Rise Against Digital IDs

Rise opposes the proposed introduction of mandatory digital IDs in Britain. The so called “Brit card” that Keir Starmer, the most unpopular Prime Minister in modern history, wants to introduce is presented as a silver bullet to deal with “illegal immigration”. It has also been suggested (by Labour MPs, the Tony Blair Institute and others) that digital IDs would allow for the “modernising” of the British state and public services.

To be clear, employers are already required to confirm the eligibly of employees to work in Britain. The fact that many don’t, and exploit migrant labour, is because of Britain’s appalling immigration system, which excludes migrants and forces them into exploitative jobs on the black market, and because of Britains inadequate regulation of employers and protection of workers.

So, in truth, the proposed digital IDs are not about “dealing with illegal migration”, except as a pretext and rhetorically playing to a racist minority.

Instead, what these IDs represent is another assault on the democratic freedoms of the British working class. In recent years we have seen the rights to free speech, protest, and privacy hollowed out by successive governments. The push for digital IDs represents another step in the this process of authoritarian decline.

As the crisis confronting the working class deepens on multiple fronts (collapsing living standards, climate breakdown, war) any move to further empower Britain’s surveillance and security state, is a direct assault on the rights of working class people, and their capacity to organise against a system which is wholly inadequate to their needs.

Alongside infringing our democratic rights and strengthening the coercive arm of the state, digital IDs will exclude and marginalise specific groups, such as racialised minorities, disabled people and the elderly. This will compound the inequality and exclusion these sections of our class already experience.

The entire capitalist system is in a state of structural crisis and decline, and the working class bear the brunt of this. Ruling classes the world over, unable to think beyond capitalism, respond to opposition to this worsening crisis by aggressively policing and repressing the working class and wider social movements.

Rise has stated clearly before that it is only the working class that can stand against this tide of authoritarian decline. All of the most sacred rights enjoyed by people in Britain today, were won by the struggles of the working classes over centuries. The defence of these rights is, thus, a central obligation on all of us, and one we must be resolute in fulfilling.