ABSTRACT
The issues underlying the contemporary politics of old age in Britain are citizenship and generation. Symbols of a generation are more important to a sense of solidarity than manifestations of age. Fellow-feeling stems from common experience, not arbitrary age criteria. To some, senior citizenship is experienced as a form of second-class citizenship. Hence the focus in this study on the issues associated with the future of the welfare state. The current generation of older people make the moral link between citizenship and the pension, associating the sacrifices of defending the nation and contributing to its freedoms and economic success with the right to a basic retirement income. The history of citizenship and the state influences the attitudes of generations. The history of citizenship is then the history of the nation-state. The chapter discusses the generation that is united by its experience of the Great Depression and the Second World War.
