Posters Artwork Documents

Black Market.

David Low/Evening Standard newspaper.

David Low's comment on Britain's "Black Market", 1943. Low's cartoon places all three participants in the "traditional model" of the Black Market - Speculators, Middlemen and Purchasers, all crawling with rats - before a firing squad. The Speculator/Middleman/Purchaser model did, no doubt, have some validity at the higher end of economic activity; the level at which plutocratic war profiteers were at the top. However, this cartoon is clearly aimed at the "common or garden" Black Market, in which Corporal/local butcher Jones sets aside a small cut of beef for a favoured customer, or a local farmer sells butter to his neighbours outside the ration system. This sort of activity was, no doubt, antithetic to the "fair share" objective of the rationing system. However, it is hard to blame ordinary people for taking advantage of opportunities to benefit from such transactions. After all, their primary responsibility was to their own families. Mind you, the low-level "spivs" (low-level "middlemen") who facilitated such transactions hardly represent a worthy class of people ... Best regards, JR.