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Tax Strike Tactics

Contrast Your Campaign with More Objectionable Opposition Movements

Tax resistance campaigns can benefit from contrasting themselves with more fearsome or objectionable opposition groups.

Example Northern Territory

Union leader Hardie Gibson used this tactic when he promoted the strategy of nonviolent tax resistance in Australia’s Northern Territory in 1919. He warned the government against trying to crack down on the resisters: “He did not want trouble… but unless the Government adopted different methods they would spread the seeds of Bolshevism faster than by any other method.”

Example Women’s Suffrage

The Women’s Tax Resistance League in the U.K. won a lot more sympathy than they might have otherwise because they could contrast their nonviolent “passive resistance” tactics with those of the “militant” wing of the women’s suffrage movement, whose members used arson, assault, and other violent tactics. Mary Russell, when she began resisting her property tax, said:

I am very strongly opposed to the militant tactics adopted by a portion of those who are in favour of women’s franchise, and I have therefore taken this, the only course open to me, which appears justifiable, of protesting against the way in which the question of woman suffrage has been treated by the Government.

In the United States, the women’s suffrage movement was considerably more restrained. There was no significant “militant” wing to act as the bad cop to the tax resisters’ good cop. This may have contributed to the slower adoption of tax resistance there. One American suffragist, commenting on Mary Russell’s resistance, noted that “this was [her] manner of protesting against militancy, though I fancy we should have considered it rather militant here.”

Notes and Citations