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The Anti‐Poll Tax Non‐Payment Campaign and Liberal Concepts of Political Obligation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Richard Bellamy
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Extract

Resistance To The Poll Tax Has Been Described As ‘The greatest popular rejection of unjust law since Chartist time’. During the period 1990 – 91, for example, summonses for nonpayment in England and Wales were taken out agaha nearly a quarter of those registered for the charge, whilst in Scotland approximately 38 per cent of the registered population were pursued by legal means. Somewhat surprisingly in the light of the large numbers of people involved and the undoubted role which the unpopularity of the tax played in Mrs Thatcher's removal from the premiership, the campaign has reccived little attention from political scientists and none, as far as I know, from legal or political philosophers.

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Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1994 , pp. 22 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1994

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References

2 W. Hamish Fraser commenting on the Scottish campaign in Labour History Review, 56, 1991, p. 87, as cited by Barker, R., ‘Legitimacy in the United Kingdom: Scotland and the Poll Tax’, British Journal of Political Science, 22. 1992, p. 531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Approximate figures derived from local and metropolitan authority statistics cited in Barker, ‘Legitimacy’, pp. 522 – 3.

4 See Worlff, R. P., In Defence of Anarchism, 2nd ed., New York, Harper & Row, 1973 Google Scholar and Simmons, A. J., Moral Principles and Political Obligations, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1979 Google Scholar, for this argument.

5 I am not suggesting that many of the campaigners actually employed the arguments discussed here. Paradoxically, I suspect that most may well have appealed to principles of a far less individualist nature that, from a theoretical point of view, do not justify disobedience nearly so well. The irony I wish to point up is merely that those who supported the reasoning behind the tax arguably provided the best grounds for withholding payment for it, and that this reveals a weakness of liberal theory.

6 For an example of these arguments, see Hare, R. M., ‘Political Obligation’, in Honderich, T. (ed.). Social Ends ami Political Means, London, Routledge, 1976, p. 7.Google Scholar

7 See Lyons, David, Farms and Limits of Utilitarianism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1965.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 See Lukes, Steven, ‘Marxism and Dirty Hands’, in idem. Moral Conflict and Politics, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991, ch. 10Google Scholar, Tor examples.

9 The statistic comes from a survey by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, Summary Warrants Now Top 3 Million, 16 December 1991 and the argument from Steve Briggs and Derek Bateman, ‘Middle Class Rebel Over Poll Tax Rise’, Scotland on Sunday, 3 February 1991, p. 5, both reported in Barker, ‘Legitimacy’, p. 532.

10 e.g. The case ofRandolph Murray v. Edinburgh District Council brought before the Court of Session in Edinburgh in May 1990. See Barker, ‘Legitimacy’, p. 531 for details.

11 This was certainly a concern of the Scottish Labour Party, albeit motivated by the self‐interested point of view that they would lose votes to the nationalists as a result, e.g. Ken Smith, ‘Labour Troubled by Poll Tax Backlash’, Glasgow Htrald, 3 January 1990. For a more general expression of this concern, see Jean McFadden, President of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, ‘Bringing the Law into Disrepute’, The Scotsman, 20 November 1990.

12 Clearly there are some laws where secrecy may be a necessary part of successful civil disobedience. Thus, those who wished to protest against the Fugitive Slave Act could not have openly helped slaves without giving them away.

13 The view of a Tory councillor, as reported in the Glasgow Herald, 12 February 1991.

14 Not solely as opposed to ‘not at all’ concerned with personal or group gain, as is sometimes argued, because, as I shall argue below, damage to one’s interests can be a reasonable ground for disobedience. Unlike the criminals, however, civil disobedient! are willing that whatever advantages they gain from their actions should be enjoyed by others who are similarly placed.

15 Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971, pp. 375–5.Google Scholar

16 Labour eventually abandoned even this measure as unjustified, for reasons explored in the next two sections.

17 Scott, David, ‘Councils Predict Poll Tax Crunch Only Months Away’, The Scotsman, 2 07 1991.Google Scholar

18 These are the three points that get a highly qualified defence in Singer, P., Democracy and Disobedience, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973 Google Scholar, for example.

19 ibid., p. 52.

