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Legitimacy in the United Kingdom: Scotland and the Poll Tax

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Rodney Barker
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Extract

The community charge has been described as the flagship of Thatcherism. It was also the issue which, together with Europe, brought the Prime Minister's voyage to an end and set her adrift as a political Captain Bligh whilst her parliamentary and cabinet crew sailed on without her. But though the prospect of English electoral disaster was the most immediate and obvious political effect of the new tax, its introduction a year earlier in Scotland had other and possibly longer-lasting consequences.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , October 1992 , pp. 521 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 As Deacon and Golding point out, the almost universal employment of the term ‘poll tax’ represented a public relations defeat for the government. A charge is a fee for services received, and therefore the wealth of the fee payer is not relevant. A tax, on the other hand, has redistributive implications, and thus if the levy is at the same rate for all payers, inequity is more likely to be perceived (Deacon, David and Golding, Peter, ‘When Ideology Fails: The Flagship of Thatcherism and the British Local and National Media’, European Journal of Communication, 6 (1991), 291–332).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Financial Times, 2 04 1990Google Scholar; Glasgow Herald, 2 04 1990Google Scholar. Such differences in the level, or even presence, of violence could be a function of the absolute as opposed to the relative size of the opposition and the possibilities this opened for the violent consequences of mistaken policetactics. John Dickson, Assistant Chief Constable of Strathclyde, attributed the lack of disorder at the Glasgow demonstration to the work of the organizers and their co-operation with the police (Glasgow Herald, 2 04 1990).Google Scholar

3 Audit Commission for Local Authorities and the National Health Service in England and Wales, The Administration of the Community Charge (London: Audit Commission, 1990), sections 81–2.Google Scholar

4 Collectable tax is the amount legally due after all deductions for rebates, etc., have been made.

5 Institute of Public Finance, Progress on the Collection of the Community Charge (London: Institute of Public Finance, 1991)Google Scholar; Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), The Shambles of the Poll Tax (Edinburgh: COSLA, 1991); COSLA Finance Committee 28 06 1991, Item 4.1)Google Scholar. By April 1992, this figure had improved only slightly, with a collection rate for the year 1990–91 of 80.1 per cent (COSLA, Poll Tax Non-Paymenl – £623m (Edinburgh: COSLA, 1992)Google Scholar. Figures for Scotland are more accessible than those for England and Wales, in part because of differences in the relative number and variety of collecting authorities. Figures issued by the Department of the Environment for England are percentages not of the legally collectable tax, but of the estimated collectable tax or ‘budgeted yield’. This means that in some case receipts can be over 100 per cent of budgeted yield. Department of the Environment figures for England, again because of the number of authorities involved, and perhaps also because of the uncertainty of how to calculate ‘budgeted yield’, do not cover all collecting authorities – ‘over 89 per cent’. All of this makes them of limited use for north-south comparison (Department of the Environment, Community Charge Collection – Fourth Quarter Results (London: Department of the Environment, 1991)).Google Scholar

6 Institute of Public Finance, Progress on the Collection of the Community ChargeGoogle Scholar; Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, The Shambles of the Poll TaxGoogle Scholar; COSLA Finance Committee 28 06 1991Google Scholar, Item 4.1. By March 1992, the outstanding amount in Scotland for 1989–90 was still 12.4 per cent (COSLA, Poll Tax Non-Payment).Google Scholar

7 COSLA Minutes 22 August 1991, Item 4.2; COSLA, Poll Tax Non-Payment.Google Scholar

8 Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, The Shambles of the Poll Tax.Google Scholar

9 Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, Summary Warrants Now Top 3 Million (Edinburgh: COSLA, 1991).Google Scholar

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11 Local Government Information Unit, Not for Want of Trying (London: Local Government Information Unit, 1992), p. 2Google Scholar; Association of Metropolitan Authorities, Poll Tax Non-Payment (London: Association of Metropolitan Authorities, 1992).Google Scholar

12 Local Government Information Unit, Not for Want of Trying (London: Local Government Information Unit, 1992), p. 5.Google Scholar

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18 I have discussed this more fully in Barker, Rodney, Political Legitimacy and the State (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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20 This argument has not changed as a result of the general election of April 1992, in which the Conservatives increased the number of their seats in Scotland from nine to eleven and their share of the vote from 24 per cent to 25.7 per cent. The change in parliamentary representation between general elections, on the other hand, was only from ten to eleven, since the lower figure of nine was a result of a by-election defeat.

