ANOTHER VOICE

Why form-filling is a form of body-piercing

MATTHEW PARRIS

'ace: please tick box (white/non- white).' In South Africa in the 1960s, when the lunacies of Afrikaner race theory were at their height, a small, wry protest among those who rejected the politics of skin- colour was to write in the box 'race: human'. Only our little joke, of course, but we did think we were making a point.

I have just received from the British government a form requiring me to specify my race.

They want to know more than my answer to the question 'white/non-white'. I must choose my race — 'ethnic origin' — from the following: 'White; Asian Bangladeshi; Asian Other; Black African; Asian Chinese; Black Caribbean; Asian Indian; Asian Pak- istani; Black Other; Other (please state)'. I toyed briefly with the idea of specifying `pinky-brown' after 'Other (please state)'; screwed up the form and threw it in the bin; pulled it out and unscrewed it; read it in full; made a half-hearted attempt to answer; and finally, pen poised in hand, was overcome with so strong a disinclination to continue that I laid the form aside, wonder- ing at the force of my reaction.

Then I wrote to the secretary of the mod- est quango to which I make a paltry contri- bution saying I would not complete this form — and understood this might mean having to leave the committee.

They would not miss me. Rather than embarrass colleagues by naming the body, let me say that this is a worthy committee offering ministers advice on an apparently arcane but interesting subject, to which my contribution has anyway been patchy: they often meet at times I cannot make. My absence from it is a loss the state can bear. A loss I can bear, too, being already fully employed. So one must not represent one- self as having made some great personal sacrifice on grounds of conscience. One is not quite in St Thomas More's league. The reaction looks more petulant than princi- pled, and rather silly.

Its force has therefore surprised me. There were other questions, too, to which I took a similarly surprising exception: `Do you consider that you have a disability?' and 'Significant Political Activity: In the last five years, have you undertaken any sig- nificant political activity? (This means activities that are a matter of public record, such as office-holding in, public speaking in support of, or candidature on behalf of any political party)'. The form offered a list of possible political affiliations (and activities) to choose from, including 'Other — please specify'. I toyed with the idea of writing `Monster Raving Loony party'.

This was just stupid. One was not, after all, being asked to divulge any great secret. I am, obviously, white. I am not disabled. I belong to the Conservative party. I have spoken for the Tory cause. None of these questions gives me the least difficulty. Volunteering the answers here in the public print is easy and unembarrassing. Yet, ordered to answer, the answers stuck in my throat.

No, even that is overstating. Nobody was ordering me to answer. The enquiry was courteously made — in response, so to speak, to one's own implied application to serve the state. Is the state not entitled to enquire as any employer might? And in this case (more than could be expected of pri- vate employers) the state was prepared to explain why the enquiry was made:

Monitoring Information. Public appointments to NDPBs [non-departmental public bodies] are subject to scrutiny by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The following information is required by the Commissioner to ensure that the appoint- ments procedures adopted by the Depart- ment are fair and open. This information will be used for monitoring purposes only and will not be a factor when determining your suit- ability for appointment.

That last bit does look disingenuous. The information is presumably not being gath- ered for the purposes of pure research. It must be a fair inference that if a question is asked, then some practical use might be made of the answer. If, for instance, there were a preponderance of (say) white Labour activists, then righting the balance would increase the employment chances of some and decrease those of others.

But do I really object to this? Was the Nolan Committee not wise to suggest we keep track of appointments, in case mem- bers of one party were being favoured? Are there no circumstances in which it would be sensible to see that members of minority racial groups are properly involved in pub- lic bodies? How can it be wrong to approach the matter in a methodical rather than haphazard way?

Try, then, as I may, I cannot honestly rationalise what was really an instinctive repulsion. And yet the emotion will not go away. I am brought up hard against my irra- tionality. Struggling for a reason for behav- iour to which one is unhesitatingly drawn, I recall my similar blind hostility to the idea of compulsory national identity cards — a sensible little suggestion, no doubt, but one which makes me see red. And then there is my strange dislike of badges, medals, lapel- stickers, tags and tattoos.

I won't wear those red Aids ribbons, and only under protest will I wear a Remem- brance Day poppy. When I toss a coin into a charity collection box at the London Underground station and the nice lady vol- unteer lunges toward me with a little sticker to pin onto my jacket, I am seized with a strange desire to hit her. I tear off the adhesive BBC security pass issued at Bush House as soon as the commissionaire is not looking. Those name-tags one is given to pin on at parties — eyes diving for the other's bosom to identify the name, instead of meeting the other's gaze as we should enrage me.

If I were a bull, I would refuse to wear a ring in my nose. Were I a steer, I would not be branded. As a sheep, I would abhor those painted numbers on my wool. Rein- carnated as a dog or a vicar, I would exhibit a cat's reaction to collars. As a pigeon, I would not be tagged. And, though white and Tory — and happy to tell you so in my own time and on my own terms — let civil servants confront me with a set of boxes to tick marked 'Race' and 'Significant Political Activity' and I spit in their eye. There. Now I've got that off my chest, I'll fill in their stupid form after all.

Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and a columnist of the Times.