Britain’s wartime rationing system promised fair shares for all. Beneath it grew a second economy built upon hidden supplies, forged coupons, stolen goods and private arrangements.
Under the Counter explores the black market that flourished across Britain during and after the Second World War. It follows goods diverted from farms, docks, factories, warehouses and shops, as well as the traders and customers who brought them into ordinary homes.
The focus is the world of illicit meat, scarce tea, cigarettes, petrol, silk stockings and bottles quietly kept aside for people willing to pay. It is also the world of inspectors, police officers and magistrates who struggle to defend a rationing system that relies on public consent.
Robin Wickens looks beyond the familiar image of the flamboyant spiv to examine the much larger population that sustained illegal trade: shopkeepers, publicans, workers, servicemen, householders and respectable customers who believed that one small exception could do no harm.
Written with wit, clarity and sympathy, Under the Counter is both an absorbing social history and an examination of the compromises people make when official rules collide with appetite, opportunity and need.
This is Book One of Britain’s Secret Wartime Economy.
Key subjects include the following:
• British food and clothing rationing
• Spivs, thieves and professional dealers
• Dock, warehouse and railway theft
• Forged and misused ration coupons
• Farming and the illicit meat trade
• Ministry of Food enforcement
• Wartime morality and social inequality
• The survival of rationing after 1945