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Title: Beating the Poll Tax
Author: Anarchist Communist Federation
Date: March 1990
Language: en
Topics: Thatcherism, Poll Tax, United Kingdom
Source: Retrieved on December 25, 2015 from https://web.archive.org/web/20141225195813/http://www.afed.org.uk/ace/polltax.html
Notes: Anarchist Communist Editions (ACE) Pamphlet No. 4. First published in March 1990 under the Tories (following ‘The Poll Tax and How to Fight It’ October 1988) Now published online March 2006 and dedicated to New Labour and the Left.

Anarchist Communist Federation

Beating the Poll Tax

‘As a socialist, I have no time for tax-dodgers’

Eric Milligan, head of Lothian region Labour council’s Finance

Department (April 1989)

‘Such is the scale of the non-payment movement in our region that we may

have to write-off large sums of outsanding poll tax’

Eric Milligan (December 1989)

MASS NON-PAYMENT is now a reality in Scotland. Councils describe the

numbers refusing to pay their ‘community charge’ as ‘frighteningly

high’. Nearly a year after the first bills were sent out, hundreds of

thousands of working class people have not paid a single penny of their

bills. Millions more are massively in arrears. Councils are despairing

of ever recovering their money.

attempts to get them to enforce the poll tax.

bureaucracy that threatens to push the ‘community charge’ system to

collapse.

strength of opposition they face, their nerve is beginning to crack.

As the first poll tax demands are sent out in England and Wales, the

Tories ‘flagship’ is clearly in trouble. The battle against the poll tax

is now entering its most critical stage yet.

This pamphlet sets out to show how that battle can be won – by

uncompromising, united working class resistance: in the communities

where we live, and the places we work.

It argues that those struggles must be controlled directly by those

engaged in them – outside the control of the Labour Party, local

councils, the party-building left or any other set of would-be bosses.

Together we can crush the ‘community charge’.

BEATING THE POLL TAX

COUNCILS ACROSS THE country are in crisis over the poll tax. Hundreds of

thousands of Scottish people are still refusing point-blank to pay a

penny of their first poll tax demand -nearly ten months after the bills

were sent out. Hundreds of thousands more are set to join the

non-payment campaign in England and Wales once their bills are

dispatched this Spring.

The chaos that surrounded attempts to compile ‘registration lists’ of

those liable to pay in Scotland, has been repeated in England and Wales

with organised disruption of the process threatening to push the system

to collapse. Worried council officials are warning that they may not

even be ready to send out the first bills in England and Wales until May

or June — putting everyone two months in arrears to start with.

The efforts of Scottish councils to beat the non-payment movement by

taking money direct from people’s bank accounts, or by seizing goods

from their homes to sell are failing dismally.

Communities have mobilised to protect each other and see off the

bailiffs. Workers in dole offices and council finance departments have

threatened strike action if they’re ordered to deduct unpaid poll tax

direct from Claimants’ giros or council workers’ wage-packets.

Despite all the pressure from the government, and media black-out,

despite all the attempts at sabotage by Labour leaders, and the endless

claims of the ‘impossibility of building a mass campaign of non—payment

of the poll tax — an enormous number of working class people in Scotland

are united in just such a movement.

And all the gloomy predictions that the non-payment campaign would

collapse once the first bills were received, have been shown up as

defeatist drivel, out of step with the mood of anger and defiance that

exists in working class communities Scotland-wide.

It’s not just the case that the non-payment movement is ‘holding firm’.

As more and more people have realised the state most Scottish councils

are in, and their inability to chase up those not paying, many who paid

a ‘first instalment’ on their poll tax bill, have re-joined the

non-payment movement — swelling the numbers of those involved.

It’s a movement that’s not about to collapse or fizzle out. The same

Labour authorities who claimed that non-payment was a non-starter now

accept that.

Birmingham Labour Council’s own estimates admit that they will be faced

with a minimum of 120,000 non-payers in the city this year. They’re so

certain that a mass campaign of defiance will emerge, that they’re

busily building special poll tax court buildings in readiness to

prosecute those not paying. Lothian Labour Council, in Scotland, predict

that they’ll need to take at least 100,000 non-payers to court.

Other figures are hard to come by — after doing their own sums, most

councils are keen to keep quiet about their estimates of the strength of

the non-payment campaign they will face.

Even the opponents of the non-payment campaign those very same local

authorities who said it would never get off the ground now admit that

they face a long, drawn-out and bitter battle against large numbers of

working class people.

Crunch-time in Scotland:

The coming weeks will be crucial in the battle against the poll tax in

Scotland. Councils — whose best attempts to wipe out the non-payment

campaign have failed again and again — have been forced to up-the-stakes

and have gone on to the offensive.

At the end of last year, around 400,000 final demands to settle the

whole of the first year’s poll tax within 14 days (or face the

consequences) were sent out. Strathclyde region sent out an additional

300,000 7-day final demands to those people in arrears in its area. When

— at end of the week — over 80% of these ‘final’ demands had been

totally ignored, exasperated council officials conceded that the

response had been ‘disappointing’.

