[Dora] Montefiore argued that because women had no representation, they could not make their positions known to members of Parliament; therefore, women lacked representation and had recourse only to passive resistance.
She had outlined a variation on this policy to readers of the feminist paper the Woman’s Signal in , suggesting that should the third reading of the women’s enfranchisement bill then before the House of Commons fail, then those women “who believe in the justice of our demands should form a league, binding ourselves to resist passively the payment of taxes until such taxation be followed by representation.”
She implemented this position in her own refusal to pay imperial taxes during the war.
Montefiore was prosecuted for her wartime tax resistance in , and she went on to recommend the tactic in to a controversial new suffrage organization, the Women’s Social and Political Union, as a means of drawing attention to the campaign for women’s parliamentary enfranchisement.
She implemented the protest again, to spectacular effect, during the “Siege of Montefiore,” at her Hammersmith, London, villa in .
The house, surrounded by a wall, could be reached only through an arched doorway, which Montefiore and her maid barred against the bailiffs.
For six weeks, Montefiore resisted payment of her taxes, addressing the frequent crowds through the upper windows of the house.
WSPU meetings were held in front of the house daily, and resolutions were taken “that taxation without representation is tyranny.”
After six weeks, the Crown was legally authorized to break down the door in order to seize property in lieu of taxes, a process to which Montefiore submitted, saying, “It was useless to resist force majeure when it came to technical violence on the part of the authorities.”
Montefiore made her case in the local Kensington News that her refusal to pay imperial tax was linked to her exclusion from the parliamentary franchise.
She was quoted in the paper as saying, “I pay my rates willingly and cheerfully, because I possess my municipal vote.
I can vote for the Borough and County Councils, and on the election of Guardians,”
Montefiore’s success at mobilizing interest in the women’s cause, and her clear articulation of her protest as one aimed at remedying her exclusion from the parliamentary franchise, popularized the concept of resisting the government as a new approach to campaigning for women’s suffrage.
For previous mentions of tax resistance in Britain’s women’s suffrage movement, see the Picket Line entries from , , and .
The employment of tax-resistance as a method of protest against disenfranchisement appears to be due, in the first instance, to Miss Charlotte Babb, whose goods were distrained upon in the early days of the suffrage agitation thirteen times because she refused to pay Imperial taxes.
Following her heroic persistence, there was a series of isolated resistances to taxation by unrepresented women, of whom the best known are Miss Henrietta Müller and the Misses [Anna Maria and Mary] Priestman, of Bristol, who resisted taxation about , and Mrs. [Dora] Montefiore, whose final resistance in gave occasion for the famous six weeks’ siege of her house at Hammersmith.
There were other individual instances as well as these, but the Women’s Freedom League in made the first organised attempt to run a definite tax-resistance campaign.
Instead of isolated instances we have now got a steadily-increasing body of yearly resisters, and the action of these women has been made use of to drive home to the public the concrete injustice of taxation without representation.
a Tax-Resistance League came into existence, confining itself to the development of this one line of protest.
This year, as a sign of further growth, the sister militant society has decided to adopt the tax-resistance policy as a means of bringing additional pressure upon the Government.
These signs of the progress of this very practical anti-Government action are good to see; but just at this moment they are particularly to be welcomed, for the National Executive of the League has just decided to adopt and develop a further line of tax-resistance, in which we hope all the societies approving this general policy will concur.
So far, the strength of the tax-resistance movement has rested with the women who were spinsters or widows; but the new line of action will make the married women a more effective agent of protest.
The most that can be done by the widow and spinster is to enter her protest, and thus delay the passing of her money into the Treasury.
Except in the case of Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard — which is exceptional — no widow or spinster has successfully withheld the contribution demanded of her by the State; but with married women this is possible.
She is enabled by the state of our present law not only to enter her protest, but actually to withhold her moneys, and so to deplete the Treasury coffers.
There are many anomalies with regard to married women upon our Statute Book, and a large number of them are due to the basic wrong done by our Common Law assumption that a married woman is the subject and property of her husband, having no independent existence apart from him.
In spite of the Married Woman’s Property Acts this assumption is still acted upon to-day, old laws that ought to have been rendered null and void by the passing of the Acts, which gave the married woman the control of her own property still remaining on the Statute Book, are being applied by the authorities.
The Income Tax Commissioners provide a case in point.
This legal inconsistency places the woman at a disadvantage, sometimes the man, but if it is dealt with in the right way in this case of Income Tax the Government itself can be made to bear the burden.
It is our duty as suffragists to take advantage of every opportunity which may offer.
Even when the initial cause of the opportunity is an insulting denial of the woman’s independence, we must still employ it.
We must make this very insult to us a means of attack upon the Government which denies us liberty.
We must turn the ridiculous survivals of coverture into weapons of enfranchisement.
The existing law so stands that married women can escape the payment of Imperial taxes.
Then let them take advantage of the law.
Let them organise a depletion of the Treasury.
Let them go tax free until women are enfranchised.
This is the new tax-resistance policy which we have adopted, and which we mean to spread throughout the land.
Let us examine the position.
The standard of Income Tax law is the Finance Act of , upon which all our present Inland Revenue procedure is based.
Section 45 of this Act deals with the position of married women, and declares that the income of a married woman living with her husband shall be deemed the income of the husband, and the same shall be charged in the name of the husband, and not in her name or of her trustee.
So stands the law for the protection of the wife.
The Income Tax authorities cannot legally apply to a married woman for the payment of any Imperial tax; they cannot cite her for non-payment, they cannot levy distraint upon her.
She is not liable to Income Tax in any form whatsoever while living with her husband.
The husband is legally liable for the taxes levied upon his wife’s income, whether earned or unearned, and generally, with her co-operation, he has been able to satisfy the Income Tax authorities as to the extent of that income, and to hand over to the same body the taxes with which she provided him in respect of the claim made upon her through him.
The authorities have been, as the man in the street would say, having it both ways.
They have refused to recognise or deal with the woman, and yet they have insisted upon her husband acting as their agent in levying taxes upon her; but all the time since they and the husband have been acting illegally.
The Married Woman’s Property Act took from the husband the old jus mariti by means of which he became possessor of all his wife’s goods and properties; it took away also his old right of administration of his wife’s property, and deprived him of any legal right to control, inquire into, or interfere with, his wife’s economic affairs.
Therefore, every time a husband, acting with the compulsion of the law behind him, compelled his wife to reveal the extent and nature of her income he was breaking a bigger law and a more recent law than the one which he was obeying.
The husband has no legal right of inquiry, no legal power of control, over the income of his wife.
He cannot be forced to do what is illegal.
He can make no return for his wife.
He cannot be assessed for payment of taxes on an income that he cannot declare.
The plan of campaign is unfolded, and it is only necessary to indicate the details of procedure.
These are simple.
When the demand for a statement of the wife’s income is made for the Government by the husband, the wife must refuse to supply any information, and must refer her husband to the Married Woman’s Property Act (England, ; Scotland, ).
This refusal and reference the husband will convey to the Revenue officials.
In all probability the form will be returned once or twice, and, finally, a form will be sent direct to the wife.
She will return this, calling the attention of the senders to the fact that she is a married woman living with her husband, and referring them to the Income Tax Act of , section 45. If both husband and wife stick firmly to their guns, the authorities would seem to be able to do nothing.
The law allows everyone who pays Income Tax to claim redress for any undue and illegal levy made during the last three years.
Therefore, a married woman’s payment during the last three years can be reclaimed, if she can prove that they were paid by herself or deducted from her personal income.
This course should be followed wherever moneys are paid out by trustees and agents, or deducted from interest on investments.
By this means not only this year’s taxes, but a portion of previous years’, can be withdrawn from the Treasury.
The cumulative effect of this additional development of the tax-resistance campaign and the new impetus given to the old lines of resistance should go some considerable distance towards convincing the Chancellor of the Exchequer that women are preferable as allies and peaceful enfranchised citizens than as an army of sharpshooters interfering constantly with the smooth conduct of his financial army.
This is our plan.
Why pay taxes?
Married women, respond!
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, Secretary of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, held a very large gathering .
A part of her long and interesting speech was taken up in pointing out to the audience how we women could obstruct the Government by refusing to pay the Imperial taxes.
She was listened to with deep attention, and many questions were asked.…
No Vote, No Tax.
— “It was mentioned on at the Suffragist demonstration in Alexandria Park, Manchester, that many of the lady Suffragists have refused to fill up their income tax forms, or to answer the urgent notices posted to them in consequence.
This plan is to be carried out all over the country as a protest against taxation without representation.”
— Manchester Evening Chronicle.
Refusal to pay Imperial taxes, which has been described as the best of all
protests, was the subject of an interesting address given by Mrs. [Margaret]
Kineton Parkes at the Caxton Hall on , when Mrs. [Edith] How Martyn presided and Mr. Bart Kennedy was
also amongst the speakers. Mrs. Parkes introduced her subject by explaining
that as one of the planks of the Suffrage platform was “Taxation without
representation is tyranny” it was inconsistent for any Suffragist to pay
Imperial taxes. They should not refuse to pay rates, for they had the
municipal vote, but they should, if they wanted to be consistent to their
principle, decline to pay Imperial taxes, such as inhabited house duty, taxes
on armorial bearings, income-tax,
&c. The
society she represented, which was organising this refusal to pay Imperial
taxes, had been in existence , and included Suffragists from every camp, Conservative,
Liberal, Socialist, as well as non-party, and was making every effort to get
a large number of influential women to refuse to pay taxes, and thus cause a
block at Somerset House. The isolated refusal to pay was ineffective and only
caused trouble to the refuser; but a large and unexpected number would cause
considerable trouble to the Government and would bring the question at issue
home to them. Even now it had been found that the Government rather than go
to the trouble of selling up the recalcitrant “debtor,” and attracting
attention to the principle involved, had quietly dropped the matter in
several instances. Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard had had no application for taxes
since she had been sold up .
This principle of taxation and representation she had found appealed to
women who had not given the subject any previous consideration, and it always
had an immediate influence on a male audience. A working woman was not asked
to pay less taxes because she was a woman, though she was usually asked to
receive less by her employer.
To married women with incomes she suggested that they should ask their
husbands not to fill in the amount in the space left on the income-tax
paper for details of wife’s income. Then, if they sent her a separate paper,
she could refuse to pay. In the past they had not given the Government half
enough work, and they should make it as difficult as possible for them to
recover money from women. She asked anyone present who knew women who paid
taxes to send in their names, that they might be approached by her society.
The Women’s Freedom League had been the pioneers in this method of Government
resistance.
Miss [Muriel] Matters, who spoke subsequently, observed that, while the
Government gave the male taxpayer a vote as receipt for his money, they said
to the woman, “Pay up and shut up.” Mrs. [Dora] Montefiore gave a brief
account of how to make it difficult for the Government to recover taxes from
women.…
Harry Kelly
Mother Earth, back in 1906 when it was started by the American anarchist dynamic duo of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, included an article “Apropos of Woman Suffrage” by “H. Kelly” (Harry Kelly, probably).
It included these thoughts on tax resistance:
The Free Churches, Wesleyans, Baptists, etc., aroused at [the Balfour-Chamberlain government’s sectarian school funding law], organized the so-called Passive Resistance movement, which was really passive enough to suit every one, except the most bigoted Churchman.
They refused to pay the school tax, printed and distributed Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” and did a great deal of good in claiming freedom for the individual as against the state, especially in matters of conscience.
It was during this agitation and inspired, no doubt, by the Passive Resisters that a woman and a Socialist (I think it was Miss Dora Montefiore) conceived the idea of refusing to pay her taxes on the ground that she was disfranchised and treated by the government as an outcast, unfit to vote or participate in the councils of the nation.
An Opera Bouffe war took place, lasting several days.
The lady barricaded herself in her house and refused to accept the summons thrown over her garden wall; food was hauled over the fence with a string, and the incident was really interesting while it lasted.
Just as it happened with Thoreau when he refused to pay taxes — some friend paid them, and the case was closed.
The incident described above, small and ridiculous as it seemed, had its effect, however; women in various parts of England took courage and emulated the example set before them…
Dora Montefiore wrote a book, From a Victorian to a Modern (1927), a chapter of which she devoted to her tax resistance and the “Siege of Montefiore” in which she held off the tax collector for several weeks:
“Women Must Vote for the Laws They Obey and the Taxes They Pay”
I had already, during the Boer War, refused willingly to pay income tax, because payment of such tax went towards financing a war in the making of which I had had no voice.
In a bailiff had been put in my house, a levy of my goods had been made, and they had been sold at public auction in Hammersmith.
The result as far as publicity was concerned was half a dozen lines in the corner of some daily newspapers, stating the fact that Mrs. Montefiore’s goods had been distrained and sold for payment of income tax; and there the matter ended.
When talking this over in with Theresa Billington and Annie Kenney, I told them that now we had the organisation of the W.S.P.U. to back me up I would, if it were thought advisable, not only refuse to pay income tax, but would shut and bar my doors and keep out the bailiff, so as to give the demonstration more publicity and thus help to educate public opinion about the fight for the political emancipation of women which was going on.
They agreed that if I would do my share of passive resistance they would hold daily demonstrations outside the house as long as the bailiff was excluded and do all in their power outside to make the sacrifice I was making of value to the cause.
In , therefore, when the authorities sent for the third time to distrain on my goods in order to take what was required for income tax, I, aided by my maid, who was a keen suffragist, closed and barred my doors and gates on the bailiff who had appeared outside the gate of my house in Upper Mall, Hammersmith, and what was known as the “siege” of my house began.
As is well known, bailiffs are only allowed to enter through the ordinary doors.
They may not climb in at a window and at certain hours they may not even attempt an entrance.
