(Militant International Review, No. 43, Spring 1990, p. 7-13)
The poll tax has become a lightning conductor for the accumulated bitterness at eleven years of Thatcherism. Peter Taaffe examines perspectives for Britain.
“As Trotskyists the world over scurry for cover, their British comrades are suddenly on the march in the vanguard of the working class revolution in such hitherto neglected proletarian outposts as Windsor and Maidenhead. Worcester and Norwich.… The only real gainer… is Militant. It is a strange situation. But then as Trotsky observed in his History of the Russian Revolution, ‚The revolution does not choose its paths: It made its first steps towards victory under the belly of a Cossack’s horse.‘ How wonderful it is – how richly, exquisitely comic – that Trotskyism has made its biggest advance of the 1990s in the conservative home counties, under the belly of an English police horse, outside the local town hall.” (Robert Harris, Sunday Times, 11 March 1990).
The poll tax revolt has swept like a tidal wave through Britain. Inspired by the year long resistance in Scotland, demonstrations of hundreds and thousands have besieged town halls throughout the land, culminating in the magnificent demonstrations, 200,000 strong in London and 50,000 in Glasgow, on 31 March. The London demonstration was the biggest in Britain for a hundred years, and one of the largest in history.
The violent clashes and rioting which took place at the end have done nothing to diminish its huge impact. (See Militant No. 987 for an analysis of the march and the causes of the violence).
Former Tories now denounce Thatcher as a ‘traitor’.
Not just in the towns and cities but in the smallest village in the remotest rural areas the resistance has developed on an unprecedented scale. This is typified by Bishops Green in East Sussex where from a population of 280, 180 are not paying the poll tax. The sign outside the village reads, “You are now entering a poll tax free zone’. It is as if Thatcher has taken a giant spoon to stir up the whole of society. Hitherto firm supporters of the government have besieged local Tory dignitaries. In Bexley former Tories denounce Thatcher as a ‘traitor’.
Heseltine has launched a barely concealed challenge for Thatcher’s crown. Rifkind, Scottish Secretary, by threatening to resign, forced the government to do a complete about-turn and extend relief for poll tax payers in England and Wales to Scotland. Incredibly he subsequently stated “she (Mrs Thatcher) has fallen in line with my better judgement” (Observer, 25 March 1990). Such public ‘insolence’ in the past meant dismissal from the Cabinet for Biffen and others. Now a weakened Thatcher, desperately clinging to her premiership, is incapable of her previous ‘firm leadership’.
This situation completely confirms the analysis which the Marxists alone made both of the consequences of the poll tax and perspectives for the Tory government. In summer 1988, for example, answering Thatcher’s declaration that the poll tax was the ‘flagship’ of her third term, we explained that “with clear leadership the labour movement can sink the Tory flagship without trace. And when the flagship goes down, the Admiral either goes down with it or is sacked!” Militant, 29 July 1988.
Hegel was fond of stating that ‘reason becomes unreason and unreason becomes reason’. Those qualities, which a fawning Capitalist press lauded so much in the past, have turned into their opposite. Thatcher, hailed as the ‘Warrior Queen’ able to face down foreign dictators and ‘the enemy within’, is now assailed on all sides as ‘stubborn’ and ‘inflexible’. Ritualistic support for the ‘community charge’ has now been completely abandoned by Thatcher’s Tory opponents. John Biffen, writing in the Observer, states “the major political liability of the community charge is that the flat rate concept is considered to be unjust. It offends a widespread belief that higher incomes merit higher taxes. Arguments showing that the community charge accounts for only a quarter of local spending and that the bulk comes from the general and progressive taxation are words in vain. It is a rich man’s tax devised by a government dedicated to the elite of wealth … the prime minister, in a maladroit (this is Tory code for idiotic – PT) political judgement. elevated this measure into ‘the flagship of our legislation’.” (25 March 1990).