People have realised that — with the council administrative machinery

still in chaos — them ‘threatening’ to seriously take on the non-payment

campaign is nothing but a joke.

The idea that the same councils who even now don’t know exactly how many

people aren’t paying because their systems aren’t yet sorted out enough

to count them properly could take hundreds of -thousands of people to

court; wage or benefit ‘arrestments’; or issue thousands of bailiffs

warrants, is just plain laughable.

Throughout Scotland there are endless stories of babies, the long

deceased and fictitious people receiving poll tax payment books, while

many of those liable to pay are still without them. Other people have

received as many as twenty. Rebate applications are, taking months to

process. Councils — dogged by computer viruses and constant government

revision of the rules — can’t even keep up with the thousands of genuine

changes of address and circumstances they need to process every week,

let alone repair the damage being done by deliberate disruption and

sabotage.

Lothian council still can’t work out where 20,000 rebate applications

from people not registered to pay have come from.

Councils have been trying two alternatives to simply trying to frighten

people into paying.

One is to trace people’s bank accounts, and seize overdue poll tax

direct from there. The other, is to send in the bailiffs to first

‘poind’ (value) and then seize ‘nonessential’ household goods from

non-payers to auction off to pay their debts. Either of these tactics

are slow, complicated, costly and time-consuming — and that’s if they

work at all. The experiences councils are suffering in Scotland suggest

that they don’t and they won’t:

they simply wouldn’t be able to cope with thousands of council requests

to seek out the bank account details of non-payers. Even if they could

it would cost a fortune and take forever — and they couldn’t guarantee

to find even 5–6% of the names.

unpopular — and have been met with such fierce community resistance —

that many councils are already considering abandoning them altogether.

Groups of bailiffs, backed by police protection, have been met by angry

crowds hundreds strong when they’ve ventured onto Scottish housing

estates. Time and again councils have been forced to drop the action.

And the fact is that the non-payment campaign is beginning to hit

councils hard. Figures released in late November show that in Lothian

region alone, the council is ÂŁ25.5 million short in poll tax receipts.

It’s having to borrow money to make up the shortfall.

The latest blow to poll tax bosses came in December when officers from

the Data Protection Agency ruled that over two hundred councils had

asked ‘illegal’ questions on their registration forms. They’ve been

ordered to go through each and every one of their computer files to

erase the wrongly-held information — as if they didn’t have enough

problems already.

Now, poll tax Minister John Patten has announced plans to ‘cap’ any

local authority who ‘overspends’ government-imposed limits. But they’d

be unable to impose ‘caps’ on council budgets until weeks after the

first bills had been dispatched. The result would be that councils would

have to ‘cancel’ all the bills they’d sent and issue a whole new set in

their place. They’d have to issue refunds; work out rebates from

scratch; re—adjust ‘installment’ payments and more. warning of the utter

chaos this would cause, the Association of Metropolitan Authorities has

concluded that the government ‘does not live in the real world. Councils

couldn’t change their entire taxation policy in days’.

Of course, the key to bringing down the poll tax lies in independent

collective working class action, against all branches of the State.

Despite the claims by the head of the Scottish Rating and Valuation

Association, Ron Skinner that: ‘you don’t need policies to stop the

community charge. It will stop itself’, we don’t believe for a minute

that councils’ poll tax plans will collapse of their own accord. But

we’d be stupid to overlook weaknesses in our enemies.

Councils everywhere are in a mess and well-behind schedule. In Scotland

many are unable to conceal their growing panic. We should contribute as

much as possible to increasing and spreading the chaos in which they

find themselves.

And what better time to go on the offensive than when our opponents are

weak and disorganised?

Pleading with our enemies?

There’s still a lot of people arguing that we should look to the leaders

of local councils to head the fight against the poll tax and persuade

them not to ‘implement it’. They’ve complained of the ‘cowardice’ of our

Labour leaders in not putting their weight behind the fight, and argued

that without their support, our struggle is doomed to defeat.

But the reason those council and Labour leaders have tried to wreck the

fight has nothing to do with a lack of ‘bravery’ or ‘guts’. They haven’t

‘sold us out’ because they were never on our side to begin with. The

leaders of the Labour Party and local councils have repeatedly attacked

the anti-poll tax struggle, because their position and their interests

dictate that they must.

Despite the insistence from some that ‘left wing’ councils could. be won

over to agree not to implement the poll tax, not a single local

authority has considered doing so. Without exception, every struggle so

far fought against the poll tax, and every element of the non-payment

campaign has been built in the face of total opposition from our

municipal ‘socialist’ administrations.

Pleading with council bureaucrats is a more than a futile waste of time:

it’s actually counter-productive. It encourages illusions that

councillors can be ‘won’ to our side, and that the power to smash the

poll tax rests with them.

