POLITICS
Noddy and national ID cards: a case of mistaken identity
NOEL MALCOLM
ne of the few interesting facts to emerge from the great debate about foot- ball supporters' identity cards is that almost no one who writes about politics for the quality press has ever actually been to a football match. The Editor of The Specta- tor, for example, has never woven this particular thread into his rich tapestry of experience. Nor, apparently, has Mr Bruce Anderson of the Sunday Telegraph, whose imposing features would strike terror, I feel sure, into many a passer-by on the streets of Glasgow on a dark night after a Rangers–Celtic cup final. ne of the few interesting facts to emerge from the great debate about foot- ball supporters' identity cards is that almost no one who writes about politics for the quality press has ever actually been to a football match. The Editor of The Specta- tor, for example, has never woven this particular thread into his rich tapestry of experience. Nor, apparently, has Mr Bruce Anderson of the Sunday Telegraph, whose imposing features would strike terror, I feel sure, into many a passer-by on the streets of Glasgow on a dark night after a Rangers–Celtic cup final.
My own experience is limited, but I believe, not untypical. I once went to a Cambridge United match. There were a few hundred other spectators. Nothing untoward happened, except at half-time, when the person standing next to me managed to spill most of the contents of a thermos of hot soup. Leaving aside the question of soup spillage, for which statis- tics are not available, all the figures suggest that this is what most ordinary football matches are like for most ordinary people. Last season there were 6,000 arrests at or around football grounds; but the number of people who attended football matches was between five and six million. Several million people went to a whole season's worth of games without witnessing a single outbreak of hooliganism.
This looks as if it should strengthen the case for saying that this is a major populist issue on which the Government has got it wrong. Mr Roy Hattersley thinks he is on to a winner here, and the rebels on the Tory back benches are already murmuring about previous embarrassing climb-downs by the Government — on Sunday trading, and on parental contributions to student grants. But there are some important differences. Most Conservative MPs never go to football matches either. Nor do they move in particularly footballing circles; whereas, in the case of opposition to Sunday trading, it was more or less true to say that they all moved in church-going circles, whether or not they were devout church-goers themselves. The issue is further clouded by the fact that those few MPs who do have strong links with their local football clubs are the Bill's firmest supporters: men such as Mr David Evans, the Member for Welwyn Hatfield, who is not only chairman of Luton Town FC but also a former Aston Villa player himself. Mr Hattersley's position is rendered tick- lish by the fact that the two most soccer- conscious of Labour's front-bench spokes- men, Mr Peter Snape (vice-chairman of Stockport County FC) and Mr Roland Boyes (director of Hartlepool United FC) are broadly in favour of the Government's Bill.
One other condition for a proper rebellion is also absent: there is no suffi- ciently ogre-like figure to act as Captain Bligh to this particular mutiny — no one who can be both a figure of authority and a fall-guy, a la Sir Keith Joseph. Tory back- benchers must either recognise that this Bill comes straight from the desk of the Prime Minister, in which case they will touch it, like the Ark of the Covenant, at their peril; or else they must blame it on the earnest, amiable, diminutive double blue, Mr Colin Moynihan. Last time I heard Mr Moynihan speak in Parliament the mood of the House was captured, unkindly but with an air of completely benign encouragement, by Mr Dennis Skinner at the moment when the Sports Minister rose to his feet. 'Come on, Nod- dy,' he said.
The Government has probably defused much of the argument, on its own benches at least, by framing the Bill in deliberately unspecific terms — a form of drafting which is against the spirit (though of course within the letter) of our legislative tradi- tion. The Bill decrees that a 'National Membership Scheme' shall be set up; it lays down the basic requirements which such a scheme should fulfil (such as 'reg- ulating the form and contents of mem- bership cards'); but all the details of the scheme are left to some future 'administra- tor' to prepare, and to some future Secret- ary of State to authorise. It will be impossi- ble, therefore, for MPs to raise any de- tailed objections to the scheme when the Bill is debated in the Commons.
Yet this whole scheme is meant to be a practical solution to a practical problem. If MPs cannot discuss how it will work in practice, they will have few adequate reasons for deciding how to vote — apart from the reasons which the Whips' Office will supply when it starts twisting their arms. Some will object, no doubt, on grounds of principle, subsuming the argu- ment about membership cards for football supporters under a much more general argument about identity cards for citizens. But the two cases are not the same. All opponents of national identity cards will readily admit that governments have the right to regulate particular activities within the state, such as owning a shotgun or driving a car. Naturally, governments should also bear the onus of proving that each activity is sufficiently dangerous to public safety to warrant their interference: this is what the Government has rather failed to prove in the case of football match attendance. But to disagree with the Gov- ernment on this point is to differ in judgment over a matter of degree, not to oppose it on a question of fundamental principle.
The objection to national identity cards, on the other hand, is a matter of fun- damental principle. Regulating citizenship is not like regulating shotgun or car own- ership. To oblige all people to obtain identity cards, and carry them with them, and produce them on demand, is to create an offence (the crime of failing to produce one's card) out of thin air. And, because this is an offence created not to serve the interests of other individuals on whom the offender's actions have impinged but pure- ly to serve the administrative convenience of the state, it changes the nature of the relationship between the state and the individual. The state becomes more (even more, I fear) the master of the individual, when it ought to be his servant.
Put it in these terms, and one can see why Mrs Thatcher's instincts are against compulsory national identity cards. So are Mr Hurd's; and for the moment, I think, we are safe. Even Mrs Thatcher's most hostile critics must sometimes admit that when she trusts to her instincts she gets it right. The football scheme, unfortunately, originated not in her instincts but at the back of her mind, in the area where things are filed away under the heading, 'Some- thing Must Be Done' — the most danger- ous department of all in her busy brain.
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