Thatcher’s second blunder was to take the pusillanimous stance of the labour and trade union leaders as indicative of the resistance of the working class to the poll tax. She also totally underestimated the capacity of the Marxists to organise a mass movement against the tax. Originally, it is now revealed, Baker, the architect of the poll tax, considered the issue so sensitive that he wanted it introduced over 12 years – death by a thousand cuts! However the denounce Margaret Thatcher as a feeble resistance of Labour’s front bench convinced the Tory. strategists otherwise. Even then, in 1987 it was planned to soften the impact in the inner city areas by a three year phased introduction. But the clamour for its immediate introduction by the massed ranks of the Tory petty bourgeois at the 1987 Tory conference, and the realisation that the full impact of the tax would be felt just before the next general election, changed the governments’ mind.
The critical factor however was the complete abandonment of any campaign by the labour leaders. Scotland was chosen because of the traditional militancy of the Scottish working class. With Scotland beaten into submission minimal resistance could be expected from the working class in England and Wales. This was the calculation of the Tory strategists.
If it had been left to the summits of the labour movement, Thatcher would have succeeded. Indeed, the labour leaders actively assisted in smoothing its path in Scotland. Tory ministers did not need to denounce the mass non-payment campaign. Her front line troops in this were unfortunately the leaders of the labour movement in Scotland. Without the magnificent organisation of a mass non-payment campaign, resistance to the tax would have been scattered and incapable of defying the onslaught of government agencies which, buttressed by police and bailiffs, would have picked off individual protesters.
Militant has supplied the political backbone to the anti-poll tax struggle.
The potential for a mass movement of non-payment existed in Scotland. But from potential to an actual movement history demonstrates that the working class needs an organised focal point. This vital ingredient was supplied by the Scottish Anti-Poll Tax Federation and now by the All-Britain Federation. While the generals at the top of the labour movement abandoned the field, and from the sidelines denounced those still engaged in struggle, this organisation took root amongst the housing schemes and workplaces of Scotland. This was a broad-based movement, including different political trends and workers who subscribed to no particular political standpoint. However, Militant supporters took the initiative in founding and organising the Federation, and supplied its political backbone.
Trotsky once described the role of Marxists in amass movement as the equivalent of a ‘crystal in a saturated solution’ which gathers around it all the disparate elements. The strategists of capital, as well as the labour leaders, are conscious of the decisive role played by the Militant. In Scotland, however, having written and re-written the obituaries for the Militant, and eager not to give the credit to the Marxists. the role of Militant was deliberately underplayed and that of the Scottish National Party given prominence. In effect the SNP have played a minimal role in the Scottish resistance to the tax, with very little forces on the ground.
Tory strategists were eager to play the ‘red card‘
In England and Wales however, the capitalists were compelled to adopt a different position. There was no English equivalent of the SNP. Moreover, Tory strategists were eager to play the ‘red card‘. Baker and Tory Central Office planned for months to denigrate and slander Militant and thereby the non-payment campaign. Baker’s right-hand man was Dr Julian Lewis, a Tory ‘entrist’ into Newham North East Labour Party in the mid 1970s. the infamous defender of Reg Prentice who subsequently joined the Tory Party.
Lewis, it seems, had been in America studying the ‘dirty tricks’ methods of the Republican Party. However, when these methods were deployed in March they completely rebounded on Baker. The attempt to picture Militant as the ‘orchestrators’ of violence cut no ice with the mass of the population. While understanding the legitimate anger of protestors, some of them youth embittered at what they had suffered under Thatcher. Militant pointed out that throwing a brick through a town hall window, attacking the police or looting the shops of small shopkeepers. who are also groaning under the weight of the poll tax, will not stop its implementation. Only a mass civil disobedience campaign would stop the tax and with it Thatcher.
The hired scribblers in the service of the ruling class such as Robert Harris can barely conceal their venom against Militant supporters, whom he describes as ‘insufferable young leaders’. But he concedes that, “in the past the government was able to enact anti-left measures – against the trade unions for example – because they had widespread public support. But the poll tax is different. It does not have the consent of the governed … it has created what Trotsky would have diagnosed as the classic pre-revolutionary phase. Elements of the petty bourgeoisie, hitherto Mrs Thatcher s strongest supporters, believing their incomes and savings to be under threat, have allied themselves with the dissatisfied working class.”