Taking the fight against the poll tax inside the council means building

links with the only group of people really capable of putting a spanner

in the works of the councils’ implementation machine: council workers.

Organising against poll tax-driven council cuts means organising against

the council. Those councillors who stay in office and implement the poll

tax have made their decision about where they stand and we should treat

them accordingly. When Manchester council workers called on the city’s

‘anti-poll tax’ Labour council not to implement the community charge,

council leader Graham Stringer explained that to do so would mean Labour

having no influence on the decisions taken.

He couldn’t have put it more clearly: if hanging onto power means

enacting the most vicious series of attacks on the living standards of

ordinary working class people — it’s a price that Labour councillors are

more than willing to pay.

Our past experience should teach us to expect nothing else of them.

Tories in trouble:

From the beginning, the general unpopularity of the poll tax has caused

splits in the Tories ranks. Recently those splits have become damaging

public slanging matches.

Sitting Tory MPs in marginal constituencies fear that high poll tax

levels could spell electoral disaster. Conservative MP Michael Mates

vocalised the fears of many fellow Tories, when he said: ‘When it first

set sail, the Titanic was described as the flagship of the fleet. None

of us wants that piece of history to repeat itself’.

Resentment towards the poll tax from traditional Tory supporters, has

forced the government to repeatedly amend the legislation, to try to

limit the impact it will have on Tory-run boroughs. Plans to fund

‘transitional poll tax relief’ for inner city areas from the coffers of

well-off Conservative councils, had to be dropped when angry

Tory-loyalists complained of its ‘unfairness’. Conservative councillors

have been further angered by government threats to ‘poll tax cap’ Tory

boroughs whose spending exceeds official limits.

The best way to exploit the growing divisions and demoralisation in the

Tory party over the poll tax, is by increasing the strength and

militancy of our revolt against it.

The battle in England and Wales:

The December deadline for the completion of poll tax registration in

England and Wales passed with a massive number of people still not

registered, and a huge backlog of work unprocessed.

The complexity of the ‘community charge’ legislation and the tightness

of the timetable local authorities are having to work to — all work to

our advantage.

Taking inspiration from the successes of the Scottish campaign,

anti-poll tax groups springing up throughout the country organised

widescale disruption of registration. With the government learning from

getting their fingers burnt in Scotland, the most effective tactic in

delaying registration, has become simply ignoring the forms for as long

as possible.

From Birmingham to Tower Hamlets groups have organised mass burnings of

registration forms. Poll tax offices have been occupied, and council

meetings stormed. The non-registration campaign has also helped

community based groups organise door-to-door canvassing to mobilise

support and spread information.

Accurate figures are hard to find, but recently, over 30% of residents

of the Tottenham area of London had still refused to register, and on

the Broadwater. Farm estate, that figure rose to 95%!

Community and workplace struggle:

The strength of organised resistance to the poll tax is – currently —

rooted in the community-end of the campaign.

It is the non-payment campaign that has provided the focus for working

class poll tax opposition in Scotland, and inspired thousands with the

confidence to break the law and take on the government — both local and

national. And it looks set to be the same story in England and Wales in

the Spring.

The spread of community-based organisation has not — so far — been

matched by a similar level of workplace and industrial activity.

The most significant impact workers have made on the introduction of the

poll tax to date, was during the selective strike action by local

government workers over their national pay claim last year. Many council

poll tax offices were brought to a total standstill during the

stoppages. But the disruption caused by this key group of workers

remained incidental to their pay battle.

Poll tax preparations were threatened not because workers employed to

organise poll tax were angry enough to strike against it, but because —

in pursuit of their pay claim — they’d withdrawn their labour to

pressurise councils into increasing their wages.

Some anti-poll tax groups visited picket lines to offer support and

argue the case for sabotaging poll tax collection from within. But,

although many good direct contacts were made, once the pay claim had

been settled, strikers returned to work, and the poll tax machinery was

activated again.

The urgent need, then and now, is to turn that incidental disruption

into active, conscious solidarity. Low-paid council workers have no

interest in implementing poll tax — they can no more afford massive poll

tax bills than any other working class people. And the destruction of

council services that the po1i tax brings with it, threatens their — and

other council workers — jobs directly.

A group of local government workers in Edinburgh are among the latest to

announce plans to mount walk-outs if any employee there is penalised for

non-payment. They’ve been joined by groups of dole office workers who

plan to refuse to process ‘arrestments’ of unpaid poll tax from

non-payers who are signing-on.

Workers in London dole offices recently struck in protest at management

plans to get them to pass details of claimants and their dependents from

DSS records straight to poll tax officials. Other offices voted to join

the action if the snooper-forms were imposed on them.

Manchester postal workers earlier took unofficial action over the poll

tax. They refused to sort registration forms for delivery. Though the

action later collapsed in the face of both union and management

opposition, it showed the level of anger that exists — and points to the

kinds of actions that are possible.

