Speaker 1: At the end of the nineteen eighties, after having largely
Speaker 1: defeated the working class movement in Britain, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative
Speaker 1: government planned to crown their victory with a new way
Speaker 1: of charging people for local government services, which became known
Speaker 1: as the poll Tax. Instead, they found themselves faced with
Speaker 1: perhaps the biggest mass movement in British history, with millions
Speaker 1: of people refusing to pay, the courts, full local councils,
Speaker 1: overwhelmed and disruptive street protests across the country. First, Thatcher
Speaker 1: herself was brought down and the tax soon followed. This
Speaker 1: is working class.
Speaker 2: History Alamatina A penal sat or the larger bell larger
Speaker 2: their larger chichi Alamatina.
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Speaker 1: link in the show notes. For many workers, activists and radicals,
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties in Britain were a deeply depressing time.
Speaker 1: The wave of workers militancy, which grew through the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies and was boosted by struggles of working
Speaker 1: class women, LGBT plus people, Black Asian and other people
Speaker 1: of color, had come to a crashing hall against the
Speaker 1: neoliberal counter effect of Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative government.
Speaker 1: Years of rising wages and living standards won by workers
Speaker 1: organizing and taking action on the job started to be
Speaker 1: replaced by widespread layoffs, deteriorating conditions, and mass unemployment. This
Speaker 1: reserve army of unemployed workers was then a powerful weapon
Speaker 1: to be wielded against anyone still in employment who wanted
Speaker 1: to fight things like pay cups, because they could just
Speaker 1: be fired and replaced by one of the many unemployed.
Speaker 1: One of these unemployed workers with Dave morris So.
Speaker 3: In the nineteen seventies, I was a postman postal worker
Speaker 3: in Islington, North London.
Speaker 4: In the nineteen eighties, I was unemployed.
Speaker 3: Most significantly, I think I was helping to build a
Speaker 3: claimants union was the Union of Unwaged Unemployed People in Tottenham,
Speaker 3: where I lived in North London, which was very active
Speaker 3: throughout the nineteen eighties and it helped people with you know,
Speaker 3: their claims for benefits.
Speaker 4: We fought for people's housing.
Speaker 3: We were a social network as well, and I think
Speaker 3: in some ways that was a good lead up to
Speaker 3: the introduction of the bull tax.
Speaker 1: Wondering if he wanted to spend the rest of his
Speaker 1: life working at the raw Male, like many postal workers
Speaker 1: ended up doing, Dave fancied a bit of a break,
Speaker 1: so he decided to quit to take some time off,
Speaker 1: during which he traveled abroad and mingled with activists in
Speaker 1: places like Amsterdam, Berlin and Poland. He then got to
Speaker 1: thinking about how to apply the lessons he learned from
Speaker 1: them back in the UK.
Speaker 3: So the nineteen eighties was a very significant decade in
Speaker 3: British history. Up to the end of the seventies, there
Speaker 3: was a kind of post World War Two consensus that
Speaker 3: the ruling class in Britain was quite shocked about what
Speaker 3: had happened during the Second World War. The rise of fascism,
Speaker 3: the rise of communism, communist governments as well, and after
Speaker 3: the war, I think there was a general census amongst
Speaker 3: all key political parties that the welfare states, stability, increasing
Speaker 3: kind of material possessions was the way to kind of
Speaker 3: keep people happy, to keep people quiet.
Speaker 1: What Dave's describing here is sometimes known as the post
Speaker 1: war consensus, whereby following the devastation reaped by the war,
Speaker 1: powerful working class movements pressured governments into offering huge concessions.
Speaker 1: This resulted in the development of modern welfare states across
Speaker 1: much of the developed world, with things like unemployment benefits,
Speaker 1: public housing, universal healthcare, old age pensions, workers' rights and
Speaker 1: so on. These movements would grow over the coming decades.
Speaker 3: But in the sixties there was a growth in new
Speaker 3: movements that were looking far beyond that. They wanted to
Speaker 3: be free, they wanted to protect the environment, they wanted,
Speaker 3: you know, to have control over their lives, and that
Speaker 3: code on. Throughout the ninet in seventies, there were the
Speaker 3: labor movement was strong and growing. There were major strikes
Speaker 3: in the nineteen seventies. There was a growth of movement
Speaker 3: to end homelessness by occupying empty houses, and it looked
Speaker 3: as far as like the ruling elite were concerned, it
Speaker 3: looked like the post war consensus wasn't doing enough to
Speaker 3: kind of gig people in their place. And Margaret Thatcher,
Speaker 3: who is a name you don't say in public in
Speaker 3: this country except special circumstances, was elected as Prime Minister
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy nine. And basically the Conservative Party had
Speaker 3: planned for years to get back in power and to
Speaker 3: start cracking down, which they did on the trade unions.
Speaker 3: They brought in new laws against the protests. They started
Speaker 3: privatizing the previously nationalized industries, the gas and electric, postal service,
Speaker 3: the coal industry, and basically rolling back the gains that
Speaker 3: working class people had made since the Second World War.
