Arthur Seldon 1959

Arthur Seldon was a major architect of Thatcher’s economic revolution, and as a shaping hand behind today’s political landscape.

In a book Arthur Seldon co-authored with Ralph Harris in 1959, entitled Advertising in a Free Society, he talked about the political and social consequences of advertising in the post-war boom of the 1950s and the emerging world of TV advertising.

Here are some quotes from this book:

On 1950s Austerity:

We are, evidently, about to enter the Age of Austerity.

Most commentators today talk about Britain in the 1950s being a period of comfort and wealth: captured by the famous MacMillan quote of 'you've never had it so good'. Consider this point from Seldon in 1959:

"In Britain today, the average man and woman still spend far too much of their lives in demeaning physical labour, the man in the mine, the factory and the field, the woman at the kitchen sink. For five days in seven men spend most of their daylight hours at work and mostly at tasks that give little pleasure or satisafaction; the daily drudgery of women is even worse."

Age of Austerity today? Maybe not.

On Advertising:

"Advertising is thus the artillery that softens up the consumer for the infantry - the commercial traveller."

Now I know that when my father introduced me to his friends not as a Senior Sales Executive, as my business card stated nearly 30 years ago, but as a 'commercial traveller', he may have had something less than complimentary in mind!