In January, a clear majority of the 17,000 workers employed by Leicester

Council voted in favour of industrial action if the council issues a

single redundancy notice because of poll tax—inspired service cuts. They

realise all too well how Leicester council’s plans to slash budgets in

the coming months, threaten their jobs and services — and they’re right

to organise themselves now, before the council has even announced which

sectors face the axe, so they can prepare properly to resists the

attacks, and show the council they mean business.

It’s clear that workers wanting to take action against the poll tax will

come into immediate conflict with their unions. Local government union

NALGO may have an ‘anti-poll tax’ position on-paper, but the reality is

that — like all other union bureaucracies — they will seek to contain

and limit workers anger, trying to prevent effective action breaking out

beneath them.

Union officials faced with council demands for massive job cuts, won’t

fight them wholesale, but will rush in to ‘negotiate ~away’ those jobs

as ‘fairly as possible’ and ‘help the council out of a tight spot’ as

‘painlessly’ as they can. Workers’ immediate interests are in defending

their jobs and wages and in protecting the services that other working

class people use and need. The interests of the union are in protecting

their position in the pecking order, and their ‘right’ to be ‘consulted’

by the bosses.

Just as community mobilisations against the poll tax need to organise

outside arid against the Labour Party mandarins in the town hail,

workers — whether directly involved in poll tax work or not — will need

to organise outside and against the union bureaucracy.

Most crucially of all, they need to link community and workplace

struggle together — not through the mediation of ‘left-wing’ councillors

or ‘progressive’ union bureaucrats -but directly, to co-ordinate and

unify their struggles.

The poll tax can be beaten. But it can only be defeated by militant

autonomous action by working class people outside the control of all

unions, parties or leaders. The Tories ‘flagship’ is in deep trouble —

the right sort of action could sink it once and for all.

HOW NOT TO FIGHT

‘When we send in the bailiffs against people refusing to pay their poll

tax, we will do so with tact and care’

Mick Johnson, leader of Brighton’s Labour Council

IN MID-OCTOBER Scottish Labour councillors led a march in Edinburgh to

condemn the use of ‘warrant sales’ against those people who were

refusing to pay their poll tax. They applauded Scottish TUC boss

Campbell Christie, who — addressing the rally — condemned bailiffs raids

on the homes of poor families as ‘immoral’ and ‘inhuman’.

Christie neglected to point out that the councils responsible for such

‘immoral’ and ‘inhuman’ attacks on the working class were in almost

every case in Scotland controlled and run by the Labour Party.

Those same Labour councillors who joined him in denouncing warrant

sales, were the very people responsible for sending the bailiffs out in

the first place.

Nothing could better illustrate the role that the leaders of the Labour

Party and trade union movement have played in the struggle against the

poll tax, or better show the contempt in which they hold ordinary

working class people.

For, despite all their claims to be an ‘anti-poll tax party’, from the

earliest days of the anti-poll tax campaign the true agenda of the

Labour Party and their allies in the trade union bureaucracy has been

clear.

Far from defeating the poll tax, their real objectives have been to try

to crush any effective opposition to it, and try to ensure that any

anger that was mobilised, wasn’t directed at Labour controlled local

authorities and councils, but focused in a purely ‘anti-Tory direction’.

Their attacks on the anti-poll tax struggle have been relentless —

they’re tried to sabotage resistance again and again. But their wrecking

tactics have failed.

From the beginning, the Labour Party’s twin strategy of trying to

disguise its total compliance with the poll tax, and spike all effective

opposition to it, has been ruthlessly pursued.

The first battle they waged against the emerging poll tax struggle, was

to predict its ‘certain defeat’.

As early as January 1988, Labour leader Neil Kinnock warned a conference

in Edinburgh, that even to consider building a mass campaign of poll tax

non-payment was ‘a fruitless council of despair’. He called on those

working class families faced with finding money for massive poll tax

bills they simply could not afford to ‘do nothing and wait’ for a

certain Labour victory in the next election.

His pleadings met with a contemptuous response. As anger against the

poll grew and became more vocal, the Labour Party and the Scottish TUC

decided that they needed to be seen to be doing more to ‘oppose’ the

hated ‘community charge’.

So while Labour controlled authorities throughout Scotland busied

themselves spending thousands on computer systems to compile

registration lists, the Labour Party and STUC together launched the

‘Stop-It’ campaign — claiming they wanted to help people disrupt and

delay the registration process!

The whole thing was a sick joke. For while Labour bureaucrats organised

token symbolic ‘opposition’ to the compiling of the lists, their party

colleagues in local town halls prepared to despatch snoopers to working

class estates, and threaten with fines those who wouldn’t sign up.

Many Labour authorities paid for purpose-built new office space to house

their poll tax operations — hoping that by separating it from other

council work, people might somehow not realise what the council was up

to. Birmingham Labour council named its new poll tax office ‘Margaret

Thatcher House’.