Speaker 4: So that was the kind of political backdrop.
Speaker 3: The other thing that the Conservatives were very keen to
Speaker 3: do was to ensure massive unemployment. Throughout the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: I think we had something like three million people unemployed.
Speaker 3: The claimants union movement had been built over the last
Speaker 3: fifteen twenty years, and we were fighting for more rights
Speaker 3: for claimants, for benefits and so on. The government was
Speaker 3: kind of cracking down all round, and they would begin
Speaker 3: to sell off council houses, social housing and so on,
Speaker 3: so that was the kind of political backdrop. There'd been
Speaker 3: some major defeats in the nineteen eighties. First there was
Speaker 3: the year long minor strike, which was a colossal struggle
Speaker 3: the government treated as a war.
Speaker 1: The minor strike was a pivotal moment in the history
Speaker 1: of the worker movement in Britain. We've got a whole
Speaker 1: series of episodes about it which you can check out
Speaker 1: to learn more, and we've got a mini series with
Speaker 1: striking miners coming soon.
Speaker 3: They basically declared war on mining communities and were determined
Speaker 3: to close down the mining industry if they couldn't control it,
Speaker 3: close it down in this country. That was inspiring and
Speaker 3: heroic struggle, but unfortunately it was unsuccessful, which was followed
Speaker 3: by some other major strikes which were all lost.
Speaker 1: Another key dispute here was the year long struggle of
Speaker 1: print workers at Whopping, East London against Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
Speaker 1: This ended with the effective destruction of the powerful organization
Speaker 1: of newspaper print workers in the UK.
Speaker 3: And there were other conflicts and disputes and campaigns that
Speaker 3: struggled to make Eddie headway against the government. So that
Speaker 3: was again and the other backdropped to when the government
Speaker 3: brought in the poll tax. They didn't call it the
Speaker 3: poll tax, they called it the community charge. Made it
Speaker 3: sound like something really fluffy that nobody could object to,
Speaker 3: and it was really It wasn't just an unfair tax
Speaker 3: because previously local government was financed by households. What each
Speaker 3: household paid depending on the value of their home notional
Speaker 3: value or actual value.
Speaker 1: But instead of a tax based on home values, the
Speaker 1: new tax would be a flat rate paid per adult person.
Speaker 1: So for example, the Duke of Westminster, one of the
Speaker 1: richest people in the country, used to pay over ten
Speaker 1: thousand pounds a year on his old estate, but with
Speaker 1: the poll tax, he would only have to pay four
Speaker 1: hundred and seventeen pounds.
Speaker 3: And people that were working or living on his estate,
Speaker 3: like his butler and his chef and whatever cleaners, who
Speaker 3: weren't paying previously, was suddenly having to pay the same.
Speaker 1: Now for most people, this just seems blatantly unfair. However,
Speaker 1: this points to the drastic extent to which the Tories
Speaker 1: wanted to remake the UK. Their Environment Secretary Nicholas Ridley
Speaker 1: said the following quote, why should a Duke pay more
Speaker 1: than a dustman. It's only because we have been subjected
Speaker 1: to socialist ideas for the last fifty years that people
Speaker 1: think this is fair end quote. And while up until
Speaker 1: this point the Tories had largely been successful in making
Speaker 1: the changes they wanted to in the UK, this was
Speaker 1: the crucial juncture in terms of how far they'd be
Speaker 1: able to push and would they be able to reshape
Speaker 1: the very concept of fairness, which is often thought about
Speaker 1: as a central feature of British national identity.
Speaker 3: So it was a colossally unfair tex but it was
Speaker 3: also an instrument of social control because then everybody, every
Speaker 3: adult would have to register and be.
Speaker 4: Followed around wherever they live and be.
Speaker 3: In some kind of regime where they could be forced
Speaker 3: to pay this tax.
Speaker 1: The poll tax register was also going to be compiled
Speaker 1: from the electoral register, so the tax was also a
Speaker 1: pretty obvious vote grab by the Conservatives. The people least
Speaker 1: likely to be able to pay the tax for the poorest,
Speaker 1: who were much more likely to vote labor, and so
Speaker 1: if people tried to avoid the tax by dropping off
Speaker 1: the electoral role, then that would also mean potential labor
Speaker 1: votes disappearing.
Speaker 4: So the Tory.
Speaker 3: Government hoped that most local authorities were Labor Party run
Speaker 3: and they hoped that the local authorities who had to
Speaker 3: implement the tax would get all the grief from the
Speaker 3: public because inevitably the community charge would be higher in
Speaker 3: those areas which had to raise more money for their
Speaker 3: local services, which were basically working class areas rather.
Speaker 4: Than leafy rural areas.
Speaker 3: So it was a political gambol which because they had
Speaker 3: won so many battles the Conservative Party, the Tory government,
Speaker 3: they thought they could pull this off.