The laws of revolution and counter-revolution are foreign to the superficial Harris. It is wrong to describe the position in Britain as a classic pre-revolutionary phase. Nevertheless. the fundamentals of his analysis are correct and were predicted by Militant. He also correctly writes: “I doubt whether the ordinary voter watching the violence on television says, ‚Look at all those horrible communists, Mabel. We must vote for Mrs. Thatcher as the only person who can deliver us from these ruffians.‘ The voter is more likely to say ‘Look at the latest bloody mess that woman has landed us in. Everyone told her this was going to happen, but she thought she knew better, as usual’.” Only the use of massive State forces could guarantee the imposition of the poll tax.
Rather than undermining support for Militant, the Tories’ attacks have exactly the opposite effect. Such is the deep loathing for the poll tax, of workers but also of sections of the middle class, that those organising resistance to its implementation have gained enormously in their eyes. A Sunday Correspondent poll on 25 March showed that 7.8 million, even before the bills had arrived, intended not to pay. This would not have been possible without the magnificent resistance of the Scottish working class. The scale of the Scottish resistance has seeped through to the population of England and Wales by a thousand different channels. The marvellous Scottish campaign, and the priceless weapon of an organisation that would co-ordinate the resistance, has had a decisive effect on the mood of millions.
This achievement is all the greater given the ferocious opposition of the labour and trade union leaders and the perjured Tory press. In action the Scottish Federation has demonstrated that it is possible to resist the forces of the state in seizing goods for non-payment of the tax. This has proved, as Tony Benn has now belatedly recognised, that in England and Wales only the use of massive state forces could guarantee the imposition of the poll tax. But for the government this would make a desperate position absolutely catastrophic. It would prepare the ground not just for mass civil disobedience but also for industrial action which could assume general strike proportions. When ten million people say ‘No’ it is impossible to cow them into submission.
The poll tax has also become a lightning conductor for the accumulated bitterness at 11 years of Thatcherism. Thatcher’s ‘property-owning democracy’ has become a nightmare for millions. As mortgage rates soar, hundreds of thousands are in arrears and house repossessions are spiralling. One houseowner, a solicitors receptionist, angrily declared to the Financial Times “we’ve all be conned… I’ve no intention of buying again if I do sell up.” The attacks on the health service have completely alienated even former Tory voters.
More than 500,000 families are facing severe financial difficulties. At least 200,000 households are in serious arrears with loan repayments. Overall, one in nine households are struggling to make ends meet with debts worth £2.9 billion, 2.4 million out of 21 million families in the UK. The much vaunted ‘prosperity’ of the Thatcher years – only a reality for a few – has floated on a sea of debt. Last year bank and building society lending totalled a colossal £90 billion.
However, refugees from home ownership will find little comfort in the rented sector. A Labour Party survey of 100 local authorities’ rents showed an average rise of 10% and a colossal 54% in parts of southern England. In Gloucester rents have risen by 35%, in Salisbury and Reigate 39%, in Cheltenham 29% , and in Merton 24%. The poll tax is just the last imposition, and not necessarily the largest.
These factors resulted in the huge electoral swing in the Mid-Staffordshire by-election, the biggest by-election upset since 1935, and in recent opinion polls. The Daily Telegraph Gallup poll on 6 April gave Labour a 24% lead over the Tories, its biggest ever. Thatcher has the lowest personal rating of any prime minister since polling began in 1938. Professor Anthony King commented that “Labour is benefitting and the government suffering from the fact that scepticism is widespread and growing about the alleged ‘economic miracle‘ of the past decade … around half the electorate – 51% – believe that there has not been such a miracle: only 47% think there has been.” The Tories have attempted to dismiss their position as ‘mid-term blues’. Yet no government has recovered from so far behind to win the next election.
If the polls were to be repeated in a general election the Tories would suffer an electoral massacre. Thatcher’s Finchley seat would fall on a swing of 11.1%. The Scottish Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, the departing Welsh Secretary, Peter Walker, and the ‘poll tax ministers’ David Hunt and Christopher Chope, would all go. What an answer to the ingrained sceptics headed by Neil Kinnock’s guru, Eric Hobsbawm, and Marxism Today, who a year ago were arguing that Labour could not win the next election.
