ABSTRACT
Citizenship discourse in twentieth-century Britain has tended to be associated with the problem of social inclusion and, more specifically, especially after the Second World War, with the nature of state welfare. Historically, the British conception of the relationship between the individual and the state has borne the influence of the concept of subjecthood. Indeed, it was only with the enactment of the British Nationality Act of 1948 that the concept of a 'citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies' was introduced as a sub-category within the status of a 'British subject'. To a large extent, the fact that a more active conception of citizenship was proposed in the first period, and a more passive one in the second, may be seen to reflect the effects of applying two different intellectual approaches to the conceptualisation of citizenship, rather than a strictly ideological difference. Idealist approach and 'positivistic' postwar approach are the two different intellectual approaches.
