
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 
 



