The postwar market was initially very much a sellers’ market, controlled by producers. Government regulations were limited, and pertained mostly to basic food staples. This brought new risks for consumers, such as unlabeled or unhealthy pre-packaged foodstuffs, new medicines marketed through new forms of ‘scientific’ advertising and consumer credit rackets. Protective goggles for so-called harmful television beams were on sale and the indoor sunbed was presented as a good way to enjoy family time with the children.11 Moreover, purchasing power in Western Europe was in general still quite low. This was perceived by the American diplomacy as a threat to Europe’s political stability. American Marshall aid provided a window of opportunity to address some of these issues.

us diplomats hoped to transform Europe into a more productive buyers’ market – and a common market for consumer goods at that. us diplomacy also had the example of the American Consumers Union (hereafter cu) back home. They enthusiastically began to diffuse what they called ‘the cu model’ across Europe. While European consumer co-operatives had always stressed that consumption could be used to advance the working-class interest, the Americans launched a more technocratic solution: buying responsibly and intelligently. Engineers and laboratory staff were seen as the ideal consumer defenders.

In 1954, the Dutch were the first Europeans to undertake a so-called productivity mission to the United States devoted to the consumer interest. Benjamin Buitendijk of the newly formed Consumentenbond participated, as did members of the co-operatives and the Dutch Household Council.12 In Belgium, family organizations and the female branches of the social-democratic movement had interest in the topic too. When the Belgians organized a study mission on consumerism to the Netherlands in 1958, all stakeholders agreed that a public umbrella organization for consumers, with the private organizations as board members, would be the best solution.13

However, resistance by the retail sector was particularly strong. The projected National Center for the Consumer, which would have been sponsored by the Belgian government for up to one million Francs, never became a reality.14 Those interested in organized consumerism soon set up their own organizations. Test-Achats and the Union Féminine pour la Défense et l’Information du Consommateur (hereafter ufidec) were founded respectively in 1957 and 1959.

ta’s founder, Louis Darms, was an advertiser with good connections among the conservative wing of the Catholic Party. ta consistently promoted individual foresight as the best strategy for consumer protection, and there was even a hint of anti-communism in its insistence that co-operatives, working-class organizations or progressives could never be ‘neutral’ consumer defenders. However, ta’s founder succeeded in attracting broad layers of the establishment, academics and the upper middle class to his project. ta published a high-brow magazine which initially featured complicated technical jargon rather than radical political demands. ta also took pride in following the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which they defined as liberal, non-political and individualist.15

ufidec was an organization of social-democratic women. ufidec demanded more legal solutions for consumers and believed in strong collective action. ufidec felt that while cu did good work, a comparative testing organization had to be a movement rather than a company. ufidecrecruited its rank-and-file by conviction, strong local networks and through artisanal propaganda. Rather than advertising the savings that subscribers could make, ufidec attracted members on the promise of political emancipation and social justice. A subscription to ufidec’s magazine was also significantly cheaper than one for ta.

While the trivialities of testing peanut butter do not suggest it, consumer activists faced fundamental questions. Were commodification and commercialization neutral processes, which only had consequences on the micro-level of the household? Or could they cause inequalities, which had to be kept in check by public authorities? ta chose the former position, thereby continuing the catholic preference for individual responsibility, market-based solutions and a non-interventionist state.16 Its choice for education over protest was remarkably coherent with the Catholic and liberal approaches to social politics. In contrast, ufidec of course saw the world according to the latter paradigm. It was more interested in mobilizing the state for consumer protection, if need be by boycotts and collective action.17

For instance, ufidec’s first media scoop was a law proposal on food safety. Shortly after that, ta made headlines by revealing that the ‘Russian’ seca brand of gasoline offered the same quality as other brands but at a significantly lower price.18 ta thus stressed the individual gains that could be made from following their advices, rather than collective solutions to the failures of the market. Later on, ufidec advanced the Swedish legislation on product labeling as an example, while ta believed that assertive consumers could defend their own interests.19 After simultaneously revealing mass fraud with bread weights in 1977, ufidec filed a complaint in court whereas ta stated that it was skeptical about the efficiency of controls by a public administration. ta consistently advocated self-defense:

If ufidec was quite open about its social-democratic inspiration (which should not be mistaken for blind allegiance), ta was less transparent. ta consistently couched its ideological choices in a discourse of scientific objectivity and efficiency. By presenting itself as a neutral guardian of the marketplace, its preference for private as opposed to public solutions remained somewhat veiled. ta rarely reflected on the consequences of its political message or its limited social impact. Nor could it clarify how the different parameters of the consumer interest (safety, labour conditions, sustainability and so forth) could be calculated ‘objectively’.

Initially, both movements had ambitious plans. They hoped to set up local clubs (which, in the case of ufidec were already in place), deliver education in schools, negotiate with governments over legislation and offer customized judicial assistance.21 Lack of resources soon forced them to limit themselves to publishing a (bi-)monthly publication. The magazines discussed good and bad shopping habits, results of comparative tests and the general consumer interest.

Still, getting the financial resources to pay for the expensive testing procedures was a perennial problem that plagued ta during its first decade and eventually led to the dissolution of ufidec in 1984, when the social-democratic womens’ organizations no longer had enough money to support it. ufidec’s definition of the consumer interest was predominantly informed by the everyday experience of poverty and more austere in tone. Underfinanced, understaffed, often cautionary and repetitive, ufidec struggled to accept that postwar consumer society comprised more than food safety. While calling for legal injunctions and contrasting Western affluence to the poverty of the Third World, ufidec lacked the means to expand its message.

One of the most important factors in ufidec’s decline however, was the lack of human capital. ta was led by higher educated, male technicians, mostly from a well-heeled background. As economists, professors or engineers, their voices were perceived as more authoritative than those of the stagnating social-democratic women’s associations. As working-class women who ideologically opposed commercialism, ufidec’s rank-and-file lacked the connections or means to launch certain political proposals or sell the organization in a fashionable way. Moreover, marginalizing ufidec’s political project had literally become a matter of life and death for ta. It accrued profits to hire new, professionally trained staff while ufidec had a small staff and a lot of volunteers. This imbalance will emerge clearly in the proposals for giving consumers a political voice. ta, much more vocal and dynamic than ufidec, usually played the dominant part in these negotiations.

While organized consumerism was struggling to collect resources, it was easy to ignore it. But by 1963, consumer movements had gained some public legitimacy. The country was moreover troubled by a rising cost-of-living index and tensions between labour and capital.22 One of the solutions proposed by social-democrat minister of Economy Antoon Spinoy was to reform and broaden the process of social-economic concertation. Spinoy envisioned a merger of the two main neo-corporatist bodies to discuss both social and economic aspects of regulations in the same arena.23 His plans would also allow the incorporation of other stakeholders (e.g. farmers or consumers) in the regulation of the political economy.

Vercauteren and Wijnens have analyzed how Spinoy’s proposals for a unified Social-Economic council met resistance and eventually failure.24 The foundation of a separate Council for Consumer Affairs was a direct consequence of this failure. It kept the dream of broadened concertation alive without stepping on sensitive toes.

The Council for Consumer Affairs25 was eventually established in February 1964 within the Ministry of Economic Affairs. This was the first public recognition of the consumer-producer cleavage as a phenomenon that deserved sustained political attention. Compared to other European countries, this recognition came fairly late.26 By 1955, the Dutch government had for instance already united all stakeholders in the consultative Consumenten Contact Orgaan (ccc).

The Belgian Council was however not a direct channel between government and consumer representatives but rather a roundtable for oppositional groups. Consumer advocates were included alongside producers, retailers and ‘independent’ experts. Yet in contrast to other tri-partisan bodies, the council had no regulatory powers whatsoever apart from offering advices.27 As a result, consumers gained a political voice in the side issues, not the essentials.

