BRITAIN Poll tax riot underlines crisis of Thatcher government ON MARCH 31 the hated poll-tax was Introduced Into England and Wales with the biggest demonstrations and battles seen in Britain for decades. 200,000 people marched through London and 40,000 in Glasgow. The London demonstration ended in pitched battles and hand-to-hand fighting with the police. London's West End was smashed up as demonstrators fought back after being attacked by the police in Trafalgar Square. THERESA CONWAY AND ALAN THORNETT gar Square rally and got by far the biggest reception — bigger before he spoke than anyone else afterwards. He took a strong line on breaking the law and non-payment. He said "there are times when conscience comes above the law and this is such a time." He went on to say that although non-payment is an individual decision, those who refuse to pay should be given full support and their houses defended when the bailiffs come. He also pointed out that if the demonstration had been called by the LP and TUC there would have been a million people on the streets.
Benn's position is in complete contrast with the statements following the march made on behalf of the Labour leadership by Roy Hattersley. He not only called for those charged to be convicted but for them to be given "exemplary sentences". No wonder the Birmingham Six' went to jail under Labour! In reality, it is Thatcher and her poll tax that have created the conditions for violent confrontations, and the provocations of the riot police and cavalry that made it virtually inevitable.
Mechanism for attacking
Labour councils
The poll tax is the centre-piece of ten years of Tory attacks on local goverment. It is designed to destroy local services and whatever local democracy remains, and provide a mechanism by which central government can attack Labour councils by manipulating goverment grants. The Tories have sold off public industries to give tax concessions to the better off. Now that there is not much left to sell, they are shifting the burden back onto the poor via the poll tax.
The tax has become the catalyst for an escalation of hatred of the Tory govemment which has been brewing up for years — and it is an effective catalyst because it affects and mobilizes so many people. Many of those fighting with the police were people at the bottom of the heap economically who are furious at the bills they are going to get and the regressive principle of the tax, according to which a millionaire is charged the same as someone on the dole.
The reaction against the tax has triggered a major crisis in the government and the Tory Party. Mrs. Thatcher is now the most unpopular Prime Minister since opinion polls began in 1937 and Labour are some 24% ahead of the Tories in the polls. Tory MPs with marginal - and not so marginal — seats are in a panic. The resignation of 18 Tory councillors in West Oxfordshire, and others elsewhere, over the poll tax has been extremely damaging.
There is now much speculation in Britain as to whether Thatcher herself can survive and whether the Tories can continue until the next general election which is still over two years away. Thatcher herself is now an electoral liability and Michael
W HILST in the past the Tories have attacked one section of the working class at a time, with the Poll Tax they have attacked and united a big majority of the population against them. The London march was extremely broad in scope — packed coaches arrived from the remotest parts of England and Wales, with banners from Bikers against the Poll Tax, Middle Class Moderates Against the Poll Tax, Individuals Against the Poll Tax - even groups of Tories against the Poll Tax. One banner was carried by Finchley Tories Against the Poll Tax - from Margaret Thatcher's own constituency. It was a genuine mass popular movement ranging from disaffected Tories to anti-poll tax groups from every part of the country, the far left and anarchists. It was overwhelmingly young, working class people who have not previously been involved in demonstrations.
What made the size of the demonstrations even more impressive was that they were organized not by the trade union movement or the Labour Party, but by the National Anti-Poll Tax Federation - a loose federation of thousands of anti-poll tax groups. Many of these groups are organized by the far left outside the structures of the labour movement. As a result there were comparatively few trade union banners.
The main slogan of the march was "Can't pay — won't pay", in sharp contrast to the position of the Labour Party and Trade Union Congress (TUC), who believe that the tax is wrong but that nonetheless people should pay it and wait for the election of a Labour government. 10 Even then the Labour Party has said that it will not scrap the tax for two years after it International Viewpoint #183 • April 23, 1990 comes into office.
The police and authorities completely underestimated the size of the demonstration and its explosive nature. They refused requests from the organizers earlier in the week to re-route the march to Hyde Park on the basis that Trafalgar Square would be too small. The result was chaos and a series of deliberate, brutal and unprovoked attacks on the demonstration, by both mounted police and police in vehicles, which triggered the main battles and involved thousands in them. Since the demonstration there have been many reports in the press complaining about the behaviour of the police and pointing out that it was police actions that started the violence.
Fury of most deprived sectors boils over
The fighting was qualitatively different from previous battles, such as during the miners' strike or the printers' strike at Wapping, in that there was clearly a layer of people who had little regard for the consequences or for their own safety and who engaged in hand to hand combat with the police over a prolonged period. In some ways it was like the inner city uprisings in Britain in the early 1980s. Many of the demonstrators were from the most deprived section of young white society living on the margins of the economy and in squats. Not only do they now have to pay the poll tax, but being forcibly registered for the tax is a huge infringement of both their civil liberties and their economic position.
Tony Benn MP, the traditional leader of the Labour Party left, spoke at the Trafal-
Heseltine, a previous Tory Minister of Defence who has distanced himself from the government since resigning from the Cabinet, is waiting in the wings for his chance to challenge for the leadership. Many Tories see a switch to Heseltine, and some substantial concessions in the structure of the poll tax, as the only chance of winning the next election.
