In the highest degree odious : detention without trial in wartime Britain

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Bibliographic Information

In the highest degree odious : detention without trial in wartime Britain

A.W. Brian Simpson

Clarendon Press , Oxford University Press, 1992

  • : pbk

Other Title

Detention without trial in wartime Britain

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [436]-442) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

During World War II a very considerable number of people were detained by the British Government without charge known to the law, or trial, or term set, on the broad ground that this was necessary for national security. Most of those held were not British Citizens, but were technically enemy aliens - in fact most of them were European refugees. A far smaller number of those detained were British citizens, and they were held under Regulation 18B of the Defence Regulations, the procedures for which operated largely in secret. It is with these people and this regulation that this book is concerned. Although Winston Churchill was not responsible for the regulation itself, he was an enthusiast for its extensive use in 1940. But later in the war he came to feel increasingly unhappy about the violation of civil liberty over which he had presided, and the title of this book makes use of a quotation from his telegram on Regulation 18B. Using primary sources this study sets out to remove the veil of secrecy which has, until now, surrounded this practice.

Table of Contents

  • The invention of executive detention
  • Regulation 14B and its progeny
  • emergency planning between the wars
  • the Commons Revolt
  • detention during the Phoney War
  • the defeat of liberalism
  • fascism and the fears of 1940
  • the British Fifth Column
  • the great incarceration begins
  • it might have happened to you
  • the experience of detention
  • the bureaucracy under stress
  • the integrity of the advisory committee
  • the early challenges in the courts
  • the courts in confusion
  • the web of suspicion
  • the leading cases in context
  • the declining years of Regulation 18B
  • death and post mortem
  • the principal texts
  • notes on sources
  • spy trials
  • Tyler Kent and Anna Wolkoff
  • Moseley's "reasons for order".

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