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Title: Winning the Water War Author: Dermot Sreenan Date: 1997 Language: en Topics: Ireland, community organizing, Red & Black Revolution Source: Retrieved on 8th August 2021 from http://struggle.ws/rbr/rbr3_water.html Notes: This article was originally published in Red & Black Revolution no. 3.
Ireland is famous for being a place where you can get all four seasons
in the passing of one day. The predominant season here is the rainy
season which extends through spring, summer, autumn and winter . The one
thing we are not short of on this island is water. But then, since when
did our ‘leaders’ or the authorities let the facts get in the way of
further exploitation. Over the last three years in Dublin a battle has
raged between the councils, trying to implement a charge for the supply
of water and the people opposed to this policy. This is the story of the
campaign against the imposition of this double tax.
When the domestic rates were abolished in 1977 following the general
election an increase took place in income tax and Value Added Tax. The
money made from these increases was to be used to fund the local
authorities, who had previously relied on the domestic rates for their
funding. Central government was to pay a rate support grant to Local
Authorities. This rate support grant increased until 1983 when the then
Fine Gael and Labour government decided to cut this grant and brought in
legislation to allow the councils to levy service charges.
So though people were effectively paying more taxes, less of this money
made its way to local councils, so they were asked to pay more money in
the guise of ‘service charges’. Eighty seven per cent of all the tax
paid in this country is by the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) worker. This is a
massive amount of money especially when contrasted to the fact that many
multi-national companies are attracted to this country for exactly the
opposite reasons, because they have to pay relatively small amounts of
tax. Put plain and simply the beleaguered tax-payer in Ireland has been
getting screwed not once but twice. This is what made this campaign so
important.
In the 1980’s resistance in Dublin led to the scrapping of the first
attempt to introduce a water tax in Dublin. Other successful campaigns
took place in Limerick and Waterford. In Waterford also, around the
Paddy Browne Road a gang of contractors who were cutting off non-payers
were held hostage by residents and Waterford Glass workers.
In other counties the charges continued and by 1993 the amount expected
to be paid by a household varied from one county to another. The service
charge for Kilkenny was £70 per annum plus extra money for refuse
collection while in the County of Cavan you had to pay £180 to the local
council. In 1995 the service charges continued to rise with Mayo
commanding an annual charge of between £205 and £235.
The writing was on the wall that a new charge was about to be levied on
the people of Dublin when on January 1^(st) 1994 Dublin County was
divided into three new County Council areas. Fingal, South Dublin, and
Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown were created and they all had to strike a rate
which they would then be charged to each household for the water
service. The existence of three new areas made it easier to administer
the charge on each household.
All the councillors had been elected on the basis that they opposed this
charge. In 1985 the Fianna Fáil manifesto for the local elections stated
“Fianna Fáil are totally opposed to the new system of local charges and
on return to office will abolish these charges and repeal the
legislation under which they are imposed .” However when the time came
to show their opposition they stalled before striking a rate. In South
County it was £70, in Fingal it was £85, in Dun Laoighaire/Rathdown it
varied from £50 to £93.
The sorry excuse that arose on the occasion of all these politicians
proving themselves to be liars was that they were forced to strike a
water charge rate or else the government would dissolve the council.
Councillor Don Tipping of Democratic Left later wrote his excuse in the
Tallaght Echo “We (Democratic Left) faced down a threat to abolish the
council in 1994 by Fíanna Faíl Minister Smith, who insisted that we must
have the water charges.” The way Mr Tipping and his fellow councillors
‘faced down’ this threat was to concede totally to the government
wishes. It is on such weak reasons that politicians’ promises are
broken. This whole episode also speaks volumes about how our ‘democracy’
works. The government pushes for Water Charges and the councillors
bluster but fail to oppose it in any meaningful way. Instead they set
the charge and set about the business of collecting it. In just a short
space of time nearly all the elected councillors went from opposing
water charges to imposing water charges.
In the spring 1994 issue of Workers Solidarity (paper of the Workers
Solidarity Movement) Gregor Kerr wrote “Householders and residents in
Dublin should immediately prepare to resist these charges. If nobody
pays, they will be impossible to collect.” Over the summer of 1994
political opposition to these water charges was drummed up as many
public meetings were held all over the county. Members of Militant
Labour (now known as the Socialist Party) and the Workers Solidarity
Movement and many non-aligned activists worked at leafleting information
about the forthcoming charge. We showed what had happened when similar
charges were imposed in the other cities, towns and county areas. The
water charges had soon developed into a service charge and now
households were facing annual bills from their local councils in excess
of £100. We knew this first charge was the thin end of the wedge and we
went about getting that information into as many houses as possible.