These hours are from sunset to sunrise, and from sunset on Saturday evening till sunrise on Monday morning.
During these hours the besieged resister to income tax can rest in peace.
From the day of this simple act of closing my door against the bailiff, an extraordinary change came over the publicity department of daily and weekly journalism towards this demonstration of passive resistance on my part.
The tradespeople of the neighbourhood were absolutely loyal to us besieged women, delivering their milk and bread, etc., over the rather high garden wall which divided the small front gardens of Upper Mall from the terraced roadway fronting the river.
The weekly wash arrived in the same way and the postman day by day delivered very encouraging budgets of correspondence, so that practically we suffered very little inconvenience, and as we had a small garden at the back we were able to obtain fresh air.
On the morning following the inauguration of the siege, Annie Kenney and Theresa Billington, with other members of the W.S.P.U., came round to see how we were getting on and to encourage our resistance.
They were still chatting from the pavement outside, while I stood on the steps of No. 32 Upper Mall, when there crept round from all sides men with notebooks and men with cameras, and the publicity stunt began.
These men had been watching furtively the coming and going of postmen and tradesmen.
Now they posted themselves in front, questioning the suffragists outside and asking for news of us inside.
They had come to make a “story” and they did not intend to leave until they had got their “story.”
One of them returned soon with a loaf of bread and asked Annie Kenney to hand it up over the wall to my housekeeper, whilst the army of men with cameras “snapped” the incident.
Some of them wanted to climb over the wall so as to be able to boast in their descriptions that they had been inside what they pleased to call “The Fort”; but the policeman outside (there was a policeman on duty outside during all the six weeks of a siege) warned them that they must not do this so we were relieved, in this respect, from the too close attention of eager pressmen.
But all through the morning notebooks and cameras came and went, and at one time my housekeeper and I counted no less than twenty-two pressmen outside the house.
A woman sympathiser in the neighbourhood brought during the course of the morning, a pot of home-made marmalade, as the story had got abroad that we had no provisions and had difficulty in obtaining food.
This was never the case as I am a good housekeeper and have always kept a store cupboard, but we accepted with thanks the pot of marmalade because the intentions of the giver were so excellent; but this incident was also watched and reported by the Press.
Annie Kenney and Theresa Billington had really come round to make arrangements for a demonstration on the part of militant women that afternoon and evening in front of the house, so at an opportune moment, when the Press were lunching, the front gate was unbarred and they slipped in.
The feeling in the neighbourhood towards my act of passive resistance was so excellent and the publicity being given by the Press in the evening papers was so valuable that we decided to make the Hammersmith “Fort” for the time being the centre of the W.S.P.U. activities, and daily demonstrations were arranged for and eventually carried out.
The road in front of the house was not a thoroughfare, as a few doors further down past the late Mr. William Morris’s home of “Kelmscott,” at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson, there occurred one of those quaint alley-ways guarded by iron posts, which one finds constantly on the borders of the Thames and in old seaside villages.
The roadway was, therefore, ideal for the holding of a meeting, as no blocking of traffic could take place, and day in, day out the principles for which suffragists were standing we expounded to many who before had never even heard of the words Woman Suffrage.
At the evening demonstrations rows of lamps were hung along the top of the wall and against the house, the members of the W.S.P.U. speaking from the steps of the house, while I spoke from one of the upstairs windows.
On the little terrace of the front garden hung during the whole time of the siege a red banner with the letters painted in white:
“Women should vote for the laws they obey and the taxes they pay.”
This banner appeared later on during our fight, so it has a little history quite of its own.
The members of the I.L.P., of which there was a good branch in Hammersmith, were very helpful, both as speakers and organisers during these meetings, but the Members of the Social Democratic Federation, of which I was a member, were very scornful because they said we should have been asking at that moment for Adult Suffrage and not Votes for Women; but although I have always been a staunch adult suffragist, I felt that at that moment the question of the enfranchisement of women was paramount, as we had to educate the public in our demands and in the reasons for our demands, and as we found that with many people the words “Adult Suffrage” connoted only manhood suffrage, our urgent duty was at that moment to gain Press publicity up and down the country and to popularise the idea of the political enfranchisement of women.
So the siege wore on; Press notices describing it being sent to me not only from the United Kingdom, but from Continental and American newspapers, and though the garbled accounts of what I was doing and what our organisation stood for often made us laugh when we read them, still there was plenty of earnest and useful understanding in many articles, while shoals of letters came to me, a few sadly vulgar and revolting, but the majority helpful and encouraging.
Some Lancashire lads who had heard me speaking in the Midlands wrote and said that if I wanted help they would come with their clogs but that was never the sort of support I needed, and though I thanked them, I declined the help as nicely as I could.
Many Members of Parliament wrote and told me in effect that mine was the most logical demonstration that had so far been made; and it was logical I know as far as income tax paying women were concerned; and I explained in all my speeches and writings that though it looked as if I were only asking for Suffrage for Women on a property qualification, I was doing this because the mass of non-qualified women could not demonstrate in the same way, and I was to that extent their spokeswoman.
It was the crude fact of women’s political disability that had to be forced on an ignorant and indifferent public, and it was not for any particular Bill or Measure or restriction that I was putting myself to this loss and inconvenience by refusing year after year to pay income tax, until forced to do so by the powers behind the Law.
The working women from the East End came, time and again, to demonstrate in front of my barricaded house and understood this point and never swerved in their allegiance to our organisation; in fact, it was during these periods and succeeding years of work among the people that I realised more and more the splendid character and “stuff” that is to be found among the British working class.
They are close to the realities of life, they are in daily danger of the serious hurts of life, unemployment, homelessness, poverty in its grimmest form, and constant misunderstanding by the privileged classes, yet they are mostly light-hearted and happy in small and cheap pleasures, always ready to help one another with lending money or apparel, great lovers of children, great lovers when they have an opportunity, of real beauty.
Yet they are absolutely “unprivileged,” being herded in the “Ghetto” of the East End, and working and living under conditions of which most women in the West End have no idea; and I feel bound to put it on record that though I have never regretted, in fact, I have looked back on the years spent in the work of Woman Suffrage as privileged years, yet I feel very deeply that as far as those East End women are concerned, their housing and living conditions are no better now than when we began our work.
The Parliamentary representation we struggled for has not been able to solve the Social Question, and until that is solved the still “unprivileged” voters can have no redress for the shameful conditions under which they are compelled to work and live.
I also have to record with sorrow that though some amelioration in the position of the married mother towards her child or children has been granted by law, the husband is still the only parent in law, and he can use that position if he chooses, to tyrannise over the wife.
He must, however, appoint her as one of the guardians of his children after his death.
, the time was approaching when, according to information brought in from outside the Crown had the power to break open my front door and seize my goods for distraint.
I consulted with friends and we agreed that as this was a case of passive resistance, nothing could be done when that crisis came but allow the goods to be distrained without using violence on our part.
When, therefore, at the end of those weeks the bailiff carried out his duties, he again moved what he considered sufficient goods to cover the debt and the sale was once again carried out at auction rooms in Hammersmith.
A large number of sympathisers were present, but the force of twenty-two police which the Government considered necessary to protect the auctioneer during the proceedings was never required, because again we agreed that it was useless to resist force majeure when it came to technical violence on the part of the authorities.
Some extracts from interviews and Press cuttings of the period will illustrate what was the general feeling of the public towards the protest I was making under the auspices of the W.S.P.U.
The representative of the Kensington News, who interviewed me during the course of the siege, wrote thus:—
Independent alike in principles and politics, it is the policy of the Kensington News to extend to both sides of current questions a fair consideration.
Accordingly our representative on Tuesday last attended at the residence of Mrs. Montefiore, who is resisting the siege of the tax collector, as a protest against taxation without representation.
On Hammersmith Mall, within a stone’s throw of the house wherein Thomson wrote “The Seasons”; of Kelmscott House, the home of William Morris, and within the shadow of those glorious elms planted by Henrietta Maria, the consort of Charles Ⅰ, a bright red banner floats in front of a dull red house, inscribed: “Women should vote for the laws they obey and the taxes they pay”….
Certainly as mild a mannered a demonstrator as ever displayed a red banner, refined of voice and manner, Mrs. Montefiore, who is a widow, would be recognised at once as a gentlewoman.
We were received with charming courtesy, and seated in the dining-room proceeded with our work of catechising.
Primarily we elicited that Mrs. Montefiore resented the term suffragette.
“It emanated, I believe from the Daily Mail, but is entirely meaningless.
The term ‘suffragist’ is English and understandable.
What I object to most strenuously is the attempt of certain sections of the Press to turn to ridicule what is an honest protest against what we regard as a serious wrong.”
“So far, what has happened?”
“The tax collector has been, with the sheriff, and I have refused them admittance, barred my doors, and hung up the banner you saw outside.”
Then questioned as to the reason for her action, Mrs. Montefiore explained:
“I am resisting payment of, not rates, but the Imperial taxes.
I pay my rates willingly and cheerfully, because I possess my municipal vote.
I can vote for the Borough and County Councils, and on the election of Guardians.
I want you to understand this; my income is derived mainly from property in Australia, where for many years I resided.
It is taxed over there, and again in this country.
I never objected to paying taxes in Australia, because there women have votes both for the State Parliament and for the Commonwealth.
There women are not disqualified from sitting in the Commonwealth Parliament.
One lady at the last election, although unsuccessful, polled over 20,000 votes.”
“You were not one of the ladies who created a disturbance behind the House of Commons grille?”
“No.
I was, however, one of the deputation to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and I listened to his very unsatisfactory answers.
This action of mine is the rejoinder to Sir Henry’s reply.
He said we must educate Parliament — so we thought we would, in my active resistance, give Parliament an object lesson.
Remember, it was the first Reform Bill that definitely excluded women from the franchise.
Prior to that Bill they possessed votes as burgesses and owners of property.
We only seek restitution.
After the Reform Bill certain women in Manchester actually tested their right to be registered as voters, and the judges decided against them.
Mr. Keir Hardie, who is our champion, deals with this in his pamphlet.”
“You are selecting certain candidates to further your cause in Parliament,” we suggested.
“Certainly,” was the reply.
“The women employed in the textile factories at Wigan ran a candidate of their own at the last election, and I addressed vast meetings at every street corner at Wigan.
I have received many messages of sympathy and encouragement from the women and the men in Wigan.”
“Have you taken Counsel’s opinion on your resisting action?”
“No, I am relying on the justice of my cause.”
“What is the next step you anticipate?”
“I believe their next weapon is a break warrant.
I have had my furniture distrained on and sold twice already in this cause.
Of course, I am only a woman.
I know the law, as it stands, is stronger than I, and I suppose in the long run I shall have to yield to force majeure, but I shall fight as long as I am able.
Only,” the lady added with a plaintiveness that might have appealed to the most implacable anti-Woman Suffragist, “one would have thought that men would have been more chivalrous, and would not force us to fight in this way to the bitter end for the removal of the sex disability.”
“Do you look for assistance from any, and which, political party?”
we asked.
Mrs. Montefiore shook her head.
“Our only policy is to play off one, against the other.
I am a humble disciple of Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy, who, now 73 years of age, has for 41 years been a worker in the woman’s cause.
She has witnessed fourteen Parliaments, but has never seen a Cabinet so inimical to Woman’s Suffrage as the present.
Every time the franchise is extended the women’s cause goes back; her hopes are far less now with seven millions on the register than they were with half a million.
Gladstone was the worst enemy woman’s suffrage ever had.”
In conclusion Mrs. Montefiore said: “We claim that the word ‘person’ in Acts of Parliament connected with voting should include women.
We believe that action goes further than words.
I am taking this action to bring our cause before the public.”
Without committing ourselves on the question of the cause itself, we could not resist expressing the hope that the lady’s devotion to it had not entailed hardship or suffering.
She smiled bravely, and said: “I have received much sympathy and encouragement, and many kindnesses.”
We ventured one more question: “Are you downhearted?”
The answer was a smiling “No!” and we left Mrs. Montefiore’s residence impressed at any rate with the sincerity of her belief in, and her devotion to, the cause she has espoused.
The Labour Leader of , had the following:—
“No taxation without representation” is one of the cardinal doctrines of the British Constitution.
But like many other ideas of British liberty it exists more on paper than in reality.
It has been left for the modern generation of suffragettes to point out that one whole sex subject to all the taxes which are imposed, has yet absolutely no representation on the body which determines and passes those taxes.
The siege of “Fort Montefiore” is the tangible expression of this protest.
On two previous occasions Mrs. Montefiore has had her goods seized for refusing to pay income tax.
she determined upon more militant tactics.
Some eight or nine weeks ago she was called upon for the income tax.
As she persisted in her refusal to pay, a bailiff was summoned.
Mrs. Montefiore’s reply was to bolt and bar her house against the intruder, and to display a red flag over her summerhouse, with the inscription: “Women should vote for the laws they obey and the taxes they pay.”
Fort Suffragette, as Mrs. Montefiore’s house may be called, is an ideal place, in which to defy an income-tax collector; and a few determined women could hold it against an army from the Inland Revenue Department.
It is a substantial three-storeyed villa in a narrow road (Upper Mall, Hammersmith).
A few feet from the front the Thames flows by; and the house is guarded by a high wall, the only access being through a stoutly built arched doorway.
The “siege” began on , and up to the present the bailiff has not succeeded in forcing an entry.
Meanwhile, important demonstrations have taken place outside, and the crowd has been addressed by various speakers, including Mrs. Montefiore, who has spoken from an upper window of her house.
On one of these occasions Mrs. Montefiore alluded to the Prime Minister’s reply to the recent deputation on Women’s Suffrage, in which he advised them “to educate Parliament.”