There was moreover a tremendous gap between the ideal and the practice of consultation. Since unanimous advices were almost never given, the Council lacked the credibility that discouraged ministers from ‘burying the advices in cardboard boxes within the ministry’.28 The Council did not have any real funding or staff to investigate specific topics.29 Cooperation with the department of Economic Affairs left much to be desired. To order books and documentation, Council members had to fill out several slips. It took three months to procure the large-sized envelopes to send out the first Council reports, while typing assignments were sloppily executed.30

The weak status of the Council was attributed to sustained protest of trade unions and employers.31 But perhaps policy-makers were blaming others for hindering a job they were not really prepared to take up themselves.32 Public declarations on the need for consumer protection – even those by social-democratic politicians – always used commonplace arguments such as the haste of modern life or a broadening of consumer choice.33 But the cases on which the Council worked basically dealt with the abuse of economic power and serious legislative gaps. Welfare state involvement meant hurting interests and possibly rethinking values that had only just been established as core of the welfare state: productivity, economic development and full employment policies. Consumer problems were not just the result of the ‘haste of modern life’: they were caused by producers and retailers.

Still, unions and employers clearly did not want to see their power dissipate in favour of another interest group. When consumer movements were founded in Belgium and the Netherlands, they created a scandal among business communities. Companies sued them because they were given bad ratings or denied a right to answer – even if such a response consisted of barely concealed advertising.

Consumer organizations also posed a challenge to the trade unions. Especially the social-democratic white-collar trade union bttk reacted stung. While bttk recognized the legitimacy of consumer concerns, it expressed a low esteem for the new consumer spokesmen, particularly the more liberal-minded ta and its founder, the technocratic advertiser. In bttk’s viewpoint, the ‘non-political’ Anglo-Saxon type of consumer organization was a hastily organized and improvising movement that stood powerless in the face of organized business:

bttk made a sharp analysis of the situation, but then threw away the baby with the bathwater. Consumer defense was a difficult matter in 1962. However, that did not make it an inconsequential form of social mobilization for the future. The treatise on consumers and economic power in the bttk journal neglected the challenge that functional specialization posed for the unions. The interests of the consumer who was also a wage worker were potentially conflicting. Consumer movements were not interested in keeping companies afloat that produced an inferior product. Bad reviews in ta actually drove a lot of smaller Belgian companies into bankruptcy.35 During the eighties, ta moreover challenged the rights of public service employees to strike.36

A review of the first two terms of the Council shows that it never really became a powerful political arena for consumer interests. Producers and retailers easily dominated the other participants. The Council initially consisted of nine consumer representatives, three business representatives and four experts in distribution or product normalization.37 However, the last group tended to side with the producer interest rather consistently. The expertise of ta, ufidec, the Family League and the other women’s associations was moreover weak and disorganized compared to that of business, who sent out well-paid professional representatives. Divisiveness reigned in the consumer scene. Belgian politicians had recognized the two consumer movements strictu sensu as official consumer representatives, but they had also acknowledged the Christian-democratic and social-democratic co-operatives, the Family League, several women’s groups and the three major Belgian trade unions as such. Because the powerful trade unions did not commit to consumer politics, the Council never gained an authoritative position.

Consumer representatives could not agree on a joint program, even though they were paradoxically united in a European contact group for consumers. Their input in the Belgian Council was described by a social-democrat as “neither active, competent nor coherent”.38 During the very first meeting of November 1964, the representative of the Federation of Industries attacked the “consumerist” discourse, arguing that producers and consumers had the same interests. He objected to the mere mention of the term “decision-making” in official records, but also to setting up subcommittees and to the possibility of making council reports public. These discussions all ended favourably for the Federation.39

On top of that, ta and (parts of) the social-democratic pillar grew increasingly hostile. With different ideologies being defended by rather intransigent personalities, the Belgian consumer movements never overcame their differences. ta’s anti-socialist director Gilbert Castelain scandalized the presence of the social-democratic co-operative more than he did that of the Belgian Federation of Industry. Meanwhile Roger Ramaekers, leader of the social-democratic co-operative and in control of the funding of the womens’ organizations, denounced ta’s “limited vision” and called them ordinary paper salesmen.40

