The statue of John Hampden, presented to the county of Buckinghamshire by Mr. James Griffiths, of Long Marston, in commemoration of the Coronation, was unveiled at Aylesbury on by Lord Rothschild.
There was a large gathering, representative of Buckinghamshire generally.
After some difficulty the Women’s Tax Resistance League received the assurance that they would be able to pay their last tribute to the great Tax Resister.
At the close of the unveiling ceremony a procession of members of the League crossed the market square to the statue, the crowd readily making way, while police lined the short route.
On behalf of the League, two delegates, Miss Gertrude Eaton and Miss Clemence Housman, laid a beautiful wreath at the foot of the statue.
It was made of white flowers, on which, in black letters, were the words, “From Women Tax Resisters.”
Within the circle of flowers was a ship in full sail with the name of John Hampden in gold letters on the streamers.
The ship was made of brown beech leaves (the beech is the tree most famous in Buckinghamshire) and white flowers.
Emblems were also laid at the base of the statue from the Irishwomen’s Franchise League [this was corrected in a later issue; it was actually from the Irish League for Women’s Suffrage] (a harp in Maréchal Niel roses), the Gymnastic Teachers’ S.S. (blue immortelles and silver leaves), and the London Graduates Union (a laurel wreath).
Among those present were Mrs. [Myra Eleanor] Sadd Brown, Mrs. [Mary] Sergeant Florence, Dr. Kate Haslam, Mrs. [Ethel] Ayres Purdie, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, Miss [Minnie?] Turner, M.A., Miss [Maud?] Roll, Mr. Lee and Mr. Sergeant.
Tax Resistance: The Situation at Bromley.
“My goods are not yet seized for non-payment of taxes. I am still barricaded.
“Outside the gate!
“A most uncomfortable position for the tax collector!
But, while offering sympathy, I feel the experience will be beneficial.
There is nothing so enlightening as a little ‘fellow-feeling.’
Nothing like going ‘there’ to learn the discomforts of being where the woman is, and should be, according to the gospel of the man at Westminster.
Bolts and bars are never pleasant things to deal with — from outside!
They are terribly, cruelly hard to remove when fixed by men driven by fear to protect an unjust wall of separation.
But walls must yield to pressure, and the women gather, intent on ‘breaking down’; content, if need be, to ‘be broken.’
While men, relying on their fastenings, ignore the trembling of foundations, women know the wall is doomed, and when it falls they will flock in to do the bidding of the “Anti” — to scrub and clean, to mind the babies, to stay in the home — the National Home.”
K[ate]. Harvey.
Meetings in the Market-square, Bromley.
Meetings are now being held every evening in the Market-square, Bromley, and are exciting wide interest.
Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard was the speaker at the first, and told the crowd why Mrs. Harvey was making this emphatic protest against taxation without representation.
Mrs. Despard’s own experiences aroused much interest.
The following evening Mrs. [Isabel] Tippett spoke, and still larger crowds gathered to hear her.
By news of these regular meetings had spread, and the audience was ready to receive the speakers.
The “Antis” are showing themselves — a sure sign of our success — but the chief argument they bring forward, in the form of questions, is that of physical force: because women do not fight they should not vote.
Mrs. Merivale Mayer, the speaker on , was able to show how beneficial the women’s vote had proved in Australia, and told of the surprise of Australian politicians that the Mother Country still refuses to give the women the chance to stand side by side with men in the fight against evil.
The police are exceedingly kind — and evidently interested.
More Tax Resisters.
On , at Redding, goods belonging to Professor Edith Morley were sold.
Speakers: Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, Miss Gertrude Eaton.
Also goods belonging to Miss Manuelle, at Harding’s Auction Rooms, Victoria Station, W.
Speakers: Mrs. [Caroline] Louis Fagan, Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, Dr. [C.V.] Drysdale; and at Working, silver, the property of Mrs. Skipwith, was sold.
Speakers: Mrs. [Barbara] Ayrton Gould, Mrs. Kineton Parkes.
On , at Southend, silver belonging to Mrs. Douglas Hameton and Mrs. [Rosina] Sky was sold.
There was a procession with brass band prior to sale, and also a very successful protest meeting.
Speakers: Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. Kineton Parkes, Mr. Warren.
The need for women to be on the watch is strikingly shown in the news of her experiences which has been sent us by Miss Clara Lee, of Thistledown, Letchworth, who points out how she forced an admission of error from the Inland Revenue Authorities.
She writes thus:—
As a tax resister, the following experiences prove the carelessness of Government officials.
Having refused to pay Inhabited House Duty (8s. 9d.) to the local collector, I was reported by him to the surveyor for this district, who sent a demand containing two inaccuracies.
I wrote to point that one ought not to have occurred, seeing that we had had compulsory education since ; the other, he would see did not agree with the original:—
Local Demand.
s.
d.
Schedule A
5
0
House Duty
8
9
Surveyor’s Demand.
£
s.
d.
Schedule A
0
5
0
Schedule B
1
1
5
House Duty
0
8
9
Schedule B, I found, applied to nurseries and market gardens.
So I wrote pointing out that the nearest connection I had to either, was that under the Lloyd George Insurance Act I was classed with agricultural labourers.
To this I received the following letter:—
4, Cardiff-road, Luton, .
Inland Revenue — Surveyor of Taxes.
Madam, — Referring to your letter of , I much regret that £1 1s. 5d. was included upon your demand note in error — the entry relating to the next person upon the collector’s return. — Yours faithfully,
(Signed) G.R. Simpson.
Is this the exactness of the work for which women, as well as men, pay so heavily?
How long would a commercial firm exist, if it allowed such errors?
How long would the public tolerate such mistakes by women workers in our hospitals and elsewhere?
The title of idiot, lunatic and criminal must revert to the people responsible for such a condition of things.
The 8s. 9d. Inhabited House Duty has now been deducted from my claim of return Income-tax; this seems an unusual proceeding.
I am still locked up!
A fellow “resister” has sent the following lines to cheer me:—
Good luck, my friend, I wish to thee, In thy brave fight ’gainst tyranny. Bracken Hill Siege will bring good cheer To those who hold our Freedom dear, And fight the good fight far and near.
And when oppression is out-done, And Liberty, at last, is won, When women civic rights possess, They’ll think, I hope, with thankfulness, Of those who bore the battle’s stress.
Those women who have heard or read of the impending arrest of Mr. Mark Wilks (the husband of Dr. Elizabeth Wilks) in consequence of his inability to pay income-tax on his wife’s earnings from her profession, will doubtless be interested to know why such a situation is possible, and what is the exact legal position of the husband and wife.
Long ago in the dark ages, or to speak more precisely, in , the Income Tax Act was passed, which regulates all income-tax procedure, even to the present day.
It is a most fearsome piece of composition.
Its language is archaic and tautological, it rises wholly superior to punctuation, and proceeds breathlessly through one hundred and ninety-four clauses.
Clause No. 45 provides that the “profits” of any married woman “shall be deemed to be the profits of her husband,” and are to be charged with income-tax in his name and not in hers.
In other words, he was to pay, and she was to be exempt, a perfectly fair arrangement in the bad old times when a man acquired his wife’s revenues or earnings on their marriage and she became thereby literally a “destitute” person.
The word “profits” denotes all revenue or income derived either from the wife’s capital or her labour.
So whether she receives her income from rents, interest, dividends, &c., from the exercise of a trade or profession, or from salary or wages paid for her services or labour, a demand for payment of income-tax thereon must be made to her husband, and to him only.
If he fails to comply with such demand, he can be thrown into prison (without any trial or other formalities) until he pays.
Such is the unfortunate and wholly absurd position to which man-made law has brought Mr. Mark Wilks — as well as numerous other husbands whom the Inland Revenue authorities are mostly unable to locate.
It will be seen that his arrest might involve a husband’s being imprisoned indefinitely, or even permanently, the period of detention being only determined by payment of the sum demanded, which in the present instance is £40. Most of the Press reports have rather distorted Mr. Wilks’ case by asserting that it is Mrs. Wilks who is refusing to pay.
Legally no married woman can even be asked to pay income-tax, and therefore a refusal on her part is quite out of the question.
I can hear someone saying, “Oh, but in we obtained a Married Woman’s Property Act.”
Quite true, but according to an official letter from Somerset House in my possession, “the Crown does not recognise this Act.”
The Crown authorities claim the right to maintain the position as it existed seventy years ago, and to over-ride the later and minor Act whenever it happens to suit their own ends.
It happens — for reasons which space compels me to omit — to suit them to the tune of two and a-half million pounds a year.
Mr. Lloyd George confessed quite frankly in the House of Commons recently, when it was suggested to him that it was high time the Government set an example of compliance with the law, instead of bare-faced defiance of it, that to recognise the Married Women’s Property Act would annually deplete the Treasury to this large amount.
Mr. Stuart Wortley boldly told the Government they were an unscrupulous and dishonest lot, who juggled with the laws of the country, and shaped their policy on £ s. d., instead of on even-handed justice.
And in the course of the debate it was stated that if mercantile firms conducted their business on this principle they would speedily find themselves in the dock.
Readers will probably be in thorough agreement with this declaration.
As a tax-resister on the ground that taxation and representation must go together, Miss Marie Lawson has made the following appeal to His Majesty the King:—
To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, etc. The Humble Petition of Marie Lawson, of 5, Westbourne-square, London, showeth:—
That your petitioner, having been proceeded against by Your Majesty’s Attorney-General in the High Court of Justice with respect to the non-payment of Income Tax, humbly prays Your Majesty to stay the said proceedings in consideration of the circumstances hereunder set forth:—
That the imposition of such tax is wrong and unjust in that it is an infringement of the principle that taxation and representation must go together, a principle which has been long recognised in that rule which prohibits the House of Lords, and an unrepresentative assembly, from initiating or amending Money Bills; and it is respectfully submitted that the same principle should operate to prevent the House of Commons, an assembly equally unrepresentative with regard to Your Majesty’s female subjects, from initiating or enforcing financial legislation affecting such subjects.
That the redress of grievances has long been recognised as a condition to supplies, and that arbitrary taxation has been persistently and successfully resisted in the past, whether the arbitrary taxation levied by the King in his own person which in the Stuart period plunged this country into Civil War, or the arbitrary taxation levied by Parliament, in the name of the Crown, which caused the American revolution.
That Your Petitioner, in common with large numbers of other women, has been driven to resistance by the goad that is furnished by the continued refusal of your Majesty’s government to grant to the women of Great Britain that measure of justice already enjoyed by their sisters in Your Majesty’s dominions beyond the seas.
The morals of Somerset House [the offices of Inland Revenue] are like those of the much abused “heathen Chinee.”
The Department has a very simple and convenient maxim by which it regulates its conduct, and that is, Never be aware of anything unless it pays.
So long as money could be easily obtained by annexing Mrs. Wilks’ furniture and effects, the Inland Revenue authorities shut their eyes to the fact that she was Mrs. Wilks, living with Mr. Wilks, and therefore might be assumed by any intelligent person to be married.
Their excuse is that she never “told” them she was married until recently, and so they assumed she was not!
Presumably they thought Mr. Wilks was her father-in-law or her grandfather-in-law, or that she called herself Mrs. Wilks by way of a joke.
So soon as they found no more money would be obtainable from her, they conveniently realised that she had a husband, from whom they demand the tax.
“But a great many excuses must be made for a Department which has only become officially alive to woman’s existence during the current year,” writes Mrs. [Ethel] Ayres Purdie to us.
“Hitherto all official letters began with ‘Sir,’ regardless of the fact that women pay taxes, and pay for the official stationery and clerical work.
As I objected to having ‘Sir’ hurled at me every time I opened an official letter, I drew up a form letter, in which I observed that ‘business men’ were in the habit of addressing women clients or customers as ‘Madam,’ and I should be much obliged if they would remember this fact, and refrain from the solecism of addressing me as ‘Sir.’
Every public official from the humble clerk up to Departmental secretaries and arrogant Treasury clerks received one of these letters as regularly as clockwork every time they called me ‘Sir.’
At last they have learnt to address women as ‘Madam,’ and this year even the printed forms begin ‘Sir or Madam,’ for all the world like a respectable business firm.
That “the Law is a Hass” no one has ever seriously attempted to deny; but what one wants to know is what to say of the people who make it?
This is an aspect of the case that has been much neglected; but with a little goodwill and concentration, we hope to make up for lost time and direct attention to the real offenders.
It is a poor kind of wit or wisdom that breaks its shaft over the suffering head of the Law, and keeps silence on the subject of the Law-maker.
The gentlemen who draw salaries large and small, ranging from £10,000 to £400 a year for performing what one might describe as the most highly skilled work required by the country, and who perform that work in such a way as to create such situations as that leading to the arrest of Mr. Mark Wilks for non-payment of taxes not his own and due on an income over which he has no control and whose amount he can only guess at, are surely playing the biggest “bluff” ever put up, on their long-suffering fellow-men.
One’s mind wanders between the alternative possibilities, that those in office are knaves while the others are fools, or that they are all knaves together; or that they are “mostly fools,” both in office and out.
…
…Acts in conflict with each other, such as the Income Tax and Married Women’s Property Acts, the National Insurance and the Truck Acts, should be brought into harmony on some definite ruling; and some attempt should be made by future legislators so to simplify their language as to make their meaning plain without the superfluity of litigation which their unhappy ambiguity at present inflicts on the nation.
While waiting for this legislative millennium, we fill in the time by demonstrating on every possible occasion how poor is the workmanship for which we are called upon to pay such preposterous prices, and how entirely logical and correct a fashion of protesting our displeasure and disability is the Tax Resistance policy, of which Mr. Mark Wilks and Dr. Wilks are the latest exponents.
All Suffragists will thank them for their spirited action, which from the nature of the case must have been painful and unpleasant for them both.
We shall not readily forget such support as that given by Mr. Wilks; and the demonstration on by the W.F.L., the W.T.R.L., the Men’s League and the Men’s Federation, showed how forcible is such action.
