ABSTRACT
Defence regulation 18B provided the secretary of the state with powers to detain people without trial, and it was to be a constant feature of the emergency regulations available to the government from September 1939 to the end of the European war. The importance of this is that is shows the extent to which the concept of civil liberties can be highly relative -both in the terms of the people who use it and the circumstances in which it is used. Turning to the grounds of ‘hostile association or origin’, it was often suggested that most people so detained were of the enemy origin although technically British subjects. Apart from the fact that someone of the enemy origin was not necessarily a fascist, it also seems likely that some British communists, pacifists or other radicals were detained on these grounds.
