name, age, occupation, and address although for the vast majority of people the card carried no photograph. Under the act people were obliged to carry them at all times and could be fined £5 (or imprisoned, or both) if they did not. The 1939 Act laid down that the police had the power to require anyone to produce their card when asked or at a police station within two days.

            In a wartime situation, with other civil liberties curtailed, there was little overt opposition to the carrying of identity cards. This was possibly because ID cards, in conjunction with ration books, were necessary to claim allowances of food and other goods. It is unclear how often most people were ever asked to show them. Given the extreme simplicity of these early ID cards, which gave little more than a name and address, it could be asked if they had any real value at all? Certainly, a Nazi forger or a British 'spiv' involved in black-market activities would have had little difficulty in forging one.  Before the war ended there were some who doubted whether ID cards could be retained in the long term. Even the Government official in charge of registration, Sir Ernest Holderness, said in October 1944, that he did not believe that public opinion would stand for the retention of ID cards in peacetime. Yet for administrative reasons the government saw fit to keep them in being long after the war had ended and Parliament was asked to renew this 'emergency' legislation annually. One of their arguments was that ID cards were necessary as long as rationing existed. However this was challenged by some MPs during the 1947 debate. Using the governments own figures that there were 20,000 deserters from Britain's armed forces at large in the country one MP asked how these people had managed to feed and clothe themselves without valid identity cards, thus questioning the usefulness of these "troublesome documents" as he called them. There were hints of criticism too from the government bench during the debate. Aneurin Bevan declared  "citizens ought to be allowed to move about freely without the risk of being accosted by a policeman or anyone else, and asked to produce proof of identity. Yet identity cards continued to be required by law and prosecutions were brought against those who broke the rules. In 1949 521 people were convicted of offences against the National Registration Act and in 1950 the figure was 436.

             It was a prosecution in 1951, however, which was to herald the end of the wartime identity card. The unlikely champion in this struggle was a  54 year old Liberal activist by the name of Clarence Henry Willcock (better known as Harry Willcock). Wilcock had been born in Alverthrorpe, Yorkshire in 1896. During the 1930s he had served as a Liberal councillor and magistrate in Horsforth, Leeds but by 1945 was living in London. As well as being the manager of a London dry cleaning firm, Willcock was also a political activist and contested the Barking constituency as a Liberal during the 1945 and 1950 parliamentary elections.