New Labour looks determined to introduce identity cards. Here are some of the reasons socialists and anticapitalists are against them. • They will mean that you will be under a lot more survelllance by the state. To obtain a card you will have to provide scans of your irises, face and
] You will need them to access health services, social security or get a job. They are really about excluding people.
• All the information they hold about you will be accessible to the police and "security
The experience of other European countries shows that young, non-white people are much more likely to be asked to show their ID card than
anyone else. In France young people of North African descent
say they can be asked to show their ID card several times a
week.
• The government's talk about
using them to protect us from
and terrorism is rubbish.
They are used to monitor and
intimidate peopie.
• The data they hold are used
to develop "profilos" of potental terrorists, o.g. young
Musilm engineering studonts.
• They are a core element of
Now Labour's attacks on civil
lbertles. You will be asked to
produce It at domonstrations
and picket lines.
• They don't help reduce
crime. I's usually lack of evidence that prevents police from Charles Clarke: another reason to oppose id cards prosecuting, not failure to Identity people. Even the most sophisticated credit cards are eventually copled and ID cards wlll make it easier for datermined criminals and terrorists to assume a range of false Identities. • ID cards will make life even more miserable for people working illegally. Employers will threaten to report to the police workers who complain against slave wages and cond tons. • The law will have a whole range of new offences directed at people who retuse to cooperate with the system. These Include: refusal to obey an order from the Secretary of State, to nottfy authortties out a last, s stolen, damged or defectiv e card, fallure
to renew a card, failure to
submit to fingerprinting, and
fallure to provi demanded by the goverment • The scheme is a shocking and huge waste of money: the cards, and the system required to enforce and read them will cost between £12 billon and £18 billion to Introduce and run - equivalent to a quarter of the NHS budget. This at a time when ministers are questioning whether the country can afford decent pensions. I If you neaded any more reasons to fight the scheme, remember it Is the sick brainchild of David Blunkett and the most authortarlan wing of the Blalrite gang: and the scheme will be pushed through by Charles Clarke. Any prospect of defeating them should be reason enough to have a gol
To find out about
campaigning plans in
your area see. www.no2id.net Poll Tax its flagship policy.
Today, Tony Blair, despite his much-reduced parliamentary majority, seems to have decided to adopt another potentially highly unpopular measure - the introduction of compulsory ID cards - as his personal swansong.
Thatcher was brought down (in November 1990), in part at least, by her failure to realise just how unpopular the Poll Tax was and therefore just how widespread and mil itant the resistance to it would be.
It is unlikely that Blair will be brought down in the same way, as ID cards will not become obligatory for another 8 years and by then (hopefully) Blair will be long gone.
However, in so far as imposing ID cards on us is part of the New Labour project, rather than a measure just
bearing Blair's stamp, it is
clearly necessary to build the
campaign against ID cards in
the here and now.
The experience of the mass
civil disobedience, which
destroyed the Poll Tax, may
therefore provide lessons for
today
The campaign against the
Poll Tax really kicked off
in1989 when at council meeting after council meeting
anti-Poll Tax protestors
stormed or attended council
meetings in some numbers to
protest against their council
voting to adopt the tax.
The single most dramatic
moment of the campaign was
the massive demonstration
(including many protestors
from so-called
England) in central London
on March 31 1990.
This resulted in a riot, or
shall we say carnival of the
oppressed, provoked by the