Long hours were spent going around housing estates dropping in leaflets
talking to people on the doorsteps. I remember spending evenings walking
around one particular suburb with comrades leafleting for a meeting
which we had organised in a local pub. After distributing thousands of
leaflets two people turned up for the meeting, one from the local
newspaper and one a worker in the council. In Templeogue people had not
been involved in campaigns and there was little history of community
based struggle. A sense of community appeared absent as each person
looked after their own interests. But this area became more organised
later on in the campaign and more people became involved as the council
began to drag people to court. The hard work done a year earlier was
rewarded as the campaign blossomed in the area.
The response was different in other areas of the city. In Firhouse 70
people showed up for the initial meeting. The activists organised a
survey as a good means to develop contacts and as a means to argue
against the charges. Persistent work by activists helped raise the
awareness of the issue. As people became aware of the campaign more and
more became involved.
On September 24^(th) a conference was held and this gave rise to the
Federation of Dublin Anti-Water Charges Campaigns. Councillor Joe
Higgins (Militant Labour) was elected Chairperson of the campaign.
Gregor Kerr, a member of the WSM, was elected secretary of the campaign.
We prepared and built for a march which took place in November 1994.
Local meetings were held thoughout Dublin and they were generally well
attended. A march took place in the city centre and over 500 people
protested at the implementation of this double taxation. The campaign
was by now well and truly alive and we were building all the time by
raising the issue where we could. Over the course of late 1994/early
1995 nearly every house in Fingal and South Dublin had received a
leaflet from the campaign.
By early December ’94, South Dublin County Council had had enough of our
campaign. People weren’t paying the bill fast enough for their liking so
they decided to up the ante and declared that if people didn’t pay their
outstanding bills within a certain number of days cut-offs would
commence. The councils were now resorting to the tactics of the school
yard bully by their use of threatening language in letters and
ultimately with the threat of cutting off people’s water supply.
All the activists raced into action. There were stake-outs at the water
inspectors’ houses. We would follow them around to ensure that they
didn’t attempt any cut off under the cover of the night. Clondalkin
people organised their own cars to patrol around that area. CB radios
were installed in the cars so that we were in constant communication
with each other as we monitored the movements of the men who would try
to cut people’s water off. One house in Tallaght was turned into a
virtual Head Quarters for the campaign. The phone calls kept flooding
in. Communities learned to be vigilant of the blue Dublin Water Works
vans and were very wary when they came into the estates. Children
playing football on the park were told to knock on the doors when they
saw such vans in the area. Indeed one van ventured into an estate in
Clondalkin village and when the kids alerted everyone to their presence
they hopped back into their van and drove away rapidly!
I remember freezing one night in a not so new car with a comrade from
Militant Labour and waiting on one water inspector to move. I got out of
the car to answer the call of mother nature behind a bush and I heard a
huge roar from the car. Our man was on the move at 5.00am in the
morning, a little early to be starting work we thought. He was aware
that he was being followed so he gave up and went back home via Crumlin
Garda station where he moaned about our close attention.
All our efforts did not go unnoticed. One South County Dublin councillor
called us “political pygmies.” The Evening Herald entitled us the “water
bandits.” But the final result from the reports the campaign received
was that 12 houses were disconnected and they were duly reconnected. The
campaign had won the first battle and no house would be without water
for that Christmas.
Things now suddenly changed because a different game was being played in
the Dáil. The Brendan Smith affair [1] caused the collapse of the Fianna
Fáil and Labour government.
A new government was formed. It still had Labour in it, but this time
their partners in government were Fíne Gael and Democratic Left. With
the change in government came a change in the tactics used to try to
extract the double tax of the water charge. In the Dáil the Minister for
the Environment announced that the power of the local authorities to
disconnect water was to be ‘delimited’. When pursued on this issue he
said “The Government will delimit their power to ensure that water
supply is not cut off as a quick reaction but where somebody has the
capacity to pay and refuses to do so the ability to disconnect water
supply will remain with the local authority.” [2] As you can see
statements like this did little to clarify the matter for us.
We continued to apply political pressure. We held a picket outside the
Democratic Left conference which was held in Liberty Hall. The Labour
party conference in Limerick was picketed by a number of activists.
Labour members continued to be smug as they passed our picket and they
paid little attention to us but disliked the slogan “You didn’t axe the
double tax, now watch your vote collapse.” On that picket we were joined
by anti-water charge activists from Limerick and Galway.