The position was entirely appreciated by the large crowds which gathered round the Lions in Trafalgar Square; and in spite of a good deal of laughter and “chaff” which was never ill-natured, a large section of the “long-suffering” British public testified to its dissatisfaction with the present state of the law and its approval of the tactics of the Women Tax Resisters.
True “Queen’s weather” favoured the opening of our autumn campaign on , when the Freedom League, in conjunction with the Tax Resistance League, the Men’s League, the Free Church League, and the Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage met in the Trafalgar-square to demand the enfranchisement of women and to protest against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for the non-payment of his wife’s taxes.
Mme. Mirovitch and Mr. Herbert Jacobs were among those who supported the speakers.
The large crowd, which gathered half an hour before the meeting began and remained throughout the two hours of its duration, showed the widespread interest in votes for women.
Both before and during the speeches members of the Tax Resistance League paraded the Square, carrying sandwich-boards bearing the words in bold letters, “We demand the immediate release of Mark Wilks.”
There were two platforms on the plinth, one presided over by Miss Anna Munro and the other by Mrs. [Isabel] Tippett.
At both of these the following resolution was put and carried by a large majority:— “That this meeting demands from the Government the political enfranchisement of women this Session, and the immediate release of Mr. Mark Wilks.”
Ridiculous Position of the Government.
Mrs. Tippett, in opening the meeting, pointed out the extraordinary and ridiculous position in which the Government has placed itself by the arrest of Mr. Wilks.
The crowd was intensely interested while she read a statement of Mr. Wilks with regard to his position.
Mr. Futvoye, of the Men’s Federation, in moving the resolution, said how glad he was to be on a common platform with so many suffrage societies.
The women’s movement had drawn together people of different parties, religions and sexes.
He emphasised the fact that women will be unable to get fair conditions of life and labour until they get the vote.
As long as they are unrepresented the Government will take no notice of their demand for a living wage.
Mrs. Merivale Mayer, seconding the resolution, said there was much talk about progress in these days, but when women talked of it it seemed to be thought that she required man’s permission to rise.
This was not progress.
Miss Boyle, in supporting the resolution, showed the ridiculous situation brought about by the incompatibility of the laws with regard to Income-tax and the Married Women’s Property Act.
Members of Parliament are the servants of the people, paid, whether they be ministers or ordinary members, out of the pockets of both men and women.
Though paid to make laws, they did their job so badly that other people then had to be paid to find out what the law meant.
Women wanted better value for their money, especially when it was taken from them under compulsion.
Suffragists had found that Tax Resistance was very effective; but though Government was spending public money in trying to put down the Suffrage movement, they would not succeed.
In being so blind as to the strength and significance of the movement, and in their treatment of the women of this country, they were obliged to look either fools or brutes, and as they were not afraid to look either they succeeded in looking both.
An Appeal to Business Men.
Mr. Simpson supported the resolution.
He appealed to the practical business men in the crowd, who had the vote because others had fought for it for them.
After long years of legislation of the people for the people by the people they wanted less of Party politics and more improvement in social conditions.
In the Labour market, what had been done to raise wages was neutralised by the cheap labour of women.
Votes for women was the only remedy for this.
Miss [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, of the Tax Resistance League, explained that Mrs. Wilks refused to pay her taxes because she realised that such a refusal was the most logical protest a woman could make against a Liberal Government whose cry had been that with taxation must go representation.
The Government was bound either to remove the burden of taxation, or give women the vote.
She thought men ought to make the protest, for the Government had imprisoned a man, while Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard, Mrs. Pankhurst, and many other women who had not paid taxes for years, were still at large.
Worse than Ancient Rome.
At the other platform, presided over by Miss Munro, the mover of the resolution was Mrs. [Margaret] Nevinson, who kept her audience in a ripple of laughter.
She thought it was high time to alter the laws of this country, which in some respects were worse than those of ancient Rome, when in the twentieth century a man could be put in prison for doing nothing.
She told several very amusing and yet pathetic stories of cases she had known before the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act, but said that the passing of that Act had brought about such anomalies as the present one, when a man could be arrested for not paying his wife’s taxes when he didn’t even know her income.
Mr. Lawrence Housman, in seconding the resolution, said that as a member of the Tax Resistance League he would like first to thank the Women’s Freedom League for allowing them to share in this meeting and to state a man’s grievance.
He found women always ready to help men, and felt that if men had been as ready to help women they would not be in the position they are to-day.
According to the Anti-Suffragists, the sending of a man to prison for his wife’s default is an example of the wife’s privileges under the law.
All honest women want to get rid of this privilege.
At the mention of Mrs. [Mary] Leigh’s release there was loud applause.
Mr. Housman said the Government dare not kill her because, whatever she had done, they knew she was fighting for a just cause.
Here was a case where physical force, so beloved by the Anti-Suffragists was defeated.
Man and Woman Standing Together.
Mrs. Despard, who was received with loud applause, said it gave her peculiar satisfaction to support the resolution, particularly the last part of it, for in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Wilks she saw coming true an old dream of hers, the dream of men and women standing together, not only in the family, but in that larger family — the State.
She was proud that these were her personal friends.
It was difficult to understand the actions of the Government with regard to tax resistance, for she had not paid taxes for two years, and the Government had done nothing but tell her that she should know their intentions.
In Ireland one weak woman had defied them; they had found it useless to coerce; the only possible course was to yield to the just demands of womanhood.
Poetic Justice.
Mrs. Tanner said that although everyone was indignant at the arrest of Mr. Wilks, there was some sort of poetic justice in a man having to suffer through the muddle made by men.
It showed how incapable men were of legislating by themselves.
Women asked for a share in the Government in order to try and prevent such muddles occurring in the future.
Mr. Kennedy supported the resolution as a member of the Men’s League.
He reminded his audience that the poet Whittier, in writing of Women’s Suffrage, had said that it was right because it was just, and although the consequences were not known, it was the safest thing, the truest expediency, to do right.…
Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, of the Tax-Resistance League, also very briefly supported the resolution.
She begged for sympathy and support of Mr. Wilks and announced how this could be publicly shown.
…
Enthusiasm for Dr. Wilks.
At the end of the meeting Dr. Wilks spoke a few words from each platform.
She was received with great applause, which was redoubled when she announced that neither she nor her husband intended to pay the tax.
Mr. Mark Wilks, of 47, Upper Clapton-road, N.E., was arrested on while on his way to the school of which he is headmaster, and removed to Brixton Prison, for the non-payment of his wife’s Income-tax.
He is the husband of Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, suffragist and upholder of the principle “No vote, no tax.”
Her goods have been distrained upon on two occasions for non-payment of taxes.
In a “manifesto” he has issued Mr. Wilks says:—
In my wife claimed that such distraint was illegal, asserting that under the Income-tax Act she, as a married woman, was exempt from taxation.
The authorities then wavered in their claim, making it sometimes on her, sometimes on me, sometimes on us both conjointly, finally on me alone.
On my pointing out that her liability had already been established by forcible distraint upon her property, I was informed that for the future I should be held liable, as that by the Income-tax Act the “wife’s property for purposes of taxation is the husband’s,” although by the Married Women’s Property Act it is entirely out of his control.
Thus I am to be held liable for a tax on property which does not belong to me.
I am now told I am to be committed to prison until such time as I shall pay the “duty and costs” — over £37.
Dr. Wilks’s Statement.
Writing to the Standard (“Woman’s Platform”) Dr. Elizabeth Wilks states the case forcibly and clearly thus:—
Will you allow me a space in your columns to explain as clearly as I can the position my husband and I respectively take in regard to the non-payment of tax on my earned income?
The Press misrepresents the case when it speaks of Mr. Wilks’s refusal to pay the tax.
I refuse to pay any Imperial tax until the Parliamentary vote is granted to women on the same terms as to men.
He does not refuse to pay, but as an assistant-teacher under the London County Council he has not sufficient money to do more than pay the tax on his own income, which he has done.
While, however, married women are not recognised as taxable units the claim does not fall on the right person.
At present the Income-tax Act still holds a man liable for the tax on his wife’s income, in spite of the fact that a more recent Act, the Married Women’s Property Act, has taken from him all control over that income.
Yet we neither of us dreamed that this anachronism would be thus glaringly exposed by the imprisonment sine die of a husband earning a smaller income than his wife.
I am taunted with the fact that while asking for my rights I am unwilling to accept my liabilities.
This is untrue.
I am asking to be recognised as a person both as regards rights and liabilities.
If the State comes to recognise me as a person liable to taxation, but still denies me representation, I, as a voteless tax-resister, shall be in Holloway Prison instead of my husband, a voter and taxpayer, being in Brixton — perhaps a somewhat less absurd position than the present one.
In the meantime the law does indeed press hardly on my husband, and a very striking example is given of the tendency of present-day legislation to penalise those who desire to comply with the marriage laws of the country.
Had the tie between us been irregular my husband would have been practically exempt from Income-tax, and for years I could have claimed abatement.
Because we are legally married he has had to pay the tax on the whole of his salary.
There is one other point I should like to mention.
From the outset of my professional career the authorities have sent the claim on my earned income to me and not to my husband.
In , instead of paying, as I had previously done, I wrote across the form, “No vote, no tax.”
They then distrained on me for the amount.
In I questioned the legality of the threatened distraint, and the authorities then wavered in their claim, making it sometimes on me, sometimes on my husband, sometimes on us both conjointly, finally on him alone.
Now after two years’ intermittent correspondence he is in prison for inability to meet it.
Manifestly if he is liable I am not, and the distraints executed on my goods were illegal.
If I am liable his arrest was illegal and the distraints on me should have been continued.
Certainly it is open to suppose that my husband’s imprisonment is not only unjust but unlawful.
A remark made by Mr. Hobhouse in a debate on the Finance Act on , makes this supposition the more probable.
On this occasion (Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 20, No. 92) he said, speaking on Mr. Walter Guinness’s amendment: “It may be said by hon. gentlemen opposite, ‘Why don’t you send one of the demand forms to the wife?’
I am not at all sure if that course were taken that the Inland Revenue would not put themselves out of court subsequently in their demand from the husband.”
Have they not in this case so put themselves out of court?
Mr. Hobhouse was not sure at that time.
Have the officials become sure since?
Teachers Sign a Petition
A petition against the arrest of Mr. Mark Wilks, the Clapton headmaster, for the non-payment of his wife’s Income-tax, has been circulated among London County Council teachers.
On the first day a thousand signatures were received, and many others are rapidly being obtained.
Protest Meeting.
A public indignation meeting, to protest against the imprisonment of Mark Wilks, will be held on , at the Caxton Hall, Westminster.
The chair will be taken by the Hon. Sir John Cockburn, K.C.M.G., and the speakers will be Mr. H[enry].G[eorge].
Chancellor, M.P., Mr. Laurence Housman, Mr. Herbert Jacobs, Rev. Fleming Williams, and Mr. G[eorge].
Bernard Shaw.
Tickets: Reserved, 2s. 6d.; unreserved, 1s. To be had from The International Suffrage Shop, Adam-street, Strand; and from The Women’s Tax Resistance League, 10, Talbot House, St. Martin’s-lane, W.C.
…Mrs. [Marianne] Hyde and Miss Bennett addressed a meeting in Regent’s Park on , and a resolution was passed calling on the Inland Revenue authorities to release Mr. Mark Wilks, who is imprisoned in Brixton Gaol for the non-payment of his wife’s income-tax.
Great Protest Meeting Against the Imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks.
“No Government Can Stand Ridicule. The Position is Ridiculous!”
The great meeting of indignant protest against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks, held at the Caxton Hall on , under the auspices of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, will be not only memorable but epoch-making.
The fight for woman’s citizenship in “free England” has led to the imprisonment of a man for failing to do what was impossible.
Throughout the meeting the humor of the situation was frequently commented upon, but the serious aspect was most strongly emphasized.
Sir John Cockburn, who presided, struck a serious note at the outset; for anything, he said, that touched the liberty of the citizen was of the gravest importance.
He remarked that it was the first occasion on which he had attended a meeting to protest against the action of law.
The resolution of protest was proposed by Dr. Mansell Moullin, whose many and continued services to their Cause are warmly appreciated by all Suffragists, in a very able speech, and ran as follows:—
That this meeting indignantly protests against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for his inability to pay the tax on his wife’s earned income, and demands his immediate release.
This meeting also calls for an amendment of the existing Income-tax law, which, contrary to the spirit of the Married Women’s Property Act, regards the wife’s income as one with that of her husband.
A Husband the Property of His Wife.
Dr. Moullin expressed his pleasure in supporting his colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, in the protest against the outrage on her husband.
The case, he said, was not a chapter out of “Alice in Wonderland,” but a plain proof that, although imprisonment for debt has been abolished in England, a man may be deprived of his liberty for non-payment of money which was not his, and which he could not touch.
The only argument that could be used was that Mr. Wilks was the property of his wife.
Twice distraint had been made on the furniture of Mrs. Wilks, the third time the authorities carried off her husband; it is the first occasion on which it has been proved that a husband is the property of his wife.
The law allows a man to put a halter round the neck of his wife, take her to the market-place and sell her, and this has been done within recent years; but there is no law which allows the Inland Revenue authorities to sell a husband for the benefit of his wife.
Governments, he added, can stand abuse, but cannot stand ridicule, and the position with regard to Dr. Wilks and her husband is both ridiculous and anomalous.
The serious question behind the whole matter was how far anyone is justified in resisting the law of the land.
The resister for conscience’ sake is the martyr of one generation and the saint of the next.
Dr. Moullin doubted whether the Hebrews or Romans of old would recognise what their laws had become; we are ashamed of the outrageous sentences for trivial offences passed by our forefathers; our children will be ashamed of the sentences passed to-day.
Everything in the law connected with women required reconstruction from the very foundation, declared Dr. Moullin.
