The British Passport

Is the British passport something that is ever questioned by the citizen or is it just another piece of legislation we take for granted, thus don't take the time to question it's origins?

Like everything that surrounds us in this, the 21st Century, the British passport has a history all of it's own.  Like the unwanted ant that crawls up the trouser leg, modern civilisation is blighted by past and present legislation all cooked up by past and present governments and their wayward offspring.  We just jog along day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, accepting everything thrown at us by an ungovernable government - the political persuasion matters not, they are all guilty of control over every aspect of our lives.

In days of yore we were allowed a degree of freedom, not from imposed legislation and such like but from having said government control shoved down our throats from every possible angle morning noon and night.

This is where it all goes belly-up!  The voices with a platform to be heard, enabled by the rising and shining of the interminable internet, get it all wrong - they fail to fact check before opening the mouth in the public arena.  An arena filled with lions and other forms of ferocious beings always ready to right the wrongs spread home and abroad, a quick and efficacious opposition to the spreading of erroneous information.

But oh no no no - this just won't do!  We can't let fact stand in the way of the caped crusader flying the flag of mis/disinformation.  Tch tch tch, know your place oh fact finder or we - the crusaders, will destroy your reputation and livelihood without further ado.  Or perhaps just silence you by eternal damnation - so much easier than presenting valid points for argument isn't it?  Indeed you don't even need a valid point for argument when you can just slam the door in the face - do you?

Err .... did some democratic advocate say something about freedom of speech?  Slamming the door in the face of the opposing view is not really very democratic is it?  Again hypocrisy springs to mind.

How often do we see examples of this lazy attitude towards accuracy .... fact v. fiction?

In very recent days a news broadcaster, when defending a specific area of newsworthy (freedom of speech was it?) hype, suggested we all have a brain so can quite easily think for ourselves, fact check, or sort the wheat from the chaff.  This is of course true to a certain degree but falls down abysmally when the member of the audience doesn't bother to think for itself or fact check or sort the wheat from the chaff - it's so much easier to go with the flow isn't it - rather than take the trouble to think for yourself.  Then the easy listener just believes, likes and propagates what is said or written without question - has the human race always been so lazy, hence gullible? 

Remember the member of parliament, only last week, telling the world something must be true because Andrew Tate, the notorious suspected criminal who fled Britain when faced with pending criminal charges, said so !?!  But we digress so back on track.

Does anyone even care much about truth over fiction these days?  Perhaps fiction allows more freedom of mind and spirit - no holes barred so to speak, a stretch of the imagination.  That's all very well in a world of make believe but far from satisfactory when talking of the real world.

It would appear not ....

A history of the UK passport

Home Office news team, 29 August 2023 - Fact sheet

For the first time in 70 years, British passports bearing the title of ‘His Majesty’ will start being issued this week in the name of His Majesty King Charles III, the Home Secretary has announced.

You can find out more about the new salutation in our press notice on Gov.UK. More information about the history of the UK passport can be found below.

1414 – The earliest recorded British passport can be traced back to documents known as safe conducts. These appeared in an Act of Parliament under the reign of Henry V.

1540 – The Privy Council, which advises the monarch, granted passports from at least 1540.

1641 – The oldest passport still in existence was issued on 18 June 1641 and signed by Charles I.

1778 – Until 1778 passports were written in English and Latin. After this date, they were issued in French which was the language of diplomacy at the time.

1794 – All passports began to be issued by the Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who we would now call the Foreign Secretary. Previously all passports would have been issued and signed by the King and Queen.

1915 – The first modern-style British passports, including a photograph and signature were first issued. They were made of a single piece of paper that folded out and sat between cardboard covers.

1921 – The first blue passport in the format of a book was issued in 1921, it had 32 pages and was written in French.

1947 – The final passports issued bearing the signature of the Foreign Secretary were issued.

1968 – UK passports began to be issued with validity for ten years, double the previous validity.

1972 – The first security feature was introduced to the passport – a special watermark. Laminated photographs would follow in 1975 and further security features in the 1980s.

1988 – The first burgundy coloured machine-readable passports were issued in the UK following the common format introduced by the European Economic Community.

1998 – The first digital UK passport was introduced which included a digital image of the photograph and signature.

2006 – The first biometric passports were issued with an electronic chip featuring the holder’s data.

2008 – The first e-Passport gates were introduced in the UK. There are now around 240 ePassport Gates operational, covering 21 air and rail terminals, helping to speed up arrivals and improve border security.

2016 – The passport renewal process went entirely online for those aged 26 and over.