But it is not as easy as that. The Tories remain split over Europe. Heseltine represents a wing of the party and ruling class who look towards Europe. Thatcher represents Atlanticism and is opposed to further European integration. They are on opposite sides of the fence. A switch to Heseltine would involve a major realignment of Britain's foreign policy and one which a major section of the British ruling class would oppose. Any challenge to Thatcher would therefore be bitterly fought with this issue at the centre. Already Norman Tebbit, who represents the extreme right of the party, has said he will stand. There is therefore no easy way out for the Tories, and their problems are still escalating. They lost the recent MidStaffordshire by-election in a spectacular Labour victory. They now face local elections in May, which will again be a referendum on the poll tax, at which the Tories will crash again. Swathes of Tory councillors are going to be swept from office and dozens of Tory Councils will go from Tory or Alliance (the centre party) to Labour, bringing more panic and confusion to the Tory ranks. They may well lose as many as a thousand seats. At the same time the economic situation gives the Tories little room for manoeuvre. The squeeze through interest rates is not working, the balance of trade problem is not resolved, inflation is on the increase and the official inflation rate may soon be in double figures, with the actual rate much higher. Nor is the poll tax going to go away. With the opinion polls predicting that between eight and nine million people intend to refuse to pay, the issue is going to run and run. The government has now charge-capped some councils (put a legal limit on what they can spend) but this is fraught with problems since it denies their own stated assertion that the tax "improves local democracy" The Labour Party response to the poll tax has been as weak at local level as at the national level. Although the left has fought for Labour councils not to set the rate for the tax or implement it, in every case they have done so. At the present time, however, the bulk of the population see it as "Maggie's Tax" and mainly blame central government for it, although this may not last when local authorities begin enforcing it. Mass non-payment is now clearly the driving force behind the campaign to defeat the tax. It is in itself a major challenge to the government and could in the end affect its stability. In Scotland, where the tax was introduced earlier, there are still 850,000 people refusing to pay after a year and there is serious destabilization of the regional administrations there.
Huge gap between official unions and demonstrators
The domination of "new realism" in the trade unions is a big problem in this campaign. The TUC organized a rally against the tax recently which was by invitation only and at which people were told that non-payment was wrong. The gap between the union bureaucracy and those on the streets opposing the tax is now huge. But the left cannot accept this situation. The poll tax poses big prob- The Doll tax poses big prob-
BRITAIN basis that it will worsen labour relations in the industry. Within the civil service unions, opposition has been focussed on possible deductions for non-payment from claimants' benefit and in a number of areas limited strike action has already occurred.
Within local government trade unions the battle over the poll tax has been particularly fierce. Over many years the amount of money given by central government to pay for local services has been drastically reduced. The Labour leadership and its local minions have argued against councils not setting the poll tax and individuals not paying it on the grounds that without this money the wages of council employees will not be paid and services not maintained.
This position has found support within the unions too, with Liverpool City NALGO demanding that the council set the poll tax to protect jobs and services. Such arguments are familiar — they have been consistently used over the last ten years in debates on how to combat central government attacks.
"Dented shield" strategy divides unions from community
This position - known as the "dented shield"- denies the possibility that if the unions and community stand together, and are supported by local councillors, the government can be defeated. The answer to this is: to oppose the poll tax, defend jobs and services and to demand money from central government to pay. It is the Tories that have created the situation by bringing in the poll tax and reducing the money provided for local services and they can resolve it by abolishing the tax and restoring the monev. and restoring the money.
Without such a fight there is a real danger that it will be local government trade unionists and the local community that are made to pay for the poll tax, a danger that becomes greater after charge capping. And within the anti-poll tax movement there will be forces that do not immediately understand the importance of the fight against cuts in jobs and services. The slogan "no cuts—no poll tax", and the building of strong links between local anti-poll tax campaigns and the trade unions to pursue this line, can help combat this danger.
The Tories have lost their mandate to govern. People are not prepared to wait two years to get rid of this tax. A campaign is needed to get the Tories out now and that means building non-payment on a massive scale alongside trade union action against all the effects of the poll tax. * 1. The Birmingham Six are serving life sentences for IRA pub bombings carried out in 1974. The evidence saint them hed to not daeen orally discredited, but the 11 state has refused to release the men. April 23, 1990 • #183 International Viewpoint
OH DEAR ME...
lems for the unions which have to
HERE COMES THAT
BLOODY TIPE be tackled. Trade unionists in
AGAIN!
local government are expected to administer and collect the tax.
Post Office unionists are expected to deliver the bills and the threatening letters. The government has taken powers to force employers to deduct the tax from the wage packets of those who refuse to pay — a huge issue for
ROLL the unions. The tax will generate
RAX massive attacks on local authority jobs as local authorities attempts to balance their books or to comply with charge-capping.
Some trade union branches
LABOUR have already passed policy in opposition to this, committing themselves to strike action if deduction of wages is enforced.
Some employers are unhappy about it as well. The Engineering
Employers' Federation is objecting to attachment of wages on the
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