Constitutional methods, like Royal Commissions, were an admirable device for postponing reform; all reformers were unconstitutional; they had to use unconstitutional methods or leave reform alone.
The self-sacrifice of an individual makes a nation great; that nation is dead when reformers are unwilling to sacrifice themselves.
No Man Safe.
Mr. George Bernard Shaw was the next speaker, and gave a characteristically witty and autobiographical address.
He 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 of 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 never saw his wife reflecting in a corner without some fear that she was designing some method of putting him and his sex into a hopeless corner.
He never spoke at suffrage gatherings.
He steadily refused to join the ranks of ignominious and superfluous males who gave assistance which was altogether unnecessary to ladies who could well look after themselves.
“If my wife did that to me, the very moment I came out of prison I would get another wife.
It is indefensible.”
— George Bernard Shaw
Under the Married Women’s Property Act the husband retained the responsibility of the property and the woman had the property to herself.
Mr. Wilks was not the first victim.
The first victim was G.B.S. The Government put on a supertax.
That fell on his wife’s income and on his own.
The authorities said that he must pay his wife’s supertax.
He said, “I do not happen to know the extent of her income.”
When he got married he strongly recommended to his wife to have a separate banking account, and she took him at his word.
He had no knowledge of what his wife’s income was.
All he knew was that she had money at her command, and he frequently took advantage of that by borrowing it from her.
The authorities said that they would have to guess at the income; then the Government passed an Act, he forgot the official title of it, but the popular title was the Bernard Shaw Relief Act.
They passed an Act to allow women to pay their supertax.
In spite of this Act, ordinary taxpayers were still apparently under the old regime, and 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.
It is indefensible.”
Women, he added, 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 vote.
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.”
Bullying Fails.
Mr. Laurence Housman laid stress on the fact that the Government was endeavouring to make Mrs. Wilks, through her affection, do something she did not consider right.
Liberty could only be enjoyed when laws were not an offence to the moral conscience of a people.
Laws were not broken in this country every day because they were not practicable.
Every man, according to law, must go to church on Sunday morning, or sit two hours in the stocks; it was unlawful to wheel perambulators on the pavement.
If the police were compelled to administer all the laws on the Statute Book, England would be a hell.
To imprison Mr. Wilks for something which he had not done and could not do was as sane as if a servant were sent to prison because her employer objected to lick stamps under the Insurance Act.
The Government had tried bullying, but women had shown that it did not pay.
Self-respecting people break down a law by demonstrating that it is too expensive to carry.
Question for the Solicitor to the Treasury.
The legal aspect was the point specially dealt with by Mr. Herbert Jacobs, chairman of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage.
He said that it was stupidity, not chivalry, which deprived the husband under the Married Women’s Property Act of of the right to his wife’s earnings, but did not relieve him of responsibility to pay for her.
Imprisonment for debt has been abolished; but if it could be shown that a man had the means to pay and refused to pay, he could be sent to prison for contempt of court.
Mr. Jacobs suggested that the Solicitor to the Treasury should be asked to reply to the following question: “What has Mr. Wilks done or omitted to do that he should be imprisoned for life?”
The law, he added, does not compel a man to do that which he cannot possibly perform.
The action of the Internal Revenue authorities may be illegal; it certainly is barbarous and ridiculous.
Bad Bungling
Mr. H[enry].G[eorge].
Chancellor pointed out that the Married Women’s Property Act was an endeavour by men to remove injustice to women, but because they did not realise the injustices from which women suffer and avoided the woman’s point of view, they bungled badly.
No one can respect a ridiculous law, and the means to be taken in the future to avoid making ridiculous laws, must be to give women the right to make their opinions effectively heard through the ballot-box.
Mr. Chancellor said that he had investigated 240 Bill[s] laid on the table of the House, and had found that 123 were as interesting to women as much as to men; twenty-one affected women almost exclusively; six had relation to the franchise.
“When we consider these Bills,” he added, “we rule out the whole experience and knowledge of women.
We must abolish sex privilege as it affects legislation.
I appeal to men who are Antis to consider the Wilks case, which is possible just so long as we perpetuate the huge wrong of the continued disenfranchisement of women.”
Refinement of Cruelty
In a moving speech Rev. Fleming Williams declared that the case of Dr. Wilks and her husband ought to appeal to men all over the country.
He spoke of the personal interviews he had had with Mr. Wilks in the presence of the warder, and of the effect of imprisonment upon him.
It was impossible to contemplate without horror the spectacle of the Government’s attempt to overcome the wife’s resistance by the spectacle of her husband’s sufferings.
If she added to his pain by humiliating surrender, it would lower the high ideal he cherishes of her principles.
“She dare not do it; she will not do it!” exclaimed Mr. Williams. He added that he had had an opportunity of waiting upon the Inland Revenue Board and tried to show them how their action appears to outside people.
He had suggested that, in order to bring the law into harmony with justice, representative public men in co-operation with the Board should approach the Treasury to secure an alteration in the law.
“But,” declared Mr. Williams, “if women are made responsible by law it will not bring the Government an inch nearer the solution of the difficulty.
They may imprison women for tax resistance, but married men would not stand it.
The only way is to say to Dr. Wilks, “We will give you the right to control the use we intend to make of your money.”
The resolution was passed unanimously with great enthusiasm, and thus ended a meeting that will be historic.
The Campaign.
A great campaign is being carried on for the release of Mr. Mark Wilks.
On , the Women’s Tax Resistance League held a meeting, followed by a procession in the neighborhood of the prison, and on Sunday there was a large and very sympathetic meeting in Hyde Park.
Mrs. Mustard took the chair.
Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard and Mrs. [Margaret] Parkes were the speakers.
The resolution demanding the release of Mr. Wilks was carried unanimously.
Nightly meetings are held in Brixton by the Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage.
A great demonstration will take place on , in Trafalgar-square.
Members of the Women’s Freedom League and all sympathisers are asked to come and to bring their friends.
There will be a large attendance of London County Council teachers — more than 3,000 of whom have signed a petition against the arrest of Mr. Wilks.
A deputation of Members of Parliament and other influential men is being arranged by Sir John Cockburn to wait upon Mr. Lloyd George and to see him personally about the case.
We hope earnestly that before this issue of our Vote appears, news of the release of Mark Wilks will be brought to us.
It seems to us impossible that the authorities of the country can persist in their foolish and cruel action.
But, in the meantime and in any case, it may be well for us seriously to consider the situation.
We are bound together, men and women, in a certain order.
For the maintenance of that order, it has been found necessary for communities and nations all over the world to impose laws upon themselves.
In countries that call themselves democratic, it is contended that the civil law is peculiarly binding, because the people not only consent, but, where they have sufficient understanding, demand that the laws which bind them shall, in certain contingencies, be made or changed or repealed according to their need, and because by their voice they place in seats of power the men whom they believe to be honest and wise enough to carry out their will.
That, at least, is the ideal of democracy.
For several generations the British nation has claimed the honour of being foremost in the road that leads to its achievement.
We (or rather the men of the country) boast of our free institutions, of our free speech, of the liberty of the individual within the law to which he has consented, of the right to fair trial and judgment by his peers when he is accused of offences against that law; above all — and now we have the difference between a democratically governed country and one under despotic rule — not to be liable to punishment for the omission of that which he is unable to perform.
It seems clear and simple enough — what any intelligent schoolboy knows; and yet our so-called Liberal Government, which flaunts in every direction the flag of democracy, which proclaims, here severely and there with dulcet persuasion, that liberty for all is their aim, and that “the will of the people shall prevail,” does not hesitate, when it is question of a reform movement which it dislikes and despises, to set itself in direct opposition to its own avowed principles.
For what do the arrest and imprisonment of Mark Wilks mean?
We are perfectly certain that it will not last long.
Stupid and inept as it has been, the Government, we are certain, will not risk the odium which would justly fall upon it if this outrage on liberty went on.
A Government which has much at stake and which lives by the breath of popular opinion cannot afford to ignore such strong and healthy protest as is being poured out on all sides.
To us, who are in the midst of it, that which seems most remarkable is the growth of public feeling.
In the streets where processions are nightly held, we were met at first by banter and rowdyism.
“A man in prison for the sake of Suffragettes!”
To the boy-mind of the metropolis, on the outskirts of many an earnest crowd, that seemed irresistibly funny; but thoughtfulness is spreading; into even the boy-mind, the light of truth is creeping.
If it had done nothing else, the imprisonment of Mark Wilks has certainly done this — it has educated the public mind.
It is not we, the Suffragists alone — it is women and men in hosts who are asking, What do these things mean?
On the part of these in our movement they mean courage, determination, skilful generalship — aye, and speedy triumph.
On the part of our opponents, perplexity and failure.
“This is defeat, fierce king, not victory,” said Shelly’s Prometheus, when from his rock of age-long pain he hurled heroic defiance at his tormentor.
The ills with which thou torturest gird my soul To fresh resistance till the day arrive When these shall be no types of things that are.
Woman, in this professedly liberty-loving country, may echo the hero’s words.
Defeat, in very truth, for what can the authorities do?
Their position is an extraordinary one.
In a lucid interval, politicians — not clearly, it may be, understanding the issues involved — passed the Married Women’s Property Act.
We believe there were no Antis then to guide and encourage woman-fearing man.
This may partly account for it.
In any case, the deed was done.
Married, no less than single women and widows, became owners of their own property and lords of their own labour.
It would have saved the country from much unnecessary trouble if, then, politicians had gone a step further, if they had recognised woman’s personal responsibility as mother, wage-earner or property-owner, and had dealt with her directly.
Love of compromise, unfortunately, weighs too deeply on the soul of the modern politician for him to be able to take so wise a course, and it is left for his successor to unravel the tangle.
What are the authorities to do?
While, with threats of violence and dark hints of disciplined, organised resistance, Ulster defies them, Suffragists by almost miraculous endurance are breaking open prison doors.
While brutal men, under the very eyes of a Minister of the Crown, are torturing and insulting women, in token, we presume, of their devotion to him, the story of the wrongs of women — not only these but others — is being noised abroad.
None of our recent publications has been bought so freely as “The White Slave Traffic.”
While well-known women tax-resisters are left at large, a man who has not resisted, but who respects women and will not coerce his wife, is arrested and locked up in prison without trial, and, since he cannot pay, for an indeterminate time.
A pretty mess indeed, which will take more than the subtlety of an Asquith, a Lloyd George or a McKenna to render palatable to the men on whose votes they depend for their continuance in power!
In a few days they will be faced with a further difficult problem.
Women are prepared to resist, not only the Income, but also the Insurance Tax.
Let us see what the alternatives are.
Mark Wilks may be let out as Miss [Clemence] Housman was; but that will not help the Government.
It is a poor satisfaction to a creditor of national importance to know that his debtor is or has been in prison.
He wants his money, and the example of one resister may be followed by many others.
If so, that big thing the Exchequer suffers.
The creditor may, when Parliament comes together, pleading urgency, pass an Act which will make married women responsible for their own liabilities.
That might result in a revolt of married women which would have serious consequences.
Men who live at ease with their children, shepherded by admirable wives, would find it, to say the least, inconvenient to be deprived periodically of their services.
And these men might be in the position of Mark Wilks.
They might not be able to pay, while their wives might have no goods on which distraint could be made.
Truly the position would be pitiable.
Over the Insurance Act the same difficulties will arise.
What is a distraught Government to do?
The answer is clear.
The one and only alternative that lies before our legislators is at once to take steps whereby women — workers, mothers, property-owners — shall become citizens.
That done, we will pay our taxes with alacrity; we will bring our quota of service to the State that needs our aid, and the unmannerly strife between man and woman will cease.
In the meantime, the law and the legislator are defeated ignominiously, and it is becoming more and more evident that, in a very near future, “the will of the people shall prevail.”
It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to devise a situation which would show more clearly than does the Wilks’ case, how absolutely incapable is the average man of grasping a woman’s point of view, or of realising her grievances and legal disabilities.
For seventy years men have been cooly appropriating the Income-tax refunded by the Inland Revenue on their wives incomes.
Did anybody ever hear of a man raising a protest against the state of the law which made it possible and legal for a husband to do this?
My own experience covers a good many years of Income-tax work, and the handling of some hundreds of cases, but the only complaints I have ever heard have come from the defrauded wives.
I have observed that the men always accepted the position with the utmost equanimity.
But now, when by the exercise of considerable ingenuity, women have contrived, for once in a way, to put the boot on the other leg, the Press and the public generally is filled with horror, and the air is rent with shrieks of protest from the male sex.
The Evening News sapiently remarks that women might have been expected to have more sense than to seek to show up a law which is “so obviously in their favour”!
And The Scotsman says: “One would imagine that the last thing the Wilks’ case would be used for is to illustrate the grievance which woman suffers under the law.
Here two laws combine to favour the wife and inflict wrong upon the husband.”
And it goes on to deride women and “their inherent illogicality.”
Here we see clearly manifest the absolute incapacity of man to realise the existence of any injustice until it touches himself or his fellow man.
Nothing could well be more logical than the holding of a man responsible for non-payment of his wife’s Income-tax, since it is the necessary and inevitable corollary of the theory that a wife’s income belongs to her husband, and that all refunds of Income-tax must be made to him, and to him only.
It is in accordance with logic and also with strict business principles that no person can claim the advantages of his legal position while repudiating its disadvantages.
Thus if a man dies leaving money, his son cannot claim to take that money and at the same time repudiate his father’s debts.
He must accept the one with the other.
And in exactly the same way, women are no longer going to allow men to claim their legal right to demand re-payment of their wives’ Income-tax, unless they also accept their legal responsibility for its non-payment.
The game of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose is played out, and the sooner men realise this fact the better it will be for everybody.
The “logic” of The Scotsman and its contemporaries is no longer good enough for women.
The law must be forced to take its course where men are concerned as it does where women are concerned.
As to the provisions of the Income-tax Act favouring the wife and wronging the husband, I can only say that Mr. Wilks’ case is the first in all my experience where these provisions acted adversely to the husband.
