Cheshire Cat
The most curious thing..
The concept of an ID card is fundamentally un-British and anti-libertarian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006
"The World War I identity card scheme was highly unpopular, though accepted in the light of the prevailing national emergency. It is possible to take a small measure of how the national identity scheme was received from remarks by the historian A. J. P. Taylor in his English History, 1914–1945, where he describes the whole thing as an "indignity" and talks of the Home Guard "harassing" people for their cards.[63]
After the Second World War the government of Clement Attlee decided to continue the scheme in the face of the Cold War and the perceived Soviet threat, though it grew ever less popular. In the mind of the public it was more and more associated with bureaucratic interference and regulation, reflected, most particularly, in the 1949 comedy film Passport to Pimlico. Identity cards also became the subject of a celebrated civil liberties case in 1950. Clarence Henry Willcock, a member of the Liberal Party, refused to produce his after being stopped by the police. During his subsequent trial he argued that identity cards had no place in peace time, a defence rejected by the magistrate’s court. In his subsequent appeal, Willcock v Muckle, the judgment of the lower court was upheld.
Protest reached Parliament, where the Conservative and Liberal peers voiced their anger over what they saw as "Socialist card-indexing". After the defeat of the Labour Government in the general election of October 1951 the incoming Conservative administration of Winston Churchill was pledged to get rid of the scheme, "to set the people free", in the words of one minister. Cheers rang out when on 21 February 1952 the Minister for Health, Harry Crookshank, announced in the House of Commons that national identity cards were to be scrapped. This was a popular move, adopted against the wishes of the police and the security services, though the decision to repeal the 1939 legislation was, in significant part, driven by the need for economies. By 1952 national registration was costing £500,000 per annum (equivalent to £13,000,000 in 2015) and required 1500 civil servants to administer it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006
"The World War I identity card scheme was highly unpopular, though accepted in the light of the prevailing national emergency. It is possible to take a small measure of how the national identity scheme was received from remarks by the historian A. J. P. Taylor in his English History, 1914–1945, where he describes the whole thing as an "indignity" and talks of the Home Guard "harassing" people for their cards.[63]
After the Second World War the government of Clement Attlee decided to continue the scheme in the face of the Cold War and the perceived Soviet threat, though it grew ever less popular. In the mind of the public it was more and more associated with bureaucratic interference and regulation, reflected, most particularly, in the 1949 comedy film Passport to Pimlico. Identity cards also became the subject of a celebrated civil liberties case in 1950. Clarence Henry Willcock, a member of the Liberal Party, refused to produce his after being stopped by the police. During his subsequent trial he argued that identity cards had no place in peace time, a defence rejected by the magistrate’s court. In his subsequent appeal, Willcock v Muckle, the judgment of the lower court was upheld.
Protest reached Parliament, where the Conservative and Liberal peers voiced their anger over what they saw as "Socialist card-indexing". After the defeat of the Labour Government in the general election of October 1951 the incoming Conservative administration of Winston Churchill was pledged to get rid of the scheme, "to set the people free", in the words of one minister. Cheers rang out when on 21 February 1952 the Minister for Health, Harry Crookshank, announced in the House of Commons that national identity cards were to be scrapped. This was a popular move, adopted against the wishes of the police and the security services, though the decision to repeal the 1939 legislation was, in significant part, driven by the need for economies. By 1952 national registration was costing £500,000 per annum (equivalent to £13,000,000 in 2015) and required 1500 civil servants to administer it."
