Kevin Manton teaches History and Politics at SOAS and Birkbeck, London. He researches modern British history and is the author of Population Registers and Privacy in Britain, 1936-1982 (2019).

This political history studies the phenomenal growth of the modern British state's interest in collecting, collating and deploying population data.

Introduction / Chapter 1: The British Government's Approach to Population Data c1945-64 / Chapter 2: Government 1964-1979 and the Growth of the Modern Data State / Chapter 3: Government Data Systems 1964-1979 / Chapter 4: Government 1979-97: Developing and Re-purposing the Data State / Chapter 5: The British People, Government Data and the 1984 Data Protection Act / Chapter 6: Data Systems 1979-1997 (1), The Electoral Register, The Poll Tax Register and Data Linkage / Chapter 7: Data Systems 1979-1997 (2), Driving Licences and ID Cards / Chapter 8: Data Systems 1979-1997 (3), The Government Data Network, the Information Society Initiative and government.direct / Chapter 9: Government Data Security, the British People and Computers, and the 1998 Data Protection Act / Conclusion