BEATING
THE POLL TAX
Anarchist Communist Editions
(ACE) Pamphlet No. 4
Anarchist Communist
Federation
(now Anarchist Federation www.afed.org.uk)
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
“Our
past experience should teach us to expect nothing else of them.”
‘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)
CONTENTS
Beating the Poll Tax
How not to fight
What lies behind the Poll
Tax
The ‘Left’ and the Poll Tax
Appendix: What is the Poll
Tax?
Burning poll tax
registration forms in
MASS NON-PAYMENT
is now a reality in
- Dole office workers and council workers are
defying their employers’ attempts to get them to enforce the poll tax.
- Councils country-wide have been engulfed by a
tidal wave of poll tax bureaucracy that threatens to push the ‘community
charge’ system to collapse.
- A mutiny is now well-underway in the Tories’
own ranks. Sensing the strength of opposition they face, their nerve is
beginning to crack.
As the first poll
tax demands are sent out in
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
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
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
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
The coming weeks
will be crucial in the battle against the poll tax in
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
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
· The
heads of Scottish clearing banks announced in late-November that 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.
· Bailiffs
raids on the homes of working class people have proved so 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
£25.5 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
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
The December
deadline for the completion of poll tax registration in
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
Accurate figures
are hard to find, but recently, over 30% of residents of the Tottenham area of
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
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
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.
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
IN MID-OCTOBER
Scottish Labour councillors led a march in
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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’.
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
If
anything, Tories councillors in the leafy-Shires of southern
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 would be 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,
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
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’
leader Labour group,
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).
- Poll tax was
introduced in
- Everyone
living in the same council area will pay exactly the same poll tax
regardless of their income: A factory boss will pay the same poll tax as
the people who work on his production lines.
- Unemployed
people will have to find 20% of their poll tax bill out of 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.
- Working
class women are set to lose out badly. Women workers make up a 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.
- Black and
Asian families will also be hard hit. As well as being 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.