Speaker 1: The tax was the brainchild of the right wing think tank,
Speaker 1: the Adam Smith Institute, which is a little ironic because
Speaker 1: Adam Smith himself rejected pole taxes. But the Conservatives felt
Speaker 1: so invincible that they were going to try to do
Speaker 1: something which no British government had attempted in centuries.
Speaker 3: People were aware that the last time the British governor
Speaker 3: the English government had tried to introduce a poll tax,
Speaker 3: which was called poll tax, was thirteen eighty one. It
Speaker 3: lives in the collective unconscious of this country, inspiring what
Speaker 3: was called the Peasants Revolts. There was a mass uprising
Speaker 3: against what was dubbed the poll tax in thirteen eighty one,
Speaker 3: which ultimately resulted in that pul tax being scrapped.
Speaker 4: A long story which I won't go into, but it went.
Speaker 3: Down history and no government since for the previous six
Speaker 3: hundred years had introduced this tax on existence, not tax
Speaker 3: on households or homes for raising money for local services,
Speaker 3: guide to local services. So a lot of people were saying,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, that's the pull tax. Why they called
Speaker 3: it community charge? So everybody started calling it the poll tax.
Speaker 3: The government said no, this community charge lot of pul tax.
Speaker 1: Only one other country in the world about time had
Speaker 1: a poll tax, Papa New Guinea, but it was already
Speaker 1: in the process of abolishing it in the UK though,
Speaker 1: rather than introduced to tax nationwide, the government planned to
Speaker 1: introduce it first just in Scotland in April nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: then introduced it to England and Wales a year later.
Speaker 3: So at the time this was about nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 3: I was involved with the Claimants Union movement and we
Speaker 3: had a Federation of Claimants Union.
Speaker 1: Claimants unions were self organized groups of claimants of state benefits,
Speaker 1: things like unemployment also known as the doll, as well
Speaker 1: as old age pensions, disability benefits and so on. Members
Speaker 1: of claimants unions would support each other with claims issues,
Speaker 1: with nonpayment, withdraws of benefits and so on, sometimes using
Speaker 1: direct action like building occupations. They would also take on
Speaker 1: other activities like putting on social events and supporting striking
Speaker 1: workers on picket lines and providing them with advice on benefits.
Speaker 3: There was about one hundred and fifty local claimants unions
Speaker 3: all over the UK and we used to have national
Speaker 3: meetings and holidays and all kinds of stuff that we
Speaker 3: organized for claimants conferences. And we had quite good relations
Speaker 3: in the Tottenham Claimants Union with a similar claimants union
Speaker 3: in Edinburgh, and I remember I think it must have
Speaker 3: been an national conference in London of the claimants union movement,
Speaker 3: the Federation of Claimants Unions. A guy from the Edinburgh
Speaker 3: Claimants Union was telling me about the struggle in Scotland
Speaker 3: against the pul tax and.
Speaker 4: I remember saying to him, you know, I remember these
Speaker 4: very words.
Speaker 3: Didn't we beat that in thirteen eighty one and so
Speaker 3: we had four warning in England and Wales, but there
Speaker 3: was growing resistance in Scotland throughout the first year. The
Speaker 3: first year in Scotland was all about the government bringing
Speaker 3: in the registration system. So the first year of its implementation,
Speaker 3: if you like, was registering everybody. The next year would
Speaker 3: be setting the rates, each local council setting the rates
Speaker 3: that everybody was expected to pay, and then the third
Speaker 3: year would be actually trying to enforce the payment. So
Speaker 3: in Scotland, really they pioneered, you know, all the kind
Speaker 3: of key elements of the resistance. And this guy I
Speaker 3: knew from Edinburgh Claimants Union said that they'd set up
Speaker 3: this network called Community Resistance against the poll Tax and
Speaker 3: they were encouraging the setting up of groups in local neighborhoods,
Speaker 3: on housing estates in different towns and villages around Scotland.
Speaker 4: Now, at the beginning, they'd.
Speaker 3: Already had this experience of Claimants Unions, which were autonomous
Speaker 3: local groups, you know, of peoples supporting each other, promoting
Speaker 3: solidarity of mutual aid. So there was a sort of
Speaker 3: quite a kind of natural progression there. But there were other,
Speaker 3: if you like, powerful tendencies political tendencies also opposed the
Speaker 3: poll tax, mainly because they opposed the government, but they
Speaker 3: weren't necessarily encouraging the kind of movement that would go
Speaker 3: on to have the success it did, so the Labor
Speaker 3: Party they wanted the poll tax to be scrapped.
Speaker 4: They didn't want people not to pay it.
Speaker 3: They just wanted people to go upside petitions and basically
Speaker 3: wait until the next elections and vote for them. And
Speaker 3: they wanted the pulp tax actually to still be functioning
Speaker 3: so that the government if it all started falling apart
Speaker 3: or was colossally unpopular, the Tory government would.
