By Nathan Allonby
Sunday 27 March was Census Day. For many people, the census is all over – they returned their forms and that is the end of it. For others, this is the point where civil disobedience begins.
Civil disobedience does not necessarily mean breaking the law. Civil disobedience comes from a respectable tradition of citizens asserting their political rights and making themselves heard by whatever means are available. It covers a wide spectrum of activity, from politely making things difficult to outright defiance of the law. Most government policies can only be enacted by public goodwill and cooperation, rather than the brute force of law. Civil disobedience is a way that the public can remind the government what it means when the public withdraw their support. Ultimately, government legitimacy and authority derive from the support of the people. If a policy is unpopular, citizens do not have to rush forward to do what the government asks – they can be reluctant and drag their heels.
In the case of the census, it seems that increasingly large numbers of people are reluctant to cooperate – something acknowledged by census officials themselves. This year, the census has been the subject of unprecedented controversy, as many citizens have begun to question their relationship with the state, and whether the state needs to collect so much information about them. Rather than try to win the argument, to gain trust and cooperation, government has replied with threats of greater coercion.
Nowhere is this indifference to public opinion more clearly seen than in the choice of contractors to organise the census: – controversial US military-security corporations, with questions about their record on civil rights. In England and Wales, the census is organised by Lockheed Martin, a US contractor previously involved in “Total Information Awareness” and which recruited interrogators for Abu Ghraib. In Scotland, the contractor is CACI, which also supplied “interrogators” who tortured inmates at Abu Ghraib. Government awarded these contracts over extensive protests, yet now they want unqualified public cooperation.
Census forms returned after 15 August will not be included in census statistics, although will be archived for record. For some, the goal is to delay past that date, to disrupt the system, in non-cooperation with the census contractors. For others, the main objective is to prevent the state acquiring their personal data at all.
Is the census inherently dangerous?
Census data was used heavily by the Nazis in the Holocaust – the progress of the Holocaust in different nations depended very largely on the quality of census data, which was why it was most efficient in Germany and the Netherlands. Although Jews were one target of the Nazis, other targets included “useless eaters”, the ill, “anti-socials”, the underclass – all of which were identified by census and statistics. The Nazi regime should be seen as a horrifying experiment in scientific rationalism, attempting to make a “perfect” society, designed by statistics, but without humanity.
Some people argue that this was not merely an aberration – they argue that the process of making a census and statistics is inherently socially divisive, because statistics inherently aim to identify sub-groups and put people under headings. By this argument, the process of making statistics is political rather than objective. Statisticians were central to the Nazi project. In the countries the Nazis invaded, many statisticians rallied to the Nazi cause, eager to help. In the Netherlands, the head of the census, Jacobus Lentz, was an active collaborator, and helped the Nazis refine their methods, to find their victims more quickly, and leave less chance of escape.
This role is summed up in the book The Nazi Census, by Gotz Aly and Karl Heinz Roth (pp6-7)
“…[There] are, in our opinion, two decisive areas: first the methods for the registration of the entire population; and second, a number of special operations that paved the way for stigmatized minorities …
Is not the simple abstraction of humans into mere numbers a fundamental assault on their dignity?
By profiling individuals, does the temptation not arise to regulate and, as statisticians like to put it, clean them up? Even when they are not expressly misused, censuses facilitate the power of the objective, the rationality of arbitrariness. Existing registration techniques were taken up and further perfected by the National Socialists.
Only in rare cases were they “perverted”. It is impossible to eliminate the abuses without giving up the methodological foundation.
Precisely in the light of historical experience, censuses, with their seemingly objective data and usefulness for policymaking, constitute and assault on the social imagination. … A basic need that we have encountered throughout our research is the need for equality among all people. the continuous counting and singling out of the weakest and those who are isolated by sociopolitical constellations only serves to deepen inequality and break up social existence, rendering it into splinters and particles.”
UK law requires all householders to return a census form, and to make complete and truthful replies. This article does not encourage readers to break the law. The purpose of this article is to encourage readers to consider the need for political change and how they can engage most constructively with government.
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