She was giving Parliament an object lesson.
“They had had enough abstract teaching,” she said, “now a little concrete teaching may do them good, and they will see that there are women in England who feel their disability so keenly that they will stop at nothing, and put themselves to every inconvenience and trouble in order to show the world and the Men of England what their position is, and how keenly they feel it”… A resolution was carried declaring that taxation without representation was tyranny, thanking Mrs. Montefiore for her stand, and calling upon the Government to enfranchise women this session.
Susan B. Anthony was one of my dear and valued friends in the suffrage movement, and I received from New York the following interesting communication with cordial wishes for the success of my protest:—
Appeal made yearly by Susan.
B. Anthony to the City Treasurer, Rochester, New York, When paying her property tax.
To THE CITY TREASURER, ROCHESTER, N.Y.
Enclosed please find cheque for tax on my property for , with a protest in the name of ten thousand other tax-paying women in the City of Rochester, who are deemed fully capable, intellectually, morally and physically of earning money, and contributing their full share towards the expenses of the Government, but totally incapable of deciding as to the proper expenditure of such money.
Please let the record show as “paid under protest.”
Yours for justice to each and every person of this Republic. MARY S. ANTHONY.
TO THE COUNTY TREASURER.
Enclosed find County tax for .
A minor may live to become of age, the illiterate to be educated, the lunatic to regain his reason, the idiot to become intelligent — when each and all can decide what shall be the laws, and who shall enforce them; but the woman, never.
I protest against paying taxes to a Government which allows its women to be thus treated.
Please so record it.
MARY S. ANTHONY.
It’s been a while since I’ve dug into the archives to hunt for information on how tax resistance was used in the British Women’s Suffrage Movement.
Here is a very early example, as reported by the Buffalo (New York) Express on :
London, — Miss Muller [Henrietta Müller, I think —♇], a member of the London School Board for the Lambeth District, is the first woman in England to pose as a martyr in the cause of woman suffrage.
She has undertaken in her own person to prove her devotion to the principle “No taxation without representation.”
Miss Muller is a leader of the Woman Suffragists, and was one of the first to propose, during the pendency of Mr. Woodall’s amendments to the Franchise bill, that women throughout the kingdom should form societies to resist the payment of taxes until the franchise should be extended to women householders.
When Mr. Woodall’s amendment was so overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Commons the ardor of the ladies perceptibly cooled, and but little has lately been heard of the proposed tax-resistance societies and defense fund.
Miss Muller, however, never wavered, and when the rate collector made his rounds this year she promptly and absolutely refused to pay a farthing for taxes upon her house.
This is situated in the fashionable precincts of Cadogan Square.
The collector argues and implored in vain, and finally distrained a portion of the furniture in Miss Muller’s residence in satisfaction of the levy.
was set for the execution of the writ, and Miss Muller, far from relenting to save her property, publicly advertised the date of the seizure, and invited the women of England to come and witness the disgraceful spectacle of a woman being robbed by the minions of the law because she dared to ask for a voice in the disposition of her taxation.
The invitation was accepted by hundreds of well-dressed but excited and indignant women, who crowded into Cadogan Square and nearly mobbed the bailiffs while they were removing the lares and penates from the Muller residence.
An indignation meeting was afterward held in Miss Muller’s drawing-rooms and many bitter and vehement denunciations of the tyranny and injustice of the law were indulged in.
Miss Muller was visited by a Cable News correspondent, and was found to be full of fight and determination to continue in her resistance.
She is a small and slender but sinewy woman of about forty-five, and gives one the impression of a veritable volcano of temper and pluck.
She sadly bewailed the seizure by the minions of the law of her favorite belongings, and said that the wretches had purposely picked out those articles which were most cherished by her on account of their associations and overlooked others of greater value.
“But,” she added, “they did not collect the rates, and they never will if they rob me of every stick of my furniture and pull the doors and windows out of my house.
I shall continue this fight if I am the only woman left in England to do so, but I hope and believe that thousands of English women will be found brave enough to follow my example.”
A paragraph of unsigned editorial commentary accompanied that piece:
The Smith sisters [Abby & Julia] of Glastonbury, Ct., who struggled so hard for the principle of “no taxation without representation,” now have an imitator in England.
The Smith sisters regularly refused to pay their taxes because they could not vote, and as regularly saw their cows sold by the tax collector, they protesting but bidding them in.
Miss Muller, the English woman who is following the same principle, lives in a fashionable quarter of London.
She witnessed the carting off of some of ber choicest furniture by the minions of the law, and invited several hundred other women to be present and witness the outrage.
It was no doubt a touching spectacle.
Our cable special clearly shows that Miss Muller was very mad.
But the public will refuse to sympathize very profoundly with a reform martyr of that sort.
Women suffrage may be advisable, though some of us do not believe in it.
But the policy of trying to reform the laws by refusing to obey them is certainly not the height of wisdom.
My next example is a brief note from the Camperdown Chronicle:
Women can refuse, as Mrs Montefiore is again doing, to pay income tax so long as they remain unenfranchised, on the old historic ground that “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”
If resistance, passive or active, ever can be justified, it assuredly is so justified in the case and cause of injured and insulted womanhood.
—“Ignota.” in “Westminster Review.”
From the Albany Advertiser:
Resistance Overcome.
London, .
The widow of Sir James Steel, a former Lord Provost of Edinburgh, refused to pay house or property tax on the ground that she is denied a vote.
A portion of her furniture was sold by auction to cover the amount of the tax.
Five thousand persons were present at the sale.
At first I thought that must be referring to Flora Annie Steele, but she was never married to a James Steel[e].
Turns out this was Barbara Joanna Steel.
She promoted tax resistance in 1907 to the Edinburgh National Society for Woman’s Suffrage, telling them:
On the ground that the franchise has not been extended to women, and she is therefore without a vote, the widow of Sir James Steel, a former Lord Provost of Edinburgh, lately refused to pay her house and property taxes.
The authorities thereupon ordered the sale by auction of a sufficient portion of Lady Steel’s household furniture to meet the demand of the tax collector, and the sale was held in the presence of 5,000 people.
A boycott of the census is (says the “Daily Chronicle” of ) to be the latest method of the militant suffragists for calling attention to their claims to the vote.
The announcement was made by Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard at a “King’s Speech meeting” of the Women’s Freedom League, held in the Caxton Hall.
The census would cost a great deal of money, said Mrs. Despard, and involve an enormous amount of labor.
So far as they were concerned, this census should not be taken.
“We shall prove,” said Mrs. Despard, “whether there is a people, or whether there can be a people without the women.
We shall call upon women householders and women lodgers all over the country to refuse absolutely all information when the census takers come round.”
Women, she went on, had been proud to belong to the nation, but they had been denied their citizenship.
Was it not logical, therefore, that they should say, “Very well; citizens we are not, and we shall not register ourselves as citizens?”
That was logical, as a protest should be, and it would be effective.
Speaking of the preparations for the census, Mrs. Despard asserted that the officials were trying to get cheap labor: little girls from the schools at six and seven shillings a week.
Mrs. Despard added that the members were going to obstruct other Government business and make other protests, and they would stop the census boycott only when they had the promise of the Prime Minister that a Woman’s Suffrage Bill would be introduced this session.
Tax resistance is to be another method of obstruction, and Mrs. Despard, who has already been “sold up” twice for refusing to pay taxes, produced a third summons to which she intimated that she would pay no attention.
A diamond ring, the property of the Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, seized because she refused to pay fines inflicted for failing to take out licenses for five dogs, a male servant, and a carriage, was sold by auction at Ashford (Middlesex) lately.
It was explained that the princess, as a member of the Women’s Tax Resistance league, refused to pay money to a Government which failed to give women representation in Parliament.
The ring was sold for £10, and was subsequently, on behalf of the league, returned to the princess.
London, — The first instance of a suffragist being committed to prison for non-payment of taxes as a protest against the disfranchisement of women occurred when Miss Clemence Housman, an authoress, and sister of Lawrence Houseman, was taken to Holloway Gaol by the Sheriff’s officer.
Similar protests have previously ended in distraint but Miss Houseman had no distrainable goods and was accordingly committed.
Miss Houseman, who belongs to the Women’s Social and Political Union and is on the committee of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, refused to pay for the taxicab in which she was taken to prison and the Sheriff’s officer paid the fare of $2,50, which curiously enough was the amount of the tax she originally declined to pay.
The monotony of purely educational work for woman suffrage has been enlivened by the arrest, imprisonment, and release of Miss Clemence Housman, writes an English correspondent, for non payment of the habitation tax.
Miss Housman a year ago refused to pay this tax, which was only 4/6 (1.10 dollar), and during the year has had sundry notices served upon her, the cost of which brought the amount up to between twenty five and thirty dollars.
The Government offered to compromise, but Miss Housman remained firm.
At length she received notice that she would be arrested on a certain day.
This was made the occasion by the Tax Resistance League of a protest meeting and a tea at the home of Miss Housman’s brother, Lawrence Housman, the noted dramatist and noted suffragist, for Mr. Housman is always speaking and writing for this cause and has thoroughly identified himself with it as his own.
The “John Hampden” dinner was the name under which the members of the “Women’s Tax Resistance League” gave a dinner recently in London.
At the end of the dining hall hung a picture of the hero, who resisted the ship money imposition, and on the menu cards appeared the legend, “No vote, no tax.”
The guests included many well-known people interested in woman suffrage, and the speakers, Earl Russell, Mrs. Despard, Sir Thomas Barclay, and Mr. Laurence Houseman, all upheld the right of women in refusing to pay taxes while they had no voice in the government of the country.
Miss Green, a member of the New Constitutional Society, and honorary treasurer to the Women’s Tax Resistance League, London, having again refused to pay inhabited house duty for 14 Warwick Crescent, Paddington, her bookcase was sold at Messrs.
Gill’s auction rooms in Kilburn.
Many sympathisers attended the sale, and the usual speech of protest having been made, three cheers were raised for Miss Green before the party left the auction room.
A procession then formed up, headed by a waggon decorated with the colours of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and an open air meeting was held on the High-road, Kilburn.
Dr. Helen Hanson, who presided, spoke of the special injustice under which the voteless taxpaying women are suffering, and expressed her satisfaction in finding that they are now combining to protest in this way.
I’ve encountered “Miss Green” in the archives a couple of times before, but never with enough information for me to be able to attach a first name to her.
Discovery by Mrs. Mark Wilks Gives Suffragets Brilliant Idea.
Campaign of Sympathy
Wilks in Jail Because His Wife Refused to Pay Her Taxes.
London, . —
Mrs. Mark Wilks, whose husband is in jail because she refuses to pay her taxes, is entitled to immense credit for discovering a new and very formidable weapon for suffragets, members of the Women’s Social and Political Union said .
Suffragets are very generally women of property and will follow Mrs. Wilks’ example.
Their husbands in turn will follow Wilks’ example — go to jail, because they can’t help themselves.
It is not, of course, that the suffragets have anything against their husbands.
Many of these husbands are themselves suffraget sympathizers.
Indeed, suffragets are campaigning to create sympathy for Wilks.
Mrs. Wilks’ discovery is too valuable not to be utilised, however.
Husbands will have to be sacrificed on the altar of votes for women.
The plan will work only in the case of husbands whose wives have independent incomes.
Nor will it work in cases where husbands pay taxes on their wives’ incomes.
Some husbands, like Wilks, have not enough money to pay the taxes.
Suffraget-sympathizing husbands, who can pay, are counted on to refuse to do so.
Thus will a large proportion of Englishmen with suffraget wives be in jail shortly.
The suffragets think the scandal and injustice of it will be a big thing, for them.
Under the married women’s property act a husband has no control over his wife’s property or income.
Under the income tax act, he is responsible for the taxes.
If the taxes are not paid the husband — not the wife — is imprisoned.
Mrs. Wilks refused to pay her income tax, $185, and her husband was locked up.
He will spend the rest of his life in prison unless his wife says otherwise or the law is changed.
When at liberty, he is a teacher in the suburb of Clapton.
The arrest and imprisonment “during the King’s pleasure” of Mr. Mark Wilks, the Clapton schoolmaster, who is unable to pay the tax on his wife’s income, is to be the subject of numerous protest meetings, organised by the Women’s Tax Resistance League, during the next few days (said the “Daily News and Leader” on ).
the Wilks campaign opens with a demonstration in Trafalgar Square.
On there will be another mass meeting in Hyde Park, and on a procession will march from Kennington Church to Brixton Gaol, where the central figure in the fight is detained.
In addition, a protest meeting is to be held outside the gaol every morning, and on Mr. Bernard Shaw will address a similar gathering in the Caxton Hall.
Under Two Acts.
A clear and humorous account of the affair was given to a “Daily News and Leader” representative by Mrs. Charles Stansfield; a sister of Mrs. Wilks.
“Mr. Wilks is in prison,” she said, “because he has not got £37 to pay a tax on property he does not own and cannot control.
That is really the whole case.
Under the Income Tax Act the property of his wife is his property for the purposes of taxation, but under the Married Women’s Property Act it is entirely out of his control.
“Every man who is married to a woman with an income of her own is in that position; and if he cannot pay his wife’s taxes he is liable to imprisonment.
It seems to place an enormous weapon in the hands of rich wives.”
It seems that in and Mrs. Wilks refused to make any return of her income either to the Inland Revenue authorities or to her husband, and, in consequence, the furniture, which is hers, was seized and sold.
The Schoolmaster’s Plight.
“In ,” her sister explained, “she claimed that such distraint was illegal, asserting that under the Income Tax Act she, as a married woman, was exempt from taxation.
As a consequence, all taxes charged upon her were withdrawn, and the authorities contented themselves afterwards with making their claim, sometimes on Mr. Wilks, sometimes on both conjointly, and, finally, on him alone.
