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item0047A 788, 789 18 August 2003Letter from Beryl Richards, responding to my views last week on Identity Cards... Dear Sir As an obvious socialist, why do you not have any objection to Social Security numbers, TV Licences, VAT Registration Numbers, passports, surveillance cameras – indeed, the surveillance of our Internet correspondence? I urge you to believe I am non racist. But these asylum-seekers are lessening the tranche of monies which we should be exclusively using for our own nation. What about Old Age Pensioners who have served their country for a lifetime and are living on pittances? I think that, if you have nothing to hide, Identity Cards enabling us to be traced (along with credit cards and Lord knows what else) are not a particularly bad thing. During the War, as a child, I had an Identity Card. The world still goes around, and I am still here. I have worked for forty years - a little more if I include my work at nine years of age (when I had to help my mother to polish and scrub floors - just to make ends meet). I believe in liberalism (though not the Liberal Party) - and for goodness sake, let’s have a little common sense. What about Blair spending all that money on the Iraq War - which turned out to be the soggiest firework we have ever tried to light? Look to the countries that have the most terrible regimes - we should encourage them to put their own affairs in order so that their people do not rush here and put further strain on our housing, Social Services and educational systems. As a graduate, you sound as if you do not have to contend with working-class life - only to patronise it. I am a graduate and also very much a socialist - but for goodness sake we only have a finite amount of land and resources – you should stop looking through middle-class liberal rose-coloured spectacles Beryl Richards
Great to hear from you, as a fellow surfer – and thanks for taking the trouble to write, in response to my piece on Identity Cards. You have cast your net very wide indeed – let me respond. You are right – I have lived my life as “comfortable middle-class”, from a professional middle-class family. You are right that I have never had to “contend” with working-class life, but I cannot help that! I must do the best I can with my life - I can only try and make my own way according to my own experience and study – just as you must do. You are a bit unfair to criticise me for simply being me! But in this context, what is the rosy-tint that you see in my spectacles? I certainly do not have a rose-tinted view of immigration, if that is what you mean – I think “migration management” is the most difficult single political issue facing the next generation. It is essential that, in acknowledging the importance of global migration (our children going to live abroad, as well as others coming here) we devise systems that are seen to be fair – both by you, by all our fellow-citizens, and by the newcomers. That is difficult – but then many political problems are difficult. And I also agree that we must do much more to respond to the human rights abuses in many foreign countries with oppressive political regimes – although I do not favour going to war against them, as Blair did against Iraq.. But I disagree with your view that we cannot welcome newcomers “because of finite resources” – and that we ought to be giving all our money to “our own nation”. We are in the top five wealthiest countries in the world, and we give a home to a tiny number of asylum-seekers and immigrants each year – equivalent to perhaps one-half of one percent of our population. That means that, in any one year, there is one newcomer for every 199 people who are already here. That is a tiny figure. Our country’s “resources” are the resources of our own intelligence, our labour, the sweat of our own brows – and those are not limited. There is plenty of room for many more residents in the UK, provided that we organise ourselves to give them the opportunity to work and “pay their own way”. Only 17% of the UK is built upon – I spent last week in North Wales, where it is easy to understand that 83% of the UK is not built upon. What matters is the level of productive working activity in any country, any "economy" - the majority of newcomers are keen to work and good at working hard – and willing to turn their hand to everything. We need them as much as they need us. Our population is changing all the time, and has changed massively in your lifetime and in mine – I was brought up in the seaport of Cardiff, which has had a rich seam of immigration for the last hundred years, producing the Colin Jacksons and Shirley Basseys of South Wales – this is all a great enrichment of our lives. The newcomers of today quickly become “our nation” of tomorrow – thank Heavens. But I accept your point that in managing this process, we must find methods that are universally seen to be fair. And I recognise that many of our fellow-citizens – including yourself, it would seem – think that the current arrangements are unfair. That poses, for our politicians, a great – and entirely legitimate – challenge. They should be embarking upon the long and difficult task of negotiating new international treaty terms. But none of that is relevant to the issue of Identity Cards, where we started. Nobody has yet demonstrated that the State needs this form of regulation in order to manage its affairs. The creation of a new kind of “in-house passport” would not solve any of the immigration problems which you have raised – there is simply no connection between the two arguments. France and Germany have Identify Cards (they are common in Continental legal systems) but that does not solve any of their immigration problems! In tracing “illegal immigrants”, the problem is not that the Police cannot identify them once they have been found – it is that the very process of “evicting” illegal immigrants is contentious, time-consuming and expensive, both for the Germans and ourselves. New ways must be found of managing the whole migration process, nationally and internationally, to give all necessary reassurance to the host community. I have no rose-tinted spectacles about that process. Thanks again for writing – and if you want to let us know a bit more about yourself, I will publish! Roger Warren Evans 23 St Peter's Road I hope that Beryl will contribute again - and what about you? Why not drop me a line?
18 March 2003 The Archbishop of Canterbury joins the Councillors of the Community of Mumbles - I am the one standing, top right, in my best suit (my only suit, these days) - I don't think you can miss the Archbishop - 
...in chatting with the Archbishop, I
appreciated his keen awareness of the representative and collective
functions performed by institutions such as parish and community councils -
they bring a richness to local life which cannot be achieved in any other
way...What do you think? Drop me a line
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