21 See Midwinter, Arthur, Keating, Michael and Mitchell, James, Politics and Public Policy in Scotland (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Discussing the available arguments in terms of economic interest for the rejection of Conservative candidates by the electorate in 1987, A. D. R. Dickson comments ‘The crucial factor that all of these existing accounts neglect is the nature of “Scottishness” and its implications for political action’ (Dickson, , ‘The Peculiarities of the Scottish: National Culture and Political Action’ Political Quarterly, 59 (1988), p. 359).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 See Kellas, James, The Scottish Political System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973, 1975, 1984, 1989)Google Scholar; Midwinter, , Keating, and Mitchell, , Politics and Public Policy in ScotlandGoogle Scholar; Fry, Michael, Patronage and Principle: A Political History of Modern Scotland (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1987)Google Scholar. Once a specifically Scottish argument over legitimacy is identified, a connection is implied with the debate over whether it is appropriate to talk of a ‘Scottish political system’, insofar as system is defined in Eastonian terms by reference to ‘the authoritative allocation of values’. It lies outside the scope of this Note to pursue those implications.

23 Scottish Centre for Social and Economic Research, Scottish Education: A Declaration of Principles, A Joint AdCAS/SCSER Report (Edinburgh: SCSER, 1989)Google Scholar quoted in Midwinter, , Keating, and Mitchell, , Politics and Public Policy in Scotland, p. 171.Google Scholar

24 Midwinter, , Keating, and Mitchell, , Politics and Public Policy in Scotland, p. 166Google Scholar. To that extent it is simply the latest example of the dilemma of governing an increasingly non-Conservative Scotland on the basis of a Conservative majority in the Parliament of the United Kingdom remarked on by W. L. Miller in 1981 when he asked, ‘On what basis then can a Conservative Secretary (of State for Scotland) govern without further alienating the Scots electorate?’ Miller, W. L., The End of British Politics? Scots and English Political Behaviour in the Seventies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 261Google Scholar. Stephen Kendrick and David McCrone argue that in the past the Conservative party has contributed to, fostered and profited from a sense of Scottish identity. Its economic policies since 1979, on the other hand, accentuate that Scottish identity in a way wholly inimical to Conservative support (Kendrick, Stephen and McCrone, David, ‘Politics in a Cold Climate: The Conservative Decline in Scotland’, Political Studies, 34 (1989), 589–603CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Midwinter et al., argue that ‘There is, though, a serious argument about political legitimacy, whether a government rejected by a large majority of Scots will be able to govern with the consent which has underlain the British democratic system’ (Midwinter, , Keating, and Mitchell, , Politics and Public Policy in Scotland, p. 206.Google Scholar

25 Miller, William L., Irrelevant Elections (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 252.Google Scholar

26 Thus the City Treasurer of Glasgow, Councillor Jean McFadden, commenting on a System Three Scotland poll which showed 80 per cent of Scots opposed to the introduction of the poll tax in Scotland a year before it was introduced in England and Wales, claimed that this showed ‘the Scottish public has not been conned by the Government's arguments’ (Evening Times, 12 01 1987).Google Scholar

27 Daily Record, 13 01 1987Google Scholar; Maxton, John, ‘Poll tax: a solution far worse than the problem’, Glasgow Herald, 13 02 1987.Google Scholar

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31 They were unemployment, inflation, health and education, nuclear weapons, defence/foreign affairs and trades unions/industrial relations (Miller, William L., Clarke, Harold C., Harrop, Martin, LeDuc, Lawrence and Whiteley, Paul F., How Voters Change: The 1987 British Election Campaign in Perspective (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 103–5.Google Scholar

