ID cards: the State makes hay whilst the sun shines
So suddenly we're going to have national, compulsory identity cards with "biometric" information. Just a few days back the BBC reports that trials are about to start on cards with the idea of making them compulsory in 10 years, then Diddy David Blunkett, who sounds more like a Sun-reading cabbie with every day that passes, blitzes us today with the news that yes, ID cards are coming, they'll be compulsory in 7 years, and you'll be fined 2.5 grand for not having one (not wanting to create "martyrs" by using criminal sanctions - so very, very British). Just when you thought the British State couldn't get any more authoritarian, it suddenly does. Not that ID cards are a surprise, having been flagged by Blunkett, Blair et al for yonks, and before them the Tories, but the obvious question to ask is: why?
Well, yer man Blunkett has all the usual, and some not so usual pretexts: terrorism, crime, illegal immigration. benefit fraud. And what right-minded Sun/Mail/Express/Times-reading person could possibly be against measures that might save even one life from terrorist action, or one house from being burgled, or help put drug barons away? Only bleeding-heart liberals, subversives and anarchists could possibly object, and we know what should be done with them, don't we? If you're a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide you've nothing to fear, eh? You can trust the State with your life and your liberty. If you've nothing to hide then you can't object to the State doing anything. Random searches of homes, random arrests, DNA samples forcibly extracted from everyone suspected of a crime, DNA records taken at birth, licence plate recognition enabling nationwide tracking of cars, CCTV on every street and in every building - you've nothing to fear if you've nothing to hide, and if you protest then that's prima facie evidence that you do have something to hide, sunshine, and perhaps we ought to pay you a little visit.
Each one of the pretexts for ID cards can be, and have been, easily demolished. A VIth form debating club could tear the flimsy justifications of the Blair regime to shreds. Hell, a group of primary schoolers would be in with a fighting chance. And the Guardian and liberal mags are full of the counter-arguments to ID cards, and of liberals astonished that their government, their Tony, isn't taking the slightest bit of notice of these arguments. How can the Blairistas go ahead with ID cards when it's so obvious that they'll never work in their stated aims? The sense of outraged hurt and incomprehension is palpable when you read liberal commentaries on the issue. But of course they completely miss the point - identity cards aren't being introduced to combat crime, or terrorism, or asylum seekers, or drug dealers, or roving bands of rogue hamsters, they're being introduced because they can be! The State can do it, wants to do it, it needs to do it to keep the lid on present and future social conflict, and because it can it will do it. The State couldn't give a flying fuck about terrorists or crims or immigrants - these are just red herrings, smoke screens. What it does give a fuck about is controlling the population so that Capital can continue to make profits and workers can't do piss-all about it. In times of chronic economic decline and consequently increased social conflict, preserving the God-given right of the ruling classes to screw the rest of us means keeping tabs on anyone who might make trouble and giving State agents the power to lock them up and/or crack their heads. It's that simple.
Ah well, that's authoritarian Britain for you. All too sadly predictable for the last couple of decades: relative economic decline, greater wealth disparity, workers being forced to work more and longer for less in worse conditions, high unemployment, de-skilling, industrial destruction - all point to increasing social conflict and thus the need for greater coercive powers by the State. And what better time for the State to bolster its powers to unprecedented levels, of which Big Brother would be properly envious, than now, when there is no, repeat no, opposition in or, more importantly, outside parliament. No unions, no political parties, no extraparliamentary groups, no crusties, no anarchists, no Trots, no nothing. Add to this a brainwashed and reactionary working class with all the political consciousness of a stunned bumblebee, a middle class increasingly fearful of the great unwashed and the degradation of their fragile 'property portfolios' and savings, the whole population gripped by fear of terrorists/criminals/pedophiles/homicidal hamsters/{insert folk devil of choice}, and a virulently reactionary and racist media, and you've got a clear run for the State to do whatever it wants. And it knows it.
So the State is making hay whilst there's zero opposition. That's why there's been such a raft of authoritarian measures over the last decade or so. Yes, the State always has a tendency to accrete power, but that's usually counteracted by oppositional forces. What better time to bring in these measures when the opposition has been put out of action for years, decades, going back to the defeat of the miners? Oh, once all these "security measures" bite and "innocent" people find themselves being arrested, street-searched, investigated, and generally given a hard time, then there'll be an outcry. People will rage against State oppression, they'll write letters to papers and to their MPs, they might even try to take to the streets (and get arrested for their troubles), and they'll ask: how did we allow this to come about? (An old Yank joke: a conservative is a liberal who's just been mugged, and a liberal is a conservative who's just been arrested.)
But by that time it'll be way, way too late. And it'll be very difficult to avoid saying: it's your own fucking fault, you dimwits. Did you really think you could trust the State and its agents? Did you really think that the cops and the spooks have your wellbeing and happiness at heart? Do you never read any bloody history? There's an old saying that the people get the government they deserve, and that is so true with the British. Or, rather, the English - I exclude most Scots from the mass of the braindead and brainwashed. The sooner the Picts get their bloody independence before being dragged down by England the better for them. And with luck the way England's going will strengthen the case for getting the fuck away from Ing-er-land toot sweet.
