The bust card: policing, race, welfare, drugs and the counterculture in 1960s Britain

Bust cards first emerged in the late 1960s as a way of obtaining help following arrest, giving the user the number of a 24-hour telephone line to call on arrival at the police station. In the 2020s, bust cards are used by direct action groups involved in civil disobedience campaigns, but tracing the bust cards back reveals that their original purpose was different. The bust card was a novel way of enabling an individual to push back against the immediate experience of hostile policing, whilst enabling organisers to collate information on what was happening. By foregrounding the object and examining its creation and development, this article explores how various influences, initiatives and imperatives intersected, and how activist ideas or tools spread across groups. As this article demonstrates, the bust card became part of wider activism to reform the criminal justice system. It was also about pushing to remake the relationship between the state and marginalised individuals, whether that was through an interaction with the police or through accessing public services.