Speaker 4: Get the blame.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty seven, a local anti pol tax union
Speaker 1: was formed in the Maryhill area of Glasgow. It started
Speaker 1: going door to door recruiting people to begin a non
Speaker 1: payment campaign and signing up members. By January nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: two thousand people had joined the group and pledged to
Speaker 1: refuse to pay. Meanwhile, as well as Labor, other major
Speaker 1: parties in Scotland also weren't fans of a mass non
Speaker 1: payment campaign.
Speaker 3: The SNP, the Scottish Nationalist Party that was campaigning for
Speaker 3: independence for Scotland.
Speaker 4: They took a similar position, but.
Speaker 3: They had a more nuanced strategy of encouraging celebrities and
Speaker 3: people that could pay not to pay as a matter
Speaker 3: of protests, but not encouraging people on mass not to
Speaker 3: pay it, because if they wanted to get into government,
Speaker 3: they of course would be relying on people to obey
Speaker 3: the law, pay their local taxes and whatever. So at
Speaker 3: the beginning there was a kind of you know, how
Speaker 3: is his tax going to be beaten?
Speaker 1: The SMP made a call for one hundred thousand Scottish
Speaker 1: people who could afford to pay the tax to pledge
Speaker 1: not to pay, in a move that they said would
Speaker 1: be enough to force the Tories to back down, which
Speaker 1: of course it wasn't. In the latter part of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven, other local anti poll tax groups started springing
Speaker 1: up across Scotland, often started by groups of grassroots activists,
Speaker 1: revolutionary socialists or anarchists, and these were organizing for direct
Speaker 1: action in resistance to the tax.
Speaker 4: And gradually the whole non payment camp. Well.
Speaker 3: First of all, non registration, refusing the register, refusing to
Speaker 3: pay became absolutely the only way the tax was actually
Speaker 3: effectively opposed, and all the others just basically faded into
Speaker 3: the background.
Speaker 1: So, following the pattern of resistance to the tax which
Speaker 1: began in Scotland, Dave and others in England and Wales
Speaker 1: started following suit.
Speaker 3: So we were one of the first groups in England
Speaker 3: and Wales the Tottenham against the Pole Tax, and really
Speaker 3: it came out of the initiative of the Totten Playment
Speaker 3: Studio and we said, oh, we need a big, broad
Speaker 3: based campaign committed to non payment, committed to mutual aid, solidarity,
Speaker 3: protest and look what they've done in Scotland where the
Speaker 3: movement was becoming very successful. So gradually lots of local
Speaker 3: groups started springing up all over London, all over England
Speaker 3: and Wales. And once we set up top of against
Speaker 3: the Poulter, I think we started not so much with
Speaker 3: a big public meeting, but we called a meeting as
Speaker 3: I think fifty people attended and it was up and running.
Speaker 3: The idea was to create a mass campaign, so we
Speaker 3: started having stalls in the high road every week and
Speaker 3: then other groups got set up in my borough, which
Speaker 3: is called Harringay.
Speaker 1: To give you a bit of an idea, London is
Speaker 1: made up of thirty two boroughs, most of which have
Speaker 1: a population of around a quarter of a million people.
Speaker 3: So there were four key groups in my borough, Hornseanwood,
Speaker 3: Green against the Pole Tax, Crowdchen against the Pole Tax
Speaker 3: and Green Lanes against the Pole Tax. And then some
Speaker 3: of those groups, well all of those groups started setting
Speaker 3: up Ward based groups. Wards are more localized kind of
Speaker 3: if you like, political geographic areas, about twenty in Harringay,
Speaker 3: so we tried to get Ward based groups set up.
Speaker 4: This was replicated all over the country.
Speaker 3: The idea was to call for non registration, nonpayment, generate
Speaker 3: massive amounts of publicity.
Speaker 4: This was called before the internet, you know.
Speaker 3: And in Haringey we particularly were obsessive about leaf fitting
Speaker 3: door to door, so we leafitted all homes in the borough,
Speaker 3: which is about one hundred thousand homes, four times during
Speaker 3: a two or three year period of the campaign.
Speaker 4: And what we did is.
Speaker 3: That we we did a you know, a kind of advice,
Speaker 3: you know, how to disrupt the poll tax, how to
Speaker 3: support each other, build a movement, how you can get involved.
Speaker 3: It was all about empowerment and collective action on one
Speaker 3: side and on the other side. It was a poster,
Speaker 3: a four sized poster saying pay no poll tax and
Speaker 3: with the contact details of what became Harrygate Anti Poll
Speaker 3: Tax Union, which was the kind of federation with did
Speaker 3: her again and it did say, you know, put this
Speaker 3: in your window. By that time, the poll tax was
Speaker 3: already becoming notorious. People knew they wouldn't be able to
Speaker 3: afford to pay it. They knew it was a Tory
Speaker 3: con Conservative Party Thatcher con, So this poster was really popular.
Speaker 3: Hundreds and hundreds of boasters went up in people's windows
Speaker 3: overlooking local streets.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after these messages. If you want
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Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash working Class history link in the
Speaker 1: show notes. After preparing the groundwork, Dave and other organizers
Speaker 1: eventually arranged for a mass meeting open to the publick.
