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Can't Pay, Won't Pay: The Fight to Stop the Poll Tax
Thirty years ago, a social movement helped bring down one of the most powerful British Prime Ministers of the 20th Century. For the 30th anniversary of the Poll Tax rebellion, Simon Hannah looks back on those tumultuous days of resistance, telling the story of the people that beat the bailiffs, rioted for their rights and defied a government.
Starting in Scotland where the 'Community Charge' was first trialled, Can't Pay, Won't Pay immerses the reader in the gritty history of the rebellion. Amidst the drama of large scale protests and blockaded estates a number of key figures and groups Neil Kinnock and Tommy Sheridan; Militant, Class War and the Metropolitan Police.
Assessing this legacy today, Hannah demonstrates the centrality of the Poll Tax resistance as a key chapter in the history of British popular uprisings, Labour Party factionalism, the anti-socialist agenda and failed Tory ideology.
Starting in Scotland where the 'Community Charge' was first trialled, Can't Pay, Won't Pay immerses the reader in the gritty history of the rebellion. Amidst the drama of large scale protests and blockaded estates a number of key figures and groups Neil Kinnock and Tommy Sheridan; Militant, Class War and the Metropolitan Police.
Assessing this legacy today, Hannah demonstrates the centrality of the Poll Tax resistance as a key chapter in the history of British popular uprisings, Labour Party factionalism, the anti-socialist agenda and failed Tory ideology.
- GenresHistory
224 pages, Paperback
Published March 20, 2020
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June 24, 2021
A good and timely histry of a historic resistance movement from which there is much to learn. Poll Tax was a brutally regressive tax on individuals rather than property that led in many cases to the poorest members of society getting slapped with bills higher that some of the wealthiest - the flagship policy of a larger smash and grab clearly orchestrated to increase wealth inequality. It is of little surprise that this prompted immense backlash, though all were shocked with the amount of people willing to actively break the law, risking not just fines but imprisonment and harassment from police and bailiffs.
The book might be a bit too brief in areas for those wanting a more comprehensive organisational history, but I think it strikes a good balance between detail and accessibility. I'm a big fan of the final chapter, which reflects on the lessons we can learn from the events in a thoughtful manner. To gather my own thoughts, the lessons include: the importance of the mass movement to ending the tax, despite the claims to the contrary by commentators afraid of direct action and extra-parliamentary politics; how Labour is a paternalistic establishment force unable to properly support working class interests (and indeed often jealously destroys socialists projects and purges the left, making their respons to the anti-poll tax movement comparable to their response to Corbynism); the importance and moral necessity for direct action generally to affect positive change, and difference between disruptive resistence and performative protest; and the need to see class as a dynamic set of social relationships rather than some distinct and static social categories.
Reflecting back on the history also highlights the utter failure of Thatcherism even when judged on its own terms, despite the hegemony it maintained (even within Labour!) even after Thatcher was ousted. To quote Hannah: 'The argument that the poor could be persuaded to vote Tory by slapping them with huge bills [meant to also be a brutal attack on the pro-gay "Loony Left" and municipal socialism that Thatcher so reviled] didn't work, in large part because the poor didn't really vote. The Tory view that the middle and upper classes were being made to pay more because the Labour-supporting poor outvoted them was empirically untrue. Instead of blaming Labour councils, people largely blamed the government for excessively high charges. The tax also failed to discipline local councils financially. The Tories had to impose their own caps to keep the Poll Tax bills low, which defeated the entire point of the financial reforms. And, as Lawson and others had predicted, it ended up costing central government more money than it saved'. Like all of Thatcher's other policies, policy intentionally designed to be cruel and brutal resulted in predictably disasterous results, without any accountability ever being dealt to the architects - even after Thatcher resigned, those others who crafted the Poll Tax retained their positions within the party for long after.
So yeah, it's a read that oscillates between the hopeful (communities rallying to rebuff bailiffs, provide legal advice, protect their elderly and vulnerable) and the depressing (the fizzling out of the movement, the callous imprisonment of people even after the tax was officially abandoned, the traitorous actions of the PLP and many Labour councils, the related rise of Blair, the council tax that replaced it still being regressive), but that at all times felt like important knowledge, with knowledge of the tactics used being a rightful part of the arsenal of those wanting to change society for the better.
The book might be a bit too brief in areas for those wanting a more comprehensive organisational history, but I think it strikes a good balance between detail and accessibility. I'm a big fan of the final chapter, which reflects on the lessons we can learn from the events in a thoughtful manner. To gather my own thoughts, the lessons include: the importance of the mass movement to ending the tax, despite the claims to the contrary by commentators afraid of direct action and extra-parliamentary politics; how Labour is a paternalistic establishment force unable to properly support working class interests (and indeed often jealously destroys socialists projects and purges the left, making their respons to the anti-poll tax movement comparable to their response to Corbynism); the importance and moral necessity for direct action generally to affect positive change, and difference between disruptive resistence and performative protest; and the need to see class as a dynamic set of social relationships rather than some distinct and static social categories.
Reflecting back on the history also highlights the utter failure of Thatcherism even when judged on its own terms, despite the hegemony it maintained (even within Labour!) even after Thatcher was ousted. To quote Hannah: 'The argument that the poor could be persuaded to vote Tory by slapping them with huge bills [meant to also be a brutal attack on the pro-gay "Loony Left" and municipal socialism that Thatcher so reviled] didn't work, in large part because the poor didn't really vote. The Tory view that the middle and upper classes were being made to pay more because the Labour-supporting poor outvoted them was empirically untrue. Instead of blaming Labour councils, people largely blamed the government for excessively high charges. The tax also failed to discipline local councils financially. The Tories had to impose their own caps to keep the Poll Tax bills low, which defeated the entire point of the financial reforms. And, as Lawson and others had predicted, it ended up costing central government more money than it saved'. Like all of Thatcher's other policies, policy intentionally designed to be cruel and brutal resulted in predictably disasterous results, without any accountability ever being dealt to the architects - even after Thatcher resigned, those others who crafted the Poll Tax retained their positions within the party for long after.
So yeah, it's a read that oscillates between the hopeful (communities rallying to rebuff bailiffs, provide legal advice, protect their elderly and vulnerable) and the depressing (the fizzling out of the movement, the callous imprisonment of people even after the tax was officially abandoned, the traitorous actions of the PLP and many Labour councils, the related rise of Blair, the council tax that replaced it still being regressive), but that at all times felt like important knowledge, with knowledge of the tactics used being a rightful part of the arsenal of those wanting to change society for the better.
Displaying 1 of 1 review