This is the first I’d heard of The Poplar Rates Rebellion but it sounds like an interesting one: In the government of Poplar, a division of London, in protest against an unequal sharing of tax revenue between rich and poor boroughs, stopped collecting and passing on a variety of tax called “precepts” to the regional authorities. Thirty members of the Poplar Borough Council were imprisoned amid large protests.
Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → Britain / U.K. (see also: Ireland, Scotland, Wales) → The Poplar Rates Rebellion, 1921
I found a few references to the Poplar Rates Rebellion in the archives of The Spectator which recently came on-line. Here are some excerpts.
First, from the issue:
Poplar and the Rates.
A great deal more is bound to be heard of the grievances of the ratepayers. Rates are taxes, and though the heaviest burden lies upon the Income Tax payer, and though that burden is the most demoralizing of all because it cripples industrial enterprise, the present terribly high rates are a great evil, and they would have attracted much more public attention if they had not been relatively obscured by even worse evils. There are people in this country who are now paying more in rates than they paid in rent before the war. Imagine what this must mean to a man who has carefully mapped out his expenses on the assumption that the rates will always be in an approximately steady ratio to his rent. Unhappily, a very large number of people are not allowed to see how vitally they are concerned in the levying of the rates because the taxes they pay in the form of rates are hidden away in an inclusive rent-charge.…
The whole question of the London rates has attracted particular attention this week owing to the case of the Poplar Councillors. The Poplar Council, with its majority of Labour members, has refused to enforce the London County Council’s “precepts” — that is to say, has refused to pay the sum demanded as the contribution of Poplar. The London County Council therefore proceeded against the majority of the Poplar Council in the High Court requiring them to show cause why their persons should not be attached. The Labour Councillors of Poplar, of course, made great play with what they called the iniquity of the unequal rating of London. They pointed out that if a very poor borough like Poplar paid its allotted sum to the London County Council — that is, the same sum as all the other boroughs pay — it would have to raise its rate to the staggering figure of £1 18s. 8d. in the pound. Mr. Lansbury and his friends demand that the London rates should be equalized, by which equalization they estimate that the uniform flat rate all over London would be 8s. 3d.
We are perfectly ready to admit that the Poplar case has certain elements of justice. A penny rate in Poplar produces only £3,200, whereas it produces £29,000 in Westminster. Obviously, money cannot be raised in the places where it is most needed except by a terrific rate.…
The truth is that in a huge place like London, with numerous boroughs, you cannot have simultaneously self-determination and equalization. If there is to be equalization, it will be necessary to make the wild Socialistic councils, which look upon the State as the universal provider and upon the Borough Council as only a lesser State, conform to a strictly limiting code of rules imposed from above.…
The High Court gave the Poplar Councillors a fortnight’s grace to think matters over. As Sir Alfred Mond announced in the House of Commons on Tuesday that he was taking steps to bring to an end the present stereotyped payment from the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund, and as this will appreciably relieve the poorer boroughs, we may hope that Mr. Lansbury and company will think better of their determination to be incarcerated in Brixton Gaol with all the accompanying honours of fifes and drums.
Whatever happens in this particular case, however, the larger question will remain. So long as the law is the law, it must be obeyed. It is just like Mr. Lansbury to suppose that millenniums are introduced by law-breaking. Every Borough Council is a body of trustees, and when trustees begin breaking the rules they have sacrificed all right to respect and show their unsuitability for a high office. It is like Mr. Lansbury, again, to pretend — though, for all we know, he has genuinely convinced himself — that the Poplar ratepayers all agree with him. In an immediate sense no doubt they do agree with him, because when he says he wants to ease the rates of Poplar by his action they are naturally all for the policy of paying less. But he is confusing the issue and deceiving himself if he thinks that the Poplar ratepayers, or any other ratepayers, are in favour of the sort of lavish expenditure which has brought Poplar into her present troubles. Every ratepayer wants lower rates, and in the long run, or as soon as he has understood the matter, the Poplar ratepayer will be on the side of those who administer affairs economically and set their faces like flint against extravagance. Probably if you asked the opinion of Poplar people individually they would tell you that they would be glad of any scheme, by whatever political name it might be called, which would save their borough from being always in financial arrears and would reduce the rates which they can no longer bear. They would be quite ready, for instance, to welcome a Commission which would put the Poplar house in order. And we can easily believe that such a Commission may be necessary before Poplar is free of the Soviet taint of financial insanity which Mr. Lansbury and his friends have spread over it.
And here’s an update from the issue:
About thirty members of the Poplar Borough Council, headed by Mr. Lansbury, have decided to go to prison rather than obey the “precepts” of the London County Council. They refuse to pay not merely the Poplar quota to the London County Council but their proportionate share of the cost of the Metropolitan Asylums Board and the Police. The period of grace allowed by the mandamus of the High Court ends on , when we go to press, and it may be that Mr. Lansbury and his friends will be in prison when these words appear, as (see illustrated papers passim) they are ostentatiously packing up their trunks in readiness.
