Set
the people free
Opposition to ID Cards in North London, 1950
Introduction
During both
the first and second world wars the government introduced compulsory ID cards
as part of their emergency measures. ID cards were withdrawn within a year
of the end of the First World War; however it was not until seven years after
the Second World War that ID cards were finally withdrawn. Clarence Willcock
was instrumental in this process; his refusal to show his ID card when stopped
by the police in North London raised questions about their use in peacetime
Britain and contributed to the withdrawal of the cards in 1952.
A year after the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001 as the 'war on
terror 'was being promoted by the US and UK governments the UK government
published a consultation paper on 'entitlement cards'. The cards would tackle
a range of issues including terrorism, fraud, and 'illegal' immigration and
would signify that the holder was 'entitled' to public - and private - services.
In 2004 the campaigning group Haringey Against ID Cards was set up. This essay
looks at the use and abuse of ID Cards during the first and second world wars
and the factors that led to their withdrawal. What factors are the same, what
are different and how can we learn from the past to resist their introduction
now.
The
First World War
During the
first year of the war there was a debate in the cabinet about whether recruitment
to the army should be voluntary or by conscription. A vital element in the
argument - knowledge of how many eligible men there were to fight - was missing;
the available statistics were thought to be insufficient. The Cabinet decided
to resolve the matter through the introduction of national registration. Under
the National Registration Bill,
introduced by the President of the Local Government Board, Waiter Long, in
July 1915, personal information on all the adult population was compiled in
locally held registers, and identity cards were issued. The figure that interested
the War Cabinet was soon generated: 1,413,900 men in England and Wales were
still available for national service. Once this figure was found, politicians'
interest in National Registration, and therefore also the ID card, dramatically
waned. By July 1919 the register was abandoned.
The
Second World War
The coming
of the Second World War provided the impetus for the reintroduction of ID
cards and a national register as a temporary emergency measure. The government
had already introduced the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939. This empowered
the government to make, 'by Order in Council, defence regulations for the
purpose of securing the public safety, the defence of the realm, the maintenance
of public order, the efficient prosecution of any war and the maintenance
of essential supplies and services'. As well as general regulations, some
specific ones were made to control for example agriculture, building societies,
patents and trading with the enemy. Regulations issued under the Act were
termed Defence Regulations and came into force automatically. They did not
require parliamentary approval. This Act also allowed that 'Any Act of Parliament
may be amended, suspended or applied with or without modification.' The act
allowed the government to curtail political activity deemed to be a threat
to the country. Regulation 18B enabled the Home Secretary to detain any person
he believed to be of 'hostile origin or association'. Oswald Mosley together
with some 800 of his leading followers and several hundred others were imprisoned
without charge or trial because they were opposed the war. The Government
was given power to ban meetings that it felt might cause public disorder or
'promote disaffection', and it became an offence to attempt to influence public
opinion 'in a manner likely to be prejudicial to the defence of the realm'.
There was an official ban on strikes, enforced overtime, state direction of
where workers were employed, suspension of agreements regarding working conditions,
internal surveillance, and censorship of the media. When introducing an extension
of the Emergency Powers Act in the Commons in May 1940, Clement Attlee stated:
'It is necessary that the Government should be given complete control
over persons and property, not just some persons of some particular class
of the community, but of all persons, rich and poor, employer and workman,
man or woman, and all property.'
ID cards and the national register were bought in under a separate act: The
National Registration Act 1939. Registration of the whole population was held
on September 29th 1939 and heads of households had to provide information
on each member of the household, including children.
The Register comprised 'all persons in the United Kingdom at the appointed
time' and 'all persons entering or born in the United Kingdom after that time'.
A Schedule to the Act listed 'matters with respect to which particulars are
to be entered in Register'.
These were:
1 . Names,
2. Sex,
3. Age,
4. Occupation, profession, trade or employment,
5. Residence,
6. Condition as to marriage,
7. Membership of Naval, Military or Air Force Reserves or Auxiliary Forces
or of Civil Defence Services or Reserves.
Then as now the introduction of the ID card and register bought with it a
whole new range of criminal offences. Section 6, Sub-section 4, of the Act
stated:
'A constable in uniform, or any person authorised for the purpose under
the said regulations, may require a person who under the regulations is for
the time being responsible for the custody of an Identity card, to produce
the card to him or, if the person so required fails to produce it when the
requirement is made, to produce it within such time, to such person and at
such place as may be prescribed'.