32 The figures were: September 1989 – unemployment named by 50 per cent, poll tax 36 per cent, NHS 26 per cent; February 1990 – poll tax 48 per cent, unemployment 40 per cent, NHS 24 per cent (The Scotsman, 5 03 1990).Google Scholar

33 The Scotsman, 2 10 1987Google Scholar; Glasgow Herald, 2 10 1987Google Scholar; Glasgow Herald, 30 11 1987.Google Scholar

34 Daily Record, 18 04 1988Google Scholar; Glasgow Herald, 11 03 1988, 20 10 1987.Google Scholar

35 Glasgow Herald, 12 04 1988.Google Scholar

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37 Glasgow Herald, 22 07 1988.Google Scholar

38 Glasgow Herald, 15 08 1988.Google Scholar

39 The Scotsman, 3 02 1988Google Scholar; The Times, 11 11 1988.Google Scholar

40 The Times, 22 10 1991Google Scholar; Levy, Roger, Scottish Nationalism at the Crossroads (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1990), p. 120.Google Scholar

41 The Scotsman, 11 03 1988; 20 September 1990.Google Scholar

42 Enston, , ‘Implementing the Unthinkable’, pp. 103–4.Google Scholar The previous year the SNP conference had rejected non-payment, though later in 1987 its executive committee called for a mass campaign of non-payment, adding without any apparent humour that to be successful such a campaign would have to be headed by the Labour party (The Scotsman, 12 10 1987Google Scholar; Glasgow Herald, 19 10 1987).Google Scholar

43 McCrone, David, ‘Opinion Polls in Scotland August 1988-July 1989’Google Scholar, in Brown, and Parry, , eds, Scottish Government Yearbook 1990, p. 285.Google Scholar

44 The Scotsman, 20 09 1990.Google Scholar

45 The Scotsman, 12 12 1988Google Scholar, 20 September 1990; McCrone, , ‘Opinion Polls in Scotland August 1988-July 1989’, p. 285.Google Scholar

46 NOP/JN 6432, 20–22nd April 1990.

47 Glasgow Herald, 28 11 1986.Google Scholar

48 Lothian Regional Council decided at the end of 1987 to delay the preparation of the register, a decision commended by Henry McLeish Labour MP for Central Fife, who urged the council to take legal advice in order to discover what was the minimum they might legally do by way of administering the new tax (The Scotsman, 9 10 1987).Google Scholar Edinburgh and Glasgow District Councils decided, in the autumn of 1987, not to act as collecting agents for their respective regional councils (The Scotsman, 30 10 1987Google Scholar; Glasgow Herald, 5 11 1987).Google Scholar

49 The Independent, 14 05 1987.Google Scholar

50 The Guardian, 14 05 1987.Google Scholar

51 Evening Times, 20 10 1987.Google Scholar

52 The Scotsman, 28 11 1986.Google Scholar

53 Glasgow Herald, 29 01 1987.Google Scholar

54 Glasgow Herald, 16 12 1986.Google Scholar

55 The Scotsman, 3 06 1987.Google Scholar

56 The Scotsman, 15 12 1987.Google Scholar

57 Gillespie, Judith, ‘How to Beat the Poll Tax’, The Scotsman, 23 11 1987.Google Scholar

58 Financial Times, 16 03 1990.Google Scholar

59 MORI, 23–4 April 1990. Comparison with England and Wales on this point is difficult. Although questions about non-payment or support for non-payment were asked on a number of occasions in Scotland, only NOP asked such questions south of the border, and only once. In April 1990 4 per cent of respondents in England, Wales and Scotland said that they would ‘probably not pay’, 5 per cent that they would ‘definitely not pay’ (NOP/JN.6432 20–22 April 1990). Speculation on this point must remain open.

60 Midwinter, , Keating, and Mitchell, , Politics and Public Policy in Scotland, p. 210.Google Scholar

61 Aggrieved Scots might have pointed further to the readiness of Conservative MPs to vote through for Scotland a form of income levying against which they increasingly rebelled when it came to be applied to England and Wales.