Indeed the Labour Party leadership itself had given up the ghost, with Kinnock contemplating giving way to somebody else. The majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party, in desperation, had embraced – proportional representation, and by implication a coalition with the ‘centre’ parties, as the only means of defeating Thatcher. These worthies argued that Labour’s electoral base was ‘shrinking’, i.e. the working class and the Labour strongholds in the North, while that of the Tories, the middle class, the homeowners, the shareholders etc. and the South was growing.
We characterised this, in the language of Marxism, as impressionism, mistaking the outward appearance on the surface of society as an expression of the underlying reality. We argued on the contrary that society was moving towards an enormous class polarisation which would shatter to its foundations the Tory Party and with it Thatcherism. This in turn would completely undermine the SDP and enormously weaken the Liberal Party.
“Not since 1945 have the middle classes of middle England been so ready to embrace the Labour Party”. Ivor Crewe, The Independent on Sunday.
Our contention that Tory supporters could pass over straight to the Labour Party was met with scarcely concealed mirth. Yet as poll analyst Ivor Crewe now writes in The Independent on Sunday. 25 March, “not since 1945 have the middle classes of middle England been so ready to embrace the Labour Party.” The SDP, the deserters from the Labour Party, face complete extinction. Owen graciously condescended to endorse Neil Kinnock in a general election – as an opinion poll in his own constituency showed Labour 26% ahead of the SDP! There is open speculation that Owen might stand down at the election rather than risk a heavy defeat.
Labour’s front bench ascribe this swing to the new ‘moderate’ image of Labour. It is nothing of the kind. It is primarily a massive anti-Tory movement. Moreover the massive unpopularity of the poll tax has more to do with the mass campaign conducted by the anti-poll tax federations than Kinnock and the leadership of the Labour Party. History has demonstrated that only when the labour movement. translates words into deeds can it draw behind its banner those sections of society who usually stand outside its orbit. The main factor in the massive Labour vote in Scotland in 1987 was the Caterpillar workers ‘illegal‘ occupation, which represented the last possibility of maintaining an industrial manufacturing base for the Scottish economy. Bold action by the labour movement in turn drew support from the middle class and other sections not traditionally supporting Labour.
A similar victory resulted from the heroic stand of Liverpool city council from 1983-87, Neil Kinnock seems to think that slavish acceptance of patently unjust laws will draw the middle class and the more inert and politically uneducated workers to Labour. It is exactly the reverse. Of course the labour movement would accept those laws that prevent crime against ordinary people and their personal property. Yet not one of the rights that the working class possess today, the right to strike, freedom of assembly, to form unions, or a free press, would have been conceded unless the pioneers of the labour movement had not been prepared to break unjust laws.
Another ‘legal’ refuge for the Labour leaders is the argument that Labour in opposition must obey the law for fear that when the Tories are in Opposition they will also break laws that they don’t like. This argument is childish and betrays a complete ignorance of the real lessons of history. When have the ruling class ever allowed legal niceties or constitutions to stand in their way in seeking to overthrow not just laws but governments which threaten their vital interests? The legally elected government of Allende in Chile was brutally overthrown by a military coup in 1973. Faced with a similar situation the British ruling class would not hesitate to resort to similar measures.
If it is objected that such ‘unconstitutional actions are possible abroad but not in ‘democratic’ Britain, then what about the 1914 Curragh mutiny? Then the British officer corps stationed in Ireland staged a mutiny, encouraged and supported by the Tory leader Bonar Law, effectively preventing the Liberal government granting Home Rule to Ireland.
‚Yes, but this is all in the dim and distant past,‘ the right wing reformists will object. But the Labour government of 1964-70 introduced a variation of a wealth tax, the Corporation Bill. Which amongst other things attempted to restrict the income of Company directors. This was denounced in the City of London as a ‚Bolshevik‘ measure. Such was the colossal pressure exerted by the handful of monopolists who control industry and the banks that the then Labour government introduced 134 amendments to neuter the Bill. The Labour leadership have a completely non-class approach, in effect a bourgeois conception of the law, which flies in the face of the historical experience of the labour movement. If a future Labour government introduced measures to benefit the working class and was met by Tory extra-parliamentary resistance, then it would have to call upon the forces of the labour movement to ensure the implementation of those laws.
