Percy Redfern, the historian of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, published a series of lectures in 1920 on The Consumers’ Place in Society. This was a tract in praise of consumer democracy and the co-operative commonwealth, stressing that trade union struggles were necessarily sectionalist and the only way to advance and protect the interests of the masses was through the mobilisation of consumers. Redfern began, however, with a lament:

Until a few years ago that could almost have been said of books on the social history of consumption and consumerism in Britain, as compared with the proliferating historiography of popular politics and the labour movement. Now the wheel is turning with gathering momentum, as the older heavy industries decline into extinction and consumer-related topics are fashionable, while studies of the labour movement are in eclipse. This may be thought a rather present-minded set of preoccupations, but history has always been written thus, and earlier neglect of consumption was undoubtedly misplaced.