Labour’s desperate attempts to disguise its backing for poll tax, were

fuelled by fears of the consequences of working class families in

Scotland receiving massive poll tax demands courtesy of their

‘socialist’ Labour local council.

But the ‘Stop-It’ campaign failed dismally to stem the growing tide of

organised resistance to the poll tax, and worried Labour leaders were

forced to change their tactics.

After trying to divert growing industrial unrest over the poll tax into

an 11-minute stoppage — and with the imminent arrival of the poll tax in

Scotland — they were forced to concede that they hadn’t done enough to

spike the struggle. Despite their best efforts, it was clear even to

them, that a mass movement committed to beating the poll tax through a

combination of non-payment and industrial action by council — and other

— workers was preparing to take on the Labour authorities who control

most of Scotland.

Just a few days before the first bills were sent out, Campbell Christie

— addressing a hostile and angry crowd at an anti-poll tax demonstration

— declared: ‘I am not having any clowns challenging my credibility over

this issue’ and promptly tore up his payment book, announcing he would

now support ‘a three month period of non—payment’.

Christie’s last-ditch effort to re-assert control over the movement was

met with derision and laughter. Poll tax law allows a maximum

three-month period in which to pay up — Christie’s intervention was the

equivalent of announcing that you aren’t going to be paying your gas

bill until you got the red one.

The thousands committed to ignoring bills they couldn’t — or wouldn’t –

pay and who’d been repeatedly attacked and denounced by Christie and his

cronies, were now being told they had his backing for a 12-week refusal

campaign — at the end of which they should pay up and give in.

Long after Christie’s 12-week deadline had passed, the first official

figures were released of those refusing to pay — showing hundreds of

thousands were withholding payment. Subsequent figures confirmed that

this non-payment movement stretched Scotland-wide.

Labour local government spokesman David Blunkett immediately condemned

this inspiring level of resistance. ‘The blame for such high levels of

non-payment’, he declared ‘must be placed squarely at this government’s

door’. Scottish Labour councils eagerly joined the chorus, angrily

refuting claims that they weren’t pursuing non-payers aggressively

enough — falling over each other in the rush to prove their commitment

to enforcing payment.

In England and Wales — as well as in Scotland — the problem that the

Labour Party faces in trying to sell the idea that what its doing its

‘complying reluctantly with the hated Tory tax’, is that Labour’s

compliance has been anything but reluctant. In practically every single

case, Labour’s response has been one of active, enthusiastic support.

Lewisham Labour council in London recently held a poll tax jobs fair to

attract suitable applicants to a career they obviously believe has a

future. Swansea’s Labour council was the first Welsh authority off the

mark in issuing summonses to non-registers. Lothian Labour council in

Scotland has been so keen to get poll tax money in from the poor that it

spend £64,000 sending out an additional reminder it wasn’t legally

obliged to. And throughout Scotland, council after Labour council has

voted through motions to pursue warrant sales against non-payers, and

despatch ‘socialist’ bailiffs to the homes of working class families.

The Labour Party’s fear of the anti-poll tax movement is growing. Before

now, Labour has been willing to lend support to demonstrations against

the ‘community charge’ as a low-risk way of parading its ‘opposition’ to

poll tax. But in mid-December Neil Kinnock rejected a plan from his own

front-bench poll tax spokesmen to call a national demonstration on April

1 1990, because he feared that groups committed to non-payment and

strike action might ‘take advantage’ of the situation — and expose

Labour’s true poll tax colours.

WHAT LIES BEHIND THE POLL TAX?

‘Poll tax: make it easy on yourself — don’t pay’

Graffiti, Edinburgh 1990

IN ORGANISING OPPOSITION to the poll tax, it’s crucial that we

understand the objectives the government has in its sights introducing

the ‘community charge’, and analyse it in context with other moves that

it is making.

Obviously, there’s the straightforward element of wealth

re-distribution: taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich.

But that isn’t the key element of the strategy here. There are far less

risky, and simpler ways of getting cash for the rich from the poor.

The poll tax is the cornerstone of the Tory’s strategy for destroying

the political and financial power of local councils.

In the years before poll tax, the Tories have repeated taken chunks from

that power base: rate capping, cuts in rate support grants, compulsory

tendering of services, the abolition of the GLC and the Metropolitan

authorities, the right-to-buy council house legislation, and so on and

so on.

Now they have set their sights on dismantling council housing, forcing

competitive tendering on such things as meals-on-wheels, home helps, and

— through the ‘opt-out’ proposals — of severing councils’ links with

local schools and hospitals.

The Tories vision for the future of local government is one in which

small groups of budget managers and civil servants — with no financial

or political clout — oversee the running of a massively reduced network

of privatised contractors.

