Black Market Britain: 1939-1955Britain's underground economy flourished during the 1940s and early 1950s thanks to rationing and price control, producers, traders, and professional criminals helped consumers to get a little extra on the side, from under the counter, or off the back of a lorry. Yet widespread evasion of regulations designed to ensure fair shares for all did not undermine the austerity policies that characterised these years and its vital role in securing compliance with economic regulation. In Black Market Britain, Mark Roodhouse argues that Britons showed self-restraint in their illegal dealings. The means, motives, and opportunities for evasion were not lacking. The shortages were real, regulations were not watertight, and enforcement was haphazard. Fairness, not patriotism and respect for the law, is the key to understanding this self-restraint. By invoking popular notions of a fair price, a fair profit, and a fair share, government rhetoric limited black marketeering as would-be evaders had to justify their offences both to themselves and others. Black Market Britain underlines the importance of fairness to those seeking a richer understanding of economic life in modern Britain. |
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August austerity barter BBC Home Service behaviour black market dealing black market offences black market prices Britain British Chief Constables Civil Industry civilians clothes rationing clothing coupons Committee consumers convicted coupons courts crime criminal customers Daily Express Daily Mirror defence regulations detectives diary DR January 1948 Ealing Studios economic control eggs enforcement evade evasion exchange fair share Food Control gifts grey market Hargreaves and Gowing HC deb Home Office illegal dealing illicit Investigation involved Jewish Justice Labour London Lord Woolton M-OA magistrates Manchester Guardian Mass-Observation meat ministers ministry inspectors MoFP moral motorists neighbours Nella Last non-compliance norms Novello October official paid favour panellists petrol petrol rationing police popular post-war price control problem profit prosecutions rationing ministries Report retailers sell sentences shops social spiv Statistics stolen supply swap theft tion trade underground economy Underworld wartime wholesalers working-class Zweiniger-Bargielowska