“All this is interesting,” she added, “as showing the ridiculous position that arises through the operation of the two Acts.
But the serious side of the matter is that Mr. Wilks is in prison for debt, and his position as a master in a London County Council school must be endangered.
He does not know for what period he will be in prison, and he has no possible way of settling the debt.”
Which prompted George Bernard Shaw to wax wittily (from the Barrier Miner):
Mr. G.B. Shaw was the chief speaker at a meeting held in Caxton Hall, London, by the Women’s Tax Resistance League last month, “to protest against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for his inability to pay the taxes on his wife’s earned income.”
Sir John Cockburn was in the chair.
Mr. Shaw said that this was the beginning of the revolt of his own unfortunate sex against the intolerable henpecking which had been brought upon them by the refusal by the Government to bring about a reform which everybody knew was going to come, and the delay of which was a mere piece of senseless stupidity.
From the unfortunate Prime Minister downwards no man was safe.
He know of cases in his boyhood where women managed to make homes for their children and themselves, and then their husbands sold the furniture, turned the wife and children out, and got drunk.
The Married Women’s Property Act was then carried, under which the husband retained the responsibility of the property and the woman had the property to herself.
As Mrs. Wilks would not pay the tax on her own income Mr. Wilks went to gaol.
“If my wife did that to me,” said Mr. Shaw, “the very moment I came out of prison I would get another wife.
(Laughter.)
It is indefensible.”
Women, he went on, had got completely beyond the law at the present time.
Mrs. [Mary] Leigh had been let out, but he presumed that after a brief interval for refreshments she would set fire to another theatre.
He got his living by the theatre, and very probably when she read the report of that speech she would set fire to a theatre where his plays were being performed.
The other day he practically challenged the Government to starve Mrs. Leigh, and in the course of the last fortnight he had received the most abusive letters which had ever reached him in his life.
The Government should put an end to the difficulty at once by giving women the votes.
As he resumed his seat Mr. Shaw said — “I feel glad I have been allowed to say the things I have, here to-night without being lynched.”
A resolution protesting against the imprisonment of Mr. Wilks was unanimously carried.
Mr. Zangwill wrote, expressing sympathy with the protest, and said, “Marrying an heiress may be the ruin of a man.”
Anna Stout, wife of the former New Zealand prime minister Robert Stout, gave her opinions of the suffrage movement (as found in the Perth Western Mail), including these remarks:
…the Tax-Resistance League… secured hundreds of converts to the cause.
“Twenty-six million pounds” Lady Stout said, “are paid annually in taxes into the Treasury by English women, and naturally there is much resentment created when the injustice of their not having a voice in the expenditure of it is pointed out to them.
We appeal to their pockets first, but almost invariably find hearts and brains behind them.”
Urges This Method of Getting Jailed for Non-Militant Suffragettes.
The non-militant suffragettes of Britain have decided to “let slip the dogs of war” to help win the cause that window smashing, red pepper distribution, mall destruction, and other gentle forms of militant protest have been ineffective in promoting.
Mrs. [Ethel] Philip Snowden, whose husband is an M.P. for Blackburn, announced on in a talk before the Equal Franchise Society how the dogs were going to be utilized.
Any old dog will do.
Mrs. Snowden herself has a dog, the breed of which she did not mention, and Philip Snowden, M.P., is not responsible for the dog.
Mrs. Snowden herself must pay the license for the dog.
Mr. Snowden, as a Member of Parliament, is responsible for the other taxes of Mrs. Snowden, which she has refused to pay, declaring that taxation without representation is unjustifiable, a sentiment that has been uttered on this continent, but they cannot put Mr. Snowden in jail for the refusal of Mrs. Snowden to pay her taxes, as he is exempted as an M.P..
The proposition of Mrs. Snowden seems to squint at the acquisition by all British maids and matrons of dogs and the refusal of the owners to pay the dog license.
Mr. Snowden, M.P., may not even know that Mrs. Snowden, N.M.S. — non-militant suffragette — has a dog; but she has.
By buying up dogs of all sorts and refusing to pay the licenses the suffragettes may get into jail with facility and honor.
Why place a bomb on the front porch or spread carbolic acid in a mail box, when you may get jugged just as well merely by refusing to pay your dog tax?
Mrs. Snowden commented on the “outrageous incompetence of the Liberal Government” and said she felt that her party no longer could trust its affairs with the Liberals.
The physical force party, Mrs. Snowden said, might destroy the sympathy of the British public.
Mrs. Pankhurst had started a crusade that she could not control.
The doctrine that the end justified the means might wind up with the blowing off of [Prime Minister H.H.] Asquith’s head.
The dodging of the dog tax seemed to Mrs. Snowden the lever with which the non-militants might pry themselves into prison.
The possibilities were large.
Every male member of the audience admitted this.
Think of a lady who had accumulated a pack of hounds refusing to pay the licenses thereon and thus making herself liable to a life sentence!
If one dog sent you to prison for one month, how many months would you be forced to serve if you owned 100 or 200 dogs?
Meanwhile you might put on all the dogs blankets inscribed “Votes for Women” and turn them loose in the Strand to the confusion of the bobbies and Parliament.
Destraint has been levied upon [Mary Russell] the Duchess of Bedford, who, as a protest against the non-enfranchisement of women refuses to pay property tax for the Prince’s Skating Rink, which is owned by her.
The tax is eight months overdue.
(When she first announced that she would resist payment of the tax the Duchess of Bedford said:— “I am very strongly opposed to the militant tactics adopted by a portion of those who are in favour of women’s franchise, and I have therefore taken this, the only course open to me, which appears justifiable, of protesting against the way in which the question of woman suffrage has been treated by the Government.)
This is an interesting example of how the violent tactics of the most militant wing of the British women’s suffrage movement (which make today’s “black bloc” look like the kumbaya chorus) gave the tax resistance movement space to present themselves as the reasonable non-militant alternative.
At this time in the United States, by contrast, tax resistance was considered a far-out militant tactic only adopted by the most radical fringe of the suffragist movement.
Distraint was levied on the Duchess of Bedford for non-payment of taxes due in respect of Prince’s Skating Rink.
A silver cup was taken to satisfy the claim.
The Duchess, who refused to pay the taxes on suffrage grounds, has instructed the Women’s Tax Resistance League to point out that the distraint is quite out of order, because as a married woman she is not liable to taxation.
The assessment or demand not should have been served not upon her, but upon the Duke of Bedford.
“Obviously,” she adds, “it was not my business to point out the law to those duty it should be to understand it.”
Carrie Chapman Catt was an American suffrage activist who felt the need to distance herself from the militant tactics of some of her fellow-strugglers across the pond.
But she had kinder words to say about the tax resisters.
From the New York Sun:
“The non-militant organization that interested me most was the Tax Resistance League, which has an enormous influence in England just now.
I went to the sale of the Duchess of Bedford’s curios, on which she had refused to pay taxes.
A member of the league made a speech along the lines of no taxation without representation which had a familiar Fourth of July sound.
It was expressly stated that this was the Duchess’s manner of protesting against militancy, though I fancy we should have considered it rather militant here.”
“No Vote, No Helping Government,” Is Suffragettes Latest Slogan.
Homes Sold Over Women.
One Firm Soldier of “The Cause” Calm While Husband Languishes in Jail for Her.
London, — The suffrage impasse in England is to be solved by a new and startling campaign.
This is to take the form of resistance to paying taxes — and is to be run by all the militant suffragettes in the kingdom who have homes but no votes.
The militants themselves are already jubilant at the prospect of their success, and are asking what Mr. Lloyd-George can possibly do to make up for this leakage in the revenues of England.
This movement is seriously worrying Lloyd-George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and those unfortunate and always unwelcome officials — the tax collectors of England.
The women are either going to jail or having their jewelry and furniture distrained upon and sold by public auction, for the settlement of the Government’s claims.
Everyone of these public auction sales, too, is made the occasion for a grand procession of women tax resisters.
They march to the scene of the fray with drums beating and banners and pennons flying.
Some of the best suffrage speakers in the country are rallying to their aid.
Frequently thousands of people surround the auction halls and when the sale is over the “victim of distraint” mounts a platform outside the hall and addresses the multitude on the text “No Vote, No Tax.”
The suggestion that “taxation and representation should go together” and that “taxation without representation is tyranny” evidently appeals to the sense of fair play in a British crowd, so that converts are easily made, money comes rolling in, and propaganda goes merrily on.
Tax Resistance Three Years Old.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League started as a small cloud — no bigger than a man’s hand — in Lloyd-George’s financial sky, about three years ago.
That it has been growing steadily ever since is probably due to the fact that it is continually stirring the imagination and touching the sense of humor of the “man in the street.”
The society has been able to attain such proportions that shortly it will give a preconcerted “signal” to the women householders in every large city and town in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, causing a general “tax strike.”
Every sympathizer who is a householder will, at a given moment, openly refuse to pay any more imperial taxes until political representation is accorded her.
Some startling developments are likely to follow.
Among the important and extremely active members of the league are the Duchess of Bedford, whose husband owns over 84,000 acres of land and whose collection of pictures at Woburn Abbey is one of the finest and most historic in the world; Princess Sophia Dhulep Sing, an Indian lady, at present in residence in England; Beatrice Harraden, author of “Ships That Pass in the Night,” and Miss Clemence Housman, sister of Laurence Housman, whose fame as an author and artist are recognized in America as well as in his own country.
His “Englishwoman’s Love Letters” made quite a sensation over here some years ago.
All London was agog when it became known that the Duchess of Bedford, aided and abetted by the Women’s Tax Resistance League, had definitely and emphatically refused to pay property tax and house duty on one of her own houses.
People who were not versed in the law speculated as to whether Mr. Lloyd-George would have the courage to order the Duchess to be arrested like an ordinary commoner and dragged off to Holloway Jail, there to endure the rigors of a plank bed and jail fare or to win her freedom by resorting to the hunger strike.
Fortunately, however, such indignities are not necessary in collecting the King’s taxes in England if tax-resisting rebels possess furniture, plate, or jewelry upon which distraint can be made.
Mr. Lloyd-George’s emissaries were therefore able to seize and carry off a beautiful silver trophy cup from the Duchess’ collection of plate, and sell it by public auction.
The auction sale of the Duchess of Bedford’s silver cup proved, perhaps, the best advertisement the Women’s Tax Resistance League ever had.
It was made the occasion for widespread propaganda.
The newspapers gave columns of space to the event, while at the big mass meeting, held outside the auction room, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, the secretary of the league; Mrs. Lilian Hicks, the honorary treasurer, and other Suffrage speakers held forth on the advisability and necessity of every self-respecting woman householder in Great Britain following the Duchess of Bedford’s lead.
Miss Clemence Housman’s Case a Poser.
The case of Miss Clemence Housman was really a “poser” for Mr. Lloyd-George.
It led to a long struggle between the woman and the authorities, and a denouement which was of the nature of an anti-climax for the Government.
The amount in question was an exceedingly small one — about $1 — but Miss Housman, incited and encouraged by the belligerent Tax Resistance League, refused on principle to pay.
As she had no goods on which to distrain, she was herself seized and thrown into Holloway Jail, there to remain until the tax was paid.
When it became evident that Miss Housman was a woman of determination and was quite prepared to spend the rest of her natural existence within the grim walls of Holloway Castle, the authorities reflected that the maintenance of a prisoner thirty or forty years in jail, and the public excitement this would involve, was too expensive and troublesome a method of collecting $1, so the doors of her cell were, after five days, thrown open and Miss Housman emerged a free and triumphant woman.
The most important and sensational event in the history of the tax-resistance movement, however, was the capture by the Government of the unfortunate husband of a woman tax-resister.
The case arose through the refusal of Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, as a Suffragist and tax-resister, to pay the tax levied on her earned income.
On two previous occasions this refusal had been followed by a distraint on her goods, but one of the peculiar anomalies of the income tax law, as distinct from the property tax in England is that, in spite of the Married Woman’s Property Act, a husband can be made liable for his wife’s income tax.
Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, realizing, therefore, that as a married woman she was not really liable to this taxation, informed the authorities that the claim should be sent not to her, but to her husband.
The government fell into the trap and sent the claim to Mark Wilks, a schoolmaster, who immediately declined to pay on the grounds that he had no legal means of ascertaining his wife’s income.
The treasury refused to accept this plea, and after a long correspondence decided to seize the person of Wilks and throw him into jail.
A public agitation was immediately started, among those who made strong protests on the platform and in the press being George Bernard Shaw, Sir John Cockburn, K.C.M.G., the Rt.
Hon. Thomas Lough, M.P., and Laurence Housman, with the result that Wilks, after being several weeks in jail, was suddenly released, no reason being given by the British Home Secretary for this act of clemency and wisdom.
The incident formed excellent subject for jest by all the humorous papers in England, and one of them suggested that now that husbands could be placed in durance vile for the non-payment of their wives’ income tax, it would be an excellent way for women who held the purse strings not only to get rid of lazy and troublesome husbands, but to have them maintained at the expense of the state!
Another ingenious form of protest adopted by women tax-resisters has been to refuse admission to the officials of the Inland Revenue who came to seize the goods, barricading their homes against the intruders.
Mrs. Dora Montefiore, a well-known Australian Socialist, was the first to adopt this novel method, and several others have since followed her example, the last being Mrs. [Kate] Harvey, whose house has been barricaded for months past.
Mrs. Harvey decided to resist Mr. Lloyd George’s insurance tax, and also refused to pay her gardener’s license.
In the meantime she took the precaution of getting a bill of sale on her furniture, so that the authorities, balked in every direction of their prey, have now seized the lady herself and committed her to jail for two months.