And even in this case they only so acted because women had laid their heads together to bring it about, and thus show how little men relish a law of their own making when it begins to act on the boomerang principle, and they find themselves “hoist with their own petard.”
A few actual instances, casually selected out of a large number, will show how wives have hitherto been “favoured.”
A man and his wife have £100 a year each, taxed (at 1s. 2d. in the £) by deduction before they receive it.
There are four children, on each of whom the husband is entitled to claim a rebate of £10 a year.
(The wife, it should be noted, can never claim any rebate whether she has a dozen or a score of children.
And if a widow, having children, re-marries, the rebate on these children goes to their step-father.)
Consequently the husband can, and does, reclaim not only the tax deducted from his own income, i.e. £5 16s. 8d., but also the £5 16s. 8d. deducted from his wife’s income.
So he really pays no tax at all, and gains £5 16s. 8d. while she loses a similar amount.
Thus the actual position is, that the wife is only worth £94 a year, while he is worth £106 a year, though nominally their incomes are the same.
If single, each could claim repayment of £5 16s. 8d., therefore marriage represents a loss to the wife, but a profit to her husband.
A member of the Women’s Freedom League was forced to leave her husband on account of his misconduct, and to bring up and educate her children without any financial aid from him.
But for a number of years he regularly drew the “repayment” of her Income-tax, until a merciful Providence removed him from this mundane sphere, by which time it was calculated that she had lost, and he had gained, about £200. At his death she, of course, ceased to be a legal “idiot,” and was allowed to claim her repayment for herself.
I may remark here that the Income-tax Act has a favourite method of classifying certain sections of the community, namely, as “idiots, married women, lunatics and insane persons.”
I don’t know precisely what the difference is between a “lunatic” and an “insane person,” but doubtless there is a difference, though unintelligent persons might think they were synonymous terms.
As regards the point of resemblance between the “idiot” and the “married woman,” it is rather obscure, but after intense mental application I have succeeded in locating it; and really when somebody illuminates it for you it becomes clear as daylight.
It is quite evident to me that our super-intelligent legislators are convinced that the woman who is capable of going and getting married is an utter “idiot,” and in fact next door to a “lunatic.”
Well, men ought to know their own sex, and if they say that the women who marry them are idiots, it must be true, I suppose.
We may therefore take it that a woman evinces her intelligence by remaining unmarried.
I ought humbly to explain that, being married myself, I am only one of the idiots, and therefore my ideas on any subject must not be taken to have the slightest value.
But to return to our instances of “favouritism,” another man has £230 a year and his wife £170 a year.
She pays Income-tax (deducted before receipt) to the tune of £9 18s. 4d., and he pays 2s. 6d..
It sounds impossible, perhaps; but when you know the rules it is quite simple.
To begin with, he gets an abatement of £160, which leaves him with £70. Then he gets a further abatement of £67 for insurance premiums, a great part of which premiums are paid by his wife on her own life.
This leaves him with a taxable income of slightly over £3, on which he pays 9d. in the £1., amounting to half-a-crown.
This couple have no children.
If they had any he would begin not only to pay no tax himself, but to have some of hers repaid to him.
She, however, under any circumstances, will always be mulcted of the £9 18s. 4d.; unless she becomes a widow, when she will be able to reclaim the whole amount.
(The official forms supplied to those reclaiming Income-tax read: “A woman must state whether spinster or widow.”)
If we reverse the financial position of this couple, and assume that she receives £230 and he only £170, she would then be paying £13 8s. 4d. Income-tax.
Contrast this with his payment of half-a-crown in the same circumstances, and observe how highly she is “favoured.”
He, however, would then pay nothing and would receive a “refund” of nearly £3 10s. a year.
A very enterprising and smart young fellow was able to treat himself to a really nice motor-cycle — not the sort that has a side-car for a lady — out of his wife’s “repaid” tax; repaid to him, I mean.
He can’t support himself, but depends on her, as she has just about enough for them both to rub along on, though she can’t afford luxuries for herself, and wouldn’t have paid for his.
But the Inland Revenue gave him her money quite cooly and without the slightest fuss.
The “Scotsman” will be pleased to hear that this poor husband manages to bear up quite bravely under his “wrongs,” and seems indeed to get a considerable amount of satisfaction out of them.
His wife, I am truly sorry to say, doesn’t properly appreciate the favour shown to her by the law.
But then men are naturally brave, and women are by nature a thoroughly ungrateful lot I expect, if they could only see themselves as The Scotsman and The Evening News see them.
In this connection it is interesting to note that three years ago two members of our Edinburgh Branch, the Misses N[annie]. and J[essie].
Brown, walked from Edinburgh to London, chatting of Woman Suffrage with the villagers all along the line of route southwards, many of whom had then not even heard about this question.
They started from Edinburgh in and reached London before .
A further point of interest is that the father of these ladies was the last political prisoner in Claton Gaol in .
Mr. Brown’s offence was his refusal to pay the Annuity Tax which he considered an iniquitous imposition.
He was imprisoned for one week, but received the treatment of a political prisoner; he had the satisfaction of knowing that his protest led to the repeal of the Annuity Tax.
The next people who committed a political offence in Edinburgh were two Suffragettes, who — fifty-two years later than Mr. Brown’s incarceration — were imprisoned, but were not treated as political prisoners.
Notwithstanding the showers a good crowd gathered on to hear Mrs. Despard, who spoke of the anomalies existing in our laws affecting women and taxation, and referred at length to the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for his inability to pay his wife’s taxes on her earned income.
A resolution expressing indignation at this and demanding Mr. Mark Wilks’ release was passed with only five dissentients.
The chair was taken by Mrs. Mustard, who told the audience of the indignation felt by the Clapton neighbours and friends of Mr. and Dr. Elizabeth Wilks over his imprisonment.
…On evening we had our usual open-air meeting.
Mr. Hawkins kindly chaired, and Mrs. Tanner spoke with her usual excellency, bringing in the “Wilks” case in her speech, as a specimen of anomaly in law in which the man suffers.
The crowd was sympathetic as regarded “poor old Wilks,” but was swayed otherwise by mistaken ideas of our aims and motives.…
The release of Mr. Mark Wilks, under precisely the same circumstances as the release of Miss [Clemence] Housman — that is to say, after a futile imprisonment, a series of defiant suffrage demonstrations, and with no sort of official explanation — is a triumph for the Women’s Tax Resistance League, the W.F.L., and the various men’s association[s] that helped to conduct the protest campaign.
It is more than a triumph; it is an object lesson in how not to do things.
To incarcerate a helpless and innocent man for his wife’s principles, knowing that that wife was one of a movement that never strikes its colours, was foolish on the face of it.
(That it was also unjust is a matter which we recognise to be of little consequence in the eyes of those who make and administer our law).
But to let him out without rhyme or reason seems foolishness of so low a degree that it is only to be described as past all understanding.
One is reminded of the genial duffer who protested that he might be an ass, but he was not a silly ass.
Our highest authorities are not so particular about their reputations as the stage idiot.
The Pity of It.
Yet we are all set wondering what is behind it all.
Is it a contempt so great for the intelligence of the public on which they batten which makes our rulers so unconcerned about even the appearance of wisdom or consistency?
Or is it sheer contempt for women which makes them bully, badger, and torture in turns, and then dismiss the matter as of not sufficient importance to pursue?
It is too easy and flattering a solution to determine that ministers have been impressed by the women’s resolute defiance.
It hardly accounts for the milk in the cocoanut.
Nothing, for instance, would have been easier than to give Mrs. [Mary] Leigh and Miss Evans first-class treatment, and keep them in durance for months and years!
The release of the latter lady at the same time as Mr. Wilks points, we sadly fear, not to an intelligent appreciation of the gathering forces of progress and humanity, but a cruel and callous disregard of wisdom, righteousness, and decency.
If this be “representative” government, it is a sorry testimonial to the worth of the [sic] those represented.
Terminological…?
No tale appears too farcical to present to the tax-payers on behalf of the Government.
One explanation that has been seriously offered, with a view to relieving the Chancellor of the Exchequer from any odium that may be incurred by those responsible for the Wilks imbroglio, is as follows: “The Chancellor knew nothing of the case.
His official correspondence followed him during his recent Welsh peregrinations, missing him everywhere, and only catching him up on his return to London, where he at once ordered a meeting of the Board of Inland Revenue, on whose report (unpublished) he acted promptly.”
Now this is a little too thin.
Wanted, a Good Lie.
The political and militant organiser of the W.F.L., who pens these lines, has to confess with emotion that during recent wanderings in the fastnesses of the Land of George, certain correspondence, re-addressed to divers and sundry humble cottages in mean streets, did indubitably go astray.
But the political and militant organiser is not a world-renowned personage who on occasion has been reduced to the Royal necessity of travelling incognito.
The more than Royal progress of the Carsons and the Georges does not lend itself to these subterfuges; and we feel inclined to give the Chancellor the advice addressed by a too intelligent master to a schoolboy of our acquaintance, whose effort at explanatory romance was not convincing: “No, no, George, my lad; that doesn’t sound likely.
Run away and think of something better.”
In consequence of the release of Mr. Mark Wilks, a sprightly account of which appeared in The Evening Standard, the proposed demonstration on Trafalgar-square was not held by the Women’s Tax-Resistance League .
The main issues which have been brought forward by this new phase of the struggle are:— “That the present irregular method of administering the Income-tax and Married Women’s Property Acts amount to a penalty on matrimony; that the relief afforded to persons of limited income is unjustly and illegally filched from them; and that the Tax Resistance campaign has for one of its objects the determination to secure to the public one million and a half of money which is at present improperly diverted from the pockets of the people to the Government coffers.
It took a woman expert — Mrs. [Ethel] Ayres Purdie — to fathom the real meaning of the law as it is administered to-day; and it is some considerable time since she expressed the opinion, and was laughed at by male legal experts for so doing, that the situation which actually arose was possible.
At Bolton.
A tax-resistance meeting was held at Bolton on , at which Mr. Isaac Edwards presided, the speakers being Miss Hicks and Mrs. Williamson-Forrestier.
The meeting was a public one, explaining the policy and principle of Tax Resistance, and was well attended.
The goods of Mrs. Fyffe, hon. treasurer of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, member of committee of the Horsham and South Kensington Branches of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, and hon. secretary of the London “Common Cause” Selling Corps, have been seized for tax resistance, and will be sold on , at Whiteley’s Auction Rooms, Westbourne-grove.
A procession will form up at Roxburghe Mansion, Kensington-court, at and start at going to the corner of Westbourne-grove and Chepstow-place, where a Protest Meeting will be held.
Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. [Caroline] Louis Fagan, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, and others will speak.
The procession will then go on to the sale.
It is hoped that as many members of the Freedom League and other Suffragists as can will support Mrs. Fyffe by walking in the procession and attending the sale.
Mrs. Fyffe, who is an ardent Tax Resister, was presiding at a meeting of the Kensington branch of the National Union (London Society) at her own house, when the bailiffs arrived to distrain on her goods.
It was a novel experience for the non-militant ladies!
Pleasant Amenities.
Mrs. Louis Fagan, summoned at West London Police-court for non-payment of taxes in respect of motor-car, man-servant, and armorial bearings, had quite a merry dialogue with the presiding genius, Mr. Fordham, who waxed — might one say waggish?
— during the encounter.
After refusing to discuss her “conscientious objections” — while in no way belittling them — he imposed a penalty of 20s. and 2s. costs in respect of the man-servant; £10 2s. costs in respect of the motor-car; and 2s. 6d. for the armorial bearings.
Mrs. Fagan represented that her conscientious objection included fines as well as taxes, and he expressed regret at having no alternative to offer save imprisonment.
“I shall sentence you to a month,” he said, “but you won’t do it, of course — you ladies never do.
If I really wanted you to have a month, I should have to call it five years!”
With such little pleasantries the affair passed off in the happiest manner; and Mr. Fordham was equally obliging in fixing the time for the distraint on Mrs. Fagan’s goods “at the earliest possible moment,” to suit the lady’s convenience.
The goods were seized on ; and all Women’s Freedom League members who know anything of the way in which the sister society organises these matters should attend the sale in the certainty of enjoying a really telling demonstration.
Mr. Lansbury’s Chivalry
At a meeting held in the Hackney Town Hall on to demand the release of Mr. Mark Wilks, Dr. Elizabeth Wilks and the Rev. Fleming Williams, who were received with enthusiasm, both addressed the audience, and a resolution of protest was carried unanimously.
The stirring speech given by Mr. [George] Lansbury contained valuable hints for Suffragists.
“Parliament,” he said, “did not do more for the cause of the women because the women did not make themselves felt sufficiently.
If, instead of remaining Liberal, Conservative, or Socialists, they went on strike against the politicians, they would get what they wanted.
“Many years ago, Mr. Lansbury continued, he had believed in the honesty of politicians, and in the sincerity of political warfare, but much water had flowed under the bridges since then, and many new ideas had gone through his head.
What was of most importance to the women of this country was not politics — whether Tory or Liberal — but the emancipation of their sex.
“The imprisonment of Mark Wilks, though it might be a laughing matter to the daily Press, was no laughing matter for the man imprisoned.
It was a jolly hard thing for Mr. Wilks.
He believed that if the working-class women of this country could be got to realise that his was no mere fight for a vote, but a fight for their complete emancipation, they would soon get this sort of thing altered.”
Resistance in Scotland
The Glasgow Herald tells us that:— “Dr. Grace Cadell, Leith, has, as a protest against the non-enfranchisement of women, refused to pay inhabited house duty on a property belonging to her in Edinburgh.
Several articles of her furniture have been poinded to meet the amount of the tax, about £2, but so far the authorities have not taken these away.”
We are also expecting news of the distraint on Miss Janet Bunten’s property for the same reason.
Miss Bunten, Hon. Sec. of the Glasgow Branch, has already lost goods in this manner, and has also been sentenced to imprisonment for refusal to pay dog license or fine in default.
