When Mass Campaigning Defeated the Poll Tax

This article was originally written in 2009 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the Poll tax in Scotland.

A Residential School setting in West Linton in the Scottish Borders seems a weird place to start the story of the poll Tax but given the history of it’s demise it is as good a place to start as any.

by Ronnie Stevenson, secretary Mount Florida anti-poll tax union, Glasgow

At a Militant (the forerunner of the Socialist Party in England and Wales and the International Socialists in Scotland.) conference in 1987, called to discuss resistance to the Poll Tax Labour Councillor Chic Stevenson moved that we begin to organise for total defiance of the Poll Tax. The strategy involved arguing for all councillors to refuse to implement the tax and for building support for a mass non-payment campaign should it be implemented. 

The decisions which were taken shaped the campaign over the next few years. The ideas of a mass campaign against the poll tax, for building anti-poll tax unions, for mass organised non-payment and non-compliance by local authorities and council trade unions, and for industrial action to defend those victimised for non-payment or non-implementation were brought together in a Militant pamphlet in April 1988. 

Militant began to set up Anti-Poll Tax unions in the localities.  These attracted thousand to meetings many to find out about its implications for them and their families but many about how to fight it.  Federations of Poll Tax unions were set up with democratically elected delegates from the Unions and Executive Committees for the Federations. 

The Strathclyde Federation was set up in July 1988.  The words of Glasgow Labour Councillor Chic Stevenson, the vice Chair of the Strathclyde Federation became its watchword ‘I’m having nothing to do with Thatcher’s poll tax. I am voting against Glasgow district council setting its part of the tax at £92 per person, along with five other councillors.

A mass non-payment campaign will still have to be organised. It has the support of local Labour Parties and the mass of people in the housing schemes. With that support, Labour councils could make the poll tax inoperable if they called on people to refuse to pay. It is not the job of Labour councils to do the Tories’ dirty work.   ‘I was elected to fight Thatcher, not to bow the knee to her poll tax.’

Against this background the Scottish Anti-Poll Tax Federation was set up.   Later in the struggle they promoted the successful creation of the All British Anti-Poll Tax Federation in November 1989. The initial community meetings consisted of explaining the tax and the collection methods including the forcible methods which could be used and then moving on to how to defeat the tax.  When it was explained the difficulties the state would face in collecting the tax if the mass of the people refused to pay then support for non-payment gathered apace. 

Unfortunately one by one the Councils in Scotland began to bow the knee and when people did not pay sent in the Sheriff’s Officers to get the debts paid.  This was Labour at its worst – all talk and posing but no action other than sticking the boot into the poor. 

mass demo

To prepare for mass non-payment the Scottish Federation of anti-poll tax unions organised a demonstration in Glasgow on March 18th 1989. More than 10,000 people attended. The Can’t Pay Won’t Pay anti-poll tax movement was hear, and we were determined not to let it pass.  There were street stalls to inform and recruit to the non-payment army. 

A play by Peter Arnott and Peter Mullen, which caught the mood of the time, was performed in Community Centres all over Scotland. Its theme of ‘Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay’ reflected what was going on. There were marches and demonstrations – large and enormous.

There were many innovative features of the campaign – occupations of Council offices and Sheriff’s Officers’ offices.  One of the most famous involved a few days with food parcels being transferred from an adjacent building, much to the annoyance of the watching police. Sheriff’s Officers’ cars became well known and they were constantly hounded.  There was a week long hunger strike in George Square, Glasgow, to highlight the plight of the poor having to choose between paying the tax or of feeding their bairns. 

There were mass demonstrations outside the homes of people threatened with ‘poindings’ (labelling of possessions for selling to pay debt) by the Sheriff’s Officers.  One of the first was outside the house of Jeanette McGinn (widow of Matt McGinn, the Calton folksinger and activist). The Sheriff’s Officers based in Lanarkshire made special efforts to carry out ‘poindings’ of possessions and there were regular mass demos outside peoples house over the years. There was one outside the home of George Galloway, then a Labour MP. Very few ‘poindings’ took place and the actual sale of the possessions became the scene of one of the most famous episodes in the Poll Tax Struggle.

turnball street

The Sheriff’s Officers had given up even trying to arrange the sales in their normal salerooms and they set up a sale in the courtyard of the St Andrew’s District Court in?Turnball Street.  A young Tommy Sheridan, who was secretary of the Scottish Anti-Poll Tax Federation and had built up a very strong base in Pollok, was served by court papers, an interdict, banning him from doing anything to stop the sale. 

In defiance he organised hundreds to be there and ripped up the interdict as he led them into the Courtyard.  The police read the writing on the wall and instructed the Sheriff’s Officers to cancel the sale.  That way of recovering the debt became unworkable and arresting bank accounts, wages and benefits became the weapon of choice of the state.  It was much easier to carry those actions out from the computers and phones in their warm offices rather than facing the direct wrath of the people. Funnily enough that led to files disappearing and computers stopping working after a visit from the Anti-Poll Tax occupiers. 

There was a consequence of Tommy’s action on that day.  He was brought to court for breaching the interdict and jailed for six months which he spent in Saughton Prison in Edinburgh. From there he stood for the Council and parliament. He achieved a fantastic vote in the Parliamentary election and was elected as Glasgow’s first Scottish Militant Labour Councillor. This was another first for the campaign, the first Councillor elected from jail. 

The mass defiance spread to England and Wales where Militant spearheaded the mass non-payment campaign. Many others were jailed including the late Terry Fields, the member of Militant who was the Labour MP for Liverpool Broadgreen. As defiance spread the Tories realised that the Poll Tax was finished. 

There was mass demo after mass demo and on 31st March 1990 the biggest of all the demos took place.  50,000 marched in Glasgow and after speaking in Glasgow Tommy flew down to London to address the 200,000 strong demo there.  Much was made of the violence in London but the size and composition of the demo and the growing mass defiance was the real reason for the backing down by the Tories. 

There were further demonstrations directed at defending those jailed for non-paying and those jailed for ‘violence’ on the 31st March. The 40,000 strong demo in London in October 1990 greeted many young marchers who had marched from all over Britain spreading the message.  In November 1990 Thatcher was forced to resign as Prime Minister, a victim of the campaign to abolish the tax she had introduced.  The fight to defend the non-payers continued for many years after that.

The last two large demos in March 1991 in Glasgow (15,000) and in London a few weeks later (50,000) were an indication of that determination to continue.  The Tories brought forward plans for a new local government tax.  

Labour’s response to this victory was to attack those who resisted. Having worked hard to implement the Poll Tax even though it was hated they began to expel those in Militant who had led the fight to get rid of it.  When the question was posed ‘Whose side are you on?’ they made it clear – the bosses and the Tories.  

The struggle against the Poll Tax is a landmark in the history of working class activity in Britain. It is full of stores of innovative actions, heroism and solidarity which makes one proud to have been part of a working class capable of such a mass act of defiance. We in the International Socialists are proud of the part we played in leading such a resistance.