A vigorous agitation for her release is going on, and it is confidently expected that within a few days Halloway’s portals will again open wide and that a huge mass meeting already being organized, in Trafalgar Square, will publicly welcome her back to the arms of her fellow tax-resisters.
Primitive but effective means were resorted to by a bailiff, who, acting on a distraint order, sought to enter the house of a leading suffragette.
The lady in question was Mrs. Kate Harvey, of the Women’s Freedom League.
She had declined to pay taxes, and was being supported in her resolve by Mrs. Charlotte Despard, the well-known president of the league.
Mrs. Harvey resides in “Brackenhill,” a large mansion in Highland road, Bromley (Kent).
Failing to gain an entrance to the house, the bailiffs procured a battering ram, and, with the assistance of the police, accomplished his purpose at the end of two hours by smashing in the front door.
[Mrs. Harvey has for years been an ardent exponent of tax resistance.
In her goods were seized and sold for inhabited house duty, and her residence was barricaded against the King’s officers for eight months, entry by force being a last effected under a warrant.
On the same date Mrs. Harvey was sentenced to distraint or seven day’s imprisonment for a tax unpaid on a male servant.
Her companion, Mrs. Despard, has served two terms of imprisonment.]
Considerable difficulty attended the levying of a distress upon the goods of Mrs. Harvey, of the Tax Resistance League; at Bromley, Kent, on Tuesday.
Upon the arrival of a tax collector, a bailiff, and a police sergeant, they found the outer gate locked and the doors of the house barricaded.
The gate offered little obstruction, but to get the door of the house open was a difficult matter.
Finally, after a heavy beam was used as a battering ram, the door went in with a crash.
The door, however, led only to a narrow passage, where a still more obstinate door barred the way.
A crowbar, battering ram, and a small jemmy were here brought into use, but even with those it was nearly half an hour before the door, almost splintered, gave way.
Later, the hall was entered, where the tax collector was met by Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. Despard.
Here was little furniture visible, and it was not until a locksmith had forced the door of the dining room that the bailiff was able to place his levy upon goods.
The amount of the tax, it is understood, is about £15.
The remaining articles concern the resistance of Sophia Duleep Singh.
First, from the New York Herald:
Sophia Duleep Singh, of Woman’s Tax Resistance League, Refusing to Pay, Loses Gems.
A pearl necklace and a gold bangle studded with pearls and diamonds, belonging to Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, have been seized to satisfy fines and costs of about $80, which she was ordered to pay for keeping a carriage, a groom and two dogs without a license.
The jewels will be sold at a public auction.
The Princess is a member of the Woman’s Tax Resistance League.
Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, of Faraday House, Hampton Court, made her second appearance at Feltham Police Court, Middlesex, on .
She is a member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and was summoned for keeping a male servant, a carriage, and two dogs without licences.
The Magistrate imposed fines of £5 each in respect of the groom and carriage, and £1 5/ for each of the dogs, with costs amounting, to 18/.
Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, of Faraday House, Hampton Court, saw her jewels seized under a distress warrant rather than pay fines and costs amounting to over £16 for keeping a groom, a carrage, and two dogs without licences.
By order of the Justices of the Spelthorne Division of Middlesex, the jewels were offered for sale by public auction at the Twickenham Town Hall on .
The auctioneer (Mr. Alaway) explained that the jewels seized by the police consisted of a necklace, with 131 pearls, and a gold bangle, with a heart-shaped pendant, with a diamond centre surrounded with pearls.
He was proceeding with the sale when Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, who occupied a seat in the front of the hall, rose, and exclaimed:— “I protest against this sale, seeing it is most unjust to women that they should be compelled to pay unjust taxes, when they have no voice in the government of the country.”
The bidding started at £6, and when it had reached £10 the lot was knocked down to Miss Gertrude Eaton, a member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League.
Bidding for the gold bangle started at £5, and only two other bids being received, it was sold to the same lady for £7.
In the Washington Herald, Clara Bewick Colby continued her impressions of the British women’s suffrage movement with a note on tax resistance:
There is a league existing for this very purpose to enroll women who are willing to have their property sold for taxes.
When a member is to be sold up a number of her comrades accompany her to the auction-room.
The auctioneer is usually friendly and stays the proceedings until some one of the league has mounted the table and explained to the crowd what it all means.
Here are the banners, and the room full of women carrying them, and it does not take long to impress upon the mind of the people who have come to attend the sale that here is a body of women willing to sacrifice their property for the principle for which John Hampden went to prison — that taxation without representation is tyranny.
Not of American Origin.
I always felt at home on these occasions as I saw the familiar mottoes ranged around.
I had supposed they were of American origin, as we had quoted them in our suffrage work; but I found that all the principles embodied in our Declaration of Independence belonged to an earlier struggle for freedom which had been won on British soil, and exactly the same as the women are waging now.
The women remain at these auctions until the property of the offender is disposed of.
The kindly auctioneer puts the property seized from the suffragists early on his list, or lets them know when it will be called.
The object lesson of the sale and the subsequent meeting on the street corner or in the nearest park carries the message to an outlying part of London, and to a people who otherwise would know nothing of the agitation.
The discrimination which the government shows on every hand is apparent in this matter of seizing goods, for some are never annoyed for their delinquent taxes, while others are pounced upon with severity.
The league makes resistance systematic and effective so that no effort is lost.
Sometimes no one will bid for the sufragist’s property and they carry it home again, but the government cannot seize it for that assessment.
Of all forms of militancy this is most logical, and it is one that women might well adopt everywhere, as it was inaugurated in America when the Smith sisters of Glastonbury, Conn., allowed their New Jersey cows to be sold year after year under protest.
Mrs. Despard, sister of Gen. Sir John French, who is president of the Woman’s Freedom League, has been sold out repeatedly, until she has around her only the barest necessaries of life.
There is an imperial tax for the non-payment of which the person and not the property is seized.
Miss Housman, sister of the distinguished dramatist, Lawrence Houman, lives with him, but owns a little property subject to the imperial tax.
It was only a trifle — four and six ($1.05) — but she refused to pay.
Various processes were served upon her until the sum had grown to about $15. She was warned repeatedly by the officer that she would be arrested if she did not pay, but she was obdurate.
At length the officer arrived to escort Miss Housman to Holloway jail.
He was very polite and took her in a taxi, which cost exactly the sum of the original tax.
(Here it would have been for that distance the sum of the tax and costs).
Miss Housman was from day to day interviewed by various officials to get her to pay her tax, which she declared she had no intention of doing.
The government was in a quandary.
There was a law to put Miss Housman in prison but there was no law to let her out until she paid the tax and costs.
The government offered to knock off the costs and let her off with the original four and six.
Miss Housman was still obdurate.
To all intents and purposes she was in Holloway for life.
To make capital of the situation and to keep up her courage the Tax Resistance League organized a procession to Holloway.
I was extremely glad to be on the spot and able to show that I was not a fair-weather suffragist, for the weather had been perfect on the occasions of the five processions in which I had already taken part in England, and this day was rainy and the streets muddy.
It was a long trudge the four miles to Holloway but many made it, and, lo! when we got in front of the frowning old fortress the meeting that had been planned for protest became one of victory, for the government had weakened and Miss Housman was free.
She was a very quiet, delicate woman who had never taken any other part in the movement, and she made her first suffrage speech this day under the walls of Holloway jail.
Miss Housman has just been called upon by the board of inland revenue to pay arrears on her taxes, and she has again expressed her determination to abide by “plain constitutional duty in refusing consent to taxation without representation.”
There is a general movement among tax resisters to send their dues to one or other by the national funds for relief labeled “Taxes withheld from the government by voteless women.”
Jail Procession Frequent.
How many times had the women gone to Holloway to welcome out the prisoners on the day of their release!
This was before the days of forcible feeding and the hunger strike which has made it necessary to take away the tortured victims in an ambulance and to a nursing home as quickly as possible.
In the earlier days they have often been met with bands, sometimes the horses would be taken off the wagon and young girls would draw it in a triumphal procession.
Then there was breakfast and speaking, and everything to make it a gala occasion.
I was present at one of these breakfasts in Queen’s Hall decorated with flowers and banners and with tables for hundreds.
It was a queer sensation in those days to look upon sweet and ladylike young women — I remember that on this occasion one was the niece of the violinist Joachim — and to know that they had actually been prisoners.
It was not long before they were looked upon as something sacred, as those who had made special sacrifices for the cause, and they wore badges to show that they had been prisoners and in every place were given the post of honor until their numbers mounted up to the hundreds.
One, of their favorite banners bears the inscription:
“Stone walls do not a prison make. Nor Iron bars a cage.”
I came across the poem the other day from which this is taken.
It contains four stanzas, written by Sir Richard Lovelace in prison in the middle of the seventeenth century.
The balance of the stanza quoted is:
“Minds innocent and quiet, take That for a hermitage. If I have freedom in my love. And in my soul am free. Angels alone, that soar above. Enjoy such liberty.”
We shall see in the next paper which will deal with Lady Constance Lytton’s two prison experiences, that this is the spirit that animates women in prison even when undergoing tortures.
They are upheld by a sense of devotion to a great cause, and they feel that they are enduring this for the sake of all women.
With such consecration there often comes to such prisoners a development of spirit that is truly marvelous.
All ordinary values have slipped away and the sense of personality is lost in the new sense of solidarity.
They are at one with all the suffering women and the wronged women of the past and of the present.
I never talked with one who regretted having gone through the tortures of the prison.
They are the birth-pangs of the new age.
Rides in the Wagon.
From this wonderful breakfast and the inspiring speaking I was privileged to ride with the group that accompanied the released prisoners to the suffrage headquarters.
Notwithstanding that the young girls dressed in white and harnessed to the wagon with their green, white and purple ribbons, had drawn the six women all the way from Holloway, they gaily took up the march and drew the wagon the additional two miles to St. Clement’s Inn.
There was one young woman not released with the rest because she had infringed a prison regulation and had written a letter to her mother.
She was to be out a week later, and the same demonstration was made for her, only varied with elaborate use of the Scotch heather which gave the colors of the Union, white, purple and green.
Again the girls drew the wagon from Holloway and the young Scotch woman who was being escorted away in triumph bore a banner with the words (warning Mr. Asquith) “Ye mauna meddle with the Scotch thistle, laddie.”
A challenge that many successful tax resistance campaigns have confronted has to do with divisions in the movement.
Sometimes these are deliberate divide-and-conquer tactics by those who oppose the campaign.
Other times, these are just the result of fractures in an unstable coalition, where most of the dividing pressure comes from within the campaign.
It can be important to the success of such a campaign that it maintain and demonstrate solidarity in the face of such challenges.
Here are some examples of how a variety of tax resistance campaigns have tried to cope.
German constitutionalists
In Germany, the government attempted to break a tax resistance movement by offering to moderate its enforcement efforts against people who could show that they had limited means.
Karl Marx, who was promoting the resistance at the time, saw this as a divide-and-conquer tactic and counseled people to disregard it:
The intention of the Ministry is only too clear.
It wants to divide the democrats; it wants to make the peasants and workers count themselves as non-payers owing to lack of means to pay, in order to split them from those not paying out of regard for legality, and thereby deprive the latter of the support of the former.
But this plan will fail; the people realizes that it is responsible for solidarity in the refusal to pay taxes, just as previously it was responsible for solidarity in payment of them.
Rebeccaites
The Rebeccaite movement in Wales was very successful in its bold campaign of destroying toll booths.
But its diffuse, non-hierarchical, anonymous structure made it easy for people to hijack it for their own ends, and it wasn’t long before people and groups calling themselves “Rebecca” began issuing threats and enacting vigilante justice in a variety of causes, or sometimes in what seemed like merely personal grievances.
For example, having come to the help of the farmers by reducing the tolls they were charged when bringing their goods to market, a meeting of Rebeccaites decided they were justified in now demanding that these newly-liberated farmers and merchants lower the prices of their goods.
Butter and beer would now be cheaper in Wales, and the Rebeccaites would make it so by force if necessary.
Things like this made the message of the movement confused, made it less sympathetic to potential supporters, and helped the authorities to recruit spies and people willing to testify against the rioters among those who otherwise might have been their allies.
Irish Land League
The Irish, suffering from famine and under the thumb of government-backed English absentee landlords, began a rent strike under the leadership of the Irish Land League.
The English encouraged the Irish to respond to their sad lot by emigrating to America and elsewhere.
They would have been happy to depopulate the island and make it England’s livestock grazing pasture, and they were eager to diminish by attrition the political power of the native population.
But, as Charles Stewart Parnell put it:
The Land League saw through this design, and defeated it by their advice to the people to resist being compelled to emigrate.
It told them to refuse to pay extortionate rents — that is, rents they could not pay and at the same time feed their families; it told them to refuse to leave their homes unless forcibly ejected, so that winter might not find them without a shelter to their heads; and it told them to refuse to rent farms from which other tenants had been evicted.
British women’s suffrage movement
At the time the Women’s Tax Resistance League and allied organizations were trying to win the vote for women, most men couldn’t vote in Britain either.
The vote at the time was largely restricted to propertied men, though there were ongoing campaigns for universal male suffrage.
By trying to get women to be treated equally as voters under the law, the women’s movement of the time was, thereby, fighting merely for the voting rights of propertied women, not for women in general.
Dora Montefiore reflected on this, and the divisions it threatened to provoke, when she reviewed her time in the movement in her autobiography, From a Victorian to a Modern:
The members of the I.L.P., of which there was a good branch in Hammersmith, were very helpful, both as speakers and organisers during these meetings, but the Members of the Social Democratic Federation, of which I was a member, were very scornful because they said we should have been asking at that moment for Adult Suffrage and not Votes for Women; but although I have always been a staunch adult suffragist, I felt that at that moment the question of the enfranchisement of women was paramount, as we had to educate the public in our demands and in the reasons for our demands, and as we found that with many people the words “Adult Suffrage” connoted only manhood suffrage, our urgent duty was at that moment to gain Press publicity up and down the country and to popularise the idea of the political enfranchisement of women.
