ABSTRACT
This chapter indicates that the British government’s interest in gathering and using population data is a comparatively recent development. Thus, in recent years governments have sought to develop the kind of data systems that they rejected out of hand after the Second World War. This chapter states that the book will argue that this change was fostered by the 1964 election of the Labour government under Harold Wilson. It is shown here that the changes inaugurated at this time have continued ever since as the same attitude has shaped the thinking of all governments since then. This here is defined as being a biopolitical mind set as defined by Michel Foucault. This is, he argues, the essence of modern politics, and the argument here is that the genesis of the modern British data state should be located in this modernisation of British government structures and attitudes that began in this period and continues to this day.
