Harry Willcock

He is best remembered for being the last person in the United Kingdom to be prosecuted for refusing to produce an identity card, a wartime requirement introduced in 1939 but which was continued after the war by the post-war Attlee government.

Willcock was born in Alverthorpe, Wakefield, Yorkshire, the illegitimate son of Harry Cruickshank, a native of Leeds who worked in the textile trade, and Ella Brooke, whose family were wholesalers to tailors.

[1] He was active in Liberal politics – a councillor and magistrate in Horsforth – then stood for Parliament as candidate in Barking in 1945 and 1950, coming third – last (at the first exceeding 12.5% of the vote, at which his deposit was refunded).

[1] To the Highgate justices, he argued that the power to require the production of such a card had lapsed when the state of emergency which led to the passage of the Act had expired.

He appealed the guilty but no-reprimand verdict to the High Court by way of case stated (meaning the bench agreed a certified point of law had arisen).

A majority of the Court (Lord Goddard CJ, Somervell and Jenkins LJJ, Hilbery and Lynskey JJ; against Evershed MR and Devlin J dubitantibus) held that the Act remained in force, as no Order in Council had specifically terminated it.

In a publicity event, he tore up his own identity card in front of the National Liberal Club, inspiring in April 1951 a similar action for the press outside Parliament by the British Housewives' League.

[1] The Party's stance to the campaign was soon cast as 'half-hearted', possibly as he was aligned with the free-trade wing – the issue of identity cards was left out of its manifesto for the 1951 elections.