‘Accountability’ is the key word the Tories bandy about when they

justify the introduction of the community charge. Accountability of the

council to the electors who vote them in to office. The flat-rate poll

tax, by shifting the burden of paying for council services far more onto

the shoulders of the poor, will mean that working class people won’t be

able to afford to vote in councils prepared to spend money on the

services they need and use. Come election time, parties will compete to

offer voters the lowest poll tax rates — by budgeting to spend the least

money on services possible.

Working class families reliant on the dozens of services that the

council currently provides will be stuck with a harsh choice: vote for

councils committed to maintaining those services, and suffer enormous

poll tax bills that you can’t afford; or vote for the party that, offers

the lower poll tax rate that you might be able to afford, and lose the

services that you need. That is what is meant by ‘accountability’: if

the poor want services they should damn well pay for them.

At the same time the Tories has taken from councils the power to levy

rates on local businesses. The traditional Labour left council’s way of

upping revenue, has been to slap higher bills on business and industry —

before increasing domestic rates. Now the Tories will set ‘enterprise.

friendly’ business rate nationally — far lower than present levels —

leaving councils with no get-out, and meaning that even to maintain

services at current levels, domestic bills will have to soar.

The Tories want to end for ever the possibility of a return of

‘municipal socialism’, by forcing left-Labour councils either to

decimate their own services in a bid to set low pail tax rates and keep

hold of office; or offer services their supporters can’t afford and make

themselves unelectable.

Manchester Labour City Council has put the choice starkly. It offers two

options: ‘A poll tax bill of £708 per person; or — to get a figure of

around £400 per person — a £95 million package of cuts’. Leicester

council are planning 10% cuts initially to get an ‘acceptable’ £370

bill. Nottingham council say to get to ÂŁ274 figure, will mean ÂŁ36

million worth of cuts and 2,000 job losses. These examples are typical.

As an incentive, the government recently published its own estimates of

‘acceptable’ levels of council spending — and a list of accompanying

poll tax rates. On the figures 380 councils out of 402 already

‘overspend’. The government hope to blame higher than-estimated poll tax

bills on ‘irresponsible’ local councils who spend too much.

Poll tax Minister John Patten recently hammered the message home —

announcing that the Tories would ‘poll tax cap’ any authority that

didn’t slash budgets, destroy services and sack workers.

But Patten is just playing safe. He knows — and the Tories know — that

Labour councils will dutifully fall in line one after another. After the

rate-capping battles of a few years ago, and the actions of inner London

local authorities more recently, its clearer than ever that Labour~

authorities know where their loyalties lie. If clinging to power means

attacking the working class more viciously than ever, Labour authorities

can be relied upon to take on the task with brutal efficiency.

If anything, Tories councillors in the leafy-Shires of southern England

have squealed more loudly against Patten’s capping plans than Labour

authorities have.

It’s for that reason that the Tories expect the non-payment campaign

against appalling high poll tax rates only to last for two or three

years at most.

Not because people will give up on the struggle, but because within that

time, they predict poll tax levels will fall back to something like

average existing rates bills, as councils wage a downwards spiralling

budget-war in the hope of winning power.

While we need to understand the objectives of the Tory’s war on

councils, the only concern for working class people is in the interests

of our class — immediate and long-term.

It’s not in our interest to rush to defend the institution of local

government; to back one section of the State against another; or to

defend the idea of ‘benevolent’ councils providing the ‘deserving poor’

with services we should be ‘grateful’ for.

We oppose the poll tax because it means massive financial burdens for

working class people, threatens the decimation of services that working

class people need and use, and promises to throw thousands of council

workers onto the dole. We oppose it because it means working class

people being subject to wage arrestments, bailiffs raids, court fines

and theft of their benefits.

Not because its ‘undemocratic’, not because its ‘unfair’, not because

its ‘unjust’. Because we know that for the working class those concepts

are meaningless under capitalism, and it implies that we think there is

a ‘just’ and a ‘fair’ system to be had under capitalism.

It’s not our job to come up with ‘better’ ways of generating local

council income, of funding local services — for that same reason.

Our interest is in seeing the poll tax defeated by the organised power

of the whole working class. In encouraging people to build their own

direct forms of organisation, that cross the artificial boundaries that

are erected between workplace and community organisation, and offer the

potential of specific, partial struggles being generalised into wider

battles.

Crushing the ‘community charge’ would increase our class’s confidence —

and strengthen our ability to take on the whole stinking system that

spawned the poll tax in the first place.

Our eventual goal must be to do away with that system and create a

society in which we are able to exercise real control over our lives.

A society without bosses or political parasites, where we will be able

to organise our lives for the mutual benefit of all, not a small class

or employers and property owners.

On an immediate practical level that means arguing for mass action,

against symbolic ‘committees of 100’, for direct contact with groups of

workers and against leaving it up to the unions, for action against

councils not for alliances with ‘progressive’ councillors. It means

exposing the hidden agenda of the authoritarian-Left and other wouldbe

bosses, and repeatedly demonstrating the true role of the Labour Party

and trade unions.