I explained in all my speeches and writings that though it looked as if I were only asking for Suffrage for Women on a property qualification, I was doing this because the mass of non-qualified women could not demonstrate in the same way, and I was to that extent their spokeswoman.
… The working women from the East End came, time and again, to demonstrate in front of my barricaded house and understood this point and never swerved in their allegiance to our organisation
Poll Tax rebellion in the U.K.
In Danny Burns’s reminiscences of the Poll Tax Rebellion, he reflects that there were constant tensions in the campaign between the locally-organized grassroots groups that were the real engine of the revolt, and the professional left/labor radical groups and politicians who kept trying to put themselves at the front of the parade.
When a number of people were arrested in a police riot during an anti Poll Tax demonstration at Trafalgar Square, some of the movement leadership distanced themselves from those who had been arrested in the riot — wanting to distinguish nonviolent tax resisters from those charged with resisting arrest or other such charges, and talking about holding “an internal inquiry” to “root out the troublemakers.”
But when the defendants organized their own collective defense committee, the leaders of the All-Britain Federation tried to usurp them by launching their own defense fund and soliciting donations (the attempt failed).
Anti-war, anti-tax coalition building in U.S.
There have been some attempts at coalition building between the left and right in the United States, where the folks at the top keep the folks at the bottom facing off against each other that way so their pockets face outwards and are easier to pick.
One example of such coalition building in the tax resistance movement was a “tea party” held in by the right-leaning group called the National Taxpayers Union, at which left-libertarians like Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess, and leftish war tax resisters like Bradford Lyttle spoke.
The following year, leftist scholar and war tax resister Noam Chomsky, and conservative publisher Robert Kephart spoke at a National Taxpayers Union event.
Another way people can assist and show solidarity with tax resisters is by coming to their assistance if their property is seized.
Here are some examples:
Practical support
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund was established in .
It helps war tax resisters who have had penalties and interest added to their tax bills and seized by the IRS by reimbursing them for a large portion of these additional charges.
The more people we could recruit to shoulder the penalties and interest of resisters, the lighter the burden for everyone.
With the modest help we could provide, conscientious resisters were able to keep on keeping on.
The penalty fund had the added benefit of making us all tax resisters, not just those who withheld all or a portion of their income taxes.
The base list of supporters has been as high as 800 people sharing the weight.
In nearly every appeal, at least 200 people respond, usually more.
In all we’ve paid out about $250,000 to help resisters stay in the struggle.
The story of the seizure of the Kehler/Corner home was the subject of the documentary An Act of Conscience.
When the home of war tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner was seized for back taxes, supporters came from near and far to maintain a 24-hour occupation of the home:
[David] Dellinger and others have come from as far away as California to the Colrain [Massachusetts] house…
Mr. Kehler and Ms. Corner continued to live in the house until they were arrested by Federal marshals last December.
Since then, friends and supporters of the couple have arrived to occupy the almost empty house in week-long shifts marked by the Thursday “changing of the guard” ceremony.
Because the house was sold in a Government auction in , all who go inside risk arrest for trespassing.…
For Bonney Simons of St. Johnsbury, Vt., sleeping on a bedroll in the house is her first official act of civil disobedience.
At 72 years of age, she said, it is time to “put your body where your mouth is.”
Suffragist tax resister Dora Montefiore barricaded her home and kept the tax collector from seizing her property for several weeks in , in what came to be known as the “Siege of Montefiore.”
She noted:
The tradespeople of the neighbourhood were absolutely loyal to us besieged women, delivering their milk and bread, etc., over the rather high garden wall which divided the small front gardens of Upper Mall from the terraced roadway fronting the river.
The weekly wash arrived in the same way and the postman day by day delivered very encouraging budgets of correspondence, so that practically we suffered very little inconvenience…
A woman sympathiser in the neighbourhood brought during the course of the [first] morning, a pot of home-made marmalade, as the story had got abroad that we had no provisions and had difficulty in obtaining food.
This was never the case as I am a good housekeeper and have always kept a store cupboard, but we accepted with thanks the pot of marmalade because the intentions of the giver were so excellent.
Examples like this also proved to be vivid anecdotes that the press could use when describing the siege and the support from sympathizers.
When the U.S. government seized Amish tax resister Valentine Byler’s horses and their harnesses while he was in the field preparing for spring planting, sympathetic neighbors allowed him to borrow their horses so he could continue his work.
Other sympathizers throughout the country who heard about the case sent Byler money — more than enough to buy a new team.
An auctioneer who was dragooned into helping the government sell some of the livestock of a man who had been resisting taxes meant to pay for sectarian education in , donated the fee he had earned for conducting the auction to the resister.
During the water charge strike in Dublin, “local campaign groups successfully resisted attempts to disconnect water and in the couple of instances where water was cut off, campaigners re-connected it within hours.
The first round was won hands down by the campaign and it was back to the drawing board for the councils.”
Similar monkeywrenching is being practiced today in Greece, where activists promptly reconnect utilities of people who have been disconnected for failure to pay the increased taxes attached to their utility bills.
During the Annuity Tax resistance in Edinburgh, people sympathetic to the resisters would bid on and return furniture and other items that had been seized and sold by the tax collectors.
The Rebecca Rioters, on the other hand, were characteristically more direct in their resistance:
Warrants of distress were issued… and the constables proceeded to execute them…
The constables then went towards Talog; but when on their way there they heard the sound of a horn, and immediately between two and three hundred persons assembled together, with their faces blackened, some dressed in women’s caps, and others with their coats turned so as to be completely disguised — armed with scythes, crowbars and all manner of destructive weapons which they could lay their hands on.
After cheering the constables, they defied them to do their duty.
The latter had no alternative but to return to town without executing their warrants.
The women were seen running in all directions to alarm their neighbours; and some hundreds were concealed behind the hedges, intending to appear if their services were required.
The entire district seemed to be aroused, and awaiting the arrival of the constables, who were going to levy on the goods of John Harris of Talog Mill for the amount of the fine and costs imposed upon him by the magistrates.
There could not have been less than two hundred persons assembled to resist the execution of process, and vast numbers were flocking from all quarters, in response to the blowing of a horn, the signal of the Rebeccaites to repair thither.
Various mounted messengers were scouring the country and sounding the trumpet of alarm.…
At Maesgwenllian near Kidwelly, several bailiffs were put in possession for arrears of rent to the amount of £150, but about , Rebecca and a great number of her followers made their appearance on the premises, and after driving the bailiffs off, took away the whole of the goods distrained on.
As soon as daylight appeared, the bailiffs returned, but found no traces of Rebecca, nor of the goods which had been taken away.
A group in Olive Hill, Kentucky in followed the Rebecca model, to an extent, “in a raid… by a band of between 800 and 900 men, who forced Levi White, Collector of Taxes, to give up a stock of goods which had been seized.
The goods were then taken back to the store of Levi Oppenheimer, where the official had seized them.”
Last year in Oaxaca, the PRI said that the would “defend up to the point of injunctions those citizens who suffer from liens imposed as well as judgments in order to prevent the impounding of vehicles, considering it unconstitutional that the police will impound them to stop the driver and remove the unit if the striker does not pay the corresponding [vehicle] tax.”
The IRS auctioned off a portion of Ralph Shinaberry’s property in after he refused to pay a fine for growing more wheat on his farm than his government-assigned quota.
“I don’t believe the Government can tell me how much I can grow,” he said, explaining his resistance.
The winning bidder, Herbert Jessup, told a reporter:
“I have no intention of taking possession of the property.”
When war tax resister Cosmas Raimondi’s car was seized by the IRS in , a handful of families in his parish offered to permanently loan him their car so he could still get around, and many others loaned him their cars temporarily.
“I’ve not had to ask one person,” he said.
In Beit Sahour, when the Israeli occupation authorities seized furniture and appliances from resisters, relatives and others would loan them spares, or camping furniture to use as replacements.
“In Bedfordshire in community pressure persuaded a minister to return goods seized from a Quaker for non-payment of tithes.”
Moral support
When Dora Montefiore was first formulating her “siege” strategy with fellow-activists Theresa Billington and Annie Kenney, they agreed to organize daily demonstrations outside of her home while she was defending it.
Montefiore remembered:
The feeling in the neighbourhood towards my act of passive resistance was so excellent and the publicity being given by the Press in the evening papers was so valuable that we decided to make the Hammersmith “Fort” for the time being the centre of the W.S.P.U. activities, and daily demonstrations were arranged for and eventually carried out. …
The roadway was… ideal for the holding of a meeting, as no blocking of traffic could take place, and day in, day out the principles for which suffragists were standing we expounded to many who before had never even heard of the words Woman Suffrage.
At the evening demonstrations rows of lamps were hung along the top of the wall and against the house, the members of the W.S.P.U. speaking from the steps of the house, while I spoke from one of the upstairs windows.
…shoals of letters came to me, a few sadly vulgar and revolting, but the majority helpful and encouraging.
Some Lancashire lads who had heard me speaking in the Midlands wrote and said that if I wanted help they would come with their clogs but that was never the sort of support I needed, and though I thanked them, I declined the help as nicely as I could. …
The working women from the East End came, time and again, to demonstrate in front of my barricaded house…
When the IRS seized and auctioned off the home and farm of Art Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos in , other war tax resisters and supporters were by their sides:
“I might have cried if I were alone,” Gravalos admitted.
But she was far from alone.
About 75 supporters gathered outside the building and spoke of their solidarity with Elizabeth and Arthur.
About 35 supporters turned up for the second auction, this time held at the IRS office in Lewiston, Maine.
Demonstrators read excerpts from letters to IRS officials and to President Clinton urging them to call off the auction.
In , the IRS levied 78-year-old war tax resister Ruth McKay’s social security checks to recoup the taxes she had been refusing to pay over the previous 20 years.
To show their support of her stand, 40 activists from New Hampshire Peace Action joined her for a vigil at the federal courthouse in Concord, New Hampshire.
When war tax resister Maria Smith’s wages were garnisheed by the IRS in , fifty supporters held a special church service in her honor.
“One of the Valod Vanias,” whose land was seized by the government during the Bardoli satyagraha, “who thus lost all his valuable property, celebrated the event by inviting friends and soldiers of Satyagraha to a party.”
On the other hand, some campaigns have taken the position that sacrifices for the cause are their own reward — that martyrdom is a blessing and that it would be foolish for such resisters to seek or accept recompense.
Nathaniel Morgan was speaking with someone curious about the Quaker stand on war and war taxes, and had this to say:
I told him then that I and my father had refused to pay the income tax on account of war, and had refused it on its first coming out, and withstood it 16 years, except when peace was declared, and that our goods were sold by auction to pay it.
This seemed to excite his curiosity, and made a stand to hear further, on the steps above the engine, going down to the river; asking me if we got anything by that, meaning, was anything refunded by the Society for such suffering.
I immediately replied: “Yes, peace of mind, which was worth all.”
Tax resisters and tax resistance campaigns have at times made use of barricades, blockades, and occupations to keep tax collectors at bay.
Here are some examples:
There were a number of prominent “sieges” in the tax resistance campaign that accompanied the British women’s suffrage movement.
Dora Montefiore barred the arched doorway to her home against the bailiffs in and held out for six weeks before the bailiffs broke through,
…addressing the frequent crowds through the upper windows of the house.
WSPU meetings were held in front of the house daily, and resolutions were taken “that taxation without representation is tyranny.”
After six weeks, the Crown was legally authorized to break down the door in order to seize property in lieu of taxes, a process to which Montefiore submitted, saying, “It was useless to resist force majeure when it came to technical violence on the part of the authorities.”
The “Siege of Montefiore” was a publicity coup for the movement, and served as a useful rallying point for activists.
On the little terrace of the front garden hung during the whole time of the siege a red banner with the letters painted in white: “Women should vote for the laws they obey and the taxes they pay.”
Kate Harvey barricaded her home in and it took seven months for the authorities to crowbar their way in and seize her dining room furniture to auction for back taxes.
The following year they needed battering rams to break her barricade.
The Women’s Freedom League reported, of her first barricade:
Passers-by read the bold declaration that she refuses to be taxed by a Government that refuses her representation because she is a woman.
Her continued resistance has aroused keen interest in the London and Provincial Press, and afforded excellent “copy” for numerous illustrated papers.
and of the second:
An ingenious plan of protection had been devised and carried out, and the King’s officers wrestled with the fortifications for two hours before an entry was effected by means of a battering-ram!
A newspaper article gives more details:
Finally, after a heavy beam was used as a battering ram, the door went in with a crash.
The door, however, led only to a narrow passage, where a still more obstinate door barred the way.
A crowbar, battering ram, and a small jemmy were here brought into use, but even with those it was nearly half an hour before the door, almost splintered, gave way.
Later, the hall was entered, where the tax collector was met by Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard.
Here was little furniture visible, and it was not until a locksmith had forced the door of the dining room that the bailiff was able to place his levy upon goods.
The amount of the tax, it is understood, is about £15.
When the tax collector and bailiff came to seize goods from Isabella Harrison,
Mrs. Harrison then gave instructions for the tradesmen’s entrance and windows to be locked and bolted, and herself opened the inner front door, closing it behind her and keeping her hand on the handle.
The Tax Collector, who was standing with the bailiff inside the outer front door, asked if he was addressing Mrs. Darent Harrison, and hoped she would allow him to execute his trying task and produced his paper.
