By Rose Tedeschi
Labour is set to introduce mandatory digital ID in an attempt to out-Reform Reform. They never tire of telling us Labour is the ‘party of working people’, but now they want to stop people working.
Many workers without the correct Right To Work (RTW) papers need employment. They could be asylum seekers, who are expected to live on £49 per week (£9.95 if they live in a hotel). Or they could be migrants who no longer fit the government’s increasingly strict visa requirements. Or they could have ‘overstayed’, but have no means to leave or very good reasons to stay.
To be honest, does it matter? Every migrant should have the right to work.
The objections to this kneejerk racist policy are many. The most obvious is that it won’t stop unscrupulous bosses employing workers without Digital ID on starvation wages: increasing the ranks of modern-day slavery.
Meanwhile it doesn’t take much imagination to envisage racists and fascists using it as a tool to accost and assault people of colour on the street: ‘Show us your ID then!’ Another means to humiliate ethnic minorities or anyone who doesn’t look ‘white enough’.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is selling it as a convenient way to access government services. But digital ID is a system built for ‘function creep’. What begins as a way to access a tax form becomes the key to your bank account, your travel, your right to protest.
Look at India’s Aadhaar system, used to authenticate over a trillion transactions. When the biometric scanners fail (which is often) it is the most vulnerable who are denied food rations and welfare, a deadly form of high-tech means testing.
Digital ID creates the perfect architecture for surveillance and authoritarianism. The threat is the power to ‘switch you off’—to deny healthcare, benefits, or the right to travel with the click of a button.
The working class must oppose this dangerous technology. It targets migrant workers today but can be used against us all.
