The creation of the British Council of Industrial Design: re-investing design with hope

"Recent historical work on consumption-related themes such as that by Hilton (2003) and Black (2003) has tended to emphasise the hopelessly compromised nature of the Labour Party's response to early signs of increasing affluence, and the failure of the post-1945 administration to offer an effective lead in a nascent consumer politics. The intention of this paper is to introduce the work of a body that has received relatively little scholarly attention, despite its relevance to these issues, and to re-claim a moment when it seemed that a more positive and pro-active reaction to new and existing consumer needs might be possible. As World War II drew to a close, the British coalition government approved the formation of a new grant-aided body answerable to the Board of Trade, to be called the Council of Industrial Design (Design Council from 1972). Its primary task was to “improve by all practicable means the improvement of design in the products of British industry”, an essential step if the country was to avoid a balance of payments crisis in the immediate post-war period. To concentrate on this industrial and economic agenda, however, would be to disregard the breadth and importance of a wider and more socially responsive remit, for the Council's work was conceptualised as having benefits at individual, as well as local and national levels. While existing criticism of some aspects of the Council's later work and of its approach may be considered justifiable, the work of the early years to which this paper attests may be regarded as laudable if overly ambitious. At the Council's core there existed a body of committed campaigners who believed with Hugh Dalton that it was possible to bring about an improvement in ""every side of our daily life"" through the application of design. Equally the Council's first Director felt that, ""lifting the quality of objects of common use in the hands and the homes of British people is a great objective"". For a brief moment, therefore, there seemed to exist a real opportunity to deliver to a war-weary British population the promise of significant improvements in its material environment, and an acknowledgement of its right to demand recognisable product standards. The qualities and aptitudes of certain key individuals will be considered within the paper, as will the impact of an ill-fated attempt by the Board of Trade to give visual expression to the standards implicit in a proposed extension and expansion of the war-time Utility scheme. The archival research on which this paper is based is being carried out within the ESRC/AHRB funded 'Cultures of Consumption' programme. The Council's archive is housed in the Faculty of Arts & Architecture at the University of Brighton."