From Free Life, Issue 19, November 1993
ISSN: 0260 5112

When I was last in Bratislava, I fell into conversation with an English estate agent who had come over to see if there was any money to be made. Having rather good connections there, I was able to tell him about several restituted buildings currently on the market. The best of these - a fine, old urban palace in Hviezdoslav Square - I actually showed him round.

He took a rather languid interest in the place, noting down details of how large and well-preserved the rooms were, of the view over the Danube from the top floor, of its proximity to St Stephen's Cathedral where Maria Theresa was crowned Queen of Hungary in 1741, of the unrestricted parking, of how close was Bratislava to Vienna - three quarters of an hour by car, or 20 minutes by river express.

Finally, he wanted the price. The owner was asking £1.8 million, I answered. He played with his pocket calculator, and shook his head. At the average Bratislavan office rental of £5 per square foot, this represented a capital price of 25 years' purchase, or a return of four per cent. I replied that this building was worth somewhat more than £5 per square foot to the right foreign company, and that the owner might come down for a fast completion in hard currency.

Still he shook his head. This was just movement at the margin, he said. His bosses in London were looking for best location properties in Eastern Europe for nothing over three years' purchase. Only on those terms, he explained, was it worth all the risk of local political and economic instability. He wondered at the stupidity of these Slovaks, so willing to ask the earth for their properties, knowing full well that no Westerner with half a brain in his head would pay an eighth of the asking prices.

I tried to point out over coffee that, with a city just 50 miles from Vienna, capital valuations based on years' purchase made no sense. The real determinant was the discount on anticipated capital gains between now and the end of the century. In my eagerness, I even coined the verb "to Croydonise".

Still nothing. He grumbled at the waiter's inability to speak English and asked if I had not wasted my time in learning Slovak. Out of politeness, I helped him to a taxi back to the Hotel Forum. I made sure never to see him again.

Last week, I learned that the building went - after frantic bidding between two German buyers - for £5.7 million.

This is not an isolated case. Time and again, my Slovak friends have told me similar stories. They want to do business with British companies. Their Government is encouraging them - fearing that, unbalanced, the current flood of German investment will bring adverse political consequences. The British, though, are perceived increasingly as just hopeless at even recognising opportunities, let alone seizing them.

It may, of course, be that my estate agent was acting very sensibly. Perhaps property and other prices in the western provinces of the former Soviet Empire are overblown, and it is a good idea to sit the bubble out. For myself, I doubt this. I should be far more surprised if the superior glances he threw me whenever he looked up from his pocket calculator indicated more than the most utter vacuity.

Our entire commerce has long since been monopolised by accountants posing as entrepreneurs. Appointed to run every large enterprise by their fellow accountants who run the financial institutions that our tax laws encourage to own the large enterprises in this country, their highest aim is to turn a nice, safe profit - and never mind how low it may be, or what real opportunities are overlooked in the process. Therefore, the main destination of our overseas investment remains the United States, where it gathers an average return of four fifths of one per cent. Therefore, billions have been sunk in property deals in Southern England, where returns are for the third year negative; and geniuses such as Sir Clive Sinclair - who ranks with Boulton and Watt and the great inventors who enabled the Industrial Revolution - are marginalised as cranks.

Every so often someone writes a newspaper article asking if the spirit of enterprise is dead in England. This is a fatuous question, since wherever 57 million people are to be found there will certainly be a natural desire for self-improvement and innovation. The real question is how long it must before we all see through the frauds whose occupying every avenue along which the spirit of enterprise must flow has entirely reduced our business class to an international laughing stock.

My wife, who is Slovak, has what is called a "family number". This is a ten digit number personal to her. It reveals her date of birth, her sex, and the number of the bed occupied by her mother in the delivery ward. Every public document in Slovakia referring to my wife must carry her family number. It must be written on her bus pass, on her will, on any job application form she cares to submit. It is also prominently written on her identity document - or what is called her "legitimation".

This is a small book, about 3" by 5", protected by a plastic cover. It carries a recent photograph of her, together with all addresses where she has lived since childhood, and full details of her education and employment. There are pages for entries regarding her medical status and for endorsing such criminal record as she may one day acquire.

Slovaks must carry their legitimation at all times when away from home. It must be produced on demand by any policeman and by most other state officials. If they enter any public building, or stay at an hotel, or join any society, their family numbers are copied into special registers, which may be inspected by persons authorised by law - and are often inspected by many others unauthorised.

Certainly, Slovakia was a Soviet province, and retains many customs and institutions appropriate to its former status. But this scheme of compulsory identification predates the Communists by at least a century. It is a legacy from the Habsburg Empire continued by all its successor states, including Austria. Similar schemes are operated in Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, Greece and Spain. In Italy, Portugal, Holland, France and Denmark, the carrying of identification documents is compulsory, though these documents need not be those issued by the State. Great Britain and Ireland are the only member states of the European Community not long ago to have made public anonymity an offence.

I have never met a Slovak or any other European willing to condemn the principle of compulsory identification, but only at worst its abuse by the authorities. Yet I feel an almost religious abhorrence of the principle. There is much that I regret about this country's present course, much even that angers me. But I can think of no other likely innovation that almost strikes me speechless with horror.

I will not dwell on the case against identity cards. It is so easily put. They do nothing to prevent real crime, but only increase the number or forgeries and frauds. They will not save public money, bearing in mind the gigantic cost of identifying 57 million people all at once. All that they can efficiently achieve is to give the State still greater powers of inspection and control. This case is overwhelmingly powerful. It cannot be met by anyone who is willing to take a candid look at the available evidence.

And it will for the moment prevail. That John Major supports the idea of compulsory identification does not greatly disturb me. He is the weakest Prime Minister since Balfour. For all the bureaucratic despotism heaped on us this century, we remain a furtive and unruly nation. Most of us have something to hide, however trivial it may seem to others. One mail bag of protests, and the dispirited rabble he claims to lead in the Commons will desert him in sufficient numbers to send him grubbing elsewhere for tabloid popularity.

But I doubt that the case will prevail in the long term. For all the idea of carrying identity cards may be hated, they will inevitably come. That we do not yet have them is an aberration. It cannot last. It is like an area of the beach still dry long after the incoming tide has soaked all around it. The England of before 1914 is dead. It will soon have passed out of the oldest living memory. Our ordinary dealings with the State are no longer confined to buying postage stamps, but we must deal with it, or with its virtual agents that the banks have been made, at almost every step we take. On an increasing number of these occasions, we are required to prove identity.

At the moment, we can still just about manage - handing over driving licences and telephone bills, and any other pieces of paper that may satisfy the authorities that we really exist. But I see no likely diminution of the paranoeia regarding drugs and immigration. Sooner or later, for our own convenience, we shall need some universally recognised form of identification.

Then there is Europe, the geographical heart of which, my atlas tells me, lies in the Slovak Republic. I am surprised that no common identification scheme has yet been imposed from Brussels. I shall be very surprised if none has been imposed before the end of this century.

Therefore, I advise my readers to suppress what reservations they may have about family numbers and legitimation, and to grow used to them. You may repeat with John Drake: "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own". You will be answered by "Phil" Gallie, the Conservative Member for Ayr: "The only people who would have anything to be concerned about are those who have something to hide". (Source: Herald, 29th October 1993)

Tomorrow belongs to him.