Over the next couple of months nearly a hundred thousand leaflets were
produced and distributed calling on people to maintain a non-payment
policy and explaining the government’s pathetic tax-free allowance
scheme. It proposed that if you paid your water charge on time then you
were entitled to claim a tax rebate at 27%. So if your tax was £150 you
were entitled to a maximum rebate of £40.50. In South County Dublin with
the Water Charge at £70 you were entitled to a maximum rebate of £18.90.
If you lived in Cavan you could claim back £40.50, but you’d already
paid £210 for your service charge.
On 31^(st) March an announcement was made that the councils would have
to bring people to court to obtain an order prior to being able to
disconnect the water. This was what the newspeak word “delimit” meant in
real terms. This was the major concession that was won by Democratic
Left in their negotiations in government! A press conference was held by
the campaign outlining a strategy for dealing with the threats of court
action. All cases would be legally defended in Court but whatever the
outcome, pickets and protests would ensure that nobody’s water was
disconnected.
A conference was held in the ATGWU hall in Dublin on May 13^(th). It was
decided then that during the coming Summer the FDAWCC would launch a
membership drive at £2 per household to help fund the legal costs which
would no doubt be incurred when the councils finally got around to
summonsing people. For the moment they contented themselves with sending
out more threatening letters. The rate of non-payment remained strong.
Over £23 million remained outstanding from 1994. Successful meetings
were held in many areas with 150 people showing up for one meeting in
Tallaght.
Late into the summer final warning notices began to appear threatening
court action. This was the final stage before the real summonses would
appear. The membership campaign was growing quite rapidly and over 2,500
householders had contributed. The Amalgamated Transport and General
Workers Union very kindly provided the campaign with an office. An All
Dublin Activists Meeting was held in September with the campaign working
on a three pronged attack of non-payment, defence of non-payers in
court, and maximising political pressure.
The first court cases were scheduled for Rathfarnham court on November
13^(th) 1995. The activists made a large attendance at this case a
priority and on the day over 500 people turned up. They voiced their
support for those people fighting in court and made clear their
opposition to the charges. There were people from all over Dublin, as
well as from other cities and towns thoughout the country. Various union
banners were present. People sang and were in good spirits as the judge
decided to adjourn the cases to the next week.
We never expected justice in court. So the next week we returned to the
court house. That day in Rathfarnham finished with a 500 strong march
through the village after the judge threw the council’s cases out of
court. RTE (national broadcasting service) finally decided that the
campaign warranted some coverage and the picket appeared on the
afternoon news. Both Joe Higgins and Gregor Kerr were amongst some of
the many people interviewed on the Gay Byrne morning radio show. After
two years in existence the media finally began to take notice of us.
The local authorities continued to pursue people though the courts. The
council had many legal representatives such as a solicitor, a barrister
and sometimes a senior barrister, as well as various council officials.
They pursued the cases tirelessly but the campaign’s solicitors (F.H.
O’Reilly & Co.) contested them on several grounds. Despite this some
disconnections were ordered but the campaign’s tactic of appealing these
decisions to the circuit court ensured that no disconnections could take
place. Larry Doran (a pensioner from the Greenhills area of south
Dublin) made an eloquent speech from the dock of this courtroom in
February 1996 when he highlighted the injustice of this state which
grants tax amnesties to the rich while pursuing pensioners for water
charges though the courts. He said “if the wealthy paid their due taxes,
PAYE taxpayers would not be asked to pay double and I would not be
before this court.” The Judge ordered the court to be cleared after the
cheering and clapping that Mr. Doran’s speech received. Larry, with the
support of his local campaign, decided not to appeal but instead
challenged the council to come and try to cut his water off. A
demonstration was organised outside his house to show the council who
they would have to deal with if they attempted to cut Larry’s water off.
The council decided not to take Larry up on his challenge.
The Councils of Fingal and Dun Laoghaire / Rathdown brought people to
court as well. All members of the campaign were represented. After 6
months of trials up to May 18^(th) 1996, involving 25 appearances by
councils, only 25 disconnection orders were issued against campaign
members. One judge in Swords even invoked the Public Order Act to deal
with a protest outside his courthouse. As William Morris said back in
1887 “The ruling class seem to want people to use the streets only to go
back and forth to work, making profits for them.” In 1996 the judge was
still not too keen on the idea of the streets being used for much else,
especially protests.
When Brian Lenihan, the Fianna Fail TD for Dublin West died it became
obvious that his seat would be contested and Councillor Joe Higgins was
going to run for the vacant seat as a Militant Labour Candidate. Joe had
always spoken strongly against the water charges and campaigned
tirelessly against them. On 13^(th) January an All Dublin Activists
Meeting was held at which Joe sought the endorsement of the campaign for
his candidacy in the forthcoming by-election.