Speaker 3: Our first big public meeting for the whole borough Harngay.
Speaker 3: We bought the town hall in part of the borough.
Speaker 3: A thousand people attended the public meeting. Now, the left
Speaker 3: wing groups are really really keen on who were the speakers,
Speaker 3: but the kind of grassroots activists we thought, how can
Speaker 3: we use this public meeting to build the movement, so
Speaker 3: who cares about the speakers that much. What we decided
Speaker 3: was we would sign people up at that meeting to
Speaker 3: become street reps, so they would represent their streets.
Speaker 4: They would be the lead person, the condum it for the.
Speaker 3: Campaign representatives for the campaign for their street or their
Speaker 3: block of flats or whatever. And we managed to sign
Speaker 3: up five hundred street reps at that one event, so
Speaker 3: then we had the infrastructure for a total borough wide
Speaker 3: presence and coordination for what needed to be a mass movement.
Speaker 3: We weren't under any illusions that the authorities would come
Speaker 3: down hard when push come to shove in trying to
Speaker 3: enforce this tax.
Speaker 4: There were street stoors all over the borough.
Speaker 1: With this base level of organization in place, local communities
Speaker 1: began to resist the first phase of the tax registration,
Speaker 1: where local councils would try to get details for every
Speaker 1: adult resident in each borough to bill. It's worth remembering
Speaker 1: that this hadn't been the case before this point because
Speaker 1: the previous local taxes were based on households, and so
Speaker 1: the council building departments might only have contact details for
Speaker 1: one person in each household.
Speaker 3: We had process, so that was the phase when it
Speaker 3: was the registration, we had burning of registration forms. People
Speaker 3: would come to events and we'd have a brazier and
Speaker 3: people would be chucking their forms onto.
Speaker 1: The Fireation resistance turned out to be pretty effective at
Speaker 1: causing problems for councils finding out who needed to pay
Speaker 1: the tax, in which local authority was extremely challenging in
Speaker 1: any case, so in inner London boroughs fifty five percent
Speaker 1: of the population changed address in a single year. Even
Speaker 1: in rural councils over a third of people changed a dress.
Speaker 1: Some council registration officers experienced harassment and violent threats from
Speaker 1: local residents as they went around trying to register people.
Speaker 1: Some quit their jobs, and one, Fred Truman in Bristol,
Speaker 1: even died by suicide. In the end, around a million
Speaker 1: people disappeared off the electoral role over the period of
Speaker 1: registration for the poll tax, and even the national census
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one reports a significantly lower population than
Speaker 1: there probably was, which is mostly attributed to people trying
Speaker 1: to avoid the tax.
Speaker 4: We did the same when the bills came round for
Speaker 4: the tax.
Speaker 3: Before we got to the tax implementation d which was
Speaker 3: the first of April nineteen ninety, you know the year
Speaker 3: before that was building up a campaign that will be
Speaker 3: able to convince everybody that everybody else was not going
Speaker 3: to pay this tax.
Speaker 1: Outside of Haringey, other similar groups were being formed around
Speaker 1: the country. Some were set up by claimants unions, some
Speaker 1: by grassrooms activists, and some were set up by members
Speaker 1: of left political groups. The most significant one at this
Speaker 1: time was called the Militant tendency known as Militant now
Speaker 1: called the Socialist Party. Militant at the time was an
Speaker 1: influential Trotskyist group, meaning that they were following the teachings
Speaker 1: of Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky. They primarily existed as
Speaker 1: a faction within the Labour Party, although significant numbers of
Speaker 1: their activists, particularly elected councilors, had been expelled from Labour
Speaker 1: in the previous few years. They embraced a non payment
Speaker 1: campaign and many of their members also helped start or
Speaker 1: organize local on payment groups, so.
Speaker 3: The grassroots mobilization was growing. First of all, we helped
Speaker 3: to create a London Federation of anti Poltax groups and
Speaker 3: our group Tottenmagatest the Poultax was the secretarial group and
Speaker 3: I was the delegator.
Speaker 4: So effectively.
Speaker 3: I was active secretary for the London Federation and there
Speaker 3: were already hundreds of groups all over London, and we
Speaker 3: had links with other federations around the country, and we
Speaker 3: called a national meeting because we thought they needed to
Speaker 3: be national coordination. I mean, Scotland had its own kind
Speaker 3: of national coordination because they predated what we were doing
Speaker 3: in England and Wales. So we called a meeting and
Speaker 3: about three hundred and sixty local unions, local antipol tax
Speaker 3: groups and unions were represented and that was the first
Speaker 3: national meeting. Now militants had their own plans, so they
Speaker 3: kind of boycotted the events, organized something two days before
Speaker 3: just of their own members and called it a steering
Speaker 3: committee for an All Britain Federation, which was quite a
Speaker 3: sectarian thing to do.
