Capping supermarket prices? Time for the return of the Assize of Bread
In 2023 when it comes to basic food prices debate focuses on whether they can be controlled and if so how. After all in a market economy, the market rules. Labour by contrast has traditionally favoured a social market economy where intervention determined a fair price and prevented excess profit.
Before the early nineteenth century a different system often applied. The staple food of many was bread meaning that the price and quality of a loaf was an essential part of daily life. If quality dipped or the price went to high protest was the likely outcome.
This was often regulated by an Assize of Bread which sat to determine what a fair price for bread of a certain quality should be and how much the miller and the baker should get in return for producing it. This was what the socialist historian E P Thompson termed a moral economy.
It could not control the price paid for wheat in the first place but it could control profiteering by the miller and the baker. They were allowed a fair profit to cover their business and personal expenses.
Needless to say far from all millers and bakers were happy with the system and attempted to circumvent it by reducing the quality of bread produced or combining to control the market. The moral economy was not a complete solution but it was a focus for popular pressure.
Perhaps instead of asking supermarkets if they would mind keeping down the cost of staples like bread and milk Rishi Sunak could take a look at how his eighteenth predecessors did it.
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