HANDS OFF OUR BABIES !!! Ministers and hospital managers have finally came clean. For the first time, they've admitted publicly that they want to tag babies with barcodes the moment they're born. Every newspaper in the country has said what a wonderful idea this is. So have politicians from all the main parties. Selected babies have already been barcoded in Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary. Both the Murdoch press and the few titles still owned by his competitors have taken the same line. Some woman dressed as a nurse stole a baby in Nottingham. Therefore all babies should be tagged and coded. Otherwise it could happen again. At least one paper published a picture of a mother kissing the barcoded foot of her day-old baby. The implication is that mothers who don't allow their babies to be tagged like items in a supermarket aren't good mothers. This kind of nonsense is, of course, the stock-in-trade of advertisers, people trying to trick us into buying something or voting for them. Let's be clear about two things. Firstly, tagging babies has been in the pipeline for months. It's not a response to anything which has happened in the past few days. To say otherwise is to tell a complete lie. It is being introduced now because the media have made it acceptable now. The 'experiments' in Edinburgh (just who do these people think they are, using our babies for experiments?) were planned some time ago. Tagging babies was also mentioned in a conference in Cambridge in April, where an American 'expert' also spoke of keeping a register of babies' footprints. Secondly, tagging babies is not about stopping baby snatchers. If that were really the goal, it would make much more sense to tag doctors, nurses, hospital porters, fathers, etc. Or they could be given tags to carry in their pockets. Doors to maternity wards and nurseries could be made to open only for people carrying tags. Many government buildings use a similar system already. Who'd expect the Ministry of Defence, for example, to let strangers into the building, resting assured that no-one could take anything because all secret documents had tags sellotaped on? Obviously any whistleblower or spy could just cut the tag off. And any serious baby snatcher could do exactly the same. You might argue that alarms could be set to sound as soon as someone tried to cut off a tag. But if you still think these people are doing it for our benefit, just ask yourself: WHY BARCODES? Surely snatching one baby is as bad as snatching any other baby. Or is a nurse going to punch in the number of any baby who's being taken home legitimately, so the alarm won't go off when it's taken out by its real mother. Meanwhile a baby being snatched, not having been checked through, would set all the bells ringing. No, this isn't it: the nurse could just cut the tag off herself when the baby's ready to go home, saving all those costs on training, but with exactly the same effect. In that case, all tags could be the same, and there'd be no need for individual barcodes. It seems we're just not being told the truth...... Quite a few politicians have said 'No expense should be spared' in guaranteeing baby security. That's the kind of thing politicians like to say. You'd hardly expect them to say 'Baby snatching must be got down to an acceptable level.' On the other hand, a sceptic might think the whole point is for the Tories to give some more money to their friends in the private security industry. After all, they've given entire prisons to firms like Group 4, in return for Italian-style donations to party funds. But for once this doesn't seem to be it. A baby-tag costs about 10p. Introducing them in a big hospital like Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary will cost "thousands of pounds". For a maternity hospital, or a security company, that's peanuts. And yet the authorities do seem very anxious to tag and barcode our babies. WHY? Well let's just consider what else has been decided or 'considered' in the past year or so. 1) After being dropped three years ago, electronic tagging of offenders is coming back. Whereas in previous 'experiments' tags had to be plugged into the phone, now they can send messages to private security guards over the airwaves. In a move closely connected to rightwing Tory propaganda about the 'underclass', The Sunday Times has called for the tagging of "far fewer than 1% of the population" (i.e. less than half a million people). A pilot scheme begins in Manchester in January 1995. (In Tennessee, tags are already fitted to truanting schoolchildren). 2) Home Secretary Michael Howard has considered having fingerprints taken from everyone. Another plan is to fingerprint Britain's 32 million motorists and to include prints on driving licences. The database would be run by a private company. Police chiefs are confident the plan will be in place by 1996. 3) Transport Secretary John MacGregor has called for all cars to be fitted with a 'black box.' Cars would be tracked by satellite, and drivers would be charged according to which roads they drive on and for how long. (A version of this system is already in place in Oslo). Companies like GEC are hoping to employ technologies first used to track tanks during the Gulf War of 1991. To sweeten the pill, and to make more profit, motorists will be sold info services at the same time. The system will be tested next spring, and is due to come into force in 1998. 4) Child benefit and pension books are due to be replaced by swipe cards in 1997, and benefit books will disappear altogether in 1999. Already pension books have been barcoded in parts of London. It seems likely that eventually all benefits will be paid into bank accounts. Post offices will be run in the interests of private banks, and many will just be shut down. 5) The police are increasingly using DNA testing and some senior officers have called for the forcible testing of all adult males. (No date on this one yet, but this year's Criminal Justice Bill will allow DNA testing for all offenses the police record). 6) City shopping centres are now routinely scanned by 24-hour video cameras. This information was first released to a wide audience at the time of the James Bulger murder. The implication was that anyone who objected to the general trend didn't care about toddlers being butchered. 7) Soon TV viewers may have to pay for each specific programme they watch. They'll buy decoder cards for the Saturday match during the week. Already people using cloned cards can have their reception turned off individually by Sky. 8) Britain's chief film censor, who thinks childhood is an 'outdated concept', wants compulsory ID cards to be issued to all children. The pretext is to 'control access' to videos, fireworks, alcohol, cigarettes, etc. Baby tagging fits very well into this list of developments. In every case, the authorities tell us it's for our own good. We all know that the government only protects people to the extent that it's good for Business. Health Department officials are little more than agents of the huge drug companies; and their colleagues in the Ministry of Defence are little more than agents of the arms manufacturers. Transport bureaucrats give millions to construction companies and increasingly to security and electronics companies too. In short, it's there to keep us in 'acceptable levels' of poverty and disease, and to force most of us to work for the rich. They don't care about our babies being stolen any more than they care about our houses being broken into, or deaths caused by tobacco. They like it when working class people turn on each other and we live in fear. Nor would things be different if any other party were in power. Even if everything were nationalised we'd just be exploited directly by state bureaucrats rather than by the directors and bankers who currently tell them what to do. Recent calls to abolish benefits for single mothers show us that the ruling parasites feel strong. They're on the march. More and more information is being kept on more and more people. The mass media discourage us from looking beyond the next few months. But if we do, we see lines of information being established which are increasingly two-way or 'interactive.'Surveillance, or keeping track of people,leads directly to control. The reason they want to tag babies is because it's easiest to start with them. It's got nothing to do with stopping them being snatched. We'll say it straight. Over the next 5 to 15 years, the rulers hope to keep tabs on us all by electromagnetic means. Corresponding types of direct surveillance would be horrific.The only thing that can stop this is Revolution. Against this World Society of Exploitation. Published by Some Opponents of Technofascism, Central Scotland, July, 1994