2017 – We recently announced that all those over the age of 16 can now renew their passport online.

2019 – The new blue passport will be phased in from October 2019, in line with the new passport contract.

2023 – For the first time since 1952, passports are issued under the title “His Majesty”, in the name of King Charles III.

https://homeofficemedia.blog.gov.uk/2023/08/29/a-history-of-the-uk-passport/

The blue passport is taking back control? No, it was first imposed on us from abroad

James E Baldwin

Fri 22 Dec 2017 11.38 GMT

Brexiters are celebrating the end of the burgundy passport, but the truth is the UK could have had blue passports within the EU



On Thursday the Home Office announced the return of the blue British passport, to a chorus of approval from Brexiter newspapers and politicians. The irony is that the UK could have had a blue passport while an EU member. EU member state Croatia currently has a blue passport, after all. In any case – the “iconic” blue passport was imposed from abroad back in 1920 – thanks to the the League of Nations.

The EU never mandated burgundy passports: it simply produced a standard format that many member states chose to use for the sake of convenience. I imagine that the then UK government assumed that nobody cared that much about the colour of passports. It’s now clear that apparently trivial symbols of national identity are very meaningful for a lot of people. We’ll never know whether, had the government reintroduced blue passports when complaints first arose, the expense and disruption of Brexit could have been avoided.

Passports also make an interesting case study on sovereignty, the concept so dear to Brexiters. Passports illustrate the limits of sovereignty in an interconnected world. As a sovereign state after Brexit, the UK will have the right to design passports in whatever way it chooses. But other states also have sovereignty: they have the sovereign right to decide which passports they accept for entry into their territory. The modern passport, since its introduction in the early 20th century, has always been a matter for negotiation between sovereign states. Transnational institutions and superpowers have often imposed requirements on supposedly sovereign states.

The Eurosceptic media used to complain about the size of British passports: the burgundy passports issued in the past few decades were smaller than the old blue ones. They have gone quiet about this recently, perhaps because they know that this isn’t something the UK can change after Brexit. Passport size, along with several other features, is mandated by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), an agency of the UN. Today’s passports are machine-readable, and an international standard is required so that all passports will fit the machines used in airports.

Most of the recent changes to British passports have been driven by the US rather than the EU. The US requires certain passport features for participation in its visa-waiver programme, which allows citizens of most developed countries to enter the US for business or recreation trips of up to 90 days without a visa. The US demands compliance with ICAO standards, but it also imposes more stringent photo requirements and biometric features.

The new US requirements have been imposed on the UK via the EU: the US informed the EU of its demands, and the EU then incorporated them into its own passport standards. But the UK would only be able to escape these requirements after Brexit by giving up visa-free travel to the US.

Regardless, those blue British passports so beloved of Brexiters had a design imposed by an international organisation. Prior to 1920, British passports consisted of a single sheet of card. In 1920, the League of Nations organised the Conference on Passports, Customs Formalities and Through Tickets in Paris. The resolution of this conference, passed on 21 October 1920, imposed a new set of standards that passports would have to meet to be internationally recognised.

The League of Nations ruling required that the passport be a booklet of 32 pages, with the dimensions 15.5cm x 10.5cm. It specified the information that the passport must contain, and the format it should be presented in. And it demanded that all passports be written in French, in addition to the national language of the issuing state. Today, ICAO standards require that passports must provide the information in English, French or Spanish. However, they specify that when the national language of the issuing state is English, French or Spanish, the passport should use one of the other two languages as well. After Brexit, the UK could decide to switch the second language of our passports from French to Spanish, but it could not eliminate the second language altogether, notwithstanding the fact that English is now the global lingua franca.

After Brexit we will still have to follow ICAO standards and US demands if our passports are to be recognised abroad. And, of course, we will still have to follow any new requirements that the EU may adopt, if we are to travel to our nearest neighbours.

After Brexit, the UK is determined to secure easy travel to the EU for UK citizens. There will be loud complaints from UK citizens, including Brexiters, if travel to our favourite holiday destinations in France and Spain becomes more difficult. It may be hard, if not impossible, to impose more stringent requirements on the ID cards that EU citizens use to travel to the UK, as the Home Office would like. And the UK will have lost its influence over EU measures to improve ID card security, which have made considerable progress in the past few years. Yet again, we may not be able to have our cake and eat it.

James E Baldwin teaches history at Royal Holloway, University of London

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/22/blue-passports-taking-back-control-imposed-league-of-nations-burgundy-passport-eu