. 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. 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 Argentinian
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? 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. 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. Tommy
Sheridan (Secretary
of Pollok Anti-Poll Tax Union. Elected Chair
of Scottish and All Britain Anti-Poll Tax
Federation. Sentenced to 6 months
imprisonment for defying a court order to help
prevent a warrant sale in October 1991. Served 4
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. Secured 20% of the vote
and came 2nd in the Westminster election of April
1992. Elected as an MSP to the Scottish
Parliament in 1999 and again in 2003. Now
co-convenor of Solidarity) |
 |
| Steve Arnott |
Anne: How do you feel the
twentieth anniversary of the poll tax has been marked by
the media in Scotland?
Steve: I
feel it’s definitely a bit mixed. The Daily Record
carried Tommy’s piece which was good. Definitely
changed days. At the time they carried the banner
headline ‘Downfall of a Dodger’ on their front
page when Tommy went to jail in the battle against the
poll tax. I thought the BBC Scotland piece was reasonable
as well. They made the point that the struggle was
unprecedented and historic in Scotland - that it was the
poll tax which brought down Thatcher and helped pave the
way for the new devolutionary settlement. These
things were really not recognised at the time. But all of
us who were involved had the feeling we were making
history. I hope there will be more coverage on the
twentieth anniversary of the victory against the poll tax
– when Michael Heseltine stood up in the Westminster
Parliament in 1991and said the tax was being abandoned
because it had become ‘uncollectable’. Then
again, perhaps it’s more attractive for the media
establishment to commemorate a heroic struggle that was
defeated, like the miners’, than one which won its
battle and brought down the Iron Lady.
Anne: The
poll tax came in April 1989. How long did it take to get
so many people to refuse to pay?
Steve: It
came into force in April ’89 – and, of course,
we were the guinea pigs here in Scotland. But it had been
big news for about a year. You could walk into any pub in
Scotland and here people complaining about the unfairness
of it, saying they weren’t going to pay, that
Thatcher could stick her poll tax up her arse. It was the
injustice of it. The poorest paid and lowest income
people, or families with adults staying at home were
losing big time. A millionaire would pay the same in
local tax as a hospital porter or a factory worker. But
also there was this sense of the last
straw…we’d had ten years of a government we
never voted for and enough was enough.
Anne: Are
you saying non-payment would have happened anyway?
Steve: Some
non-payment would have happened but not organised mass
non-payment. There were those at the time who
argued the struggle should stay within legal political
limits or should be led by the STUC (Scottish Trades
Union Congress) – but that wasn’t going to
happen. Those of us in what was then the Militant in
Scotland realised that Thatcher had made a tactical
error. Previously she had taken on sections of working
class only one at a time, but the poll tax would affect
nearly everyone simultaneously. We realised a major
movement of resistance was possible. There were waves of
Tory government and Labour council propaganda promising
hell and high water if people didn’t pay the poll
tax, but we did public meetings up and down the
country organising ordinary people in their communities
into anti-poll tax unions, pledged to defend one another
if councils sent in the sheriffs to pursue non-payers. We
produced tens of thousands of posters and leaflets
explaining the law and how it could be broken. When April
1989 came we were ready. We organised Bin the Bill
rallies all over Scotland where ordinary people could
come and tear up their poll tax bills or throw them on a
brazier. In Fife we had hired the Lochgelly Centre in May
and four hundred people turned up that night to
demonstrate their defiance. Tommy Sheridan spoke
that night, as did Dick Douglas, the local dissident
Labour MP who courageously broke with Labour over its
stance to tell people to pay the tax. When I announced
from the chair that a mole in Fife Council had let us
know that over 100, 000 people in Fife had not paid
Thatcher’s tax in the first month the place went
crazy. I knew then we were on to something big.
Anne: What
are your most abiding memories of the struggle?
Steve: Difficult,
because there are so many. I remember a woman came up to
me in Inverness High Street a few years back and said
‘Don’t you remember me’? I’m terrible
with names and faces but I did know her from somewhere.
It turned out she was a woman we’d helped chase the
sheriffs away from all those years past. Her and her
husband had been one of the first to receive a poinding
notice threatening to remove their household stuff for
non-payment. They didn’t live in area where we had
an anti-poll tax union. It was just a quiet wee Fife
village but around thirty of us turned up to barricade
the home and refuse the sheriff’s entry. It was in a
cul de sac and the moment they saw us they turned tail
and fled in their big fancy motor. But we were well
prepared. People had cars and chased them all over Fife.
It was like the Dukes of Hazzard that day. That was one
of the first poundings successfully stopped and the
Record carried a double page spread on it. Gradually more
and more people got the confidence not to pay. By the end
it was pretty much enough to have an anti-poll tax
federation poser in your window to guarantee the
sheriff’s would stay away. When the poll tax was
brought in in England and Wales a year later the fact
that a million people in Scotland weren’t paying
gave the movement there a huge boost.
Anne: In
a few sentences how would some up the lessons of the
anti-poll tax movement?
Steve:
Unity is strength. Pick your ground well, get your
tactics and strategy right, and have moral right on your
side and all things become possible. There are people now
who built that movement shoulder to shoulder who
don’t even speak to one another now – and
that’s a tragedy. But my good friend Peter Luke who
was chair of the Fife Anti Poll Tax Federation and is now
an economics lecturer in London once said to me ‘we
were part of history and no-one can ever take that away
from us’. No-one who fought in the anti-poll tax
battle should ever forget that they were part of
something marvelous. We defeated the Tories and got one
back for the miners. We ended an evil tax which
threatened to impoverish millions. We raised the self
confidence of the Scottish people and of ordinary people
throughout the UK, and we brought down Thatcher. Armed
with the right ideas, ordinary people can achieve
extraordinary things.