Yorick Wilks

The Guardian last leader yesterday told of a woman—-who started as Eileen de Bont (!)—-and who changed her name to Pudsey Bear to raise money for charity.
Later the Identity and Passport Agency (did you know it had changed its name—and significantly!?) would not give her a passport on the ground the new name was frivolous. As the Grauniad wrote, portentiously but correctly, “The right to call yourself whatever name you damn well please is one of the small but great British liberties.”

This has always been a fundamental difference between us (and most English speaking countries) and countries like France where you have a legal name which you must use. In a country where Harold MacMillan would suddenly start calling himself “Stockton” (after his ennoblement) and bishops sign their letters “+John Oxon” it is obviously a very necessary liberty. The key case was some 25 years ago when a man who had opened more than a dozen post office savings bank accounts in as many names, and was prosecuted by the GPO, was acquitted on the ground that if no fraud was involved, there was no offence in calling yourself as many things as you liked, and that this was not tantmount to impersonation (as the traditional offence now called “identity theft” or “identity fraud” used to be called).

The reaction of the I+P Agency, even if overruled, shows change is in the air—I do not believe this has yet been clarified by the Bill introducing identity cards, but it is not hard to guess that this Government will want to abolish this age-old common law right; another good reason for NO2ID.