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Files just released to the National Archives under the ’30-year rule’ reveal that Harold Wilson’s Labour government dismissed ID cards in 1974, even after IRA bombs in Guildford and Birmingham had killed 25 people and injured hundreds. Home Secretary Roy Jenkins condemned ID cards as “expensive and ineffective” and also feared that they would seriously infringe civil liberties. You can get more details via the link on our news page

We all know that times and attitudes change but a statement by another well known Labour politician, speaking at their Party conference in October 1995 regarding Michael Howard’s plans to introduce ID cards, only serves to emphasise by how much:

“And instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards as the Tory Right demand, let that money provide thousands of extra police officers on the beat in our local communities.”

This certainly sounds sensible, who could possibly have said it?

Tony Blair�

The future Prime Minister’s rhetoric was (unsurpisingly) misleading. This is not a matter of being left or right, as a glance at NO2ID’s supporter list shows.

Full transcript of Blair’s speech to the Labour Congress on 3 October, 1995