The Council shows that those managing the welfare state during les trentes glorieuses recognized that they could not bypass this new interest group, but they were not prepared to fully include them. Economic growth was more important than a vocal consumer. In an age that coupled steady rises in purchasing power with a general optimism about the market, the disruptive potential of consumer movements was too limited to command real participation. One very important reason for this disconnect was the gender gap. During the sixties, organized consumerism was still considered something of a women’s concern. The Belgian government, an all-male bastion, did not consult a council dealing with the “soft” matters of household consumption to inform its overall macro-economic policy.41 That only changed when economic downturn occurred.

The oil crisis of 1973 shocked the Belgian economy. Paradoxically, this also engendered the break-through of consumerism in the political arena. Mounting inflation led the then minister of Economic Affairs Willy Claes, again a social-democrat, to start up the Mercator campaign. The campaign intended to make consumers aware of their economic influence.42 Claes was not convinced that the general rise in price levels was related only to the measures of the opec cartel.43 It was indeed not uncommon for Belgian producers to use any world crisis to speculate with resources and prices.44 But Claes found only weak partners in the consumer movement and began to believe that defending consumers was essentially the role of the state.45

Measured by the number of participants who requested the ministerial brochure on consumer awareness, the Mercator campaign was a success. For the first time, Belgian business communities began to fear that consumers would find ‘a potent partner in the state’. This potential public-private nexus was such a shock that the business community openly questioned the legitimacy of doing comparative testing without ‘adequate’ supervising. The Federation of Belgian Industries expressed its hopes for an ‘organized dialogue’ between consumer movements and their partners, ‘the producers and retailers’.46

In reality, global business communities had no intention whatsoever to befriend the consumer movement. With the rise of Ralph Nader and the consolidation of several strong national consumer movements across Europe, organized consumerism left its noncommittal ‘toaster testing’ phase behind. More fundamental values, such as waste and equality, were now being debated in a context of global economic crisis.

Criticized both by business and public authorities, the Belgian consumer movements decided to take unanimous action. In 1974, ta, ufidec and the Family League held their first joint press conference. They asked for participation in the commission for Control on gas and electricity and the newly founded Commission for control on the petroleum sector. The energy crisis was advanced as a reason to adjust the tripartite nature of (parts of) social-economic concertation.47 And there were other new ideas. In April 1975, the consumer group within the Council for Consumer Affairs issued an advice on the institutional tools for consumer politics in Belgium. It mentioned a unified and powerful administration for consumer protection, an economic magistracy, a technical research institute and a consumer ombudsman, as in Sweden.48 Only one of these ambitious ideas would materialize during the seventies: the public institute for consumer affairs. But here again, ideological differences impacted the outcomes.

Public consumer institutions already existed in Northern Europe and France. Frans Van Mechelen, the influential president of the Family League who wanted more ambitious research on macro-economic policies for consumers, introduced the idea in Belgium. Van Mechelen also claimed that the energy crisis had made the consumer challenge insurmountable for private comparative testing organizations. Indoors, ta basically agreed with this analysis. In public however, it opposed such an institute because it could threaten their commercial survival.49 Seen from a zero-sum perspective, such public institutes could indeed be perceived as competitors. However, ta’s rejection of a public consumer institute was not based on evidence, but rather on an entrenched suspicion against public interference. ta ignored the fact that such centers could offer more sustained defense and information programs than they could, while also removing financial barriers to consumer education and perhaps strengthen the existing movements.50

ta’s connection to the Catholic establishment paid off when it began to lobby against a powerful public body for consumers. Gilbert Castelain (ta) recounted how his connections with minister André Oleffe (a Christian-democrat) eventually led to a center that served not the consumer-citizen, but the organizations:

The Center for Research and Information for Consumer Organizations (hereafter crioc) was eventually inaugurated in 1975 with the goal to aid the consumer movements, promote the consumer interest and stimulate – but not take up – the defense of consumers. crioc’s board consisted of representatives of all consumer movements, including co-operative movements and trade unions. It received a yearly subsidy by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, who also had one representative.52

crioc seems a successful example of a public-private mix for consumer welfare, perhaps even the typical result of the Belgian consociational democracy.53 In reality, its delicate position warranted a lot of internal conflict. Where did communication with the public begin? What did the different consumer movements really expect from crioc? The commercial interests of the existing consumer movements meant that crioc’s range of action, paid for by taxpayers’ money, was severely curbed.

crioc was thus not a success for consumers. In 1980, the socialist pillar pressed for a new structure for crioc, including a scientific coordinator and more comprehensive support to the consumer groups.54 ta was able to actually avert the reform. It also blocked a crioc publication on legal reform from the public. ta reported (internally) on crioc’s activities in the following vein:

ta even requested a significant decrease in crioc’s budgets. This budget cut was ‘granted’ by the governments Martens v and vi (headed by Prime Minister Wilfried Martens) in 1982 as part of a broader turn toward neoliberal accents.

In the end, crioc played an important role in battling tobacco advertising. It also collected valuable studies and documentation for the consumer movements during the nineties. But these achievements stopped short of the ambitions expressed in the early seventies, when Van Mechelen and the social-democrats wanted to model crioc to the powerful Swedish Konsumentverket (Consumer Council). crioc had very little public renown and gained little relevance for policy makers. This outcome reflected not the inherent weakness of the consumer interest, but the ideological choices and conflicts of certain consumer activists. ta depended on sales and therefore feared creating a competitor, even if this competitor had the public interest in mind.

After the golden sixties and with debates about the welfare state in full swing, the notion of the consumer interest had nonetheless become more disruptive. During a 1971 academic congress, several young economists had urged for more economic democracy by letting consumers and wage-workers jointly determine the goals of production in a planned economy.56 Ralph Nader’s visit to Belgium in 1973 was a widely mediatized event. The so-called countercultural critiques of May 1968 on the mass consumer society entered the mainstream as gloomy predictions on the economy became real after the oil crisis. Confronted with these challenges and in danger of losing their audience, comparative testing organizations had to re-invent themselves.

While non-interventionism had become the default position of the majority within ta’s board, certain board members of ta did offer some unconventional social policy measures. Especially Willy Van Rijckeghem, a professor in economics, self-proclaimed neo-Keynesian, president of the International Organization of Consumer Unions and participant in several development missions by international organizations (e.g. the International Labour Organization and the Inter-American Development Bank) played a key role in this creative turn. Two of ta’s proposals will be discussed in more detail: the basic needs economy and the idea of local consumer information centers.

These ideas had the potential of transforming consumer society, providing more collective forms of consumer protection. Their history presents a more balanced view of the postwar consumer movement and the challenges it faced. Although not every ta-member was a free-market fundamentalist, the ideology adopted by ta in the late fifties caused a deadlock during the seventies. ta co-opted more radical ideas, but was not powerful enough to bring them into practice. Its short-lived overture towards a more political path also illustrates the resilience of the organization.57 During the same period, ufidec’s main focus was the same it had always been: food safety. While its work in this field was valuable, ufidec lost the battle for mediagenic performances. By the early eighties, the once powerful mass movement for female consumers had become a small player with a modest, almost unfashionable periodical.

In 1976, ta organized a conference on macro-economic policy starring its director Willy Van Rijckeghem. Van Rijckeghem held a plea for a national economy that catered to the basic needs of its citizens while procuring sustainable domestic employment at the same time.58 The plan showed similarities with the radical New Deal recipes advocated by Colston Warne, president of cu, during the thirties and late fourties.59 In this type of planned economy, consumer needs and production factors were matched more thoroughly.

