Following my
recent post on ID cards, I’ve been thinking about
the poll tax, the last piece of government legislation to meet massive popular opposition. The poll tax was bought down because thousands of people said “NO” and it nicely illustrates how individuals can beat poorly thought out and poorly implemented legislation; how laws which have their genesis in dogma and in a ‘we know best attitude’ ultimately fail as the partnership between the government and the governed breaks down.
I was the 23rd person in the England to be summonsed for non payment of the poll tax and although I was only a part of it the small victory a few of us won over Medina Borough/Isle of Wight County Council in 1990 was part of a massive movement.
The IoW is terribly poor. The economy is seasonal and a bad summer means that many will struggle to make it through the winter. In the late 80s/early 90s there was a realisation that grants could be obtained from Europe and the UK government for regeneration projects. The council had to show that it was raising all the money it was due locally before any extra national funding would be given. So, in a great fanfare of publicity the council decided that it would become the “first council in England to begin court proceedings against non payers of the poll tax”. Duly, I received summons number 23, an extra £50 charge and a date in court.
The Isle of Wight council were hoping to get some good press over this and must have assumed that people would either pay up or meekly go to court, have a bit of a moan about the injustice of the system and then quietly go home. But they hadn’t counted on the fact that one person had read the full legislation and had quietly found a way to beat the council. The headlines the following day were not about the council’s victory over the anarchists but the anarchist’s victory over the council. I wish I could remember our hero’s name but time has lost it to me. I bet there are people in the council who remember him. I bet the lawyers that he embarrassed remember him. He had his 60 seconds in court and it went like this…
Judge: How do you answer the charge that you are wilfully refusing to pay a legally imposed tax?
Our Hero (OH): Not guilty. And as the summons was issued illegally I am seeking compensation from the council.
J: How so?
OH: Can I refer you to Section X, Subsection Y, paragraph Z of the Act? It says, “All documents pertaining to any legal proceeding are to be issued by the fastest appropriate method”
J: Yes. The summonses were all sent by post. Do you not consider this an appropriate method?
OH: I do your honour. But it says the ‘fastest’ appropriate method. The Royal mail is appropriate but the fastest way to use the Royal Mail is to use First Class Post. My summons was sent Second Class.
J: (Turning to the council’s legal team) Do you have any response?
Legal teams: Errrrr, ummmmm no your honour.
J: Case dismissed.
Of course, everybody had been sent their summons by second class and so a council official had to sheepishly advise us all that we could go home. We went to the pub.
Some people had paid their poll tax on receiving the summons. That’s fine. Not everyone is prepared to fight to the bitter end and anyone who defied the system is worthy of praise. They all played a part. They also all paid the £50 additional charge, which the judge later ruled should be refunded due the illegality of the summonses. It cost the council thousands. All because their expensive legal team full of ego and bravado, but empty of common sense and intelligence failed to do what a dusty old commie in a bed-sit managed to. He found the flaw.
History remembers the
riot in Trafalgar Square of 30 March 1990; more 200,000 people engaged in civil disobedience on an epic scale. Everyone remembers how they finally woke the Conservative Party up to how unpopular the tax was and to just how out of touch Thatcher had become. But beyond the riots up to 18,000,000 people either refused to pay or did not cooperate fully with the system, paying late, paying in pennies, posting cheques that were unsigned or dated 1890, deducting amounts proportional to that spent on the local police farce or the chief executive’s wages. The imagination shown by poll tax protesters was endless and each and every one of them was a thorn in the side of the government, a problem they didn't need. Six months later both Thatcher and the tax were gone.
ID Cards will lead to demonstrations on a much larger scale. They may be as violent as in 1990 or they may not; they may not need to be. They may of course be
far more violent, the validity of violence as a means of political protest is a matter of individual conscience. But the passion felt by those of us who oppose the cards is underestimated by the government and it will boil over somewhere, some when.
However, the headline demonstrations against ID cards will be a side show compared to the drip, drip, drip of people who simply want to mess with the system. Every person who fails to turn up at the allotted time for their ‘classification’ interview and photo session will slow the system down. Everyone who fails to fill in the form properly or forgets to post it back, everyone who spells their name wrongly or gives an incorrect date of birth, everyone who writes over the inevitable barcode, everyone who signs the form “Obi Wan Kenobi” all will be banging nails into the coffin that will inevitably bury ID cards. We all know, we all feel the growing sense of incredulity as people realise the full consequences of ID cards. You don’t have to throw bricks at policemen or go to prison to defy them. You just have to do something.