Offences under the Act included giving false information, impersonation, forgery
of an identity card, and unauthorised disclosure of information. For these
offences, maximum penalties on summary conviction were a £50 fine and/
or three months in prison, and on conviction on indictment a £100 fine
and/or two years in prison. It was also an offence to fail to comply with
any other requirement duly made under the Act, or with any regulation made
under it, and the maximum penalty was a £5 fine or one month in prison
or both. The Act applied to the whole of the United Kingdom and was to remain
in force until a date which 'His Majesty may be Order in Council declare
to be the date on which the emergency that was the occasion of the passing
of this Act came to an end'.
Three major reasons were given for the introduction of ID cards and a national
register:
1. The need for complete manpower control and planning, in order to maximise
the efficiency of the war economy.
2. The introduction of rationing required a system of
standardised registration. Rationing was introduced from January 1940.
3. To have up to date information and statistics about the population, the
last census had taken place in 1931.
In addition to the rationing of food and clothes ID cards were required for
all post office transactions. By the time they were withdrawn in 1952, 38
government departments used the ID card and the national register. It was
the police who consistently used the card in their day-to-day dealings with
the public; a demand to see an ID card became a routine event. C.H. Rolph,
an ex-policeman, said:
"The police, who had by now got used to the exhilarating new belief that
they could get anyone's name and address for the asking, went on calling for
their production with increasing frequency. If you picked up a fountain pen
in the street and handed it to a constable, he would ask to see your identity
card in order that he might record your name as that of an honest citizen.
You seldom carried it, and this meant that he had to give you a little pencilled
slip requiring you to produce it at a police station within two days"
Each year, Parliament passed an Emergency Laws (Transitional Provisions) Act,
continuing the effect of selected wartime laws, in 1947 when the registration
system came up for renewal opposition was evident in parliament. During the
debate W S Morrison, a conservative MP, said:
"Now that more than two years have passed since the end of the war,
we ought seriously to consider whether the time is not overdue to get rid
of what was an innovation introduced in order to meet a temporary set of conditions.
There is no doubt that they are troublesome documents to some people. They
frequently get lost, involving the owner in difficulties of one kind or another
simply because he has not got a certain piece of paper. Law-abiding citizens
who live in one community are particularly prone to lose them because they
are known by all their neighbours and do not carry the cards. The dishonest
man - the spiv, as he has been called - is generally possessed, I am told,
of five or six different identity cards which he produces at his pleasure
to meet the changing exigencies of his adventurous career. So in the detection
and prevention of crime no case can be made out for the identity card."
And later in the debate, Morrison went on:
"The argument advanced on second reading - I conceive it to be the
main argument for the retention of these troublesome documents - was that
as long as rationing persists they are necessary. I do not believe it. We
were told in the House the other day that there are 20, 000 deserters still
at large. How have these 20, 000 persons contrived to equip themselves with
food and clothing? Ex hypothesis they cannot be possessed of valid honest
identity cards, but that has not prevented them from sustaining themselves
with food and clothing themselves with raiment without these documents. Therefore,
as a deterrent to the evasion of the rationing arrangements the case is proved
that they are of little or, at the best, of speculative value."
Although this attack did not succeed in getting the system abolished it did
draw a denunciation of identity cards from the Government's spokesman, Aneurin
Bevan:
"I believe that the requirement of an internal passport is more objectionable
than an external passport, and that citizens ought to be allowed to move about
freely without running the risk of being accosted by a policeman or anyone
else, and asked to produce proof of identity."
Clarence
Willcock
On the
7th December 1950, Clarence Willcock - the manager of a dry cleaning service
- was stopped whilst driving down Ballards Lane in Finchley: some accounts
say he was speeding, some that he was driving 'erratically'. He was prosecuted
for speeding. The police officer, PC Harold Muckle, demanded to see Willcock's
ID card. Willcock refused to show PC Muckle his card and is quoted as saying
"I am a liberal, and I am against this sort of thing."
Willcock was presented with a form to produce his card at a police station
within two days; he refused to accept this too and was subsequently summonsed
to appear at Hornsey Magistrates Court (now Hornsey Coroners Court) and charged
under Section 6 sub section 4 of the act.
In the magistrates court Willcock argued that the 'emergency' legislation
introducing ID cards was now redundant because the 'emergency' was now clearly
at an end. His counsel urged the magistrate to "say with pleasure and
with pride that we need not be governed with restrictive rules any longer."
The magistrate, Lieutenant Colonel WE Pringle, found Willcock guilty of not
producing his ID card and of speeding; Willcock was fined 30 shillings and
given an absolute discharge. Pringle disagreed with Willcock's interpretation
of the law but encouraged him to appeal.