Members of the WSM present at this meeting spoke strongly against this
proposal. We said that we would much prefer to see the charge defeated
by the working class organising on the streets to show their opposition.
We believe that people have to seize back control over their own lives
and this is not done by electing some official to fight your corner.
Empowerment would come from defeating the combined forces of the state,
the government, and the local authorities, by organising together and
fighting against the imposition of this charge. Now that we were
winning, we just had to keep on pushing forward with our demands to have
this charge abolished. Electing Joe to sit in the Dáil to argue our case
was never going to be empowering. Joe would have been ignored just as on
the local council his opposition to the charge was ignored. While our
arguments were well received and considered, the decision of the meeting
was to endorse Joe’s candidacy.
In the end Councillor Joe Higgins nearly became Joe Higgins TD but for a
few hundred votes. In the end however, Irish politics didn’t vary from
the mean and the son Brian Lenihan Junior was elected to the seat his
father had died in.
The Federation of Dublin Anti Water Charges Campaigns held a conference
in May of 1996. Many people were jubilant by the good showing of Joe
Higgins in the Dublin West by-election. For many activists this was the
most media coverage the campaign had received since its inception. But
on the various prongs of attack we were doing well. Not one member had
been disconnected despite the flurry of court activity and the huge
resources spent by the councils chasing non-payers. The Campaign was
still solvent and over 10,000 households had contributed £2 each to it.
We decided to continue to maximise political pressure and the majority
of people were in favour of the campaign running a slate of candidates
in the next general election in order to ‘put the frighteners on the
politicians.’ Once again we argued against this tactic. The Campaign was
already on winning ground. The courts couldn’t operate. Resistance to
payment was still very high with over 50% of the houses not paying. The
Councils were heading into their third year of setting a rate that would
not be paid by the majority of people in the area. When a campaign of
working class resistance to this injustice is so strong the last thing
you need to do is to elect more politicians whose voices will be lost ,
soon to be followed by their principles. Mass resistance had got the
campaign into this winning position and mass resistance would be the
murder weapon of the water charges.
In November and December of 1996 the Campaign increased the pressure on
the local councillors. All sorts of incentive schemes had been
introduced to try and make people pay this double tax and all of them
had failed. The non-payment of water charges had increased and the
councillors knew the imposition of this tax was becoming impossible. The
prospect of a General Election in the Summer of 1997 had all the
political parties running for cover. They were running scared in the
face of the massive unpopularity of this form of local funding. The last
turn of the screw came in the shape of Civil Process cases. In this
instance the councils took people to a civil process court where they
would try and get the judge to rule for them and where they would be
entitled to seize assets to the value of the money owed. This new
tactic, which they are continuing to persevere with, has met with as
little success as the previous ones. Again, people turned up in their
hundreds to defend their fellow citizens from this persecution, and a
combination of court protests and legal defence continues to make life
very difficult for the councils.
The water charges were effectively dead in the water (pun intended).
They had become uncontrollable and largely uncollectable. Further
demonstrations were held outside local council meetings where they tried
to strike an estimate for the following year of how much they would seek
from the people. A march was held in the city centre which attracted a
good attendance. The message was to stand firm and we would definitely
see victory. Protest phone calls bombarded the local councillors.
Massive public meetings were held. 500 people attended such a meeting in
Baldoyle in late November. Finally, on December 19^(th) 1996 the
Minister for the Environment announced that the Water Charge was going
to be replaced by a new system whereby the road tax collected in each
area would be the source for local council funding. Of course he
neglected to mention that his hand was forced in this change of policy.
The working class people of Dublin had organised, rallied and won an
important victory. Double taxation was over and this is due to the
policy of mass resistance, organisation and direct action. The political
establishment had once again thought they could exploit the working
class for yet more money. But this time they had their noses bloodied.
The fight is not over but the victory is certainly ours. In time to come
we should remember this victory and how it was won because the
politicians will not be long before they come up with a new method to
exploit us while they leave the rich to get richer. We must remember
that direct action and mass resistance destroyed their best laid plan
this time and be ready to employ these tactics again when they unveil
their new tricks.
[1] The Brendan Smith affair brought about the collapse of this
Government. The Attorney General’s office took an exceedingly long time
to get extradition papers prepared so that Father Brendan Smith could be
extradited and prosecuted for child abuse. It led to the resignation of
Albert Reynolds as Taoiseach and the formation of a new government
(without an election).
[2] Quote taken from minutes of the Dáil as Minister Howlin answered a
question.