fair.” They were right: the tax was an immediate disaster. One trouble with very simple ideas is that what is wrong with them becomes swiftly apparent to even the dimmest opponent. In the present case, everyone could see what the tax implied: that two street sweepers living in a single room at the most fetid end of the Borough of Westminster would pay the same as a millionaire and his well-salaried wife living at No. 10 Downing Street. The earl in his castle (or Tarzan behind his monogrammed gates) would benefit by several hundred or several thousand pounds; massed farm laborers and their families would bear this cost. Mrs. Thatcher likes to offer patronizing economic homilies to her opponents, and a favorite, oft-repeated line goes “You don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer” Here, though, was the starkest possible case of making the rich richer while at the same time, and by the same process, making the poor (and middle-incomed) poorer.
In the first year of the tax in Scotland, £158 million, or 16.3 percent of expected revenue, went uncollected. The next year, it got worse: by September 1990, almost halfway through the fiscal year, £769 million, or 73 percent of the tax, had still not been paid. Attempts at arresting bank accounts and wages proved largely unsuccessful; in Strathclyde, 500,000 warrants had to be issued. Many refused to pay the second year’s tax as a protest against subsidizing those who hadn’t paid the first time round. In England and Wales, the poll tax was no less resented. On March 31, there was the biggest riot central London had seen in decades: a pitched battle in TrafalgarSquare, cars burned out in St. Martin’s Lane, looting in the Charing Cross Road. Three hundred and thirty-nine people were arrested, and 144 needed hospital treatment. Trotskyist and anarchist groups were blamed for hijacking a peaceful demonstration; even so, that protest was itself massive, consisting of 200,000 people.
Complaints came from all political quarters, about both the nature of the tax and the blithe ineptitude of its implementation. The Government had estimated that nationally the average community-charge bill would be £278 (as opposed to the previous year’s average rates of £274); it turned out to be £370. Nor could the Government blame those “high-spending” Labour councils; the Tory tax hit the Tory shires. Government estimates of tax levels in Chelmsford and Dover, for instance, were £180 and £150; the levels set by these Tory councils were, respectively, £397 and £298. In West Oxfordshire, eighteen Conservative councilors resigned en masse in protest against the community charge; when the leader of this group stood for reelection as an independent, he defeated the official Tory candidate by a margin of four to one.
The grumbles and the rumbles continued all year, as a stretched bureaucracy sought to administer an unwelcome tax. Demands sent out to those who had recently died seemed more shocking when the charge was per capita rather than merely on property. A group of soldiers on Salisbury Plain tried to refuse the charge, on the ground that they didn’t use council services; magistrates ordered 389 of them to pay. On the Isle of Wight, there was a mass summons of 4,000 defaulters; the case collapsed in farce, because the reminders had been sent out by second-class post, thus not giving people enough time to pay. In the East London borough of Tower Hamlets, the Liberal Democrat council threatened to cut off refuse collection for those who failed to stump up. Elsewhere, bailiffs did a growing business. “Can’t Pay—Won’t Pay” was the protesters’ slogan. By the end of October, six months after the introduction of the charge, one in seven of the 36 million poll-tax payers in England had paid nothing; a quarter of Londoners were not cooperating; the London borough of Haringey had nonpayment running at 42 percent. Nor could it even be arguedthat the tax was
In the first year of the tax in Scotland, £158 million, or 16.3 percent of expected revenue, went uncollected. The next year, it got worse: by September 1990, almost halfway through the fiscal year, £769 million, or 73 percent of the tax, had still not been paid. Attempts at arresting bank accounts and wages proved largely unsuccessful; in Strathclyde, 500,000 warrants had to be issued. Many refused to pay the second year’s tax as a protest against subsidizing those who hadn’t paid the first time round. In England and Wales, the poll tax was no less resented. On March 31, there was the biggest riot central London had seen in decades: a pitched battle in TrafalgarSquare, cars burned out in St. Martin’s Lane, looting in the Charing Cross Road. Three hundred and thirty-nine people were arrested, and 144 needed hospital treatment. Trotskyist and anarchist groups were blamed for hijacking a peaceful demonstration; even so, that protest was itself massive, consisting of 200,000 people.
Complaints came from all political quarters, about both the nature of the tax and the blithe ineptitude of its implementation. The Government had estimated that nationally the average community-charge bill would be £278 (as opposed to the previous year’s average rates of £274); it turned out to be £370. Nor could the Government blame those “high-spending” Labour councils; the Tory tax hit the Tory shires. Government estimates of tax levels in Chelmsford and Dover, for instance, were £180 and £150; the levels set by these Tory councils were, respectively, £397 and £298. In West Oxfordshire, eighteen Conservative councilors resigned en masse in protest against the community charge; when the leader of this group stood for reelection as an independent, he defeated the official Tory candidate by a margin of four to one.
The grumbles and the rumbles continued all year, as a stretched bureaucracy sought to administer an unwelcome tax. Demands sent out to those who had recently died seemed more shocking when the charge was per capita rather than merely on property. A group of soldiers on Salisbury Plain tried to refuse the charge, on the ground that they didn’t use council services; magistrates ordered 389 of them to pay. On the Isle of Wight, there was a mass summons of 4,000 defaulters; the case collapsed in farce, because the reminders had been sent out by second-class post, thus not giving people enough time to pay. In the East London borough of Tower Hamlets, the Liberal Democrat council threatened to cut off refuse collection for those who failed to stump up. Elsewhere, bailiffs did a growing business. “Can’t Pay—Won’t Pay” was the protesters’ slogan. By the end of October, six months after the introduction of the charge, one in seven of the 36 million poll-tax payers in England had paid nothing; a quarter of Londoners were not cooperating; the London borough of Haringey had nonpayment running at 42 percent. Nor could it even be arguedthat the tax was
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