Sing Tax Resistance Songs

Some tax resistance campaigns have had their own anthems or fight songs to rally the troops. Singing can broadcast the strength and enthusiasm of a movement and can help to build and maintain solidarity. Songs can also be educational tools if they have lyrics that explain how to resist or how to make resistance more successful.

Example Bardoli Tax Strike

Mahadev Desai, in The Story of Bardoli, mentions such songs on a few occasions, and stresses their importance:

I paid a visit along with Sjt. Vallabhbhai to one of these [Raniparaj] villages.… The young women, who had taken the Khadi pledge three years ago in the presence of Gandhiji and shed their trinkets and heavy brass ornaments, were all there in spotlessly white Khadi, brimming over with joy and lustily singing Satyagraha songs.

The mention of the Satyagraha songs reminds me of one or two things that happened during the month.… Phulchandbhai had already some songs ready, and the atmosphere in the taluka gave him the inspiration for many more… The plain and homely songs spread the message of Satyagraha in a most effective manner, and men, women, and children had them on their lips. One cannot speak too highly of the part played in the movement by Phulchandbhai and his songs.…

We visited Nani Phalod, a small village, at about 9 p.m. There was a huge procession of men and women, the former singing Satyagraha songs, and the latter singing a song from an old saint of which the refrain was: “All our sorrows have ended, now that the Master has come.”…

There were huge meetings everywhere, attended by hundreds of women, laying heaps of [homespun] yarn before Sjt. Vallabhbhai, as in 1921, and lustily singing bhajans. The invincible spirit of the people evidenced everywhere was bound to exasperate the officials even more.…

The women of Varad… had their own songs, some of them being old songs of the saints and some composed by themselves to suit the fight in which they were engaged, and tacked on to the originals.

Example American Revolution

The boycotts and tax strikes of the American Revolution also had their songs. When patriots gathered to spin homespun yarn, their work would be accompanied by “many stirring tunes, anthems, and liberty songs.” One such tune tried to convince listeners that homespun cloth was more than just patriotic—it was a fashion must:

Of economy boast, let your pride be the most
To show clothes of your own make and spinning.
What if homespun they say is not quite so gay
As brocades, yet be not in a passion,
For when once it is known this is much worn in town,
One and all will cry out—’Tis the fashion!
And, as one, all agree, that you’ll not married be
To such as will wear London factory,
But at first sight refuse, tell ’em such you will choose
As encourage our own manufactory.
No more ribbons wear, nor in rich silks appear;
Love your country much better than fine things;
Begin without passion, ’twill soon be the fashion
To grace your smooth locks with a twine string.
Throw aside your Bohea, and your Green Hyson tea,
And all things with a new-fashion duty;
Procure a good store of the choice Labrador,
For there’ll soon be enough here to suit you.
These do without fear, and to all you’ll appear,
Fair, charming, true, lovely and clever;
Though the times remain darkish, young men may be sparkish,
And love you much stronger than ever.
Then make yourselves easy, for no one will teaze ye,
Nor tax you, if chancing to sneer
At the sense-ridden tools, who think us all fools;
But they’ll find the reverse far and near.

Example Whiskey Rebellion

War tax resister Joan Baez was fond of including the Whiskey Rebellion celebration tune “Copper Kettle” in her concerts. The second verse packages some useful information about how the tax authorities search for stills, and how moonshiners can evade the search:

Get you a copper kettle
Get you a copper coil
Cover with new made corn mash
And never more you’ll toil

Build your fires of hickory
Hickory or ash or oak
Don’t use no green or rotten wood
They’ll catch you by the smoke

My daddy he made whiskey
My granddaddy did too
We ain’t paid no whiskey tax
Since seventeen ninety-two!

Examples American War Tax Resisters

The modern American war tax resistance movement has in recent years managed to collect its own funk anthem…

I was talking to a friend of mine,
Said he don’t want no wars no more.
They’re building bombs while our schools are falling.
Tell me what in the hell we’re paying taxes for.
What if we all stopped paying taxes?
Now, what if we all stopped paying taxes?
Stop paying taxes y’all.

…and a folk song…

Don’t send your money to Washington
To fight a war that’s never done.
Don’t play their games don’t be their pawns
And don’t be afraid of the neo-cons.

…and a rap:

You don’t give money to the bums
On the corner with a sign, bleeding from their gums.
Talking about you don’t support a crackhead—
What you think happens to the money from yo taxes?
Shit, the government’s an addict
With a billion dollar a week kill-brown-people habit
⋮
And the end of the year add up what they subtracted:
3 outta twelve months your salary
Paid for that madness—man, that’s sadness

When a youth activist group joined war tax resisters at a tax day demonstration at the Oakland federal building, they brought their lyrical skills along:

People, People, People, can’t you see?
They kill around the world with tax money.
Stealing from workers ’s how their money’s made,
I guess that’s why we’re broke and they’re so paid!
People, People, People, can’t you see?
They tax the poor more, the rich stay greedy.
No money for health or to educate,
I guess that’s why we’re broke and they’re so paid!