The other day a woman, an utter stranger to me, came into the office to seek advice.
She was a pale, worried little creature, and had a little blind child.
Her trouble was that she had had to leave her husband on account of his brutality — he seemed to be a thoroughly bad lot — and had returned to her parents with the child.
She never saw her husband, nor received any money from him, but he was getting her Income-tax repaid to him.
Her income was very small, and she needed it all for herself and her child, and asked how this procedure could be stopped and the money obtained for her own wants.
I could only tell her that nothing could be done, as the law held that her income belonged to her husband, on hearing which, she broke down and sobbed bitterly, saying she had thought that women might be able to help her.
These are cases one hears of every week, but the Press remains conveniently silently about such, and reserves all its sympathies for the “wronged” husband.
These repayments often amount to quite respectable sums, perhaps as much as £40 or £50, for a three years claim.
I must say that personally it is terribly distasteful to me, when I have recovered tax deducted from a married woman’s income, to be obliged to draw the cheques in favour of her husband, though morally the money is hers.
Yet this is what I am forced to do for my own protection, as, if I handed the money to its real owner, I should still have to pay it to the husband in addition.
He could sue me in the County Court for it, or I might perhaps be charged with “feloniously misappropriating” his money, if I dared to hand it to the wife.
The isolated case of Mr. Wilks is a relatively small matter when compared with numerous cases of defrauded wives.
Mr. Wilks, being released, will have saved £40 by imprisonment, and lots of these wives would joyfully do a few weeks in Holloway, if thereby they could save their money.
What we want to do is to get the law altered, and the Married Women’s Property Act recognised by the Crown, so that marriage shall not involve the brand of “idiocy” and a financial penalty for a woman.
But there seems to be a general impression abroad that the only injustice lies in Mr. Wilks being imprisoned, and not in the law being as it is; and that as he has been got out, that will be the end of the whole thing, and nobody need trouble about it or make any further fuss, unless and until another husband finds himself held liable for tax on his wife’s income, and put in prison for not paying it.
Whether people are Suffragists or Anti’s or neutrals, it is equally to their interest to get the law brought up-to-date.
The Anti husband of an Anti wife might quite as easily find himself in Mr. Wilks’ position, and “tax-resistance” has nothing to do with it, because Income-tax on a wife’s income may be demanded from a husband quite without his wife’s knowledge.
There is a case going on at the present time where 2s. 8d. is being demanded from a man for Income-tax on some Consols which the authorities state are held by his wife.
She has never been asked to pay it, and is not even aware that it is being demanded from him.
He disputes paying it on the ground that he has no evidence that she possesses any Consols, as he has never asked her anything about her means and never intends to do so.
He has formally appealed against the charge, and at the hearing of the appeal his wife’s name was not mentioned, nor her existence even referred to, as the Consols in question are legally deemed to be in his possession.
This husband will doubtless be put in prison in due course.
He contends, quite logically, that if he is held liable for the tax on one of his wife’s investments, he ought to be held equally liable for the tax on all of her other investments, and while the whole position remains so unsatisfactory and anomalous he will pay nothing and do nothing, but will remain simply passive.
At the hearing of the appeal two highly-paid Special Commissioners, drawing, I believe, at least £1,000 a year each, sat to consider the matter.
There was also present a Surveyor of Taxes, who had come up on purpose from Brighton at the public expense, the appellant and his legal representative (myself).
This gentleman and I wasted our valuable time, and the three Revenue officials wasted their time (and the public’s money) for upwards of an hour, discussing a matter involving 2s. 8d., and the existence or non-existence of some Consols which none of the persons present knew anything about.
There were also one or two clerks who took everything down; and altogether it was a most amusing demonstration of the methods of the Circumlocution Office, and the sublime art of How Not To Do It.
Numbers of married women invest their money in order to escape from the anomalies of the Income-tax Act, so some day we may see an equal number of husbands being called upon to pay tax on these investments (which they know nothing about), and ultimately getting locked up sine die.
When men in considerable numbers begin to feel the shoe pinching, probably some serious effort will be made to amend the law.
In the course of a well-reasoned speech, Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson said: We live in revolutionary times.
The will of the people must prevail.
The Portuguese Royal Family fell because it did not consider this.
Berlin has also revolted, and the revolt there would have been more sanguinary had it not been for women, who placed themselves in the front — themselves and their children — and it takes much self-sacrifice to sacrifice your child.
Here the women are also in revolt against the social and economical condition of things, for similar grievances prevail here to those which prevail in Tariff Reform Germany.
Mr. Lloyd George will be attacked more severely.
Hitherto he has had some unpleasant moments; now we are going to attack his pocket.
We are going to have our say in the spending of twelve millions on Dreadnoughts, and also on the reform of Poor Law system.
I am a Poor Law guardian, but I am almost ashamed to own it, for I find the whole system of Poor Law administration is rotten to the core, and I work harder as such than in presenting petitions at Downing Street.
Our next move is to pay no taxes.
It is the most direct and unanswerable method.
If we are not good enough to vote, we are not good enough to pay.
No vote, no tax.
Those little income-tax forms, Form Ⅳ. or Ⅵ., or some other number, will be just thrown into the basket and not returned.
Everyone who perhaps has not an income to be taxed can have a dog, and then refuse to pay tax.
We all at the bottom of our souls know that we want a betterment of affairs, and we women are going to try to alter things and improve conditions of men and women, and then the exports and imports will go up by leaps and bounds.
There are starving women in this richest country in the world, and therefore we are going to revolt and make a revolution among the women, and the revolution is sure to succeed if we give our lives and time and money to bring it about.
Mrs. Ayres Purdie A.L.A.A.
Mrs. Purdie spoke about the disabilities and handicap of women in professions due to their lack of status.
She was once the object of a Bill which, if it passed, would have made her liable to a fine of £10 and £1 per day thereafter so long as she continued practising her profession.
It was absurd to suppose women were going to pay M.P.’s to pass Bills such as these.
Women would never break down the barriers which kept them from advancing in the professions while they were denied representation.
Mrs. [Margarete Wynne] Nevinson.
Mrs. Nevinson… in the course of her speech said: The Conciliation Bill is a first instalment of justice, the first righteous thing that we accept and that we are willing to take.
If anybody owed you £1,000, and said, “I cannot give the whole amount to you now, but will pay you £100 on account and the rest later on,” every wise person having anything to do with finance would say, “All right, I will take the £100 now and the rest as soon as you can let me have it.”
Women are naturally becoming very indignant with the Budget, which has put Women’s Income Tax up to 1s. 2d. in the £.
Before the war we only paid 6d. Women had nothing to do with the causes involving increased taxation, and yet we now have to pay 1s. 2d.
Income-Tax Courtesy.
Here I have one of Mr. Lloyd George’s wonderful forms, with its numerous questions, to answer which intelligently I should require, apparently, the training of a lawyer and surveyor, and a fund of universal knowledge which I do not possess.
I am asked to answer those questions, but am not considered fit to vote for a member of Parliament.
This Form is addressed to me because I have a little freehold property, but it starts off with “Sir.”
I am sending it back, pointing our that I must be addressed as “Madam,” and not “Sir,” and that as I have not vote, I do not see what this matter has to do with me.
If you think of it, it is rather an insult to all women property holders to be addressed as “Sir,” and not by their proper title of courtesy.
The State seems to take for granted that there can be no free women or women freeholders in the country, but that all the land must be owned by men.
The Women’s Freedom League for the last three years has preached and practised tax resistance as a protest against unenfranchisement.
It is, therefore, very gratifying that the sister militant society has now decided, in the event of the Conciliation Bill not becoming law this session, also to adopt this form of protest.
It is to be hoped that the Women’s Tax Resistance League will succeed in persuading all the other Suffrage Societies to unite on this logical policy of refusing supplies until our grievance is redressed.
Several married women Suffragists, acting on the advice of Mrs. E[thel].
Ayres Purdie, the only woman income tax expert, were able last year to
withhold moneys from the Treasury. So strong is the law in favour of the
position we take up that a case is now in hand to claim back the moneys
taken in taxation from a married woman during the last three years. The
legal inconsistency will provide us with an effective weapon.
Married women who have been separately taxed, or who have resisted taxation
and had their own goods seized in default should put their cases into Mrs.
Purdie’s hands. The law allows every one who pays income tax to claim
redress for any undue and illegal levy made during the last three years.
Therefore a married woman’s payments 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.
On morning Mrs. [Mary McLeod]
Cleeves appeared in the Swansea Police Court to answer a summons for keeping
a carriage without a license. Mrs. Cleeves made a clear and dignified
statement of her position, but the bench sentenced her to a fine of
10s. and costs, or in
default to seven days’ imprisonment! This alternative was evidently given in
the hope of frightening our Swansea Tax Resister into paying; for immediately
before her case was called an almost identical case was considered, the
defendant — a man — being called upon to pay
10s. and costs with no
alternative. However, Mrs. Cleeves was determined not to pay her fine and
was quite prepared to be taken off to prison at once. Mrs. Cleeves, Mr.
Hyde and I drove back to Sketty in the offending carriage. Later in the day
we heard through a solicitor that the Bench had made a slip regarding the
seven days and that a distraint warrant had been issued. Since then Mrs.
Cleeves has been beseiged by friends asking to be allowed to pay her fine;
but like a true Suffragette, she refused. And on
the police came to execute the
warrant, with orders from the Superintendent to take the carriage, which they
did with as little delay as possible. The warrant was issued for a guinea,
yet the officers of the law come along and seize a carriage valued at £30!
This is a piece of gross injustice. Whatever the motive that prompted it,
which most assuredly was not a friendly one, it has turned out to be the best
thing that could have happened. The newspapers took and published photographs
of the carriage being taken away, and gave splendid notices of this peaceful
protest. The Cambria Daily Leader says:—
“No Vote, No Tax!”
Swansea Suffragette at the Police Court.
At the Swansea Police Court , Mrs.
Mary Cleeves, Chez Nous, Sketty, was summoned for having a carriage without
a license.
Sergeant Thomas, Sketty, said he called at defendant’s house and asked if
she had a license. She replied, “No,” and she didn’t intend to take one
out. “No vote, no tax!” (Laughter.) The officer told Mrs. Cleeves he would
have to report her.
Clerk: And you have seen Mrs. Cleeves use the carriage?
Witness: Yes, sir.
Before this occasion? — Yes, almost daily.
Clerk (to Mrs. Cleeves): Have you any question to ask witness?
Mrs. Cleeves: No; I perfectly agree with what he has said.
Clerk: Have you any statement to make?
Mrs. Cleeves: As a matter of principle I have decided to pay no Imperial
tax till I get the vote.
Chairman (after consultation with the clerk): This can’t be called an
Imperial tax, Mrs. Cleeves, because the local authorities get the benefit.
However, we won’t say anything about that. An offence has been committed
and proved. You will be fined
10s. and costs, or in
default seven days.
Clerk: Seventeen shillings in all, Mrs. Cleeves.
Mrs. Cleeves: I refuse to pay.
Chairman: You had better consider the matter: I’ve hinted to you that I
think you may relieve your conscience a great deal when I say that this is
not an Imperial tax.
Mrs. Cleeves sat down where defendants usually sit who cannot or will not
pay the fine.
Clerk: No, you can go, Mrs. Cleeves.
Thanking the Clerk, Mrs. Cleeves retired, and the Clerk observed to the
Inspector: “Issue a distress warrant.”
On morning all Swansea opened its
eyes in amazement and admiration. The good people of the town are used to
seeing Mrs. Cleeves drive about in her carriage. On Saturday they saw her
driving, not her carriage — that is in the hands of the police — but her
cart. Everyone looked, everyone smiled, and everyone talked of the
Suffragette Tax Resister. One vehicle we passed on the road was full of women
who, on catching sight of Mrs. Cleeves in her cart, called out: “Well done,
ma’am!” Many another smiled encouragement, and we may fairly say that Swansea
is thoroughly roused by this last instance of Governmental tyranny. Now we
are waiting to hear when the sale will take place, and we shall hold protest
meetings all over Swansea. The Cambria Daily
Leader has a paragraph headed “Mrs. Cleeve’s Resource,” in which it
says that:
Notwithstanding the loss of her vehicle she was
seen driving about in a market
cart.
On night Mrs. Cleeves, Mr. Hyde
and I drove drove over to Llanelly and held a meeting in the Town Hall
Square. On we had a magnificent
meeting at Briton Ferry. There was very great interest and enthusiasm shown
in our work. At the close of the meeting we received quite an ovation — a rare thing here in Wales. Many pamphlets and
Votes were sold, and no less than seventy-four
postcards signed. These postcards are to Mr. Lloyd George asking him to
withdraw his opposition to the Conciliation Bill. Here again friends rallied
round and asked us to return on , for two meetings which they will advertise. Wherever we have been
with our cards friends have written asking for a packet to get signed amongst
their fellow-workers. Our Post Card Campaign in Wales has opened
successfully, and we hope this augurs well for the future.
A very successful drawing-room meeting was held on the evening of
, when
Dr. Lewin kindly invited
members of the above league to meet at 25, Wimpole-street, and in spite of
the stormy night her spacious rooms were crowded.
Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson presided, and in a forcible little speech urged
the members to redouble their efforts to make this very logical form of
protest known amongst their tax-paying friends. Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard was
the speaker, and her eloquent address was listened to with the deepest
attention and admiration. She threw quite a new sidelight upon the somewhat
prosy subject of taxation by showing how men were giving themselves body and
soul to the piling up of gold and how commercialism was spoiling all that was
best in our nation. Women then, observing this, must attack the stronghold,
and see to it that John Bull’s money-bags were not so easily filled in the
future, as they would assuredly not be if the money of the women taxpayers
is withheld. Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes dealt with the business of the
league, and members signed pledge cards to signify which Imperial taxes they
would resist if the Conciliation Bill does not become law this Session.