Public health, public transport and housing were just a few of the sectors that Van Rijckeghem considered deficient, and in need of public investment. ta even temporarily renounced individual consumer sovereignty by suggesting that individual gains for the consumer (in the form of higher incomes) were not a priority. Instead, it suggested nudging demand towards sectors that created local employment and supported welfare state policies.60 Van Rijckeghem’s proposals, as advanced in name of ta, very much anticipated the future developments of the welfare state. Although Belgium had a decent model of social security in place since the late fourties, it was not necessarily able to deliver all citizens a decent standard of living. Health care was one example. For a country in which the public sphere was according to Van Rijckeghem ‘preoccupied with dieting’, Belgium had a remarkably high account of deficiency diseases among children, especially those of poor families.61 The health of the Belgian working-class population was consistently lower than that of its Western-European neighbours. Van Rijckeghem thus urged for preventive, rather than curative health care. This even included better working conditions and less environmental pollution.

Housing was another field in which the consumer ideal did not necessarily match Belgian reality.62 The number of unsanitary homes had actually risen between 1961 and 1971. For almost a third of the Belgian population the ideal middle class home was unattainable. Four out of ten houses did not have an indoor toilet, half of all houses had neither a bath nor a shower and 75 percent lacked central electric heating in 1977.63 Belgian housing policy was an example of what sociologist Herman Deleeck had identified in 1975 as the Matthew effect. This means that social policy is designed in a non-inclusive way and hence benefits better-off groups more than weaker social groups. In practice, Belgium had not so much a housing policy as a policy of promoting home ownership while ignoring tenants. Van Rijckeghem hence advocated means-tested subsidies for home improvements. He also stressed the need for better education of the ‘often overlooked’ first-generation immigrants, many of whom were illiterate.64 Finally, he urged governments to update their fiscal policy so that activities which fulfilled basic needs received more support than wasteful economic activities. One of the first examples he mentioned was recycling.

But who had to pay for such an ambitious project? To a limited extent, Van Rijckeghem wanted to nudge private capital into specific projects. To the dismay of insurance companies’ representatives, he counted on private savings and most of all on contributions from insurance companies. Yet the main source of funding lay elsewhere:

Van Rijckeghem wanted to reallocate future economic growth – as opposed to the ‘more radical’ solution of redistributing the existing wealth – by setting up a separate fund. The fund would be used to create jobs in the basic needs sectors he had identified. This plan owned something to the strategic social funds that were contemplated in Sweden around the same time by Gustav Meidner. The difference was that while Meidner specifically charged large companies and shareholders to line these public funds through a share levy66, Van Rijckeghem suggested that the employees and capital owners of the most productive sectors gave up some of their gains.

The logic behind Van Rijckeghem’s proposal is particularly interesting, as it illustrates ta’s somewhat hostile attitude towards trade unions. Van Rijckeghem equalled higher productivity with lower prices for the consumer. He then reified this rather simple and contemporary observation into an economic law; this certainly had to be the ‘normal situation’. Whether improving labour conditions, as he himself advocated, was compatible with cheaper products and services, remained unquestioned. Van Rijckeghem then stated that the Belgian model for social-economic concertation made the country deviate from this principle because increased productivity led not to lower consumer prices, but to higher wages. He claimed that the general wage rise of the past years did not necessarily coincide with increased productivity in specific sectors. Therefore – according to his analysis – the old system of concertation had to be completely readjusted. However, social-economic concertation was at the time a sectoral matter, rather than a national one. It was not necessarily true that less-productive workers received exaggerated wages because of the social-economic concertation. This argument on the warping effect of higher wages pertained to the discourse of employers.67

ta’s proposal for a basic needs economy was nonetheless an ambitious attempt to surpass both the free market and the traditional recipes of deficit spending. The plan was also a controversial solicitation of the consumer movement to join macro-economic planning.68 Van Rijckeghem’s consumerist proposals would have thoroughly modified the balance between capital and labour that had been negotiated in the Joint Declaration on Productivity (1954) and institutionalized within successive wage-bargaining rounds.69 Hence, the plan was never adopted.