The Economist magazine surveyed city economists on their views on a Labour government. “Do they tremble in their air-conditioned towers? NO, three fifths believe Labour would either be good for the economy or make no difference.” 14 April 1990
Neil Kinnock, at the Scottish Labour Party Conference, correctly stated that millions will not be able to pay the poll tax. He then went on to denounce those who were prepared to assist the poor in their resistance to such an unjust measure. But Kinnock’s dismissal of Militant supporters as ‘toy town revolutionaries‘ is not echoed by the serious strategists of capital. They well understand the vital role which Militant supporters have played. Hence the unprecedented explicit denunciation by the prime minister and the chairman of the Tory Party in the House of Commons. The attempt of both front benches to picture Militant supporters as ‘alien’, seeking to ‘hi-jack’ the anti-poll tax movement, has cut no ice with the mass of the population. Nor will Kinnock’s attempts to once more engage in a witchhunt stop the advance of the anti-poll tax movement or the forces of Marxism.
Kinnock is not at all original in this respect. The TUC General Council banned the Unemployed Workers Movement in the 1930s but this did not prevent the mass hunger marches which had the overwhelming support of the working class. Marx wrote that ‘once an idea grips the minds of the masses it becomes a material force‘. Millions have decided that they are not going to pay. They have turned to those who have the strategy and tactics to ensure victory in this struggle. Black propaganda from the Tories, as well as denunciation from Labour’s right, will be as effective as a dew-drop on a hot stove.
Is it possible however for Thatcher to escape? Maintaining the tax in place is a guarantee of electoral slaughter. Any concessions have always been ‘too little and too late’. And rather than mollifying the opposition, the circle of discontent has been widened. The dilemma of the government has been summed up surprisingly by Norman Tebbit, not the most sensitive of political commentators. He bewailed the fact that the Tories now appear to be ‘dogged’ by the ‘Rottweiler syndrome’. Such is the adverse press for Rottweilers, that if one were to jump into a river to save a drowning baby, it would be attacked for wanting to eat the baby! Thatcher will be damned if she does not give concessions but also if she does.
This does not mean that out of sheer desperation the Tories will not attempt to at least mollify the opposition of their own supporters to the tax. Thus Environment Minister Patten has ‘capped’ the poll tax levels of 20 Labour councils. This panicky measure, introduced at the behest of Thatcher with Patten himself reluctantly acquiescing, is a brazen act of political spite which will further rebound on the government. It has undermined the raison d’etre of the poll tax, of ‘local’ as opposed to government control, and it will not result in huge financial gains to poll tax payers. It will however slash jobs and services in the ‘capped’ authorities, resulting in a ‘Bradford situation‘. with the closure of schools, old peoples homes. Meals on Wheels etc. Given the mounting opposition in local government unions like NALGO to being put in the invidious position of acting as collectors of the hated tax, capping is a formula for further inflaming the situation.
Concessions, to have any effect, would have to be huge. One billion pounds extra expenditure would only reduce poll tax bills on average by £28 a year, if the local authorities do not spend the extra government grant. To have any effect, the government would have to inject 4.5 billion or more, probably next year, slashing the government’s budget surplus. This would rule out tax concessions in the run up to the election. The predicted budget surplus in any case has fallen from £14 billion last year to £8 billion this year.
On top of this the Tories are faced with a recession this year with the inevitable rise in unemployment. As the last issue of the MIR pointed out, the economic prospects confronting British capitalism are calamitous. Such are the trends in the world economy, with the rise in interest rates in Germany, Japan and America, it is likely that interest rates will be jacked up once more. The value of the pound has dropped 5% since October. This, together with rises in fares, the poll tax, water rates etc. will add to underlying inflation. In the past British capitalism plugged the massive deficit in manufacturing trade with the surplus earned on ‘invisibles’, that is banking, insurance and profits repatriated from investments abroad. Yet Britain had a deficit on ‘invisible’ trade in the fourth quarter of 1989!
The rout in Mid-Staffordshire was bad enough. It has not escaped commentators that the captain of the Titanic was born in the constituency! Yet even worse looms. The May local elections will further shatter the electoral base of the Tories. Loudly proclaiming itself as a ‘unionist’, that is, all-British party, the Tories have been reduced to near extinction in Scotland and are an endangered species in Wales. The North is largely foreign territory to them. And now they are under siege in the West Midlands and in the South. Against this background it is not excluded that Thatcher will be compelled to find an excuse to retire to Dulwich. Some bourgeois commentators are urging Thatcher to ditch the poll tax as a means of clinging to power. The Times. The Financial Times. The Independent and Today are all urging Thatcher to drop the poll tax.