An interesting discussion followed, and the collection amounted to £27.
At the Garden City.
Mrs. Kineton Parkes, Secretary of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, by
kind invitation of Miss Stephen Strong, held two most successful meetings at
Letchworth Garden City on .
She pointed out how needful it is to grasp the present opportunity of pushing
on the Conciliation Bill. She called attention to the continued injustice to
women by asking them to contribute imperial money where they had no voice in
its spending. She further urged that much had been said about indiscriminate
charity and the harm it did, yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer placed women
in the childish position of being responsible without an atom of authority.
Many of us had much too alarming ideas as to what would personally happen did
we become so courageous as to resist the tax — should we be sold up, should
we be imprisoned? for in spite of Mr. Winston Churchill’s less severe rules
than those imposed by Mr. Herbert Gladstone, prison has its horrors. Mrs.
Parkes allayed these natural fears by stating that articles to the value of
the required (unjust) tax are taken away and auctioned.
We had a capital meeting; converts were gained, earnest questioners were
satisfactorily answered, subscriptions flowed in, and a spirit of
determination took the place of uncertain fears and hesitation. Many ladies
pledged themselves to resist by filling up cards for that purpose.
Miss Lee, “Thistledown,” 2, Norton-way, Letchworth, Herts., will be glad to
give information and distribute literature.
Our hon. treasurer is still
at large, and members of Headquarters’ office, and those who kindly
volunteer to help with the arduous duties wrestled with there, still have the
pleasure of seeing Dr.
[Elizabeth] Knight coming and going as usual, in perfect unconcern. The
sentence of “seven days” has neither ruffled her serenity nor interfered with
the even tenor of her way; and the discharge of her term appears to have
receded into the dim and distant future. In this connection we may recall to
the minds of our members that the threat of immediate arrest levelled at Mrs.
[Charlotte] Despard some two years ago, for non-payment of taxes, has not yet
been carried out! Mrs. [Kate] Harvey’s barricade against the tax-collector
also remains unbroken, and has in no way hampered her magnificent energy on
behalf of the International Suffrage Fair.
Probably not one of our keenest observers would, on a casual acquaintance
with Mrs. Kate Harvey, discern a fraction of the capacity for organisation and
business-like execution possessed by this unassuming woman. Even after many
years’ personal knowledge of her and of her generous support of our League in
so many ways, this splendid characteristic came as a revelation to me when I
called at her residence in Bromley the other day.
The house itself has been in a state of siege against the tax collector for
some months past, the windows bearing placards of the Tax Resistance League.
Entrance, therefore, was not too easy, even for a comrade. The locked gates
and the silence of the surrounding grounds gave an appearance of inertia,
but what a contrast when once admission was gained! The whole house, which is
a large one, seemed to have been converted into a warehouse and factory
combined. Here was the great clearing house on which the success of our Fair
depends.…
Suffragists will rally in force to greet Mr. Mark Wilks and his wife,
Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, at the
reception, organised in their honour by the Tax Resistance League, to take
place at the Caxton Hall, on The sympathy of
teachers with Mr. Wilks’ protest and imprisonment is shown by the fact that
the chair will be taken by Mr. R. Cholmeley, Headmaster, Owen’s School,
Islington, N. For particulars see page 30.
Mrs. [Ethel] Ayers Purdie’s splendid success at Sunderland, single-handed
against the Board of Inland Revenue, will be given in detail next week. The
Inland Revenue authorities, we understand, intend appealing to the High
Court.
The goods of Mr. J.A. Hall, of “Glenamour,” on
, Waterloo-park, Lancashire,
were sold for the second time against distraint consequent on his refusal to
pay income-tax on house property belonging to his wife. The goods were bought
in by a friend for the amount of the tax and expenses.
Mrs. Hall, who attended the sale in the unavoidable absence of her husband,
explained — by the courtesy of the auctioneer — to the large company of
sympathisers present that this action was taken as the most practical and
emphatic protest possible against the stupid and unjust action of the Revenue
authorities who despite the fact of the Married Woman’s Property Act under
which she herself is liable for her own debts, had forced the issue under the
Income Tax Act of 1842. This Act, whilst making the husband liable for the
payment of any tax on his wife’s own income, leaves him absolutely without
any power to obtain from her any information with regard to her income if she
declines to disclose it.
Mrs. Hall emphasised the absurdity and unfairness of such an enactment,
and said it was matter for considerable surprise that, quite apart from the
merits of the woman’s question, men had not bestirred themselves to force
the Government to remedy this utterly impossible state of things and make
women, if they could, pay this or any other tax whilst withholding
from them the Parliamentary vote.
[Our readers will be specially interested in the following account by Mrs. Ayers Purdie of her successful appeal against the Inland Revenue authorities.]
I desire it to be clearly understood that the following narrative is not an extract from Alice in Wonderland, neither is it a scene out of a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera.
It is a simple and faithful account of a successful Income-Tax appeal which was heard at Durham on .
The appellant was a Suffragist, belonging to the Women’s Tax-Resistance League and the Women’s Social and Political Union.
I was conducting the case for the appellant, which I am legally entitled to do under Section 13 of the Revenue Act, 1903.
Dramatis Personæ
The dramatis personæ are as follows: Two Commissioners of Taxes, elderly gentlemen, inclining, like all their kind, to baldness; spectacled of course; one of them wearing his spectacles high on his forehead, and looking out at me from under his eyebrows with a pair of piercing eyes.
These gentlemen hear appeals under the Income-Tax Acts, and are the judges therein.
Their decision is absolutely final, except on a point of law, in which case a further appeal may be made to the High Court.
To continue the list, there is also the Clerk to the Commissioners, who is a solicitor, member of a well-known North-country firm.
His business is to record everything, and to help the Commissioners on knotty legal questions; and, finally, the Surveyor of Taxes, who conducts the case for the Crown.
Opposed to all these learned gentlemen are my client and myself.
Unlike all other cases, in which the plaintiff or appellant has the opening and closing of the case, the procedure in these appeals is reversed; the Crown has the first and the last word, which puts a handicap on the appellant.
Accordingly the Surveyor of Taxes is invited to open the proceedings with a statement of his case; and he sets forth that Dr. Alice Burn, of Sunderland, Assistant Medical Inspector for the County of Durham, is receiving an official salary of so much per annum, and, though she has a husband, he lives in New Zealand, according to her own admission, so an assessment has been made on her salary and the Surveyor claims that he is fully entitled to do so.
Then it is my turn to put my case, and I freely admit all the facts as stated by the Surveyor, but challenge the conclusion he has drawn from them; my case being that by Section 45 of the Income-Tax Act of 1842 Dr. Burn cannot be held liable for the tax.
The solicitor reads this section aloud to the Commissioners.
Most women are familiar, since the famous [Elizabeth & Mark] Wilks episode, with the words on which I am relying.
They are, “the profits (i.e., income) of any married woman living with her husband shall be deemed the profits of the husband, and shall be charged in the name of the husband, and not in her name.”
One of the Commissioners asks in whose name was Dr. Burn’s salary assessed, and is told that it has been charged in her own name.
Geographical Separation.
The Surveyor, invited to offer any arguments or evidence to support his case, says that as Dr. Burn is here and Mr. Burn is in New Zealand, she cannot be living with him.
I argue, as against this, that the case really involves a point of law as to what is meant or implied by the words “living with her husband;” that these words must be interpreted strictly in accordance with their legal signification, and therefore I shall contend that my client lives with her husband in the legal sense, though I fully admit the geographical separation.
This term, “geographical separation,” seems to strike one of the Commissioners very forcibly; he repeats it with much relish, adding, “Yes, I can see what you mean, and I suppose you will say that the Crown cannot take any cognisance of a mere geographical separation.
Quite so.”
Apparently he thinks this is a good point, and he glances towards the solicitor, as if wondering how in the world they will get over it.
By this time both Commissioners, who started with the expression of men about to be frightfully bored, have become thoroughly alert and impressed; and the Surveyor appears to realise that his task will nt be such an easy one as he anticipated.
He becomes slightly nervous and confused, a little inclined to bluster, and to take the matter personally, which causes him sometimes to contradict himself and to refute his own arguments.
Being now invited to consider the point about “the geographical separation,” he declines to have anything to do with it, and strenuously denies that any point of law is involved.
He absolutely refuses to consider the matter from this standpoint, and declares that the Commissioners do not take the legal aspect into account in forming their decision.
According to him, this case is purely one of fact, and what the Commissioners have to do is to consider the actual fact, and nothing else.
He knows that if a woman’s husband is at the other side of the world she is not living with him in actual fact, and therefore cannot be said to be living with him at all.
Impertinent Questions
Asked by me to state on what authority he bases this last assertion, he says that he bases it on his own authority; and on his own common-sense.
This leads me to inquire how it happened that, being so fully convinced that my client was not living with her husband, he yet had written to her asking her to furnish him with her husband’s name, address, occupation, the amount of his income, &c. He begs this question by complaining that her reply had been that she could not tell him her husband’s address; and, of course, if a woman could not give her husband’s address it was perfectly plain that she could not be living with him.
I point out that this does not follow, and one of the Commissioners mildly suggests that my client shall explain why she made this reply.
She readily answers that her primary reason was indignation at his questions.
The Commissioner, who seems to be rather human, and quick at grasping things, remarks, “Ah, I see.
You thought he had asked you a lot of impertinent questions, and that was your method of showing your resentment.
Very natural, I’m sure.”
The Surveyor being apparently unprepared with any further argument or evidence beyond the assertion of his own common-sense, it is again my innings.
I take up the tale by reference to the decision in Shrewsbury v. Shrewsbury, which showed that the Crown can only claim to levy tax on spinsters, widows, or femes soles, and my client does not correspond to any one of these descriptions.
I quote precedents set by the Inland Revenue Department on other occasions; as witness the successful objection made to taxation by Miss Decima Moore, Miss Constance Collier, and sundry other ladies, whose circumstances were precisely the same as those of my client.
The Surveyor pretends to be too dense to understand how those ladies whose names I have mentioned could have husbands, and has to have it all minutely explained to him before he is convinced.
A Commissioner asks if I can give any other instances, and I reply, “I am an instance myself, if that will do.
My husband’s business compels him to live in Hampshire, while my own business equally compels me to live in London; but no Surveyor of Taxes has ever ventured to assess me, or to insinuate that I am a feme-sole.
Perhaps you will tell me that I do not live with my husband,” I gently suggest to the present Surveyor of Taxes, who looks as if nothing would give him greater satisfaction if he only dared, but he does not offer to accept this invitation, and the Commissioner hastily says, “I think we are now quite satisfied on the question of precedents.”
I am then proceeding to state that the Crown has itself embodied the correct attitude towards married women in one of the forms issues from Somerset House, in which reference is made to the treatment of “a married woman permanently separated from her husband,” when the Surveyor interrupts — “Are you giving that as evidence?”
“Yes, I am,” I reply.
“Then I shall object to it,” he says.
“I deny that there is any Revenue form having such words upon it, and I object to that statement being received as evidence.”
“As he repudiates the existence of this form, I fear we must uphold his objection,” says the Commissioner apologetically to me.
“Oh,” I exclaim, affecting to be greatly dismayed, “this really was my strongest point.
Do you mean to say you will not admit it because you have not this form before you?”
“I am afraid we cannot, if the Surveyor persists in his objection.
As you see, he is also making avery strong point of it,” is the reply.
The Surveyor intimates that he will persist.
“Very well,” I say, in a tone of resignation to the inevitable; and then there is a short and uncomfortable pause.
The Surveyor looks pleased, as though he fancies he has scored at last.
The other three appear to sympathise with me; even my client begins to look apprehensive, as if she fears I am done for.
Because (as she tells me subsequently) she also thinks I cannot produce this thing, and that I have only been bluffing.
Piece de Resistance
But I make a sudden dive down to my satchel, which lies open on the floor at my feet, and where, unseen by anybody else, the disputed form (No. 44A) has been lying in wait; my last act, before I left London, having been to equip myself with this most important document.
It is laid in front of the Commissioners, and they and the solicitor stare very hard at it, shake their heads over it, and murmur to one another, “Yes, it says so, right enough,” and “This settles it, don’t you think?”
When they have quite done with it, the Surveyor has his turn, and he pounces upon it, examines it intently, up and down, and all round, as if to convince himself that there is no deception, and that it is not a conjuring trick.
(I must do him the justice to say that I honesty believe he has never seen or heard of this form before, as it is very little used.)
It is now fairly evident that my pièce de résistance, No. 44A, has clinched the business, as I knew it must, and that my case is as good as won.
But the Surveyor starts off desperately on a fresh tack.
“Even if those words are on this form,” he says, in portentious tones, “it does not follow that what is stated on official forms is necessarily in accordance with law.”
“I quite agree with you there,” is my cordial reply.
“If everything that is contrary to law were to be eliminated from the form, there would be very little left.
But you may take it that the part I am relying on is perfectly good law,” and I glance toward the solicitor, who nods his assent.
“Then I shall maintain that you cannot reply upon what any form says, because the Board of Inland Revenue can at any moment alter the wording of a form,” says the Surveyor.
“Yes, the Board always have the power to vary the forms when they think fit,” echo the Commissioners.
“But they have not yet altered this one,” I object, “and you cannot raise a valid argument against it by simply saying that it might be something different if it did not happen to be what it is.
The Board have put these words on this form to serve some particular purpose of their own; and it so happens that it equally suits my purpose to make use of them here and now.
It is ‘up to you’ to decide this case in one way or the other; but the Crown is not going, as hitherto, to claim to have things both ways.”
“Both ways, indeed,” laughs one of the Commissioners.
“Why, the Crown will have it three ways, if it is possible.”
“And I am here to show the Crown that it is not possible,” I retort.
The Surveyor is disinclined further to contest the validity of Form No. 44A; but the solicitor seems to be uneasy, as if he feels that the Crown is losing prestige, and that somebody must make the running for it.