In June 1951 the appeal went to the high court and was heard by seven high
court judges including the Chief Justice Lord Goddard (later to become infamous
for hanging Derek Bentley) and the Master of the Rolls. Willcock's defence
team comprised of several leading liberals of the time including AP Marshall
KC, Emrys Roberts MP and Basil Widoger who offered their services pro bono.
The Attorney General, Sir Frank Soskice, appeared as amicus curiae and argued
that Parliament had legislated in 1939 to deal with several manifestations
of the same emergency, or even several overlapping emergencies, and a declaration
that 'the emergency' had ended in relation to one piece of legislation did
not affect the continuance of other emergency powers. The High Court agreed
and Willcock's conviction was upheld. Lord Goddard was damning of the legislation
however, in his summing up he said:
"Because the police have powers, it does not follow that they ought
to exercise them on all occasions as a matter of routine. From what we have
been told it is obvious that the police now, as a matter of routine, demand
the production of national registration indemnity cards
whenever they stop or interrogate a motorist for whatever cause. Of course,
if they are looking for a stolen car or have reason to believe that a particular
motorist is engaged in committing a crime, that is one thing, but to demand
a national registration identity card from all and sundry, for instance, from
a lady who may leave her car outside a shop longer than she should, or some
trivial matter of that sort, is wholly unreasonable. This Act was passed for
security purposes, and not for the purposes for which, apparently, it is now
sought to be used. To use Acts of Parliament, passed for particular purposes
during war, in times when the war is past, except that technically a state
of war exists, tends to turn law-abiding subjects into lawbreakers, which
is a most undesirable state of affairs. Further, in this country we have always
prided ourselves on the good feeling that exists between the police and the
public and such action tends to make the people resentful of the acts of the
police and inclines them to obstruct the police instead of to assist them...
They ought not to use a Security Act, which was passed for a particular purpose,
as they have done in this case. For these reasons, although the court dismisses
the appeal, it gives no costs against the appellant."
Clarence
Willcock and the 'campaign' against ID cards
In most
accounts of these events Willcock is presented as being an average member
of the public; he was, however, politically active. He was a member of Barnet
Liberal Association, had been a independent councillor in Horsforth, Yorkshire
and had stood as the Liberal parliamentary candidate in Barking in 1945 and
in 1950, though he was beaten both times. Willcock's connections to the Liberals
had secured him support for his case in the high court.
The case gave Willcock a public profile that he used to start a campaign against
ID cards. He formed the Freedom Defence Association which was launched, outside
the National Liberal Club, where he ceremonially destroyed his ID card. There
was a well attended public meeting in Hyde Park in August 1951 to launch a
petition to parliament to withdraw the 68 'emergency' measure that had remained
on the statute books since the end of the war. The campaign did not develop
and the withdrawal of ID cards did not appear in the Liberal party manifesto
for the 1952 election. There is, however, a record of four members of the
British Housewives Association staging a card burning protest outside parliament
in April 1951, though the protest was primarily against the continuation of
rationing. Apparently due to high winds and rain only one of the cards was
burnt.
On the 21st February 1952 the Secretary of State for health, H Crookshank,
announced that the ID cards and the national register were to be withdrawn.
It is unlikely that the Clarence Willcock case was directly responsible for
the withdrawal of the scheme, but it was certainly a factor. The 1951 election
returned the conservatives under Churchill, his ambivalence to the emergency
measures was on record. In a Commons debate on 3rd September 1939, he had
said:
"Perhaps it might seem a paradox that a war undertaken in the name
of liberty and right should require as a necessary part of its processes the
surrender for the time being of so many dearly valued liberties and rights.
In these last few days the House of Commons has been voting dozens of Bills
which hand over to the executive our most dearly valued traditional liberties.
We are sure that these liberties will be in hands which will not abuse them,
which will cherish and guard them, and we should look forward to the day,
surely and confidently, when our liberties and rights will be restored to
us and when we will be able to share them with the peoples to whom such blessings
are unknown."
In 1951 Churchill campaigned against Atlee's Labour government under the slogan
'Set the people free' and proceeded to abolish ID cards as part of his 'bonfire
of controls' and general deregulation. The reason Crookshank gave for their
withdrawal was a financial one; the government would save £1 million.
It's doubtful whether the ID card scheme would have remained if the Labour
party has succeeded in the 1951 election, in 1944 while the war was still
on, the Registrar General, Sir Ernest Holderness, had said he did "not
believe that public opinion would stand for the retention of national registration
in it's present form." He knew that as rationing was phased out any public
support for the ID card would dwindle.