Things have become desperate when Murdoch urges Thatcher to retreat! Yet, as we have pointed out, this will not save her. Consequently a growing Tory opposition has been searching for an alternative in the candidatures of Howe and Heseltine. The latter has been deliberately built up by a section of the press. Yet Heseltine is no liberal. He initiated the sale of council housing, fought CND and has urged a tighter implementation of the vagrancy laws to drive the homeless off the streets of London. Heseltine would seek to achieve the same goals as Thatcher only he would be prepared to bend a little more when facing hostile winds.
The more far-sighted Tory Strategists are seeking an escape route in a new leader, who would resort to what John Biffen called ‘the social market economy.’ This would involve a defence of capitalism, no less determined than Thatcher herself, but buttressed by increased spending on education and the infrastructure which is in any case in a disastrous state. They hope in this way to salvage something from the wreckage of the Tory Party. Yet a new leader would not guarantee victory for the Tories in a general election. The pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. Two thirds of those polled who have swung over from the Tories to Labour would not go back again.
If Howe was to replace Thatcher he would be a modern day equivalent of Douglas Hume who replaced MacMillan in 1963. This did not prevent a Labour victory in 1964, in an economic and social situation far more favourable to the Tories than the one which looms in two years time. If Heseltine were to become leader this also would not prevent a Labour victory. Possibly Heseltine is looking towards the aftermath of the next election. Probably he is not too keen to preside over a party heading for inevitable defeat. Far better, as the strategists of capital have undoubtedly concluded, to send the British working class back to the school of reformism, to the school of a Kinnock government.
Kinnock, John Smith, Cunningham and the rest of Labour’s front bench have been busy demonstrating that they, as opposed to the labour movement, offer no fundamental threat to the existence of capitalism. They are the ‘second XI‘ of capitalism, who can be put into bat when the wicket becomes a little bit sticky. Even The Investors Chronicle has given its seal of approval to Labour’s front bench: “The old ideological battleground is, after all, defunct. The primacy of the market is now recognised in theory as well as practice.” The MIR supports the election of a Labour government. But we want a socialist Labour government. The experience of Spain, Greece, France, Australia, and above all, Sweden, shows that a Labour government which remains within the framework of capitalism will be forced to carry through counter-reforms.
The only guarantee that a Labour government will carry through lasting measures in the interests of the working class is to take over the handful of monopolies which control 80% of industry and introduce a socialist plan of production. Failure to do so will inevitably result in retreats and disappointment for those who repose so much trust and faith in such a government. At a certain stage of a Labour government an inevitable recoil by the trade unions in particular will take place. The Swedish Social Democrats. held up as models for the British labour movement by the Kinnock leadership, have bent the knee to capital. They recently attempted to ban strikes and were met with a hurricane of opposition from below, particularly from the trade union rank and file. The Finance Minister, Feldt, was forced to resign. Those trade union leaders who went along with the anti-strike proposals are under pressure to resign and the ideas of Marxism are finding a ready audience in the factories and in the ranks of the Social Democracy.
Retreats by a Kinnock Labour government, after an initial delay of one or two years, will result in even greater turmoil in the British labour movement. All trends of opinion will be put to the test. This is what has already happened in the anti-poll tax movement. Only the Marxists, the supporters of Militant, were prepared to go to the end with the working class in the struggle to defeat this tax. It is this which has earned them a spectacular increase in support and influence. The attacks of the capitalist press, rather than undermining Militant, has buoyed up its support. The threats of a witch-hunt, and the actual expulsions of some of the best class fighters in the labour movement, have not gone unnoticed by the mass of ordinary workers engaged in this battle. But this has done nothing to undermine support for Militant. The poll tax is one of, if not the decisive battle we have seen in Britain in the last decade. On the basis of the strategy and tactics advanced by the Militant, it has every prospect of victory, not just over the tax but over Thatcher and the Tory government itself.
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