So he starts to read an obscure and wearisome section of the Income-Tax Act relating to “foreigners” coming to reside in this country!
Ethel Ayers Purdie.
(To be continued.)
I’ll post the second part of the above article on .
After inexplicable delays, the representatives of the Law have finally made up their minds to wrestle with the case of Dr. [Elizabeth] Knight.
On , the Hon. Treasurer of the League received a call from a gentleman who embodied in his person the might, majesty and power of the London County Council, and the Court of Petty Sessions, and showed a desire to annex Dr. Knight’s property in lieu of the £2 5s. which she declines to pay.
It is hardly necessary to tell readers of The Vote that he got very little satisfaction out of his visit, seeing that no fine was forthcoming, no property could be seized, and no information was vouchsafed.
After some slight altercation, and an almost pathetic attempt at persuasion, in neither of which was any advantage gained, the Law retired, to return at some future period (unstated) with a warrant for the arrest of the smiling culprit, who declined, in accordance with the attitude taken up by the Women’s Freedom League, to furnish any information or facilities to the agents of the Government.
Miss Janet Bunten, whose goods were seized in Glasgow at twenty-four hours’ notice, was absent from home with the women marchers at the time that the Government executed its mandate for the distraint.
We are glad to be able to say that a staunch friend of Miss Bunten’s, who belongs to the Women’s Social and Political Union — some of whose members were in the same plight — bought in the goods for her.
Women’s Tax Resistance League.
Last week Mrs. Kineton Parkes spoke at Manchester and Leeds, and on Mrs. [Caroline] Fagan spoke at Woking on the subject of Tax Resistance.
New members joined the League at each place.
On , a Tax Resistance meeting was held under the auspices of the Hampstead W.S.P.U., and was presided over by Mrs. [Myra Eleanor] Sadd Brown.
Mrs. Kineton Parkes and Mr. Mark Wilks were the speakers.
Particulars appear in another column [sic] of the Caxton Hall Reception, on , to Mr. Mark Wilks.
Great interest will also be attached to the account of the case of Dr. Alice Burn, Medical Officer of Health for the County of Durham.
Mrs. Ayers Purdie appeared for her in Durham, and won our case against the Inland Revenue — a notable triumph for the Cause.
The Women’s Tax Resistance will join the Marchers at Camden-town on and proceed with the John Hampden Banner to Trafalgar-square.
“If anyone fears that he has not courage to go to prison he will soon find, when he is inside, that one of its peculiar characteristics is to produce a determination and courage undreamed of to resist, not its discipline, which is a farce, but its tyranny, which oppresses the weak, and vanishes like the mist before the strong.”
— Mark Wilks
Two meetings; the same hall; the same man as the centre of interest; yet what a difference!
In , Mr. Mark Wilks was in prison, and the Caxton Hall rang with the indignant demand for his release.
In Mr. Mark Wilks was on the platform, and the Caxton Hall rang with enthusiastic appreciation of his service to the Woman’s Cause.
“It is fitting that on this memorable day, when the Government has been defeated in the House of Commons, that we should meet to celebrate the defeat of the Government by Mr. Mark Wilks,” said Mr. Pethick Lawrence.
One had only to scan the platform and glance round the hall on to note that the Women’s Tax Resistance League has the power to call together men and women determined to do and to suffer in order to win the legal badge of citizenship for women and the amending of unjust laws.
Mr. Wilks and his brave wife, Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, had a fine reception, and their speeches were clear, straight challenges to all to carry on the fight.
“We must never tire,” said Dr. Wilks, as she showed the injustice of the working of the income tax methods of collection, and told heartrending stories of the betrayal of young girls, “until we have won sex equality.”
“If anyone fears that he has not courage to go to prison he will soon find, when he is inside, that one of its peculiar characteristics is to produce a determination and courage undreamed of to resist, not its discipline, which is a farce, but its tyranny, which oppresses the weak, and vanishes like the mist before the strong.”
Thus, Mr. Mark Wilks; and, having been inside himself, he declared that he was most anxious that Captain Gonne should enjoy a similar experience, because he is resisting taxation, largely on account of the White Slave Traffic.
“They seized an obscure man; let the important ones be seized.
They did not know you were behind me; we will show the one or two men who really stand for the great scheme we call ‘Government,’ that we are behind Captain Gonne.
I have been inside and know how to do it.
Play the band and cheer.
The effect is electric!”
Mr. Robert Cholmely, M.P., from the chair, blessed the Tax Resistance movement; Mr. Pethick Lawrence acclaimed it as part of a militant policy against a Government which abandons its Liberal principles and finds itself defeated; Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard rejoiced that the best men were standing by the women; Mrs. Cobden Sanderson pleaded for more recruits for the League to help it to find more Mark Wilks; Miss Bensusan and Miss Decima Moore delighted and amused everyone by their recitations of imaginary Antis and real tax collectors.
A notable gathering on a notable day.
The importation into the case of a clause dealing with “foreigners” is
obviously a red herring, and not to be tolerated for a moment. I interpose,
therefore, to point out once again that the words of Section 45 are:— “Any
married woman living with her husband.” My contention is that my client is
“any married woman,” and so long as she comes within these words it does not
matter if she is an aborigine or a messenger from Mars. So this red herring
is abandoned, and another is introduced. The solicitor and the Commissioners
enter into a desultory discussion as to whether the Crown does not possess an
abstract right, under the Constitution, to levy tax on all its subjects. My
client is suddenly appealed to, and is asked to state whether she claims to
be a subject of the Crown, whether she “owes allegiance” to King George, and
whether she has become naturalised in this country!
I am again obliged to object, and I meekly explain to the solicitor that I
have always understood that married women cannot claim to be the subjects of
anybody (except their husbands, possibly) or “owe allegiance” to any
sovereign or government; neither can they possess a nationality or domicile,
nor obtain naturalisation. He seems unable to take this in all at once, but
in a minute or two it dawns upon him, and he says, “Ah! yes; that is so, I
believe.”
The Commissioners appear very bewildered and quite unable to understand why
married women should be in such an extraordinary situation. But as I have
stated that it is so, and the solicitor has agreed to it, they have to let
it go at that.
They then inquire whether my client’s husband is a subject of King George,
&c., and I again object,
explaining that we do not represent Mr. Burn, and therefore cannot speak for
him, and that, whatever he is or may elect to be, it has nothing to do with
our case.
For This Relief Much Thanks.
The solicitor now reads out, for the benefit of the Commissioners and the
Surveyor, a decision given by Lord Cairns, who said:— “I am not at all sure
that, in a fiscal case, form is not amply sufficient. If the person comes
within the letter of the law, he must be taxed. On the other hand, if the
Crown cannot bring the subject within the letter of the law, the subject is
free. Equitable construction is not admissible in a taxing statute, where you
can simply adhere to the words of the Statute.” “Oh, indeed, and so Lord
Cairns said that, did he?” remarks a Commissioner in a tone showing that the
declaration carried great weight with him. He seems quite relieved to find
that somebody has said something definite and tangible, and grateful to the
late lord for giving him such a clear lead. “And you think,” addressing the
solicitor, ”that the Crown has failed to bring the appellant within the
letter of the law?”
“I am of that opinion,” is his reply.
Gloomy Silence.
The Crown has nothing to say for itself now, and its representative, the
Surveyor of Taxes, is reduced to gloomy silence. This is a good thing for
everyone concerned, as had he offered to challenge this opinion, I am fully
prepared to administer to him a dose of Lord Blackburn, who said; “No tax can
be imposed on the subject without words in an Act of Parliament clearly
showing an intention to lay a burden on him. I think the only safe rule is to
look at the words of the enactment, and see what is the intention expressed
by those words.” I should also have felt it my duty to quote Lord Cotton to
him, who was of opinion that “a tax imposed upon the subject ought not to be
enforced unless it comes fairly within the words.” Or I might even have been
impelled to launch Lord Halsbury at his head, who goes further than all the
rest, as he says: “Whatever the real fact may be, I think a court of law is
bound to proceed upon the assumption that the Legislature is an ideal
person who does not make mistakes. It must be assumed that it has
intended what it has said. I think any other view of the mode in which
one must approach the interpretation of a statute would be attended with the
most serious consequences.”
But these weighty pronouncements are evidently not required on the present
occasion, Lord Cairns having proved (to use his own expression) “amply
sufficient.” So I can keep the others in reserve, to do me yeoman service in
some future encounter with the Crown.
The Plight of the Crown.
And now a horrible idea has penetrated the mind of one of the Commissioners.
He is the one who has been so impressed by Lord Cairns’ opinion; but it has
at last occurred to him that this opinion may cut both ways. If
Dr. Burn can secure immunity
on the strength of it, so possibly may her husband, and he inquires
anxiously: “Has the Crown any machinery by which it can reach Mr. Burn in
New Zealand, and levy this tax on him?”
“There is none that I know of,” replies the solicitor. “Mr. Burn appears to
be absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of the Crown, and out of reach of any
fiscal machinery.” “Then what is the Crown to do? On whom is the tax to be
levied? Here you have an income, and nobody can be made to pay the tax!” is
the pitiful lament of the Commissioners.
At this point the expression of these gentlemen irresistibly reminds me of the two officials, Ko-Ko and Pooh-Bah, in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera of The Mikado of Japan.
It would not surprise me if they burst into “Here’s a state of things! Here’s a pretty how-d’ye-do!”
They seem to see the tax on my client’s income (already standing at nearly £30) slowly but surely dissolving into thin air, like the immortal Cheshire Cat of Alice in Wonderland, leaving behind nothing but a grin.
The solicitor shakes his head gloomily,
the Commissioners are lost in speculation as to who will pay; the Surveyor of
Taxes frantically insists that “Someone has to pay.” To which I reply that I
have no objection, provided the someone is not my client. He can write to New
Zealand and ask Mr. Burn to pay; or, if it is a matter of such great moment,
why not pay it himself!
I point out that my client and I have no interest whatever in this aspect of
the case, and that I do not feel inclined to cudgel my brains to find a
solution of the difficulty into which the Crown has floundered. It must find
a way out as best it can.
Useful Mother-in-Law.
Dr. Burn volunteers the
information that her husband may be coming to England one of these
days; in fact, it would never surprise her to see him walk in unexpectedly.
This seems to afford a gleam of hope for the Crown. And when it further
transpires that should a suitable appointment be offered to her
Dr. Burn may herself cut the
gordian knot by betaking herself to her native land, there seems to be a
feeling that it is her duty to take herself off as soon as possible, and so
relieve the Crown of her embarrassing existence.
“I suppose we shall have to hear something to show that the relations
existing between the appellant and her husband really are of a normal
character,” says a Commissioner to me. “Have you any evidence to give as to
that?”
“Oh yes,” I reply, “we have brought a letter from her mother-in-law.”
Ethel Ayres Purdie
(To be concluded.)
You’ll have to wait until for
the exciting conclusion.
In addition to the letter from her husband’s mother, we have also her husband’s latest letter, received a few weeks ago, and I propose that you shall read both of them, handing them over as I speak.
This proposition appears to be quite unexpected, and scarcely seems to commend itself to the Commissioners.
The letters are received and handled in the most gingerly manner, and they appear quite at a loss what to do with them.
I am requested to indicate which is which.
I point out the one from the mother-in-law, and a Commissioner, after regarding it with a very dubious eye, remarks: “There’s a good deal of it, isn’t there?
I don’t think we will trouble to read that.
I suppose it is quite friendly,” and I reply, “Oh, absolutely,” as he hands it back to me.
They mere glance at the heading and signature of the other letter, and the solicitor enters these in a great book.
The Commissioners seem to be feeling as if it is not quite gentlemanly or sportsmanlike to read another fellow’s letter to his wife, and are palpably anxious to get rid of it.
So I say, to reassure them: “Pray don’t hesitate to read it.
We are most anxious that you should; and, really, it is quite a nice conjugal sort of epistle, just such as a man would write to his wife.”
But this, instead of reassuring them, seems to make them more alarmed than ever.
They positively decline to read the letter, and insist on handing it back to me, entirely disregarding the Surveyor of Taxes, who has been eyeing it hungrily and waiting for his turn to come.
He is plainly itching to get hold of it, and to see whether he can find in it something which will serve for another objection.
So I calmly proceed to put it away, whereupon he says: “May I look at that letter?”
“Certainly,” I reply; but, naturally, I don’t intend that he shall read it, when the others have passed it unread, and as he leans forward to take it, I present him with one corner of the letter, while I retain a firm hold on the opposite corner.
Consequently he can just “look” at it, and no more; and finding I don’t relinquish my hold on it, he can only say “Thank you,” and let it go again.
The solicitor here says: “I beg your pardon, but I quite omitted to notice how the letter from Mr. Burn began.
Would you have the goodness to tell me?”
“With pleasure,” is my reply; and then I say, in solemn tones: “It commences thus: Dear Alice—” “Thank you very much,” he says, and writes in his big book again.
As far as I can see, it is duly entered on the official record that the appellant receives letters from her husband, who calls her “Dear Alice.”
Dr. Burn is asked to explain what she is doing in England all these years, and why she left New Zealand.
She replies that she had a two-fold reason, namely, the better education of her child, and the obtaining of a medical degree for herself so that, by practical experience of Public Health methods as administered in this country, she might be qualified for an official appointment in her own country whenever opportunity offered.
But although she does not say so, she seems to have reached the conclusion that if this case is to be taken as a criterion of English methods and administration, they are not exactly calculated to qualify anyone for anything but a lunatic asylum, and that her own country could teach England a thing or two.
After a few more desultory and half-hearted inquiries as to where she obtained her degree, who paid her fees, whether her husband sends money to her, and so forth, the Commissioners announce that they have heard all they want to hear, and request us to retire while they consider their decision.
The Verdict.
The appellant and myself sit in an ante-chamber, simmering with suppressed amusement.
There are signs that tea is being partaken of by somebody, but none is offered to us.