62 Opinion of the Lord President in causa, Randolph Murray against Community Charges Registration Officer for Lothian Region (Edinburgh: Court of Session, 1990)Google Scholar; Opinion of Lord Kirkwood in causa, Randolph Murray against Community Charges Registration Officer for Lothian Region (Edinburgh: Court of Session, 1990)Google Scholar; Ascherson, Neal, Independent on Sunday, 27 05 1990, p. 21.Google Scholar Whether or not such legal arguments were spurious is not the point. The facts of the Union of 1707 may be ‘irrelevant to current Scottish politics. But the myth of the union is not.’ (Miller, , The End of British Politics?, p. 1.)Google Scholar

63 W. Hamish Fraser reviewing Young, James D., ed., Scotland at the Crossroads: A Socialist AnswerGoogle Scholar, in Labour History Review, 56 (1991), p. 87.Google Scholar

64 It is not only attempts to relate non-payment of the poll tax to other factors that is set about with difficulties. The early confidence with which new right and rational choice analyses of local politics related rate-paying and non-rate-paying to voting for generous or parsimonious policies has been shown to rest on shaky foundations. See for example the arguments in Midwinter, Arthur, ‘The Politics of Local Fiscal Reform’, Public Policy and Administration, 4 (1989), 2–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Midwinter, Arthur, ‘Economic Theory, the Poll Tax, and Local Spending’, Politics, 9 (1989), 9–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 Buxton, James, Financial Times, 29 03 1990, p. 10.Google Scholar The relationship between community charge collection rates, non-payment and socio-economic structure is not one investigated in this Note. Whilst the distribution of social classes in Scotland is similar to that in England and Wales, there is a higher proportion of low earners in Scotland than in England, and on indexes of deprivation Scotland scores much higher (Department of Employment, New Earnings Survey 1990 (London: HMSO, 1990)Google Scholar Part E, tables E108.1., E109.1, El 14.2; Carstairs, Vera and Morris, Russell, ‘Deprivation: Explaining Differences in Mortality Between Scotland and England and Wales’, British Medical Journal, 29 (1989), 886–9).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the other hand some of this distinctiveness may disappear if the comparison is not between Scotland, and England and Wales, but between various regions of the United Kingdom, where what Miller has termed ‘peripheral’ distinctions emerge, and differences are associated with the distance from the (south-eastern) centre, rather than location north or south of the border (Miller, , The End of British Politics?).Google Scholar

66 Briggs, Steve and Bateman, Derek, ‘Middle class rebel over poll tax rise’, Scotland on Sunday, 3 02 1991, p. 5Google Scholar; Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, Summary Warrants Now Top 3 Million, 16 12 1991.Google Scholar

67 Briggs, and Bateman, , ‘Middle class rebel over poll tax rise’.Google Scholar

68 Whilst I have argued that there is a reciprocal relationship between opposition to the poll tax and a defensive Scottish nationalism, I make no claims about measurable relationships between, for instance, support for the SNP and the introduction of the tax, or nationalism and non-payment, or any other potentially investigable quantifiable relationships. Not surprisingly, support for the community charge was almost negligible amongst SNP supporters, but so was it amongst supporters of the Labour party (MORI, 23–4 April 1990).

69 The author describes this factor in the decision whether or not to pay as the ‘perceived legitimacy of the imposition of the community charge’ – though this legitimacy failure seems to consist in the tax being regarded as ‘unfair’ (Erskine, Angus, The Community Charge and Poverty: The Impact of the Community Charge on Low Income Households in Strathclyde (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Department of Social Administration and Social Work, 1990), pp. ii, 15, 20, 42).Google Scholar

70 As was rather indiscreetly pointed out by the Scottish local government minister Allan Stewart: ‘Many people are prepared to pay a rise for inflation but they bitterly resent paying for those who have paid nothing. I completely understand the resentment of those who don't want to pay [an increase due to high levels of non-payment]’, Briggs, and Bateman, , ‘Middle class rebel over poll tax rise’.Google Scholar