The fight against the poll tax remains one battle in an on-going class

war.

THE ‘LEFT’AND THE POLL TAX

‘Without Militant there’d be no organised campaign against the poll tax’

Militant newspaper, February 2 1990

‘Sadly, because party members were told that non-payment was a

diversion, and an irrelevance, many of our own comrades have paid their

poll tax’

Mike Gonzales, Glasgow Socialist Workers Party, November 1989

WHILE EACH OF the dozens of ‘Left-wing’ political parties involved in

the anti-poll tax movement have unveiled their own supposedly-distinct

‘strategy for winning’ — they’ve all been united on the central question

of who they think holds the key to victory: and it isn’t the working

class.

The ‘responsibility’ for the success of the poll tax struggle —

according to the Left — lies with the leaders of the Labour Party and

the trade union movement.

The problem — as the Left sees it — is not that union and Labour leaders

are out to wreck the poll tax struggle, but that they aren’t — as yet —

doing enough to support it.

Throughout the campaign the Left have endorsed each successive act of

sabotage by those bureaucrats — even claiming that these acts prove that

the bureaucracy is moving in the right direction.

So when — in a calculated attempt to head-off widespread industrial

unrest over the poll tax — the Scottish TUC called the now-infamous

eleven-minute ‘tea-break stoppage’ against the poll tax, they won

overwhelming backing from the Left — whose only objection seemed to be

that this wasn’t really ‘long enough’. The Socialist Workers Party

called on workers to ‘make the most of the action’ and ‘demand’ that the

bureaucrats extend it.

Instead of denouncing it as a wrecking-tactic, the Left took the

opportunity to applaud the STUC’s ‘fighting spirit’.

The Left have sought to excuse, justify and explain away the Labour

Party’s attacks on the struggle — endlessly repeating their ‘surprise’

at Kinnock’s compliance with the poll tax, and bemoaning the ‘cowardice’

of Labour councillors who ‘won’t fight’.

They’ve sought to focus attention away from the need to build autonomous

working class action against all branches of the poll tax machine — and

towards placing ‘demands’ on our enemies in town halls, union offices

and in Parliament not to attack us.

At every turn, the Left has sought to undermine the growing confidence

and independence of working class poll tax resistance — hoping to take

the initiative out of the hands of working class activists, and give it

back to the very forces that want to destroy the chance of a real battle

against the poll tax.

Some on the Left genuinely believe that Kinnock and Co can be ‘forced’

to fight. But others issue ‘demands’ on Labour leaders knowing in

advance that such calls are hopeless. They do this in the hope that

people will conclude -when their ‘demands’ aren’t realised — that what’s

needed are ‘new’ and ‘better’ leaders, politicians, bureaucrats and

officials that are ‘really on our side’.

As the Socialist Workers Party poll tax pamphlet bluntly explains: ‘If

the real responsibility for the campaign is pinned squarely where it

belongs, it will enable people to see where the real fault for any

defeat lies. Pointing away from the organised working class lets Labour

and trade union leaders off the hook. For it is they who have the power

to launch activity and who are running away from their responsibility’.

In other words, for the SWP and their ilk the ‘job of socialists’ is to

cynically and dishonestly push the campaign towards a strategy they know

can only fail — in the hope of picking up members for the party machine

in the aftermath of its collapse.

The Socialist Workers Party

The one consistent theme that runs right through the story of the SWP’s

ever-changing analysis of the poll tax fight has been their blatant

opportunism.

As the Party leaders have continually re-assessed the mood of the

movement, their ‘line’ has been repeatedly rehashed and repackaged in a

desperate attempt to keep in step with the struggle.

To start with, the SWP actively attacked the idea of community-based

resistance to the poll tax — dismissing it (in much the same way as

Kinnock did) as ‘unrealistic’. For the SWP, only action in the workplace

held out any hope at all.

Their 1988 poll tax pamphlet (since withdrawn) explained: ‘Community

organisation stands in stark contrast to the power of workers organised

in the workplace. Community politics diverts people away from the means

to win, from the need to mobilise working class activity on a collective

basis. And by putting the emphasis on the individual’s will to resist,

any difficulties and defeats will be the responsibility of the

individual alone’.

By deliberately misinterpreting the non-payment strategy as one relying

on individual, isolated acts of unconnected defiance, the SWP sought to

.show how much more effective collective industrial action would be. The

‘case’ as they set it up (contrasting individual refusal with collective

resistance) proving itself.

For the SWP ‘class action’ only exists in the factory and office — only

‘workers’ have a part to play in the class war. Action that mobilises

working class people beyond the factory, that seeks to forge united

class-wide action, is — for the SWP — a diversion to be resisted and

opposed.

So convinced were the SWP that mass community-based non-payment would

collapse within a couple of months in Scotland, that by the early Summer

of 1989 in the pages of Socialist Worker the ‘defeat of the poll tax

struggle’ had joined the ritual list of set-backs that the working class

had suffered in the current ‘down—turn’.