Speaker 1: We talk more about the strategies of other revolutionary left
Speaker 1: groups in the bonus episode of this double episode, available
Speaker 1: for our supporters on Patreon link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: But this kind of decision is not a particularly unique
Speaker 1: one for this kind of socialist group. Part of their
Speaker 1: typical strategy is to work within united fronts on campaigns,
Speaker 1: and larger groups will often try to lead these campaigns
Speaker 1: so that could either mean trying to take over existing
Speaker 1: umbrella groups or if this doesn't seem possible, they might
Speaker 1: set up their own versions. In this case, though everyone
Speaker 1: seemed to agree that the priority was beating the tax.
Speaker 3: However, we didn't want to get into a dispute with them,
Speaker 3: so following the first national meeting, had that first national meeting,
Speaker 3: we agreed to work with Milleton and the groups that
Speaker 3: they had set up to create and unified All Britain Federation.
Speaker 3: But they were already a pre existing national organization with
Speaker 3: like three or four thousand members, so they basically engineered
Speaker 3: the situation where they were completely dominant in the ORBIT
Speaker 3: Federation and there were only three independent delegates from Harringay,
Speaker 3: Bristol and I can't remember the other area possibly leads
Speaker 3: federations that were on the national committee. So it was
Speaker 3: a very uneasy kind of alliance at the national level.
Speaker 3: But they didn't really do much at the national level,
Speaker 3: and all the activity really was at the grassroots level,
Speaker 3: and the movement continued to grow and to be coordinated
Speaker 3: horizontally in all kinds of different ways.
Speaker 1: At this meeting in November nineteen eighty nine, in order
Speaker 1: to build the strongest level of organization against the poltar acts.
Speaker 1: Dave and other grassroots activists essentially agreed to form part
Speaker 1: of an overall federation controlled by Militant, but they decided
Speaker 1: that they also needed to preserve a certain level of autonomy,
Speaker 1: the ability to organize independently of Militant, if that would
Speaker 1: become necessary at some point. At this time, Militant did
Speaker 1: have elected officials in Parliament and in local councils, which
Speaker 1: could give them a conflict of interest in terms of
Speaker 1: councils legal responsibilities with collecting the tax, and so a
Speaker 1: level of caution around this possibility would seem sensible.
Speaker 3: What we decided to do is to ensure that national
Speaker 3: coordination could continue independent of any party control, and we
Speaker 3: set up something called the three D network, which became
Speaker 3: very important later on. Three D which is don't register,
Speaker 3: don't pay, don't collect.
Speaker 1: These referred to the three main strategies of the movement
Speaker 1: in England and Wales to resist registrationation for the tax,
Speaker 1: resist paying the tax, and encourage council workers to resist
Speaker 1: collecting the tax. In Scotland, by this point, the registration
Speaker 1: phase for the tax was already complete. There had been
Speaker 1: debates within the movement about whether or not to try
Speaker 1: to organize resistance to registration, but this resulted in most
Speaker 1: groups there deciding not to resist registration and instead focus
Speaker 1: on non payment. Some left groups didn't have faith in
Speaker 1: a community non payment campaign and so instead argued for
Speaker 1: a focus on trying to get council workers to refuse
Speaker 1: collecting the tax through their trade unions. Now we do
Speaker 1: discuss this in a bit more detail in our bonus
Speaker 1: episode for our patron supporters, available in the link on
Speaker 1: the show notes, but not to give you a spoiler,
Speaker 1: we're not going to be talking much about this during
Speaker 1: these episodes because while a couple of unions did nominally
Speaker 1: pass motions supporting the non payment campaign, none of the
Speaker 1: efforts to encourage workers to refuse to collect the tax
Speaker 1: really came to anything. Still, network did appeal to workers
Speaker 1: not to collect, although the bulk of its activity was
Speaker 1: focused on encouraging people not to register or pay.
Speaker 3: We had our own national network and bulletins and communication channels.
Speaker 3: So meanwhile, the London Federation kind of became transformed and
Speaker 3: basically taken over by militant in a kind of uneasy,
Speaker 3: not completely clear way However, the coordination at grassroots level
Speaker 3: across London continued.
Speaker 4: So I was no longer secretary.
Speaker 3: But everybody agreed that the one thing that nationally we
Speaker 3: all need to do was prepared for a mass demonstration
Speaker 3: in central London but also in Glasgow in Scotland on
Speaker 3: the thirty first of March Saturday, thirty first of March
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety. Yes, so the big date, certainly in England
Speaker 3: and Wales, was thirty first of March nineteen ninety because
Speaker 3: the following day, the first of April, was the implementation
Speaker 3: dates in which bills would start being sent out by
Speaker 3: local authorities.
Speaker 1: Before the mass central demonstration in London, there were significant
Speaker 1: large protests in villages, towns and cities across Britain.
Speaker 3: Now, something absolutely remarkable happened in the week or two
Speaker 3: before that date.
Speaker 4: All over the country.
Speaker 3: Local councils were meeting to set their rates, what they
Speaker 3: were going to charge, and every single council meeting of
Speaker 3: that kind resulted in mass protests all over the country,
Speaker 3: including in small, quiet villages everywhere, and with phenomenal turnouts.