Mrs. Harrison asked and was told the names of the local magistrates who had signed the warrant, and explained that her house could only be entered by force.
… The Tax Collector protested that he could not employ force against a woman — that was quite out of the question.
Mrs. Harrison then suggested that if he did not intend to stand there till he or she collapsed he must either employ force or call in the police to do so.
He scoffed at the idea of sending for the police, but finally sent the bailiff to see if he could find any.
But no police were to be found.
The bailiff was next sent to get his dinner, and when he returned he reported “still no police anywhere to be found.”
It was a complete impasse.
They had been facing one another for three hours, and the Tax Collector seemed equally determined to “do his duty” and not to be guilty of even a technical assault on an elderly woman.
It was only after being taunted with cowardice — with fear of the consequences of meeting moral with physical force — that he finally made an effort to get control of the handle of the door, and so with the assistance of the bailiff to force his way in.
On an earlier occasion, Harrison had barricaded herself inside her home.
Supporters brought her food and supplies by means of a basket she lowered from a window by a rope.
There is at least one report of similar barricades in the American women’s suffrage movement.
Lillie Devereaux Blake addressed a New York Women’s Suffrage Society meeting in , and
…narrated several anecdotes of vigorous ladies, who, in the security of their own castles, had defied all the approaches of the tax collector.
One lady, she said, was in the habit of barricading herself in her house whenever the tax collector made his appearance, getting into a top room of the house, and from that coign of vantage, delaying the minion of the Government with potations from her parlors.
[Laughter.]
In this case, Mrs. Blake said it was suspected that the collector had paid the taxes himself, rather than submit to the convincing streams of the lady’s eloquence.
[Laughter.]
The story of the seizure of the Kehler/Corner home was the subject of the documentary An Act of Conscience.
War tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner refused to leave their home when it was seized by the U.S. government in , defying a federal court order.
When Kehler is arrested and imprisoned for contempt of court, a dozen affinity groups maintained a round-the-clock occupation of the home through .
During the Dublin water charge strike:
People were told how to block up their stopcocks to make it difficult for their water to be cut off.
Empty bean tins and a little bit of cement were the necessary ingredients.
In a group of French syndicalists and unemployed workers rallied at the home of “two of their comrades who refused to pay the income tax” and successfully deterred the police and bailiffs from appearing.
During the Fries Rebellion, officials tried to arrest Henry Shankwyler, but were foiled by a crowd of fifty supporters, who “went in advance of the officers, and, reaching the house before them,” intimidated the marshal into withdrawing without his prey.
“Some said if he were taken out of his house they would fight as long as they had a drop of blood in their bodies.
… Seeing that nothing further could be accomplished there, the officers took their leave.
As they left the house the people set up a shout and hurrahed for ‘Liberty.’ ”
Irish “Blue Shirts” held a rally in County Cork to protest government property seizures against tax resisters, and “[w]hile the conference was sitting, County Cork farmers felled trees in the roads, cut telephone wires and made other efforts to prevent further seizure of cattle for unpaid annuities.”
At one point “police fired upon a crowd attempting to prevent the forced sale of cattle seized for non-payment of taxes,” killing one.
Una Ridley, an English council tax resister, told a reporter in :
…how the couple had managed to foil efforts by bailiffs to remove property.
“So long as you make yourself secure, close all the downstairs windows and all the upstairs ones too, the bailiffs cannot make an entry,” she said.
In Samoa in , officials tried to arrest Tamasese, the head of the Mau movement, for tax refusal:
…a party of civil police attempted to arrest Tamasese at Apia, but were prevented by crowds of Mau supporters, who obstructed the police and managed to get him away in a car.
On , at Vaimoso village, another attempt was made by a party of civil police at his home.
On that occasion the police were covered by a party of 30 men from the cruisers.
Resistance was again made, and the police and the naval party, to avoid bloodshed, retired. further attempt to make an arrest was made at the home of Tamasese at Vaimoso on .
The party of six military police was stoned by women and others, and it retired.
Barricades were used successfully in the battle against Thatcher’s Poll Tax.
In one early case:
Over 300 people turned up outside [Jeannette McGuin’s] house.
Banners were hung out of the window saying “God Help the Sheriffs.”
The sheriffs didn’t show up and Jeannette McGuin never heard another word from them.
In some others:
[I]n Edinburgh over 300 people filled a central high street to prevent a poinding… 200 activists guarded flats in the Grass Market area… and 150 people guarded 11 flats in Stockbridge and Comely Bank.
In another:
Demonstrators threatened to form a human blockade outside the home at Irvine of Mr Alex Smith, MEP for Scotland South, who has refused to pay a £50 penalty imposed for not registering for the community charge.
However, before the protesters arrived, two sheriff’s officers, who called at Mr Smith’s home, left without trying to force entry after he refused to let them in.
Jackie Moyers of the Mayfield/Newtongrange Anti-Poll Tax Union reported:
The very first poinding which was supposed to have been taking place was in a small village called Pathead…
The back of eight o’clock everybody started coming up, they actually started running a relay service, a shuttle service with cars going to collect people, and I’d say by about half-past nine to ten o’clock we had 110 people standing in the garden.
It was a beautiful day, it was like everybody was sunbathing, having a day out; we stood about there, everybody singing songs, we had the records on, a couple of them had a wee drink, things like that, waiting on the sheriff officers coming…
The sheriff officers turned up, got on the phone and, lo and behold, a police car turned up… So the police came up and asked us if the sheriff officers could get in and I said, “Well, I’m telling you, under no circumstances whatsoever are we allowing any sheriff officers into anybody’s house to carry out a poinding.”
…So the sheriff officers turned around to the police, and says “I want him arrested, because he’s organising this,” and the police says, “well, we can’t do a thing.”
And everyone in the garden, I says to them, well, “They want me arrested.”
They says, “Well, if you’re getting arrested then all of us are getting arrested.”
And by this time, the local coalman had come up the road in his lorry, stopped his lorry and blocked the street.
The two guys at the back jumped off, and the coalman who was driving the lorry, they jumped over the fence and joined us.
The local council workers, who were doing the windows at the time, downed their tools and got in the garden and supported us.
It’s worse than jungle drums, because the local baker heard it, he came around with his baker’s van and started dishing out cakes to us.
The sheriff officers were getting quite panicky by this time.
The police got in their car and left the sheriff officers.
I told them again.
I said, “You’d better get going.
It’s a waste of your time.
We know you’re not going to get in, so there’s nothing else you can do.”
… They tried to get in for five or ten minutes and by this time the crowd were getting quite hostile, and I says, “I think you’d better go to your car while you’ve still got four wheels and you’re still able to walk.”
At Bishops Lydeard, people “divided up into small groups, and blockaded every road into the village.”
Barricades were constructed and every vehicle which tried to enter was stopped and asked its business.
… In the end, the bailiffs didn’t come near the place.
Poll tax resisters also sometimes occupied or blockaded the offices of sheriffs and bailiffs.
During the Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance, blockades were used to obstruct the movement of constables when they were seeking to arrest resisters, and barricades were used to prevent property seizure.
Here are excerpts from one government investigation of the Annuity Tax disturbances:
…I saw sledge hammers and other instruments there to open the premises and get at the goods, but after labouring for half an hour or more they could not effect an entrance.
Q: Was that because Mr. Dun used some of the metal in which he was a dealer to barricade his premises?
A: Yes; tons of metal were put up against the back door, and it was impossible for them to get in.
Mr. Dunn had barricaded the door of the room where the poinded effects were, so that an entrance could not be had… I found that the room where the poinded goods were was filled up to above the centre of the room with boxes filled with plates of iron of immense weight.
We were told that the poinded goods were lying beneath those, and that we might get at them as we could.
I sent for labourers, and had the whole of those boxes removed into the front shop until I got access, after great trouble, to the sheets of brass, which were the poinded articles.
These were then declared by the sheriff officers to be of a different description, and inferior to what they had previously poinded; they refused to take them; and the only articles they recognised were some coils of copper wire; those they took to the police office, and those were all that were obtained on that occasion.
During the Bardoli satyagraha, farmers famously barricaded their homes with their cattle inside to protect them from seizure.
When the attachment operations began, minute instructions were issued to meet every situation.
In the beginning only those who had received notices were to greet the attachment parties with closed doors.
Then whole villages were turned into blackholes, and people who could not put up with the terrible strain involved were humourously asked to undertake a pilgrimage.
When it was found that in spite of the greatest precautions, the Pathans managed to carry away carts, break into enclosures and unhinge closed doors, the Sardar [resistance commander] said: “Pull your carts to pieces.
Keep the body in one place, wheels in another, and shafts in a third place; make your hedges extra strong with thorns and bushes; and fortify the doors in such a way that they might not be able to open them except by breaking them open with axes.
Exhaust them thoroughly.”
In order to save their beloved cattle 80,000 men, women, children with these cattle have locked themselves up in small and insanitary houses for over three months.
As I passed through villages, silent, empty and deserted with sentinels posted at different ends, I saw women peeping through the barred windows to see whether it was the arrival of the japti [attachment] officer and on being reassured the doors being opened I was taken inside and I saw the darkness, the stench, the filth; and the men, women and children who had herded for months in the same room with their beloved cattle — miserable, lacerated, grown whitish by disease — and as I heard their determination to remain in that condition for months rather than abandon their cattle to the tender mercies of the japti officer I could not help thinking that the imagination which conceived the dire japti methods, the severity which had enforced them and the policy which had sanctioned them were difficult to be found outside the pages of a history of medieval times.
In Alwar, India, in , blockades were used against tax collectors:
Thousands of armed Hindu Moslem [sic] peasants of splendid physique with fighting spirit are concentrating in an area of 22 square miles to repel the State tax gatherers.
The roads by which the lorries have been bringing troops have been made impassable.
The paths are blocked by huge boulders…
“Early one morning in Karl North (Rochester, N.Y.) was alerted by neighbors that the IRS had seized his car and was about to have it towed for $11.29 in unpaid telephone tax.
Without time to grab his car key, Karl rushed out of the house and lay down under the car.
This disconcerted the IRS enough that when they stopped everything to call the police, he ran back into the house, got the key, rushed back out, and drove the car off.”
Landholders in Tasmania launched a tax strike in , and when the police came with distress warrants, “Householders padlocked their gateways, and mastiffs were chained at the approaches.”
The tax resisters at the “New Rush” in South Africa in assembled a force to prevent the jailing of one of their comrades who had refused to pay a fine.
The Hut Tax War in Sierra Leone began when a king named Bai Bureh assembled an armed group which successfully defended him against an expected attempt to arrest him for refusing to pay the Hut Tax — an attempt that a later government investigator labeled “aggression pure and simple on the part of the authorities.”
Other angry kings and people, inspired by Bai Bureh’s successful action, rallied to his side.
In , drivers parked their cars in the middle of the streets in downtown Paris, blocking all traffic for 45 minutes at mid-day to protest a fuel tax.
Property seizures were also used by the British women’s suffrage movement as opportunities to hold protest rallies or for propaganda.
Here are some examples from the news of the time:
“Miss Muller, far from relenting to save her property, publicly advertised the date of the seizure, and invited the women of England to come and witness the disgraceful spectacle of a woman being robbed by the minions of the law because she dared to ask for a voice in the disposition of her taxation.
The invitation was accepted by hundreds of well-dressed but excited and indignant women, who crowded into Cadogan Square and nearly mobbed the bailiffs while they were removing the lares and penates from the Muller residence.
An indignation meeting was afterward held in Miss Muller’s drawing-rooms and many bitter and vehement denunciations of the tyranny and injustice of the law were indulged in.”
“Miss Raleigh naturally made use of the occasion for propaganda purposes, conversing with the tax collector for some time on the subject of Woman Suffrage, and presenting him with Suffrage literature, which he accepted.”
“A very successful protest was made at Finchley on in connection with the seizure of property belonging to Miss [Sarah] Benett, late hon. treasurer of the W.F.L. By courtesy of the auctioneer, Miss Bennet, was allowed to explain her reason for resisting payment of taxes.
A very successful open-air meeting was held afterwards.”
A tax resistance campaign can benefit its recruiting efforts, engage public sympathy, and constrain the response of the government, by getting a good spin out in the media.
Here are some examples:
The Bardoli tax strike was media savvy, both in terms of national establishment media, and in terms of local, down-to-earth outreach methods:
“A campaign like this could not be carried out without a publicity department,” wrote Mahadev Desai.
“The peasants could not be asked to subscribe to daily papers or even to the weekly Navajivan, and outside papers could at best give an outside view of the campaign.
… The arrangement was to issue a daily news bulletin and publish Sjt. Vallabhbhai’s speeches in pamphlet form and to distribute them free to the agriculturalists all over the taluka.
… The arrangement answered most admirably, the villagers waiting anxiously for the patrikas every morning and devouring the contents with avidity.
All the Gujarati and almost all the English dailies of Bombay reproduced them verbatim, and as the movement gathered force, every important town and village in Gujarat began to get copies of the bulletin with the result that over and above ten thousand copies distributed in Bardoli, four thousand copies were subscribed to by places outside.”
In the course of describing the organizational structure of the nonviolent resistance army, Mahadev Desai noted: “[U]nder these officers were privates ready to march anywhere and everywhere, at any hour of the night and day, and ready to do the lowliest of duties, from carrying a message to drawing water from the well.
… The round of duties of most of them began often as early as 3 A.M., when they started with their orders for the day to the various villages where they would distribute the daily news bulletins issued by the Publicity Bureau.
… All were to go amongst the peasants, acquaint themselves with their needs and difficulties, cheer them up, and explain to them the instructions of the Chief.”
