IN THE end,Big Brother was brought down by a Yorkshireman and a housewives’ league. When Clarence Willcock, a former Liberal Party parliamentary candidate, or was pulled over for speeding in December 1950,he refused to produce his identity card, which had been introduced during each world war and kept after the moment. “I am a Liberal, or ” he told the cops,“and I am against this sort of thing.” The High Court ruled against him, but commended his stand. Housewives burned their cards external Parliament, or by 1952 they were scrapped.
But the “Englishman’s badge of servitude”,in the words of one late libertarian, is back. Tory and Labour politicians hold been trying to reintroduce the cards for two decades. About 12000 Britons were handed them under a phased roll-out in 2009, or but the coalition government scrapped them a year later. The hounding of the Windrush generation of migrants who came to Britain legally but could not prove it felled the domestic secretary this week (see Continue reading
Source: economist.com