Speaker 4: We're talking about I mean Harringing.
Speaker 3: I think we had about one thousand people, but even
Speaker 3: in some places which had a population of maybe total
Speaker 3: pop place of twenty thousand, they might get five hundred
Speaker 3: people turning up at council meetings to say don't implement
Speaker 3: the poll tax and so on. Actually, in Haringey we
Speaker 3: had the highest rates in the whole country. I think
Speaker 3: it was seven hundred and forty pounds a year adults
Speaker 3: were expected to pay.
Speaker 1: This is an equivalent of over two one hundred pounds today,
Speaker 1: so would be over four two hundred pounds for a
Speaker 1: standard household of two adults, and of course significantly more
Speaker 1: for people with roommates or children aged over eighteen. For
Speaker 1: some other examples of local protests, ten thousand people marched
Speaker 1: in Plymouth in a protest organized by a former Conservative
Speaker 1: Party voter, five thousand marched in Taunton, fifteen hundred people
Speaker 1: took to the streets in Stroud. In the small quiet
Speaker 1: town of Midsummer Norton and Radstock, ten percent of the
Speaker 1: total population of twenty thousand residents marched against at tax
Speaker 1: and pelted police with stones, bottles and rotten fruit. Local
Speaker 1: battles with police also all over the place, including Bristol,
Speaker 1: where twenty six people were arrested and multiple police officers injured,
Speaker 1: one of them kicked unconscious. In Hackney, East London, after
Speaker 1: police attacked demonstrators with batons, the crowd defended themselves with bricks,
Speaker 1: bottles and stones and then began attacking local shops, smashing
Speaker 1: windows and expropriating goods. Almost thirty police were injured and
Speaker 1: fifty seven people were arrested. In Rochester upon Medway, the
Speaker 1: Kent Evening Post denounced protesters who stormed a council meeting
Speaker 1: as quote animals. In Exeter, four police officers were injured
Speaker 1: in fights with protesters who also threw food at counselors
Speaker 1: in the council chamber, reportedly hitting the mere in the
Speaker 1: face with a pasty.
Speaker 3: So they had this rolling protests movement at the grassroots
Speaker 3: everywhere in the country. And this was all in the
Speaker 3: two weeks before the national demonstration.
Speaker 4: I later learned that police.
Speaker 3: Estimates official estimates for the demonstration in Trafalgar Square, Central London,
Speaker 3: they expected twenty thousand people to turn up, but anybody
Speaker 3: involved in that movement would have known it was going
Speaker 3: to be ten times that, and that's what happened. About
Speaker 3: two hundred thousand people. And we've had some very large
Speaker 3: demonstrations since then, but at the time it was.
Speaker 4: One of the largest ever in British history.
Speaker 3: And I remember in Harringay we all met at the
Speaker 3: local underground station, about two hundred and fifty people, people
Speaker 3: carrying plat guards, people dressed for a kind of day out,
Speaker 3: carnival celebration of the movement. Yes, people were angry about
Speaker 3: the tax, but they were up to then it had
Speaker 3: all been very localized. Everybody was beavering away in their
Speaker 3: local areas. It was great to come together. I mean
Speaker 3: almost every you know, local group had their own banner
Speaker 3: to say, you know whatever, cattering against the poll tax
Speaker 3: or also anti poll tax groups. Some of them based
Speaker 3: in workplaces or it could have been you know, a school.
Speaker 3: There was all kinds of different groups with banners and blackards,
Speaker 3: all coming together in just south of the river, preparing
Speaker 3: to march to Travagar Square for this mass demonstration.
Speaker 4: On that day.
Speaker 3: I decided not to be involved in the London wide
Speaker 3: kind of organization of that march, and I focused on
Speaker 3: mobilizing the people in Harangey. I think I may have
Speaker 3: had a megaphone and you know one time and that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff, so that the organization of the demonstration
Speaker 3: was largely left to the All Britain Federation, so people
Speaker 3: marched in their sections and it was quite fluid in
Speaker 3: many ways, and it was a really fun, positive but
Speaker 3: angry atmosphere. And we marched past Downing Street where the
Speaker 3: Prime Minister hangs out head of government, and I think
Speaker 3: it was huge. We were marched to the Fargusku which
Speaker 3: only has a capacity of.
Speaker 4: About sixty thousand people.
Speaker 3: That when the organizers a few days beforehand realized it
Speaker 3: was going to be absolutely huge, they tried to get
Speaker 3: the police to agree to re routing the march to
Speaker 3: Hyde Park, which is a massive open space that could
Speaker 3: have gobbined eight millions, but it was refused. And when
Speaker 3: people got to Downing Street, unsurprisingly, at one point some
Speaker 3: people sat down and had a protest opposite.
Speaker 4: Down the street. Now, normally, you know, that's not a
Speaker 4: big deal.
Speaker 3: After a while, people get up and move on, but
Speaker 3: the very quickly police kind of zoomed in and tried
Speaker 3: to keep people moving.