Mahadev Desai continues: “And at the head of them all the Sardar, ever on the move, without haste and without rest, ever vigilant, his iron discipline ever unrelaxed, paying the penalty of his exclusive prerogative — speech-making — often at midnight, and often at three or four places in a day.”
… “The Bardoli victory was not won by a miracle.
It was the inevitable fruit of patient and incessant toil, the inevitable result of the teaching that the Sardar wore himself out to impart day in and day out.
During the first two months he gave three days in the week to Bardoli, but as soon as the Ahmedabad Municipality released him, all his waking hours were given to the people of Bardoli, the day usually beginning at 5 P.M. and ending at 2 A.M., with four or five speeches a day on average.”
The case of Valentine Byler, an Amish man who refused to participate in the American Social Security system for conscientious reasons, was notable for how it played out in the media.
Part of this was due to the clumsy heavy-handedness of the IRS, which seized Byler’s horses out from under him literally as he was working his field.
Asked about this, the IRS Chief of Collections said: “Plowing never occurred to me.
I live in an apartment.”
The frame of thoughtless-urban-bureaucrats vs. godly-heartland-people attached itself to the story, and editorialists across the country who were already skeptical of welfare state policies jumped on it.
“What kind of ‘welfare’ is it,” wrote the New York Herald Tribune, “that takes a farmer’s horses away at spring plowing time in order to dragoon a whole community into a ‘benefit’ scheme it neither needs nor wants, and which offends its deeply held religious scruples?”
Byler got letters of support from around the country.
And Congress eventually felt enough of the pressure that it carved out an exception for the Amish exempting them from the Social Security law.
Abby and Julia Smith, who were taxed excessively by an unscrupulous local government for which they, as women, had no voice in electing, knew how to make their struggle attractive to the news media.
Julia prepared a speech for the town council, which fell on deaf ears — but she then released it to the editor of a nearby newspaper, which reprinted it and compared the sisters’ actions to those American Revolutionaries who fought for the principle of “no taxation without representation.”
An accompanying editorial concluded: “It will not be creditable if Abby Smith and her sister are left to stand alone… to fight the battle of principle unaided.”
Sure enough, they found support — rhetorical and practical — from many quarters.
“[M]uch of the nation’s interest in the Glastonbury case was the work of Abby,” wrote Elizabeth George Speare in recapping the case, “who willingly took pen in hand to keep her public informed.
Though she once reminded a Toledo editor that she could not give quite so much time to answering such distant requests, she seems to have welcomed every opportunity to recount, in her pungent style, a tale which lost nothing in constant retelling.”
The Women’s Tax Resistance League in Britain made sure to have speeches and propaganda ready to deliver at any events — such as tax auctions — that the media might cover.
Such speeches might form the core of an overtaxed reporter’s coverage of such an event.
When Dora Montefiore barricaded her home against the tax collector in , she recalled:
In a bailiff had been put in my house, a levy of my goods had been made, and they had been sold at public auction in Hammersmith.
The result as far as publicity was concerned was half a dozen lines in the corner of some daily newspapers, stating the fact that Mrs. Montefiore’s goods had been distrained and sold for payment of income tax; and there the matter ended.
When talking this over in with Theresa Billington and Annie Kenney, I told them that now we had the organisation of the W.S.P.U. to back me up I would, if it were thought advisable, not only refuse to pay income tax, but would shut and bar my doors and keep out the bailiff, so as to give the demonstration more publicity and thus help to educate public opinion about the fight for the political emancipation of women which was going on.
They agreed that if I would do my share of passive resistance they would hold daily demonstrations outside the house as long as the bailiff was excluded and do all in their power outside to make the sacrifice I was making of value to the cause.…
…From the day of this simple act of closing my door against the bailiff, an extraordinary change came over the publicity department of daily and weekly journalism towards this demonstration of passive resistance on my part…
On the morning following the inauguration of the siege, Annie Kenney and Theresa Billington, with other members of the W.S.P.U., came round to see how we were getting on and to encourage our resistance.
They were still chatting from the pavement outside, while I stood on the steps of No. 32 Upper Mall, when there crept round from all sides men with notebooks and men with cameras, and the publicity stunt began.
These men had been watching furtively the coming and going of postmen and tradesmen.
Now they posted themselves in front, questioning the suffragists outside and asking for news of us inside.
They had come to make a “story” and they did not intend to leave until they had got their “story.”
One of them returned soon with a loaf of bread and asked Annie Kenney to hand it up over the wall to my housekeeper, whilst the army of men with cameras “snapped” the incident.
Some of them wanted to climb over the wall so as to be able to boast in their descriptions that they had been inside what they pleased to call “The Fort”; but the policeman outside (there was a policeman on duty outside during all the six weeks of a siege) warned them that they must not do this so we were relieved, in this respect, from the too close attention of eager pressmen.
But all through the morning notebooks and cameras came and went, and at one time my housekeeper and I counted no less than twenty-two pressmen outside the house.
A woman sympathiser in the neighbourhood brought during the course of the morning, a pot of home-made marmalade, as the story had got abroad that we had no provisions and had difficulty in obtaining food.
This was never the case as I am a good housekeeper and have always kept a store cupboard, but we accepted with thanks the pot of marmalade because the intentions of the giver were so excellent; but this incident was also watched and reported by the Press.
When I read stories from newspaper archives about the tax strike in Beit Sahour during the first intifada, I’m struck with how much more sympathetic the English-language press was toward the Palestinian people at that time.
They are depicted as human beings, with families and aspirations, and their grievances are taken seriously and explored and analyzed and given credence.
The contrast with the coverage in today’s media is stark.
Beit Sahour was a high water mark of sorts.
This can partially be explained by the fact that most of the resisters were Palestinian Christians, and so did not trigger the anti-Muslim bias that shapes much of the English-language reporting from the area — one news account made much of the fact that the Israeli military had seized “Christian crosses carved of olivewood and the statuettes of the Good Shepherd and the Madonna” from one resister.
But the resisters were also very deliberately media savvy: they stuck to nonviolent tactics, which, besides being tactically sensible under the circumstances, also made the draconian Israeli crackdown seem particularly bullying; and they used slogans, like “no taxation without representation” that could not help but fall on sympathetic ears in the English-speaking world.
Another article noted that when the Israeli military lifted its siege of Beit Sahour, “hundreds of residents gathered at a central intersection to celebrate and to escort journalists to homes and shops from which troops had seized goods.”
During the campaign against Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax, the very name “poll tax” was a propaganda coup.
Thatcher had launched the tax under the benign name “community charge,” but the opposition movement used “poll tax” right off the bat, and the name stuck.
That name had resonance with anti-poll tax campaigns of the past, dating back as far as the rebellion of Wat Tyler.
The movement also pitted the government against pensioners, the disabled, student nurses, families with live-in elderly relatives, and other such victims that made for a sympathetic media narrative.
“Stories like this flooded both the national and local media,” writes movement historian Danny Burns.
“One minute the focus was on the nurses, next on the disabled, then on the pensioners.”
The IRS includes a publicity strategy with their enforcement actions, and grades itself with how much publicity it gets when it cracks down on a tax evader, thus “sending the message to taxpayers that violations of the Internal Revenue Code and related financial crimes are being investigated and prosecuted.”
Since the IRS is already doing the work to make sure the press is aware of the action, and of course giving out their own spin, it makes sense for tax resisters to be prepared with their own message.
“Never let a lien, levy, seizure, auction, summons, Order to Show Cause, or indictment pass without taking the opportunity to publicize opposition,” advise the authors of the book War Tax Resistance: A Guide to Withholding Your Support from the Military.
“The IRS is very sensitive to adverse public opinion.
It is probably the most disliked agency of the government.
You may be surprised at the amount of support and sympathy you will get from the general public and media when struggling against the IRS — if you take care to organize properly.”
NWTRCC has some ideas on how to make a bigger media splash, including propaganda leaflets, props & costumes, theatrical protest ideas, penny polls, tax form burnings, bake sales, banners, vigils, and so forth.
John Clifford, leader of the Passive Resistance movement
I have a single article in my sample of articles from concerning the tax resistance campaign against elements of the Education Act.
This, from the Northampton Mercury, concerned an auction of goods seized from tax resisters in which, somewhat bizarrely, one of the resisters was also the auctioneer.
Excerpts:
Passive Resistance in Northampton.
The first sale of the distrained goods of Passive Resisters in the Borough of Northampton took place at the Auction Mart, Abington-square Cafe, Northampton, on .
About 90 Passive Resisters who conscientiously objected to contribute to the rates that proportion of the amount which would be devoted to the support of sectarian teaching, were summoned at the Northampton Borough Police Court on .
The distress warrants were issued in due course, and they were executed, generally by the assistant overseers of the several parishes, about ten days or a fortnight ago.
Mr. G.W. Beattie, one of the resisters, proffered his services as auctioneer free of charge, and needless to say the offer was gratefully accepted.
The sale took place in Mr. Beattie’s auction mart, where he had stored the goods free of charge from the date of their seizure.
There were in all 87 lots, including two from the village of Duston.
The auctioneer himself had his goods seized on three distress warrants — one for his residence, the second for his office in College-street, and the third for his auction mart.
One or two other resisters were summoned for two rates.
A complete list of the resisters, the goods seized, and the amounts required by each warrant, appeared in ’s Northampton Daily Reporter.
At , when the sale commenced, the room was full, quite 250 persons being present, the resisters being well in evidence.
Mr. Beattie was greeted with hearty applause when he took his stand at the table.
In opening the proceedings he said that if he had not been a passive resister and in full and hearty sympathy with the movement nothing possible could have induced him to take that position that evening (hear, hear, and applause), for it was at once an unpleasant and unpopular duty.
(Hear, hear.)
To the greater part of that audience he knew that he need make no apology.
(Hear, hear.)
He thanked the overseers for allowing him to act as auctioneer at that sale.
(Hear, hear, and applause.)
The conditions of the sale were: Cash upon delivery and before removal.
(Laughter.)
He had arranged with the Rev. J.F. Nodder, the secretary of the Citizens’ League, that Mr. Nodder should start bidding for those resisters who desired their goods to be bought in.
Mr. Nodder would in such cases name the sum required by the warrant, plus the expenses, and if there were no further bids the goods would be at once knocked down to Mr. Nodder.
The sale then commenced.
The proceedings were most orderly and good humoured.
In nearly every case the goods were bought in by Mr. Nodder or by the owner personally.
Once or twice some would-be humourist bid 2d. or 3d. for a ten-shilling article before Mr. Nodder could bid the amount required, and now and again there was a little competitive bidding, but in hardly any case was there any serious attempt to purchase the articles.
Of the 87 lots about 70 were knocked down to Mr. Nodder’s first bid without any attempt at competition.
In half a dozen cases where the bidding did not equal the amount required by the overseers the auctioneer announced that the articles were by arrangement bought in by the assistant overseers concerned.
The names of one or two prominent ministers and citizens who are well known in the movement were received with hearty applause as soon as their goods were offered…
…Mr. Frank Bates put into the sale a framed portrait of the Rev. Dr. Clifford, and, needless to say, the portrait of the apostle of passive resistance, who is such a favourite in Northampton, quite brought down the house…
Mr. Beattie [said]… he was only sorry that in Northampton, known throughout the world, and certainly throughout the length and breadth of this kingdom, as a town which stood for religious freedom, that there were only 90 resisters.
(Hear, hear.)
They had not reached the end of the struggle yet by a very long way.
There were some in connection with the League who, if he had judged them aright, intended to show their resistance in a very different form ere long if the occasion demanded it.
(Applause.)
The sale occupied barely an hour.
A protest meeting was held shortly after.
Hymns were sung, a letter from John Clifford was read, and the usual speeches were given.
One of these was by Rev. Arthur Morgan, who said in part:
He was beginning to think that instead of a Passive Resistance Brigade, they would have to have a Prison Brigade.
(Applause.)
They knew the inconvenience of having their goods sold, and some of them knew what it was to have to pay more than they could afford for the rights of conscience, but when they saw men sneering and laughing at their action they were beginning to wonder whether they should not rise to a higher level and say to their critics, “If you think this is a joke, if you think this is a mere trick on our part to overthrow the Government, you have sadly mistaken us, and sadly mistaken our action.
(Applause.)
We are prepared to go to prison for the Right (applause), and I for one,” added Mr. Morgan, “am prepared to step across the dividing line from being a Passive Resister into becoming a member of the Prison Brigade.”
(Cheers.)
The Education Act must be killed, and if the only way to destroy it was through the prison, then, God help them to put upon themselves the brand of the prison, the stain of the prison house, for they must kill it.
(Loud applause.)
I also found an early mention of suffragette Dora Montefiore’s tax resistance, in which it is suggested that she learned the tactic from the anti-Education Act campaign.
This comes from the Leamington Spa Courier and Warwickshire Standard:
Dora the Determined.
“Evil communications corrupt good manners.”
So wrote Tertullian, so quoted Paul, so it has happened in the case of Mrs Dora B. Montefiore, of Hammersmith.
The lady being undoubtedly of Hebrew origin, we cannot suppose that she has much sympathy with Dr. Clifford, the apostle of passive resistance.
But that she has been studying Dr. Clifford’s methods is evident.
She has not only studied them, but has resolved to put them into practice.
Not indeed so far as the education rate is concerned, but with respect to a rate of much more importance, the Income Tax to wit.
Upon what grounds?
Non-representation.
She holds strong views on the subject of female suffrage, and she has informed the Daily News that she has resisted the claim for Income Tax because she is refused a voice in the spending of the taxes, and “taxation without representation is tyranny.”
Her goods have been seized, and will be sold on .
There is, of course, no reason why “passive resistance” should not be adopted by the whole army of faddists; but what becomes of civilised and constitutional government in the meantime?
