From the archives: Up to our eyes in debt

This latest piece from the Spectator archives isn’t topical in any specific sense, but it does chart a problem which has spread over recent years until it has seeped into everything from government to football: namely, debt. In it, Dominic Lawson visits a Merseyside housing estate towards the end of the 80s, to find a community which has been force-fed cheap and easy credit, and is preyed upon by debt collectors. As a warning of what was to come, there are few better examples:

The debtors of Smack City, by Dominic Lawson, The Spectator, 17 February, 1988

He could not work it out, the Merseyside debt collector. And nor could I, accompanying him on the sort of biting winter evening that his profession relishes (the targets are more likely to be in). His card said that Mr Jones, owing £4,000 to two secured lenders, led at number 30. But there did not seem to be a number 30.