Around that same time, ta considered setting up local information centers for consumers. Similar initiatives had appeared in the United Kingdom, where small clubs of volunteers checked local prices, offered advice and denounced consumer scandals under the wings of the Consumer Association, another comparative testing organization.70 This was very much a matter of spontaneous community organizing. But faithful to the Belgian recipe of subsidized liberty and its own habit of keeping tight control, Belgian ta saw local centers as a way to strengthen its own enterprise with support of public funding.

ta set up its first information center – located in a large Brussels shopping mall – in 1976 with a promise for financial support from the Brussels municipal government.71 In Van Rijckeghem’s words, ‘specialized teams able to offer a wide range of services to the local communities, including advice on large purchases, budgetary planning and matters of housing’ were an indispensable part of the basic needs approach.72

This window of opportunity for ta was created by the reform of the local institutions for social assistance. A groundbreaking 1974 law redefined poverty aid as a right, rather than a favour. It led to an institutional reform of the local Commissions for Public Aid (the so-called coo’s) into Centres Publics d’Aide Socialeor cpas (legally in 1976, in practice only after 1978 after the fusion of municipalities). Theoretically, cpas were broader in nature.73 The welfare state had made the commitment to not only assist welfare recipients with money, but also to address the social and psychological dimensions of poverty. Social assistance now had to enable every citizen to live ‘in conditions conforming to human dignity’.74 Local authorities were faced with an imminent reform of which the limits and modalities were still unclear. They had to rethink the social services offered to their inhabitants. Although ta had stated in 1957 that the working-class was not its core audience, it now saw the benefits of offering ‘community services’ rather than just publishing an expensive magazine.75 Plans were made to set up at least ten new centers in Ghent, Antwerp, Bruges, Waver, Liège, Namur, Mons and Charleroi. In all cases, support from the cpas or city councils was vital for the financial survival of the project.76

During the preparatory phase, ta’s board discussed possible measures to make the centers accessible for a wide range of audiences. Staff members had to be higher educated, but preferably in the humanities. More than it had ever done before, ta wanted to attract public-minded individuals interested in human problems, rather than all-knowing technicians who judged commodities. ta was moreover acutely aware that high-profile university students might not be the best communicators towards ‘Monsieur et Madame tout le monde’. The centers should reach an audience that relied less frequently on the written word, as its director Castelain explained on tv.77 To avoid scaring less-well-heeled housewives away, the centers would have specific opening hours, a display of household objects and a children’s corner. The board meetings stated a preference for female staff members – even though the televised coverage of their first center in Brussels featured a reassuring gentleman in a tidy suit.78 ta’s plan was to give consumers pre-shopping information (it even used the uncharacteristic term of ‘real needs’), legal advice and social-economic education. For those recently fired, those looking for the best conditions on a loan or for those duped consumers who wanted legal action, the centers had to give free guidance. An impressive brainstorm on possible activities took place within the board. In August, seminars on ‘social climbing through alternative forms of education’ were planned for college graduates who had failed their first term. For pensioners, guided tours in old-people’s homes were projected. Seminars on how to save energy were considered particularly topical.79 For children and families, there would be coloring games, quizzes and product demonstrations.80 The centerpiece of all these efforts was ta’s product database, which could be accessed freely in the center on a terminal. The Brussels center served as a test case for the whole endeavor. During its first year, it attracted the impressive number of 40,000 visitors.

Such consumerist local initiatives were popular among politicians as well. Municipalities such as Antwerp, Huy and Wilrijk already had council members who took up consumer affairs or developed collective action in this field.81 There were many more local politicians who looked favourably upon ta’s plans. But there were also adversaries. ta reported internally that a local tradesman, who happened to be a city council member, was ill-disposed towards their proposals because it could harm his own interests.82

But after two years of careful negotiation and planning, ta’s promising plans collapsed completely. One of the most conspicuous reasons for failure was that the staff member who managed the project, stole the cash register of the Brussels center and disappeared.83 After filing a complaint and sending out a new project manager, ta discovered that the enthusiasm of the local municipalities and cpas for co-founding consumer centers was more mooted than the employee had suggested. Funding from the Brussels city council actually never came through. ta could hence no longer afford an office in a popular shopping mall such as City 2. The Brussels information center was continued for one more year in ta’s own office. After 1981, it was replaced by telephone-based advice for paying subscribers only.

