To answer your specific questions:
1) Yes, we have Parliamentary supporters in all the main parties - and in both Houses. See our page on '
Public figures against ID'.
2) NO2ID has so far been a campaign of both (mostly!) elegant tactics, and a lot of hard work. The public campaign managed to get noticed by the media pretty early on at least partly because we were very fast-growing. We also know what we're talking about. I have been told that NO2ID was the most rapidly growing
civil liberties campaign in recent British history - from a pub meeting of less than a dozen volunteers (a week after a public meeting attended by about 350 people at the LSE) to 10,000 registered supporters in well under a year. But then we
were fighting a live Bill in Parliament from just a couple of months after the public campaign's official launch...
Use of e-mail and the web certainly helped in the early days, as did starting local groups, networking with other organisations and making sure we were present at significant events - e.g. party conferences, the ESF, etc. Putting a lot of effort into the media side of things didn't hurt, either. Most of our early 'actions' were deliberately
photo-oppotunities, not protests or demonstrations, something for which we took some flak at the time.
3) NO2ID currently has around 30,000 registered supporters, but - as we are a privacy campaign and don't care to ask people for their details unless they
want to give them to us* - we almost certainly have a lot more people working with us, e.g. through our local groups (quite a few of whom run their own independent mailing lists). Our broader network of affiliate organisations allows us, in theory at least, to reach literally millions of people. Unison alone, which voted to affiliate to NO2ID at its last national conference, represents 1.3 million public service workers.
Public support for NO2ID's
position has risen from 20% in the polls to around 50% - the highest it has been is around 55% - but there are clear indications within the detail of various polls that things will move even further in our direction as people begin to understand the consequences of the database state, and (eventually) feel the ID scheme itself begin to bite.
Hardcore opposition - i.e. those who say they'd refuse or go to prison, rather than have a card - has risen from around 3 million in 2004 to almost 9 million, on the poll figures. I've heard people say that, all in, the Poll Tax involved around 17-18 million people - from those who simply ignored their bill, to those who went to prison - so, assuming people can be motivated to act, we're halfway there with at least another two years to go. (We don't underestimate that assumption, by the way).
4) I thought we had something on this on the main website, but - on checking - it appears we don't, so I may as well write something here. [N.B. This is a personal account, so any mistakes and/or omissions are mine and mine alone.]
'NO2ID' was first used as a brand name as far back as 2002, by a number of individuals working for different NGOs who shared concerns that ID cards might be back on the political agenda - I assume because of the events of 9/11, but you'd have to ask them. I know that they published at least one pamphlet under the NO2ID name, because I've seen a copy. I think they may also have produced some badges. They certainly managed to piss off the Home Office. :D Stand's (successful) attempt to get people to respond to the Home Office 'consultation' on "Entitlement Cards" was treated as a single negative response, despite some of the 5,000 genuinely individual responses that were sent via Stand's site being clearly
in favour of ID cards...
This same group - drawn from Privacy International (whose Director, Simon Davies, was NO2ID's first Chair), Liberty, Charter 88 (Debbie Chay is now serving her second term as Vice-Chair of NO2ID's Advisory Board), FIPR, The 1990 Trust & Stand - organised public meetings, and it was at one called '
Mistaken Identity' at the LSE on 19th May 2004 that the current public campaign was declared. Many of the people who adjourned to the Three Tuns pub after that meeting are involved in or close friends of the campaign to this day.
All those who were interested in getting involved met up in
The Newman Arms pub one evening about a week later. There were less than a dozen of us at that meeting - some from the existing groups, others (like myself) just concerned members of the public.
Some of the people obviously knew each other from before, but we all pretty much just mucked in and got on with things. I'd made some
T-shirts on my PC at home, and had been mucking around with the logo - as had Chris Lightfoot, IIRC - so we pretty quickly settled on a basic design. We appointed Mark Littlewood - who I believe was at that point on sabbatical from Liberty, where he was Director of Campaigns - to lead the group and started to create the bare bones of a proper public campaign, including a draft
Constitution.
I ended up being lumbered with handling the finance (including sorting out a bank account!) and fundraising side of things, others - Owen Blacker & Adam McGreggor - got the mailing lists and website up and running, and Mark either co-opted people or introduced new folk to the group. I certainly remember meeting Charles Farrier, Andy Robson (who'd been working since very early on within Charter 88) and Dave Walker at those early meetings. Guy Herbert (at first editor of NO2ID's newsletter), Cassandra Rae and Guy Taylor also got involved almost immediately.
[My apologies if I've forgotten anyone - give me a nudge and I'll edit you back in!]
You can see the notional shape of the organisation at that point by scrolling down to the bottom of our
first newsletter, which was published on 26 July 2004.
NO2ID's official launch, by which time we'd got our first grant from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd, was in Covent Garden on Saturday 18th September. Our first AGM was held on 9th October - at which NO2ID's original Advisory Board was elected by the paid-up members and Mark Littlewood was confirmed in post as National Coordinator. If you want any more 'forensic' detail from this period, its probably easiest just to read our old newsletters:
http://www.no2id.net/news/newsletters/newsletter.php?issue=2
[to move to the next newsletter, just increase the last digit of the URL in your browser address bar by one].
Do have a read of the main website. There's a lot of material there, though you may have to dig for some of it. We've been fighting flat out for over 2 years now, and our archiving isn't always what it should be.
Phil Booth
National Coordinator, NO2ID
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