The Willcock case did have an a effect on police behaviour. Statistics are
not available for the war time period but in 1949, 521 people were convicted
of offences against the national
registration act. In 1950, 470 (409 men, 61 women) were charged, 436 were
convicted, 19 cases were otherwise disposed of, and 15 were dismissed. In
1951, 273 (232 men, 41 women) were charged, 235 were convicted, 16 otherwise
disposed of, and 22 dismissed. In 1952 only 8 people were charged, of whom
3 were convicted.
...and
2006:
Introducing 'Entitlement Cards' and the response in
Haringey
Calls to
reintroduce and ID card scheme have been a regular occurrence in parliament
since 1952. Most have been private members bills and have cited football hooliganism,
crime or terrorism as reasons for reintroduction, all were rejected because
of cost or threats to privacy. In 1995 the Major government issued a green
paper for consultation. Tony Blair said;
"We all suffer crime, the poorest and vulnerable most of all, it
is the duty of the government to protect them. But we can make choices in
spending too. And instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory
ID cards as the Tory Right demand, let that money
provide thousands of extra police officers on the beat in our local
communities."
There was considerable public and Cabinet opposition. The proposal was dropped
in 1996.
Following the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001 ID cards were on the
agenda again and in July 2002 another consultation paper for 'entitlement'
cards was published. The name has changed but the bill has now received royal
assent and the government is in the process of implementation.
In late 2004 Haringey Solidarity Group organised a public meeting to discuss
opposing the introduction of ID cards in Haringey. The meeting led to the
establishment of the group Haringey Against ID Cards (HAIDC). The group has
been active in raising awareness of the implications of ID cards and in organising
resistance. The group has:
• run two relatively well attended public meetings,
• lobbied councillors and MPs,
• run stunts like "police checkpoints" where we dress in toy
police helmets and high visibility jackets, to "check" for ID cards,
• produced leaflets, pledge forms, window posters, stickers, and badges,
• had stalls nearly every weekend at shopping areas where many thousands
have signed the Pledge to resist the ID system, and collected names of 800
people who say they want more
information about the campaign and its activities,
• demonstrated outside the Home Office building and in Westminster Square,
• produced a banner and an occasional newsletter for
information
• tried to get Haringey Council to follow the example of many other
councils and Assemblies and reject the ID system
• moved a successful resolution at the national Trades Union Council
Annual Conference of Trades Councils against ID, one of many on this theme.
Learning
from the past
The government
has obviously learnt from the past uses of ID cards in the UK. The Registrar
General for the ID card scheme during the second world war - Sylvanus Percival
Vivian - talked about giving the card 'parasitic vitality': the only way people
would keep the card was if it was linked to something they needed. The national
register of the Second World War was
intimately tied to rationing. The present government estimates that over 44000
private enterprises may be using the card and the National Identity Register
and has been 'consulting' government departments about what uses they could
find for the card and the register. The scheme has already been linked to
the DVLA and automatic number plate recognition.
The next steps
Even though
the ID card scheme of the Second World War was bought in as an emergency measure
it survived longer during peacetime than it did during the war. Is there a
similar
emergency today? How will we know when it's over? How can we make this system
unworkable?
Sources/further reading
Jon Agar, 'Identity cards in Britain: past experience and policy implications'
http://www.historyandpolicy.org/archive/policy-paper-33.html
Ryan Dilley, 'When the British
fought off ID cards'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3129302.stm
Mark Egan, 'Harry Willcock:
the forgotten champion of Liberalism', Journal of Liberal Democrat History
17: Winter 1997-98
www.liberalhistory.org.uk/files/upid-journal17.pdf
Wendy M. Grossman, 'Identifying
Risks: National Identity Cards', Lecture delivered at the University of Edinburgh
on January 19, 2005
www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrb/script-ed/vol2-l/idcards.pdf
Sean Gabb, 'A Libertarian Conservative Case Against identity Cards', Political Notes No. 98 http://www.spunk.org/texts/otherpol/examples/sp2000862.txt
Jim Fussell, 'Group Classification
on National ID Cards as a Factor in Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing' http://www.preventgenocide.org/prevent/removing-facilitating-factors/IDcards/
Statewatch, 'Identity cards in the UK - a lesson from history'
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2003/jul/26ukid.htm
Statewatch, 'The origins of Emergency Powers Acts in the UK'
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2003/jun/23bcivil.htm
BBC News, 'Asylum seekers given 'smart' ID cards'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1793151.stm
Arun Kundnani, 'ID cards: implications for Black, Minority Ethnic, migrant
and refugee communities' http://www.irr.org.uk/2005/may/ak000010.html
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