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Tax Strike Tactics

Miscellaneous Attacks on Tax Officials

Here are a couple of examples of attacks on tax officials that I wasn’t sure how to categorize.

Example Defying Governor Evans

In one of the more amusing cases in my archive, American colonial Governor John Evans tried to impose a tax on shipping on the Delaware river. This tax was not authorized by the colonial charter. Evans tried to enforce his pet tax by firing cannons on vessels that tried to pass his fort without paying.

Richard Hill decided to defy the tax. First he sent men “with the ship’s papers to the fort, to show that the vessel had been regularly cleared at the custom-house, and to endeavour to persuade the officer to suffer her to pass without molestation,” but that didn’t work. Then he just tried to sail by, “steering as near to the opposite side as he safely could,” and almost got through unscathed “except [for] the main-sail, which was shot through.” Then:

The officer at the fort, not willing to miss his prize, immediately had his boat manned and went in pursuit. [Hill’s] ship’s sails were now slackened, and the boat was allowed to come alongside, and having fastened a rope to the ship, the officer and his men came on board. Whilst engaged in a warm controversy with the owner and his friends, some one on board (no doubt advisedly) quietly loosed the boat and let her drift astern. The ship was now under full sail, and when the officer at length discovered that he was in danger of a voyage to the West Indies, and that all his hopes of retreat were cut off, his courage failed, and he suffered himself to be led as a prisoner into the cabin.

Hill landed on the Jersey side of the river, in a colony run by Evans’s rival-governor Lord Cornbury, “who claimed in his own right the exclusive jurisdiction of the river” and, being “a proud and haughty man, on hearing the case, was quite indignant at this encroachment on his prerogative, and he threatened the officer in no measured terms of rebuke, who now became seriously alarmed at his situation, and sued for pardon, making many professions of sorrow for the offence he had committed. At length, having promised never to attempt the like again, he was suffered to depart.” Evans then gave up on his tax.

Example Railroad Bond Shenanigans

When a higher court ordered county court judges in Missouri to impose taxes there to pay off the owners of fraudulently-issued railroad bonds, “a gang of armed men rode into the county seat of Osceola and held tax officials at gunpoint while its members stole all the official tax records. The gang warned the county court judges that they would be lynched unless they resigned immediately. Lawmen recognized individuals in the gang but took no action because they knew residents admired the gang more than they did the court.… All three judges resigned and, at a special election, voters selected three dedicated Greenbackers, one of them a relative of train robber Cole Younger who could presumably be trusted not to ally with railroads”

Example Poll Tax Rebellion

When the Nottingham city council was due to set the rate of the dreaded poll tax in early 1990, resisters “broke into the Council House chamber, unfurled banners, hurled toilet rolls, and pushed paper plates full of shaving cream into the faces of some councillors.” On another occasion, resisters there invaded and locked-down the City Treasurer’s office, hanging a banner out the window and using a bullhorn to address passers-by: “The Poll Tax is unfair and inefficient—together we can make it unworkable.”

In the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, a masked group visited the home of the head of the city council and told him to expect “tit-for-tat raids” on the homes of councilmembers if bailiffs tried to seize anything from tax resisters.

Notes and Citations