Speaker 1: Now, according to the excellent book Poll Tax Rebellion by
Speaker 1: Danny Burns, which we've relied on heavily for these episodes,
Speaker 1: the initial sit down outside down street containing the home
Speaker 1: of the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, only consisted of around
Speaker 1: twenty people, but two of them were violently arrested by police.
Speaker 1: One man in a wheelchair was pulled out of his
Speaker 1: chair and thrown into a police fan, and a woman
Speaker 1: was arrested and stripped of her clothes in front of
Speaker 1: the crowd.
Speaker 3: This resulted in more people sitting down. This resulted in
Speaker 3: police forces arriving and it looked like reflecting afterwards that
Speaker 3: the police wanted a confrontation.
Speaker 1: This group seyn Down swelled to around three hundred.
Speaker 3: They basically tried to move people away from downing streets
Speaker 3: and force some everybody into Travalgar Square and the police
Speaker 3: would surround the square and contain the demonstration. It wasn't possible,
Speaker 3: it didn't happen. It created huge amount of resentment and
Speaker 3: conflicts and battles started erupting.
Speaker 1: First, demonstrators responded to baton charges using whatever they had
Speaker 1: to hand, fighting with placard sticks or throwing banner poles
Speaker 1: and bottles.
Speaker 3: The whole mood of the demonstration changed. Police started driving
Speaker 3: police fans into the demonstration. Really the whole thing degenerated
Speaker 3: really quickly into a massive physical battle where people defended
Speaker 3: themselves from police violence. Please betruncheons, cars driving at people.
Speaker 3: A lot of people were injured by the police. The
Speaker 3: police completely lost control.
Speaker 1: Police drove numerous vans at high speed into crowds of protesters,
Speaker 1: mowing pedestrians down at speeds of up to forty miles
Speaker 1: an hour. So people began trying to block in police
Speaker 1: fans with their bodies, banging on the windows and attacking
Speaker 1: them with whatever they could, like scaffolding poles. A temporary
Speaker 1: construction cabin was set on fire, as was South Africa House,
Speaker 1: the diplomatic mission of apartheid South Africa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it decended into a riot basically, and
Speaker 3: it spread out from Trafaber Square all over the center
Speaker 3: of London, people barricading streets and looting.
Speaker 1: There was looting in particular on roads after Faber Square,
Speaker 1: like Regent Street. Symbols of wealth were violently attacked, like
Speaker 1: shops selling jewelry and fur coats, and luxury cars like
Speaker 1: BMW's were overturned.
Speaker 4: Really, the whole thing just got completely out of control.
Speaker 3: I think they police underestimated the numbers, They underestimated the.
Speaker 4: Depth of anger.
Speaker 3: After ten years of thatterism and previous defeats through you know,
Speaker 3: government intransigence and the police had been militarized in a
Speaker 3: way the previous ten years that hadn't happened in the
Speaker 3: previous century, and people fought back and it became the
Speaker 3: worst really the or most significant example of public disorder
Speaker 3: in England really for probably a century or something.
Speaker 1: By the end of the day, five hundred and forty
Speaker 1: two police officers had been injured, in addition to thousands
Speaker 1: of demonstrators and members of the public who had been
Speaker 1: indiscriminately beaten by police. Three hundred and forty one were
Speaker 1: also arrested. Yeah, they luck out, They luck out, and
Speaker 1: luck out out. Adios learn more about what happened following
Speaker 1: the poll tax riot and the subsequent non payment campaign
Speaker 1: in Part two. You can listen to that now by
Speaker 1: joining us on Patreon, which is how our work is funded.
Speaker 1: There you can access loads of other great exclusive content,
Speaker 1: including an exclusive bonus episode with more information from Dave
Speaker 1: about the campaign, different tactics within it, undercover police infiltration
Speaker 1: of the movement, and more. It's only your support which
Speaker 1: allows us to make these podcasts, So if you do
Speaker 1: appreciate our work. Please consider joining us at patreon dot
Speaker 1: com slash working class History link in the show notes. Otherwise.
Speaker 1: Part two will be out for everyone else next week.
Speaker 1: If joining us on Patreon isn't an option for you
Speaker 1: at the moment, please don't worry about it, but do
Speaker 1: tell your friends about this podcast and give us a
Speaker 1: five star review on your favorite podcast out. As always,
Speaker 1: we've got more information sources and eventually a transcript on
Speaker 1: the web page for this episode link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: One of the main sources we've used for this episode
Speaker 1: is the excellent book Poll Tax Rebellion by Danny Burns.
Speaker 1: You can get hold of it on the link in
Speaker 1: the show notes. Thanks to our Patroon supporters for making
Speaker 1: this podcast possible special thanks to jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez Ojeda,
Speaker 1: Nick Williams, and Old Norm. Our theme tune is Bella
Speaker 1: Chau Thanks for permission to use it from Disky Dead Soiler.
Speaker 1: You can buy it or stream it on the links
Speaker 1: in the show notes. This episode was edited by Engin Hassan.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Catch you next time, Lady