ABSTRACT
Citizenship at that time was perceived mainly in terms of the enjoyment of state protection against the social evils of the pre-war years in return for a general levy of tax contributions linked to the capacity to pay. The word citizen was then scarcely used in Britain. We were and remain subjects of the Crown, not citizens of a republic. There were a few reminders of the obligations of citizenship. National service, whereby the vast majority of
the young male population were called up for two years’ military service, was not finally ended until the early 1960s. Citizens were called upon to do jury service, and, of course, citizens were expected to pay their taxes, obey the law and behave in a neighbourly fashion. Those who possessed a British passport noted that they enjoyed the ‘National Status of British Citizen,?’ and that ‘Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary’. This was heady stuff, redolent of the Empire, but the daily reality though mundane was very different after the war from what it had been before 1939. The Beveridge reforms that together constituted the welfare state were based on a broad measure of consensus between all political parties. There had been a cultural shift towards equal opportunity, mutual protection, subsidized housing and free health and education for everyone. This welfare consensus remained unchallenged until the mid-1970s.