But their leaders soon sensed that their announcement of the ‘collapse

of poll tax resistance’ was unlikely to win them much credibility on the

housing estates in Scotland where thousands were steadfastly refusing to

pay up -despite the SWP’s gloomy predictions.

So the Party did an abrupt U-turn. Suddenly ‘diversionary’

community-action was a struggle worth fighting. In total contradiction

to their earlier statements, the pages of Socialist Worker now

proclaimed: ‘There is no rigid divide between struggles in the workplace

and in the community. Community campaigns can often achieve real

victories’.

This was only the latest in a long series of ‘revisions’ of the Party

line.

Initially the SWP argued strongly for non-registration. Later they

dropped this demand. Then they criticised Labour leaders for not

‘leading a non-registration campaign’. Later still, they concluded

non-registration was ‘a mistaken tactic’. First off, they supported the

building of ‘committees of 100’ of ‘notable’ non-payers, only to decide

within weeks that the committees were ‘elitist’ and ‘irrelevant’.

It’s anyone’s guess what the position of the SWP on the poll tax

struggle will be next month. Currently the Party hierarchy has ordered

the membership to ‘withdraw’ from their poll tax ‘work’ to concentrate

their recruitment efforts elsewhere — but its certain they’ll be ordered

back in again if their leaders sense the ‘mood ‘ once again offers the

potential for signing up some new members.

The Militant Tendency

The Militant Tendency is without doubt the ‘Left’ Party pouring most

energy into the poll tax campaign. The motivation behind this high level

of involvement is clear.

Under cover of the poll tax fight, Militant hope to rebuild their power

base within the lower levels of the Labour Party.

Many months ago, Militant’s leaders decided that the emerging poll tax

struggle would be an ideal ‘host’ for their parasitical work. They hoped

that by creating ‘community’ organisations committed to defeating the

poll tax through a non—payment campaign they could win themselves

recruits both to the Tendency and to the Labour Party itself.

Every decision they have made on their campaigning strategy has been

based on what they think best serves the interests of their struggle

within the Labour Party — not on what’s best for beating the poll tax.

As Labour leaders have cottoned on to what Militant are up to, Kinnock

has ‘suspended’ a number of local Labour Party branches, while

investigations are carried out into Militant’s activities.

Despite Militant’s claims that they oppose these ‘witchhunts’ against

them — they are, in fact, delighted when their members are expelled from

the Party. That’s because it offers them the chance to draw anger and

energy away from the poll tax fight, and re-direct it into defending

their supporters from attack.

Their ‘disbelief’ and ‘outrage’ at their members being booted out is

always well rehearsed. In fact, the expulsions are part and parcel of

Militant’s battle—plan — and are the beginning of what, for them, is the

real fight.

Militant frequently claim to be ‘leading the fight against the poll tax’

— and they’ve launched a national Front-organisation (The All British

Anti-Poll Tax Federation) in a bid to stamp their leadership on the

movement.

Militant seek to run the campaign by freezing-out or crushing

independent groups that oppose their manipulation. The set of

‘committees’ full of their own supporters, try to, seize key posts in

local poll tax ‘unions’, pack meetings with ‘delegates’ from

bogus-community groups and worse.

Right from the start of the poll tax struggle, people have mobilised to

oppose Militant. Their hopes to establish a stranglehold on the campaign

have been dashed — and increasing numbers of people are coming to

realise what Militant’s ‘hidden agenda’ is really all about.

Of course, Militant and the SWP are only two symptoms of a more

widespread disease. Their are dozens of similar ‘Left-wing’ parties

sharing identical assumptions — forever lecturing working class people

resisting the poll tax that without the support of Kinnock and the TUC,

their struggle is doomed to defeat. Their only concern is in bolstering

their own Party empires on the backs of the working class.

Their interference in the poll tax struggle is motivated purely out of

this self-interest. They have nothing to offer us.

WHAT IS THE POLL TAX?

‘To actually make enough cutbacks to get poll tax spending down to

government limits, we would have to close half our schools’

Lawrence Silverman, leader Labour group, Berkshire council February 1990

The poll tax — or ‘community charge’ — is a flat-rate tax levied on

people, (not on property, as the old rates system was). Everyone over 18

will have to pay (with very few exceptions).

effect in England and Wales in April 1990.

poll tax regardless of their income: A factory boss will pay the same

poll tax as the people who work on his production lines.

their giros. They may get a partial rebate of that 20% — but that’ll be

based on the government’s fictional ‘national average’ poll tax rate.

large percentage of the low-paid, and, of course, many women do unpaid

work (caring for children or relatives in the home). In either case

they’re still expected to pay up in full.

amongst the lowest paid group of workers, poll tax rates in inner-city

areas where many Black and Asian families live, are certain to be

amongst the highest. Traditional Asian extended families living under

the same roof face huge bills.