The Figure of the Spiv

The spiv—typically a petty criminal who deals in black market goods—entered British popular consciousness during and after World War II, when rationing forced people to turn to the black market. Sometimes the spiv was celebrated: a cheeky rebuff to postwar government control. Perhaps the prime example of this is the character Private Walker in the enduringly popular TV sitcom Dad's Army. However, the term also had strong ethnic associations. As Mark Roodhouse has shown, both Italians and Jews were commonly associated with the black market in postwar Britain, and, for a variety of reasons, Jews were disproportionately prosecuted for illicit trading. The heritage of the spiv is therefore, at least in part, the heritage of the ethnic outsider. Hence, the spiv is a convenient scapegoat: what the spiv does is reprehensible, what British capitalists do is commendable.