Profile

Biography

 BA (Cantab), MSc (Oxon), PhD (Cantab), FRHistS

Mark Roodhouse is Lecturer in History. He works on the economic and social history of modern Britain. He is currently writing his second book about organised crime in mid-twentieth-century Britain. His first book is Black Market Britain: 1939-1955, published by Oxford University Press.

Mark was educated at Cambridge and Oxford before coming to York. He is a director of the Centre for Historical Economics and Related Research, editor of the Borthwick Papers and a member of the History and Policy network. He has also refereed articles and reviewed books for several academic journals.

Research

Overview

Mark is currently writing his second book on the history of organised crime in mid-twentieth-century Britain. This explores the interaction between the law-and-order bureaucracy’s dark imaginings and the activities of criminal entrepreneurs. Through a micro-history of a failed black market sting operation, the project reveals the interplay between the representation and reality of organised crime before ‘celebrity’ gangsters like Billy Hill, Jack ‘Spot’ Comer and the Messina brothers entered the limelight in the 1950s.

Mark stumbled across the case when writing his first book Black Market Britain: 1939-1955. In the book, he argues that illegal markets did not pose a serious threat to rationing and price control because of Britons’ self-restraint. 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 and its vital role in securing compliance with economic regulation. Mark has shared these findings with the general public through his contributions to television programmes like Wartime Farm and The One Show as well radio programmes like Broadcasting House.

Drawing on his work, Mark has contributed to ongoing debates about climate change, producing a policy paper evaluating carbon rationing proposals in the light of historical experience, writing an op-ed for the Financial Times and submitting written evidence to a parliamentary committee. These interventions attracted national and international press coverage.

Supervision

Mark welcomes proposals to work on any area of British history since 1914.

Current PhD students

• Tom Wright, “Abolishing Capital Punishment: Britain, 1945-1979.”
• David Ellis, “Pavement Politics: Community Action in Urban Britain, 1965-1990.” (AHRC-funded)

 Current MA by Research students

• Rosie Shelmerdine, “British Policy towards German Internees and German POWs, 1939-49”

Publications

Selected publications

• Black Market Britain: 1939-1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
• "‘Fish-and-Chip Intelligence’: Henry Durant and the British Institute of Public Opinion, 1936-1963”. Twentieth Century British History (2013).
• "In Racket Town: Gangster Chic in Austerity Britain, 1939-1953". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 31, no. 4 (2011): 523-541.
• "Lady Chatterley and the Monk: Anglican Radicals and the Lady Chatterley Trial of 1960". Journal of Ecclesiastical History 59, no. 3 (2008): 475-500.
• "Rationing Returns: a Solution to Global Warming?" History and Policy Paper, March 2007.
• "Popular Morality and the Black Market in Britain, 1939-55". In Food and Conflict in Europe in the Age of the Two World Wars , edited by Frank Trentmann and Flemming Just, 243-265. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
• "The 'Ghost Squad': Undercover Policing in London, 1945-49". In Conflict and Legality: Poilcing Mid-Twentieth-Century Europe, edited by Gerard Oram, 171-191. London: Francis Boutle, 2003. Reprinted in Police and Policing in the Twentieth Century, edited by Chris A. Williams, 141-161. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.
• "The 1948 Belcher Affair and Lynskey Tribunal". Twentieth Century British History 13, no. 4 (2002): 384-411. 

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Modern Britain, 1850-2000. 'When History Came to A .'
• British Police and the Democratic Idea Since 1829
• The Politics of the Permissive Society: Britain, 1957-1974

Postgraduate

• Modern History and the Moving Image

External activities

Memberships

• Fellow Royal Historical Society, 2013-
• Member, Economic History Society, 2010-
• Member, Advisory Group, History & Policy, 2007-
• Fellow, Higher Education Academy, 2007-

Editorial duties

• Editor, Borthwick Papers, Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York, 2009-13

Media coverage

Blogging

• “Eating Horse in Austerity Britain.” OUPblog. March 19, 2013. http://blog.oup.com/2013/03/horsemeat-austerity-britain.

Journalism

• Interview by Chris Bowlby. “Austerity Measures will Open the Door to the Black Market.” BBC History Magazine 11, no. 12 (December 2010).
• “City Bankers - Spivs or Profiteers?” History & Policy Opinion Piece. September 28, 2010. http://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion/opinion_53.html.
• “Carbon Copies?” History Today 57, no. 7 (July 2007): 4-5.
• “Feeding Britain: Food Control, 1940-45.” Everyone’s War 15 (Spring/Summer 2007): 39-43.
• “Enlist the Blitz Spirit, Get Out the Carbon Ration Book.” Financial Times, March 13, 2007.
• Interview by Chris Arnot. “Enemies of the Fairer Society.” Education Guardian, July 12, 2005, 21.
• “Nye Bevan, Black Marketeer.” History Today 55, no. 7 (July 2005): 2-3.

Radio

• “Meet the Spiv,” Broadcasting House. BBC Radio 4. London: BBC, September 26, 2010, 10:00hrs. [audio essay]
• Interviews for BBC Radio Leeds, BBC Radio York, BBC Wiltshire

Television

• Interview by Ruth Goodman. “Episode Two.” Wartime Farm. First broadcast September 13, 2012, 20:00hrs on BBC Two. [2.7 million viewers (BARB)]
• Interview by Stuart Maconie. A History of the World: Cumbria’s Atomic Pioneers. First broadcast May 17, 2010 on BBC One (North East and Cumbria only). [Winner of the Royal Television Society Best Broadcast Factual Production 2011]
• Interview by John Sergeant. “Black Market Cosmetics.” The One Show. First broadcast May 17, 2010 on BBC One, 19:00hrs. [4.35 million viewers (BARB)]
• Interview by Dan Snow. “A History of Hair.” The One Show. First broadcast November 27, 2009 on BBC One.
• Interview by Gareth Hughes. “Nye Bevan.” A Date with Destiny. First broadcast October 2, 2006 on ITV1 Wales.
• Interview. Spivs. First broadcast October 24, 2005 on BBC Four.
• Interview. When Britain Went Bananas. First broadcast October 8, 2005 on BBC Four.