sovereigns on his fingers, and rings round his neck. He works in Stuarts, a Shepherds Bush sports wear merchants who’ve made such a name for their stock of $265 Sergio Tacchini tracksuits that they attract coachloads of kids who come down from the north simply to spend money.

“Tomfoolery” (jewellery) is one obvious sign of affluence, another is a Bond Street bag.

There’ve been murmurings of discontent recently, from the Bond Street traders’ association worried about the hordes of oiks and urchins ruining their haute couture image by pouring into Bond Street and South Molton Street to shell out wads of grubby 10 pound notes for what used to be strictly up-market chic. They’re wearing Cerruti, Gucci, and Armani on the terraces at football and on every tumbledown estate. And come summer they head for the sun. ,

According to Doug Good-

man of Thomson Holidays, “In a period of doom and gloom as soon as people get any spare money, even if it’s their last penny, they spend it on a holiday. They seem to think it’s the last one they’ll ever have.” Despite the depression, holidays, and particularly those like Club 18-30 and Club Med aimed at the young, are booming. The other growth area is ski-ing, so long the pursuit of only the rich. Thomsons alone sold 45,000 ski-ing holidays last winter. Money has lost its shame and found a powerful new currency.

Conspicuous consumption has never been considered to be very British, and during the Sixties middleclass guilt made it downright unfashionable. But now it’s not confined to the brightly coloured world of overdressed wide boys. Hooray Henrys and Sloane Rangers have made a rousing comeback since lady Di spear-headed com-ing-out chic. Pop stars who once had to pretend that they didn’t like nice things now make videos off the coast of Sri Lanka, and make sure they get seen swanning round expensive nightclubs. Everybody wants to be seen to be in the money.