Why did local authorities promise support only to withdraw it once the plans became more concrete? Perhaps they had concluded that ta offered an uneven bargain, in which public authorities would have more burdens than benefits. The local centers would have been managed by ta but paid for by the public authorities, who thus had little control over the staff members. Total costs included staff, prestigious office space and a contractual payment of 50,000 Belgian Francs each year for ta’s services as a private subcontractor to public welfare.84 ta never completely forgot its own objective, which was first and foremost expanding its customer database. Board meetings spoke of the centers as places for data-mining. Visitors were given free information but then convinced to subscribe to ta.85 Incidentally, a lack of new subscriptions was the main reason for relinquishing the Brussels experiment.86

In ta‘s philosophy, the considerable savings individuals could make by reading the magazine compensated subscription costs.87 But this assumption surely did not apply to every consumer. Lacking any experience in social work, ta was moreover not prepared for the multidimensional nature of social exclusion and poverty, which the cpas had to remedy. In their insistence on popular shopping quarters, they showed little understanding of the geography of poverty. Finally, most questions handled in the Brussels center dealt with notarial advice and expensive household durables. The information centers had a middle-class bias.88

The projected cooperation between private and public actors showed other salient features. Informal contacts between ta’s board members and local politicians served to set up the first plans for local centers. Contingency and mutual understanding thus became more important than a reasoned, well-designed set-up of information centers in locations that really needed consumer advice. Since ta’s board members were already quite well-heeled, the plans could reinforce the inequality between local communities, which was the major unresolved problems of the reform of the cpas.89 Matters of accountability to the public were nowhere mentioned in ta’s euphoric, but rather superficial project notes on the centers. ta also had a history of holding tight control and allowing little participation when it teamed up with partners.90 But as the history of their own unscrupulous project manager showed, employees with the skills, experience or ethics to deal with the task at hand were an invaluable asset. ta’s plans for information centers had design flaws that could have made them another prime example of a Matthew’s effect: a policy that benefitted those who least needed it.

As this grassroots approach to expansion was dwarfed, ta identified two alternative strategies to grow. The first was getting more media attention by taking up the role of assertive watchdog. Once ufidec disappeared, ta approached this job with even more professional commitment. The second strategy was offering an insurance policy to its paying members.91 This included a hotline for questions, legal advice on demand and cheaper tariffs for certain services. By building this private ombuds service for subscribers only, the privatization of consumer assistance took a decisive turn. Unlike in e.g. Germany or Puerto Rico, plans for a publically paid and easily accessible service for consumers were never again made in Belgium.92

In this article, I have argued that consumer movements were initially referred to the margins of the welfare state, as unsuccessful players in a consultative council. Consumer movements were not able to revert the focus on economic growth and full employment policies into one on increased consumer welfare. Like the trade unions, they missed a historical opportunity to overcome the compartmentalization of citizen’s interests.

While the economic crisis of the seventies provided an opportunity to tie the consumer interest to the welfare state more closely, the outcome (an amputated public center known as crioc) was less than optimal. As the most dynamic Belgian consumer movement, ta played a very important role in the final outcome of the negotiations, in which its specific ideological agenda and its commercial model took prominence. Yet these features simultaneously jeopardized ta’s position as contractors of even more public social welfare. Their plans for local information centers were fraught between opposing logics.

The Keynesian welfare state increasingly took the character of a service provider, rather than a powerful broker between labor and capital. Consumer movements reflected the same evolution. Despite delivering some very original ideas on social policy and slowly constructing consumerist awareness among the general population, consumer movements have not dealt with issues of social stratification or the limits of the commodification process. For private and public actors alike, these challenges remain out in the open.