Renegotiating Citizenship through the Lens of the ‘People’s War’ in Second World War Britain

Abstract

This article re-examines the importance of the ‘people’s war’ by exploring the word history of the phrase. The article shows that the term was widely used and understood on the British home front during the Second World War. Our focus is on how it provided a framework to renegotiate citizenship. Drawing on a wide range of popular newspapers, magazines and life writing, we argue that the ‘people’s war’ was a flexible concept. It was used, on the one hand, to explain extensions to the duties of citizenship and encourage participation, and, on the other, to demand a greater voice, recognition and rewards for citizens. This shaped the lived experience of wartime, and provided a language for ‘ordinary people’, as well as politicians and the press, to articulate their demands in the present and hopes for the future. We argue that the ‘people’s war’ remains an important historical concept. The process of negotiation through the lens of the ‘people’s war’ not only sheds light on wartime experience; it also suggests new ways to think through vernacular understandings of citizenship and the relationship between the people and the state, in the post-war world and beyond.