A Question of Identity

This Green and Surprisingly Pleasant Land explores the stubborn British resistance to identity cards

The British can be perverse in ways that are charming, bizarre and downright annoying. The  Great British resistance to the introduction of a national identity card system fits squarely into the latter category.

Although the card issue is endlessly debated most politicians have consigned it to the ‘too hard’ bin. However the former Home Secretary David Blunkett, has recently had another go at getting identity card introduced but, as ever, he did so in negative terms rather than by extoling the obvious benefits of having an easy to use identity document.

Mr Blunkett sees identity cards as a means of screening out illegal immigrants. He may have a point  but surely the main reason for introducing national identity cards is the convenience they will offer to citizens currently required to produce all manner of documents to establish who they are. The bottom line is that identity cards are easy to use, save time and are by far the easiest way of confirming a person's identity.

The proof of the need for a national identity card system is that Britain in fact has a de-facto identity card system but it is a typical British mishmash. The mishmash employs  driving licenses as a means of establishing identity. The problem is that this is not a universal system and excludes those who do not drive, mainly the young, the poor without cars and the elderly who have given up driving. In other words Britain has an identity card system but it is selective and therefore grossly unfair.

Practically every other country of the world has stopped messing about and issues identity cards. In Britain the messing about is endless and causes endless problems. A good example being concern over voter fraud, the alleged reason for bringing in new regulations for voters to prove their identity. But that’s far from easy for people without a driving license who have to find other cumbersome means of establishing their right to vote. The net result is that many do not bother and voter turnout has dropped. There are many other examples of obstacles thrown up to confront anyone without a driving licence as I repeatedly discovered upon returning to live in Britain without a UK driving license to hand.

Instead of drawing a logical conclusion from this mess we prefer to make do with a system bizarrely dependent on driving licenses in an age where we are being encouraged to do less driving.

This is bonkers and the opponents of  introducing identity cards know it, so they gloss over questions of convenience and head straight for the comfort spot of spouting nonsense about the right of Britons to be free of the onerous need to prove who they are.

The faux patriots suggest that the introduction of identity cards will be yet another step in creating a ‘non-British’ surveillance state. These naïve souls have not been paying attention because in the modern age of mass electronic surveillance the Good Ship Anonymity sailed long ago and is already cruising in deep waters.

Yet fears about state surveillance of citizens are not groundless and are indeed a problem in authoritarian nations where an oppressive government transforms the business of identity cards into a means of keeping track of the people under its control. It does not follow that a functioning democracy, with mechanisms to ensure accountability, will ape the ways of dictatorships.

However the sneaking suspicion lingers that all this talk about surveillance is merely a smokescreen to cover the idiocy of the flag wavers whose real objection to identity cards is their foreignness. These are the same morons who made a fuss over UK citizens being given red passports in the bad old days when Britain was part of the European Union. Things have improved since ‘liberation’ from the EU as valiant Britons discover the pleasures of restricted movement within Europe and join long passport queues alongside all kinds of Johnny Foreigner.

It is also worth remembering that Britain had identity cards during World War II, a system that  ended in 1952. And in 2010 a law was passed bringing them back into being. Thankfully the dreaded threat of commonsense were blown away in a gust of patriotic unease that restored the status quo of inconvenience.

Pleasure of the Week

One of the pleasures of reading The Times is that it always includes a dispatch from its archives. I particularly enjoyed an article from 1924 reporting on the purges of the then Russian Communist Party producing the need to recruit a great number of new members. Quantity rather quality characterised the recruitment process as exemplified when one of the new members asked, ‘what was the maximum amount of spirits a Communist was allowed to drink.’  Bless.