Foment Acts of Solidarity from Non-Resisters
Often in tax resistance campaigns, not everybody can be a tax resister. Perhaps only some people are subject to the tax being resisted. Or maybe the point of the resistance is that some particular group of people who are being taxed ought not to be, and so only that group of people is resisting.
Tax resistance campaigns can inspire people who aren’t resisting the tax to show solidarity in other ways. They can also suggest roles that non-resisting sympathizers can play in the campaign.
Example Poll Tax Rebellion
The success of the anti-poll tax movement in Thatcher’s Britain relied on mass popular support. The Anti-Poll Tax Unions “had to make people feel wanted and included and give everyone a sense that they had a role,” said movement chronicler Danny Burns. “In order to sustain a long and protracted struggle, it was necessary for as many people as possible to feel responsible for some aspect of the movement, however small.”
He gave some examples: “In the fight against the bailiffs and sheriff officers, the kids hanging around the streets passed on the word as soon as they saw a suspicious-looking character. Parents and pensioners who were not out at work organised telephone trees and were ready to be at each others’ houses at short notice.”
Example Bardoli Tax Strike
The Bardoli tax strike was deliberately limited to a particular region with a particular tax grievance. But it was also a test run of the use of organized nonviolent action to force government concessions—so the rest of India was watching closely. Many outsiders also wanted to lend a hand, or at least to donate money to the cause.
The suggestion… that the 12th of June should be celebrated throughout the country as the Bardoli Day was backed by Gandhiji and the President of the Congress, and there was hardly a city or town of note in India, and hardly a village of note in Gujarat, but celebrated the day with hartals and processions and collections and meetings.…
The awakening among the youth in Bombay was immense. They went from door to door making collections, and organised early in July a Bardoli Day of their own, led a successful procession in pouring rain, money pouring in the Sardar’s car as it threaded its way through the crowds. Various purses amounting to over Rs.24,000 were presented to the Sardar at the meeting in the Empire theatre, where the youth honoured the beloved leader and received with applause his call to go and have their first lessons in public service in the Bardoli University.
The Satyagraha Fund met with a response almost unique in the history of the nation. Cheques and money orders were received every day at Bardoli, at Satyagraha Ashram and at the Navajivan and Young India offices. The contributions came not only from all the provinces, but from the most distant parts of the land, not only from distant lands like France, Belgium, Japan, and China, but from the most remote corners of the globe including New Zealand, Malay States, and Fiji.…
Bombay had several meetings addressed by that expert national beggar Manilal Kothari who levied his tribute of handsome amounts from barristers and advocates some of whom had never contributed towards a movement of this kind. Anything was acceptable to him. “If you cannot give a handsome cheque, you can give your car,” he would say in his seductive way, and thanks to his efforts, the workers in Bardoli had timely use of no less than four cars to help their whirlwind campaign.
Example Rebecca Riots
The Rebecca Rioters knew how to make their tollgate demolishing popular among people who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) participate directly.
On the night before market day in Cardigan, Rebeccaites destroyed the Rhos Gate, the Rhydyfuwch Gate, and the gate on the Llangoedmore road near Cardigan. When the market opened, “every one who drove in was exempted from paying the usual toll, except those who came over the coach-road. The people, looking at things from that point of view, were filled with Rebeccaite enthusiasm. On that day nothing was heard at public-houses but proposals of good health and long life to Rebecca.”
On another occasion, Rebecca and her daughters pointedly left intact the gates on “the Queen’s high road” but destroyed those on roads that the various parishes were required to maintain. “This rendered Rebecca not unpopular amongst some farmers and others, many of whom paid the fine rather than be sworn in as special constables [to hunt for Rebecca and her daughters].”
The Rebeccaites also sometimes resorted to threats to induce reluctant bystanders to participate. In one example:
All male inhabitants being householders of the hundred [district], were to meet at eleven o’clock on the following Thursday, at the “Plough and Harrow,” Newchurch parish, to march in procession to Carmarthen—to defy the Mayor and magistrates, and to destroy the gate on their return. Rich and poor were to be compelled to attend, and in case of illness a substitute must be found. All owners of horses were to ride. All persons absent without a sufficient excuse or substitute were to have their houses and barns destroyed by fire.
In another example:
[I]n order to ensure a full attendance of her followers, the church doors in the neighbourhood of Elvet were covered with notices in the dead of night, signed by “’Becca,” commanding all males above the age of sixteen and under seventy to appear at the “Plough and Harrow” on the morning of the 19th under pain of having their houses burnt and their lives sacrificed. The time and place of meeting were also published by word of mouth at most of the Dissenting meeting-houses throughout the hundred, and wherever a disinclination was known to exist on the part of any person to join in the procession and to take part in the intended proceedings, he was privately admonished if he wished to protect his property from the firebrand of the midnight incendiary, and to excuse himself from personal injury, that he had better join the procession—“or else.” This species of intimidation had the effect of drawing together immense numbers to the place of rendezvous.
At one point the Rebeccaites threatened an attorney in order to make him join them on one of their destructive sprees, “so that if any proceedings were subsequently taken, he as local solicitor might be made a party to them.” They sometimes also forced the toll gate operators to take part in the destruction of their own toll houses.
Example Beit Sahour
When residents of Beit Sahour launched a tax strike against the Israeli occupation, Israel put the town under siege. Christian groups around the world attempted to bring humanitarian aid to the city, or just to pay a friendly visit. Visitors who were turned away by the Israeli military included the heads of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox churches.
Example British Women’s Suffrage Movement
Some men who were sympathetic to the tax resistance campaign of the Women’s Tax Resistance League found that they could participate by exploiting a legal technicality that made them responsible for paying their wives’ income taxes. If their wives refused to pay, and the husbands were unable to pay and had no property to seize, the husbands could be imprisoned for not paying their wives’ taxes—and some were.
Example American Revolution
American colonial tax resisters used boycotts and other means to try to hurt sales of taxed and British-monopoly products in the colonies. In this way they enlisted as their allies the manufacturers and exporters of Great Britain, who begged Parliament to rescind the taxes so as to bring the boycotts to an end.
Notes and Citations
- Burns, Danny Poll Tax Rebellion AK Press (1992), pp. 190–91
- Desai, Mahadev The Story of Bardoli (1929) pp. 185–86
- Evans, Gwladys Tobit “Introduction” Rebecca Riots! (2010) p. 14 (Evans references Seren Gomer, August 1843)
- Evans, Henry Tobit Rebecca Riots! (2010), pp. 32, 48–49, 51, 71
- “US bishops back West Bank rebels” Catholic Herald 17 November 1989, p. 2
- The Parliamentary History of England, Vol. XVI (1813) pp. 133–36