Campaign for Democracy in the UK

ID Cards
Discussion Forums

New Labour is now planning to make ID cards compulsory after saying for ages that they would be voluntary. The proposal will probably appear in the Queen’s Speech, indicating that they want legislation passed in the next parliamentary year. Most people in Britain are opposed to the proposal, which would be a massive attack on our civil liberties.

I, Steve Wallis, the initiator of the Campaign and maintainer of this website, started taking up this issue in early 2003. I handed out copies of resolutions (based on the draft resolution that you can read by clicking here) at socialist and anti-war meetings (including the conference that planned the 2 million strong anti-war demo in London), plus meetings of the Independent Manchester United Supporters Association (since ID cards could be used to prevent people with season tickets passing on tickets for individual matches to their friends). I did not just argue for opposition to ID cards before they become law, but for defiance of the law afterwards. Now that the ID cards are to become compulsory, there will be bigger opportunities for activities in defiance of the law.

I set up the Campaign for Democracy in the UK to organise for more democratic rights and also to oppose erosion of the democratic rights that we already have. There is already a lot of surveillance of individuals in the UK, but information about us is spread out on different computer systems that are not compatible with each other. The ID cards proposal would put a lot of information about all of us in one central computer for the first time, enabling the state to harass and persecute left-wing activists to a much greater degree than they have been able to already. Since I have been persecuted by the British state (see my socialist home page for further information), I feel very strongly about this issue. Others do too, and I have heard the ID cards proposal being compared to George Orwell’s vision of the future in his book “1984”.

I don’t believe that ID cards will significantly cut down on crime or terrorism, and even if they did, the cost for our freedom would be too great. Besides, the surveillance techniques that the state already has, which are used by organisations like MI5, MI6 and Special Branch, are sufficient to neutralise organisations like the Real IRA and Al’Qaeda; hence the lack of terrorist attacks in the UK (and similarly the USA) since 9/11. [Incidentally, there is a significant amount of evidence that the US security services knew about 9/11 before it happened, as revealed in Michael Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 9/11.] In my opinion, George W Bush and Tony Blair are on the same side as Osama bin Laden and Muqtada al-Sadr – they want to portray the main struggle in the world as a struggle between “freedom” or “democracy” and “terrorism” rather than between capitalism and socialism.

I have an anti-ID cards website as part of my socialist website, which you can access by clicking here. I have set up a related ‘anti-id-cards’ discussion group. Other relevant websites are listed below:

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