They combined these lyrics with a well-rehearsed pantomime to drive the point home.

At another American tax day protest, this one in St. Louis in 2003, war tax resisters at the federal building sang a protest song with lyrics like these:

For the cost of cluster bombs
that maim and leave to bleed
our kids could have more teachers
helping them to read.

These examples are mostly lyrics of exhortation that are designed to convince wavering taxpayers that the time is ripe to stop paying (or to remind wavering resisters why their resistance is important). People will sometimes reflect seriously on an exhortation expressed lyrically when they would dismiss it if they had to sift through a reasoned argument first. Lyrics have a way of getting stuck in the mind, echoing off the walls of the skull and returning to consciousness long after they are first heard.

Example Castine, Maine Resisters

Residents in Castine, Maine, upset at their local taxes being siphoned off by state politicians, started a tax resistance campaign and accompanied it by protest songs.

In one, I Just Found Out (Who the “They” Is), the lyricist reminds people that their acquiescence allows government injustice to continue. He explained: “I’ve heard so many people talk about what ‘they’ are doing. This is my attempt to show that the ‘they’ are those who let government operate by default.”

Example Meo Rebellion

When Meo farmers killed a tax collector during a tax strike aimed at the British-backed Maharaja in the 1930s, they commemorated the occasion with a song of defiant triumph:

Rebels in the open the Meos did then rejoice
They conferred among themselves and spoke in a single voice
Your názim’s dead and ever since
we aren’t ruled by any prince
To London by now you should’ve fled,
and do take along your dead.

Example Dray and Land Tax Resistance

During the quickly successful Anti Dray and Land Tax League campaign in South Australia, “an eccentric gentleman” made a lyrical interpretation of the League’s manifesto and put it to music. He later made it available as sheet music with lyrics for a shilling a pop:

We’ve sever’d ourselves from our friends and home,
And far over the ocean we’ve come, my boys!
To reap from our toil, on this sunny soil,
A better reward than at home, my boys!
But sorrow clouds Hope’s sunny face;
Our autocratic rulers base
Have taxed our roads, and taxed our drays
And coward slave is he who pays.

Then down with the road and the dray-tax, too,
And show to the minions of tyranny,
Bold Britons are we, who dare to be free,
And die for our rights and liberty.

To direct taxation we’ll not submit,
Without representation, I trow, my boys!
’Tis base, and, what’s worse, ’tis the monster curse
Of Turkey and Russia, e’en now, my boys!
We’ll dare to brave oppression’s brand,
Hurl despotism from the land;
We’ll wear no chains of slavery—
We will be free—we will be free!
Then down with the road and the dray-tax, too…

Shall we to ourselves play the traitor knave?
Shall we who for freedom came here, my boys!
Resign all our rights, like a dastard slave,
And be ruled like a serf through fear, my boys?
Our wives, and sons, and daughters see,
Racked by the stings of poverty?
Oh, no, by Heaven, as men we’ll die,
Ere we to despot rule comply!
Then down with the road and the dray-tax, too…

Example Household Tax Resisters

Resistance to “household taxes” in Ireland was accompanied by “The Resistance Choir” which sang its song “Now Is the Time for Rage” at demonstrations, rallies, and other events. Choir member Tina MacVeigh explained that “we have the Resistance Choir using the song in political flash-mobs around Dublin to counter the propaganda onslaught of Revenue, and then we have the production of the song from one of our live performances as a download single. We are giving people opposed to the tax another way to vote against it. So don’t sit around, let’s fight this tax, and we can beat it.”

Notes and Citations

Desai, Mahadev The Story of Bardoli (1929) pp. 74–75, 96, 122
Massachusetts Gazette 9 November 1767, as found in Williams, H.L & Moore, F. Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution (1905) pp. 47–48
“What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes?” by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
“Don’t Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons” by Norman Blake
“Uncle Sam Goddamn” by Brother Ali
BAY-Peace Youth Action Team
“War Tax Resisters Refuse to Pay Up” (Associated Press) Southeast Missourian 16 April 2003
Reilly, Wayne “Castine revolt engraved on new pops recording” Bangor Daily News 6 January 1976, pp. 1–2
Moore, Erin P. Gender, Law, and Resistance in India (1998) p. 51
Lancelott, F. “We’ve Sever’d Ourselves from Our Friends and Home” South Australian 28 June 1850, p. 2 (there are other published versions with slight lyrical variations)
Dublin Reporter “Single Release of anti-Property Tax song ‘Now Is the Time for Rage’ by The Resistance Choir” 28 May 2013