The Poll Tax Rebellion

 “Ye cannae beat her son, she’s faced doon Galtieri and beat the miners. She’s the iron lady”

This was a common response at the early anti-poll tax meetings organised in housing schemes across Scotland in 1988.

A battered and bruised working class had witnessed a rampant and brutal Prime Minister, in the shape of Margaret Thatcher, cruelly and callously despatch troops to recapture the tiny Falklands Islands and sink ships in retreat from the battle in 1982 and tool up the ‘polis’ in paramilitary gear and tactics to crush the aspirations of miners in 1984. Their only crime was a desire to defend their jobs and communities for future generations. 

by Tommy Sheridan, Chair of the Scottish and All Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation

With less than 40% of the popular vote a deeply divided Britain returned her to office for a record third term in office at the 1987 general election.  Her victories over the Argentinean conscripts and the proud National Union of Mineworkers emboldened her to implement even more assaults on the welfare state, trade union rights and the very concept of ‘society’.  ‘There’s no such thing’ she declared at a Royal Geographical dinner to the applause of the rich and powerful throughout the land who welcomed her determination to destroy socialism, human solidarity and the collectivist spirit which renders a society worthy of the description.

This was the political background to the mighty anti-poll tax struggle.

Thatcher and her Tory lapdogs were intent on replacing the rates based on property values with a tax on every adult in a household regardless of income. It represented the most graphic attempt to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. The average family in a tenement would pay considerably more while the rich in their mansions would pay less.  The wealthy Duke in his castle would receive a windfall but the low paid dustman was to get a kick in the teeth. It was introduced as the ‘community charge’ but almost immediately was christened the ‘poll tax’ and became known as such thereafter. It had to be fought. But how? 

mass non payment

Those of us involved in devising the mass non-payment campaign in defiance of the Thatcher poll tax drew inspiration from several sources. The racist ‘pass laws’ in Apartheid South Africa were defied by a courageous black population who refused to obey unjust laws any longer despite the brutal repression they faced. Rosa Parkes in America was simply tired of being abused and discriminated against so refused to give up her bus seat and broke the unjust segregation laws of Montgomery, Alabama?

The 47 Liverpool councillors, and before them those of Poplar, voted to break the law and set an illegal budget rather than attack the poor and slash services anymore in their city. Civil disobedience in defiance of bad and unjust laws had a rich and proud history and the anti-poll tax campaign was about to be added to that history. Sure the odds seemed stacked against us at first but Thatcher’s arrogance and intoxication with power led her to make a crucial mistake. Up until the poll tax the ruling class tactic of ‘divide and rule’ had been applied with distinction.

The steelworkers, nurses, printers and then the miners were all taken on separately. To their shame the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress leaders never united the movement in opposition to her assaults.  But the poll tax was different. Here the whole of the working class were being attacked at once. Sure Scotland was chosen as the live guinea pig for this shameful wealth transfer to her rich friends but that actually served to sharpen the sense of grievance against the Tax in our Nation. We didn’t vote for them in ’87. We wiped them out. How dare they impose this unwanted policy on us first?

The fact it was an ‘unfair, unjust and immoral’ tax, the most common description at the time, was compounded by the decision to introduce it in Scotland a year before England and Wales. They ignored petitions, protest marches and rallies and the ballot box. All we had left was the right to defy. Civil disobedience through mass non-payment. People were understandably worried, even scared. Disgracefully Labour Councils voted to implement this ‘immoral’ tax and thus despatched sheriff officers to harass and intimidate non-payers.

The dreaded warrant sale threat was used to frighten families across Scotland. What the authorities didn’t reckon with was the size and determination of the grassroots movement to stand up and be counted. We refused to be cowered. We would not allow non-payers to stand alone. Poverty was undoubtedly the most demanding recruiting sergeant to our cause but through the network of housing scheme anti-poll tax unions and the regional and all-Scotland federation we gave strength and solidarity to those under threat. 

no warrant sales

News of attempted poindings by parasitical sheriff officers despatched by spineless councillors brought hundreds onto the streets in defence of threatened households. Not a single warrant sale was allowed. Scotland was in revolt against the Tax and the grass roots nature of the uprising left the politicians out of step and the authorities in despair. By the end of 1989 the non-payment army approached the one million mark.  Marches and rallies involved tens of thousands. Council chambers were occupied. Sheriff officers were barred entry to non-payers homes and often returned to find their own offices under siege. 

The Tax was fatally wounded and when we spread the campaign to England and Wales the 13 million new recruits to the non-payment army rendered the poll tax a dead duck. Or as John Major was forced to admit in Parliament in 1991 it was being repealed because it had become “uncollectable”. The anti-poll tax campaign made it “uncollectable” and its unbreakable spirit rested in its grass roots character.

The thousands of ‘ordinary’ people who became extra-ordinary campaigners, particularly, it has to be said, the many women who led from the front.  The names of Betty Currie, Mary McQuade, Betty McEachran, Jean from Cambuslang, Agnes from Pollok, Margaret from Easterhouse and hundreds of others too numerous to mention were the lifeblood of the campaign and they more than anyone put the “uncollectable” into the poll tax and helped melt down the iron lady and despatch her to the political knackers yard were she belongs. 

Well done to each and every one of the anti-poll tax campaigners on the 20th anniversary of our almighty struggle. 

footnote:  Tommy Sheridan was the secretary of Pollok Anti-Poll Tax Union, He was sentenced to six  months imprisonment for defying a court order to help prevent a warrant sale in October 1991. Served four  months in Saughton Prison between March and July 1992 where he was elected as a Scottish Militant Labour councillor for Glasgow Pollok in the May elections of that year and secured 20% of the vote and came 2nd in the Westminster election of April 1992. Now co-convenor of Solidarity