Citizenship and Identity

A chapter on citizenship, if less so in respect of identity, may be thought to sit oddly in a book called Fundamentals in British Politics, for it can be argued that citizenship is far from fundamental to British political praxis. Citizenship as a status replacing subjecthood came into being only in 1948 and more consequentially in 1983 (when the 1981 British Nationality Act came into force) (Gardner, 1997: 5). Moreover the legal foundations of citizens’ rights are variable in the different parts of the United Kingdom and, in general, complex. This can be construed positively, as it is by John Patten (Mount, 1992: 33–4), on grounds of adaptability, or negatively because of the fragility and uncertainty of rights (Klug et al, 1996; Gardner, 1997).