20 ibid., pp. 30–42.

21 ibid., p. 43.

22 ibid., p. 134.

23 McLean, I., and Mortimore, R., ‘Apportionment and the Boundary Commission for England’, Electoral Studies, 11, 1992, p. 308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Esam, P. and Oppenheim, C., A Charge on the Community: The Poll Tax. Benefits and the Poor, Child Poverty Action Group and Local Government Information Unity 1989, pp. 114–5.Google Scholar

25 For details of this claim, see Barker, ‘Legitimacy’, pp. 525–6, 529–31.

26 Rt Hon. N. Ridley, MP, House of Commons Debates, 18 April 1988, col. 581, quoted in Esam and Oppenheim, Charge on the Community, p. 34.

27 Rt Hon. Selwyn Gummer, then Minister of State for Local Government, at Blakeney, Norfolk, 7 Oct 1988, quoted in Esam and Carey, A Charge on the Community, p. 30.

28 Progressive taxation was said to allow the poorer to ‘overload’ both the state and the richer wealth‐creating sections of the community with financial burdens for services which those who paid for diem did not necessarily use. A flat rate charge was intended to get around this problem and was justified on die grounds that payment for facilities like car parks, swimming pools and the like had none of the redistributive implications involved with taxation for services such as welfare and education and should simply be related to use. The view mat non‐rate payers were more likely to vote for extravagent policies than rate‐payers had been subjected to damaging critical scrutiny by Arthur, Midwinter, ‘Economic Theory, the Poll Tax, and Local Spending’, Polities, 9, 1989, pp. 9–15.Google Scholar In general, as Miller, W. L., Irrelevant Elections, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988 Google Scholar, points out ‘it is rich taxpayers who tum out to vote more readily man poor non‐taxpayers’ (p. 232).

29 Households with an average weekly income of between $50 and $200 were on average net losers under the new system, the rest were net gainers. Whilst those with an average weekly income of under $30 gained on average by 0.01 per cent, those with an average weekly income of over $500 gained on average by over 6.73 per cent. (For detailed figures, see Gibson, John, Thi Politics and Economics of tht Poll Tax: Mn Thatcher’s Downfall, Warley, Emas, 1990, ch. 5.Google Scholar).

30 These distinctions come from Dworkin, R., ‘Civil Disobedience and Nuclear Protest’, in his A Matter of Principle, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986 Google Scholar but are implicit in many other liberal accounts including Rawls, Theory of Justice, pp. 363 ‐ 94.

31 Dworkin, ‘Civil Disobediencc’, p. 112.

32 On the evidence of Democracy and Disobedince, pp. 92–104, it is doubtful that Singer would accept them, for example.

33 Goodin, R. E., ‘Civil Disobedience and Nuclear Protest’, Political Studies, XXXV, 1987, p. 466.Google Scholar

34 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 364.

35 ibid., p. 372. A similar view was expressed by the Scottish Court or Session Judges. See McKain, Bruce, ‘Belief in the Injustice of Poll Tax “No Excuse” for Disobeying the Act’, Glasgow Herald, 25 07 1990.Google Scholar

36 e.g. Scott, David, ‘Top Labour Councillor Slamt Poll Tax Dodgers’, Scotsman, 29 03 1990.Google Scholar

37 Hart, H. L. A., ‘Are There Any Natural Rights?’, in Quinton, A. (ed.), Political Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967, pp. 61–2Google Scholar and Rawls, J., ‘Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play’, in Hook, S. (ed.), Law and Philosophy, New York, New York University Press, 1964, pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

38 Nozick, R., Anarchy, State ami Utopia, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1974, pp. 90–3.Google Scholar

39 For details see Gibton, Poll Tax, chs. 8 and 9, and Bramley, G., Le Grand, J., and Low, W., ‘How Far is the Poll Tax a “Community Charge”: The Implication] for Service Uiage Evidence’, Policy and Polities, 17, 1989, pp. 187–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 I owe this point to Eiam and Oppenheim, A Charge on the Community, pp. 124 – 5.

41 For details, see Hargrcaves Heap, S. et at., Tht Thory of Choice: A Critical Guide, Oxford, Blackwell. 1992, chi. 13 and 14.Google Scholar