Mr. Lansbury announced that he and his friends are proud to suffer in such a cause, the cause being that of the unemployed. The Labour Councillors say that they cannot possibly pay out adequate sums to the unemployed through the Guardians and also meet the demands of the London County Council and the other superior authorities.
Now, we have frankly acknowledged on a previous occasion that there is some justice in Mr. Lansbury’s case. The very boroughs which are most oppressed by the poverty of the unemployed are necessarily those which are least able to raise money to relieve the distress. London is the only English city in which each separate district has to bear its own burden of unemployment. While Poplar with much unemployment is a poor borough, Westminster is a rich borough with little unemployment. A penny rate in Poplar produces only hundreds of pounds, while a penny rate in Westminster produces thousands. Yet Westminster does not share the burden of Poplar, nor does any other borough.…
Basing himself upon the moderate element of justice which we have tried to describe, Mr. Lansbury is working for a municipal revolution in London. He is trying to bring about chaos. If enough unemployed persons act on his suggestions, and, apply for relief from the Guardians, and a spoke is not put in his wheel, he will succeed. So much money would be spent in relief that municipal budgets would break down altogether. It is unfortunately true that there is no way of exacting the money due to the London County Council from recalcitrant Borough Councils. Members of a Council can be convicted of “contempt” for resisting a mandamus of the High Court, but that does not help us very far. The payment of the money depends in the, last resort upon good citizenship and a sound social sense. These are the “sanctions,” as the French would say; but just because they are not very oppressive ones, Mr. Lansbury has lightheartedly thrown them to the winds.
Acting on his advice the unemployed march in thousands and demand “full maintenance” from the Guardians. What a picture it is! With one hand Mr. Lansbury has done as much as any man in England to create unemployment by circulating noxious doctrines which have undermined trade, and with the other hand he makes a magnificent gesture worthy of a Saviour of the People. When he says that Poplar is grossly overrated — as no doubt it is, thanks to the mad policy of the Council and the Guardians — he does not press the point too far, as he knows perfectly well that the real ratepayers of Poplar, the people on whom the burden falls heaviest, are not the ordinary residents but the large companies which own factories and gasworks and docks. The rates in Poplar already stand at 27s. in the £, even without the demands of the London County Council and the other superior authorities which have not been met.…
Finally, this from the issue:
The Socialist councillors of Poplar, who refused to levy a rate for the sums due to the County Council and the police, were arrested in batches and committed to gaol for contempt of court. Some of them urged their followers to refuse to pay rent. It is clear that they sought to make a Socialist or Communist demonstration, in order to divert attention from the gross extravagance of their methods.
According to Wikipedia’s article on the action, “Eventually, after six weeks’ imprisonment, the Court responded to public opinion and ordered the Councillors released, which occasioned great celebrations in Poplar. Meanwhile, a bill, the Local Authorities (Financial Provisions) Act , was rushed through Parliament more or less equalising tax burdens between rich and poor boroughs.”
Thousands of old newsreels from the British Pathé archives have been posted to YouTube. Here are a handful that show some rare motion picture footage of tax resistance actions of the past:
The nicest way of being Arrested
“Tired of waiting — women councillors arrange by telephone with Sheriffs Officer to be taken to prison altogether at 3 o’clock!” This was part of the Poplar Rates Rebellion of (silent):
Les obsèques des ouvriers de l’usine Krupp…
Footage of the funerals of (and commemorative parade for) of Krupp factory workers killed during the strikes of the Ruhrkampf in (silent):
Footage of Gandhi
Here’s some footage released in soon after his imprisonment for sedition. It shows him addressing an outdoor Indian National Congress meeting (silent):
This comes from , at the time of the Salt March, and shows Gandhi addressing a crowd and large groups of people in “Gandhi caps” walking along with him (silent):
Rideaux Baissés et Portes Closes
Parisian shopkeepers and businesses shut down one afternoon in in a hartal to protest against new taxes (silent):
Footage of Irish Blue Shirts
This comes from a point in when the quasi-fascist Blue Shirt party had launched a tax strike. One person was killed by police during an attempt to stop a tax auction of seized cattle, and this newsreel shows footage of the funeral (silent):
Tax & Taxis!
Parisian taxi drivers blockade the streets outside the Chamber of Deputies in a tax protest:
Farmers Protest
Belgian farmers drive their tractors into the provincial capital in to protest a new tax, and a pitchfork-waving, paving-stone-throwing, tire-burning riot ensues:
Footage of a large meeting with Pierre Poujade speaking
From , by which time Poujade was trying to transform his regional tax protest into a national political party (silent):
