Some excerpts from Pressure Through Law by Richard Rawlings & Carol Harlow summarize the beginnings of the quest to legalize a form of conscientious objection to military taxation — what is now seen in the Peace Tax Fund movement and the Peace Tax Seven.
The Peace Pledge Union (PPU), founded in by the Revd Dick Sheppard, was discussing the possibility of a “war tax resistance” campaign . PPU’s interest stemmed from prosecution of members for failure to pay income tax and Sheppard wished to establish a general defence of conscientious objection. Though the defense was tried by individuals, the idea of “tackling the Income Tax question on a grand scale” lapsed with Sheppard’s untimely death in …. After the Second World War, however, the question was brought onto the agenda by the Quakers, again contesting income tax assessments.…
In Cheney v. Conn (), a Quaker assessed for income tax put up the defence that the assessment was illegal because a portion would be used for armament — an unlawful purpose. Not surprisingly, the defence failed on the ground that the words of the Finance Act were unambiguous. Some years later, the Quakers tried to move the argument on to new ground, bringing in the Genocide Convention and Genocide Act . Their case was lost in the Court of Appeal where, on the same day, a similar case based on an alleged violation of a fundamental civil right to protest was also lost (Langran v. Hayler, Surrendan v. Hibbs ()). In parallel actions Quakers filed applications in the European Commission of Human Rights under Article 9 of the European Convention (freedom of conscience). The Commission too was unresponsive, holding the applications inadmissible…
About the same time the Peace Pledge Union was running a similar campaign. In , after some reluctance, Council had finally resolved to contest PPU’s liability to pay tax on behalf of its employees… This, the longest running tax resistance case, gained the PPU substantial publicity but was eventually lost in Bloomsbury County Court…