After some ten to fifteen minutes have elapsed we are recalled, and the solicitor explains to us that in order to justify the Commissioners in the decision at which they have arrived, they desire Dr. Burn formally to confirm the statement which I had made on her behalf, namely, that she is not judicially separated from her husband.
This done, the solicitor says he will have to place on record how long she has been married, and the year in which the marriage took place, which is a bit of a poser, for Dr. Burn, like most of us, cannot remember these details off-hand.
I know I never can myself, and I proceed to apologise for not having brought “her marriage lines” along, but am politely assured that it was not necessary, and a simple statement will suffice.
Meanwhile, my client, by a prodigious effort of memory, has recalled how old she was when she was married, and by carefully subtracting this from her present age the required information is reached.
She further recollects that it was “in the month of September.”
This brilliant feat of memory is quite satisfactory; but as reference has been made to a child, its sex, age, and present location are required to be known, also if it is the only one.
When all this domestic history has been duly entered in the big book, as if it were a Family Bible, the decision of the Commissioners is at length announced.
It is:—
That the appellant’s case has been fully established, the Crown has failed to show any legal authority for taxing her, and therefore the assessment must be canceled.
“On a Point of Law.”
The surveyor, on behalf of the Crown, declares his dissatisfaction with their decision “on a point of law.” Hitherto, his great point, strenuously maintained by him throughout the case, was that there was no point of law about it at all, but only a “point of fact” Dr. Burn, being only a layman, is intensely astonished and perplexed by this sudden volte-face.
But the rest of us, being old hands, and knowing that the decision has to be accepted as absolutely final, except one on a point of law, do not trouble ourselves about his “lightning-change” tactics, as we can fully appreciate his anxiety to save his face or, rather, the face of the Crown.
He hints that his Department will apply to have a case stated in the High Court, with the object of upsetting the decision.
The others look as if they deem it very unlikely that the Department will do anything so foolish, and a Commissioner, smiling very affably, remarks to me: “You understand, of course, that this is only professional dissatisfaction.
He is obliged to say these things.”
“I fully understand, and we are quite satisfied,” is my reply.
“I think we need detain you gentlemen no longer, and will wish you good-day.”
They are all standing up, the solicitor holds the door for us, and we are bowed out with the utmost respect.
(Most women will have observed that a man is never so respectful to our sex as when we have met him on his own ground, and bowled him out in a fair fight.)
Dr. Burn and I, however, are glad to escape from the realms of Topsey Turveydom, and to find ourselves once more amidst realities, and amongst plain, practical people whose lives are ruled by common-sense and not by tortuous red-tape and freakish traditions.
The Crown’s “Second Thoughts.”
The Crown has since indulged itself in “second thoughts” over the Commissioners’ decision, with the following result:—
Commissioners of Taxes. Gateshead, .
Dear Madam,— Re Dr. Alice M. Burn.
With reference to this appeal, heard at Durham on , and the dissatisfaction with the decision then expressed by the Surveyor of Taxes, I am instructed by my Commissioners to inform you that they have received a formal intimation that the Board of Inland Revenue do not intend to take any further action in the matter.
— I am, yours faithfully,
H. Swinburne
Mrs. E. Ayres Purdie, A.L.A.A.
Mr. Swinburne is the solicitor and clerk to the Commissioners, and the above communication was quite spontaneous and unsought by me.
It strikes me as being exceedingly comic, because on looking back I find that Somerset House told me in two consecutive communications in , that Dr. Burn was correctly assessed, was not living with her husband, and Section 45 of the Income-Tax Act did not apply to her case, followed by peremptory demands for immediate payment.
In , they wrote: “Dr. Burn is living in England, and is therefore not living with her husband, who is in New Zealand.
The duties are long in arrear, and payment cannot be allowed to be further deferred.”
By , they had got themselves into such a frantic state as to be threatening Sheriff’s officers, writs of arrest and imprisonment, and various other nonsense.
While the Surveyor of Taxes, not to be outdone by his superior officers, likewise indulged in extremely impertinent letters to me.
In one dated Newcastle, , he said: “In reply to your letter of yesterday I beg to state that Dr. Burn is chargeable with Income-tax.
You have misread Section 45. Be good enough to suggest to your client the desirability of paying the tax due without delay.”
Again, in , he wrote from Sunderland: “I have to state that the assessment (on Dr. Burn) appears to be quite in order.
I am quite unable to follow your statement that the assessment of your client is ultra vires.
If you think you have any valid ground of objection, it will be necessary to state it specifically.”
And this after I had been stating the ground of objection in specific terms for months past.
No Taxation Without Representation.
There is a moral in the foregoing; in fact, many morals.
Dr. Burn in her own land is a citizen possessed of equal rights and status with any other citizen.
She could not have proved more clearly how a colonial woman, by coming to this benighted and effete England loses absolutely all status, even the status of a taxable unit, and is regarded as the mere shadow and appendage of some male person.
The Government says, “Representation goes with Taxation,” and a woman has replied: “No Representation goes with No Taxation.”
Let all the other women, married and single, hurl the same challenge at the Government which denies us representation and a voice in the expenditure of public money.
If they all do this, something has got to happen.
Æteleia writes: Acting on advice received from Mrs. [Ethel] Ayres Purdie, I am able to evade the payment of Income-tax on investments.
I intend to give everything saved in this way to the funds of the W.F.L. as a Suffragist’s form of “conscience money,” and would recommend the same course to all women who derive income from investments.
Deplorable evidence of the panic from which many men are now suffering, owing to the recent outbreak of militancy, has come to our notice; the victim in this case is our good friend and helper, Mrs. Ayres Purdie.
Her many clients will have noticed the sign prominently exhibited in her office window in Craven House, Kingsway, bearing the harmless legend,
“Women Tax-Payers’ Agency.”
Her landlords and fellow-tenants — men only — combined in a demand that she should delete the word “women” from her sign, as this word — necessary to the continuance of life — was considered “offensive and objectionable.”
They went on to inform her that “they did not want women shouting that they paid taxes; women would do well to keep quiet!”
Mrs. Purdie’s retort was to remove herself and her sign from Craven House across the road to the appropriately-named Hampden House, where the sign will be as prominent as before.
The sequel to this may be an action in the County Court against Mrs. Purdie to recover damages for breach of contract.
If so, it should prove a very interesting case, showing that though the word “woman” may be “offensive and objectionable,” woman’s money is worth having.
Many people are fully prepared to admit that women who pay rates and taxes ought to have the vote, although they will not go further and admit a woman’s right to full equality; tax resistance, therefore, is generally felt to be an entirely logical and almost constitutional method of protest.
The Woman’s Freedom League would like all members and sympathisers who pay taxes which might be resisted, to put themselves into communication with Headquarters.
Inhabited house duty, income tax, armorial bearings, dog licenses, and carriage taxes offer excellent opportunities for making local protests in all parts of the country.
One of our members has taken a house jointly with her husband, and each time the tax for inhabited house duty falls due, one half is paid and the other half is withheld as a protest against the disfranchisement of the other fully qualified householder.
Other methods will suggest themselves to our members; at present we have five or six protests coming on and in all cases Mrs. Ayres Purdie will give expert advice through the Political and Militant Department.
There is a waggon on the Cowslip Farm at Witnesham, Suffolk, which has
become quite celebrated. It has been sold twice annually for
and still remains on
the same farm.
It was drawn into Bond’s Sale Yard at Ipswich on
, and the plate on it
disclosed it as the property of
Dr. Elizabeth Knight and Mrs.
[Hortense] Lane. A placard described it as Lot 21, and when the other lots had
been sold the auctioneer approached the waggon, followed by a large crowd who
were curious to see what was the meaning of three women being seated inside,
apparently with a set purpose. Just as the crowd assembled
Dr. Knight came into the sale
yard to look after the welfare of her property.
Miss Andrews asked the auctioneer if she might explain the reason for the
sale of the waggon, and, having received the necessary permission was able to
give an address on tax resistance, and to show how it is one of the weapons
employed by the Freedom League to secure the enfranchisement of women. Then
came the sale — but beforehand the auctioneer said he had not been aware he
was to sell “distressed” goods, and he very much objected to doing so. He
declared that he regarded Dr.
Knight and Mrs. Lane as persons, and thereby showed himself to be in advance
of the law of the country. The meeting and the auctioneer together made the
assembly chary of bidding, and the waggon was not sold, which was a great
triumph for the tax-resisters. Further developments are eagerly awaited, for
it is assumed that the Government will not thus easily give up its claim to
tax unrepresented women, and will endeavour to find a less scrupulous
auctioneer. Miss Trott and Miss Bobby helped to advertise the meeting by
carrying placards round the crowded market.
C[onstance].E.A[ndrews].
Women’s Tax Resistance League.
At a Members’ Meeting at the offices of the League on
, with Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson
in the chair, speeches were given on the following subjects:— “The Recent
Sales and Protests,” by Mrs. Kineton Parkes; “Married Women’s Dividends” — test case, by Mrs. [Ethel] Ayres Purdie; “Married Women and Income Tax,” by
Miss Amy Hicks, M.A.; an interesting
discussion followed.
Sales of the Week.
On , Mrs. Skipwith, 13,
Montagu-square, W., and Gorse Cottage,
Woking, had a silver dish sold at Woking for refusal to pay Property Tax. A
good protest meeting was held, the speaker being Mrs. [Myra Eleanor] Sadd
Brown. On , a clock, belonging to
Miss Bertha Brewster was sold by auction at Wilson’s Repository,
Chenies-mews, Gower-street, because of non-payment of Inhabited House Duty.
At the subsequent protest meeting at the corner of Grafton-street, and
Tottenham Court-road, the speakers were Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, Miss Sarah
Bennet, and others. On at
Eastchurch, Kent, Miss [Kate] Raleigh’s goods were sold for refusal to pay
Imperial Taxes. The speakers were Mrs. Sadd Brown, Mrs. Kineton Parkes, and
Miss Raleigh.
Mark Wilks was arrested and sent to Brixton Prison for failing to pay his wife’s income taxes.
The case became a cause célèbre in the British women’s suffrage movement and an embarrassment to the British government and its tax authorities.
This is a good example of how careful study of the law can help tax resisters find and exploit flaws that hold the tax system or its enforcement arm up to ridicule, make them unworkable, or make them vehicles for additional resistance or propaganda opportunities.
Ethel Ayres Purdie, resident tax law expert of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, discovered the vulnerability.
The Income Tax Act, she wrote, “is a most fearsome piece of composition.
Its language is archaic and tautological, it rises wholly superior to punctuation, and proceeds breathlessly through one hundred and ninety-four clauses.”
But one of those clauses held a fatal flaw.
The “Married Woman’s Property Act” of was a reform that allowed married women to maintain control of their property rather than relinquishing it to their husbands’ control upon marriage.
But the earlier () Income Tax Act still considered the husband to be solely liable for the income taxes of both the husband and wife.
At first, when Elizabeth Wilks began resisting her income tax, the government responded by seizing and selling her property, but when this quirk in the law was discovered, tax resisters like Wilks protested that the government could not legally seize her property since as a married woman her taxes were legally owed by the him in the marriage.
So the government went after Mark Wilks instead.
Mark Wilks, for his part, insisted that he could hardly fill out an income tax return since he had no legal right to demand information from his wife about her income!
Besides, his modest income and lack of property in his own name meant that he could not afford to pay the taxes on his wife’s considerably larger income (he did pay the tax on the portion of their joint income that was attributable to his own income, though his income was low enough that by itself it would not have been taxable).
“I am informed that I am liable for taxes levied on her income,” he wrote “while at the same time the law places all her property entirely beyond my control.”
Meanwhile, the Women’s Tax Resistance League trumpeted the arrest of Mark Wilks and his indefinite imprisonment — “for non-payment of taxes not his own and due on an income over which he has no control and whose amount he can only guess at” — as proving their contention that not only should women resist the income tax, but that married women were not even legally obligated to pay it and those who were paying it were operating under a legal delusion.
The imprisonment of Mark Wilks was a propaganda coup:
For what do the arrest and imprisonment of Mark Wilks mean?
We are perfectly certain that it will not last long.
Stupid and inept as it has been, the Government, we are certain, will not risk the odium which would justly fall upon it if this outrage on liberty went on.
A Government which has much at stake and which lives by the breath of popular opinion cannot afford to ignore such strong and healthy protest as is being poured out on all sides.
To us, who are in the midst of it, that which seems most remarkable is the growth of public feeling.
In the streets where processions are nightly held, we were met at first by banter and rowdyism.
“A man in prison for the sake of Suffragettes!”
To the boy-mind of the metropolis, on the outskirts of many an earnest crowd, that seemed irresistibly funny; but thoughtfulness is spreading; into even the boy-mind, the light of truth is creeping.
If it had done nothing else, the imprisonment of Mark Wilks has certainly done this — it has educated the public mind.
Wilks was released after less than a month in prison, without official explanation, and without paying the tax.
A tax resistance campaign is almost always one that butts up against the law, and it can be helpful to have campaigners who know a thing or two about legal matters.
As Elizabeth Cady Stanton put it when she was considering a tax resistance campaign for women’s suffrage in America,
One thing is certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation, and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat.
Today I’ll summarize some examples of how legal study and the assistance of attorneys have made a difference in tax resistance campaigns.
Poll Tax rebels in Thatcher’s Britain
Understanding the law and the legal process was important in the poll tax rebellion — to give confidence to resisters, to support targets of government reprisals, and to make the process of tax enforcement costly and unmanageable.
Anti-poll tax volunteer Danny Burns writes:
In Bristol when the court cases started, each person with a summons, who rang into the office, was logged and sent an information pack.
The same personal attention was given to people with notices from the bailiffs.
At the peak of the campaign, the Bristol office was staffed morning and afternoon five days a week by different volunteers.
, it was receiving over 200 calls a week.
… [The volunteers included] at least five court support workers…
In every part of England and Wales local groups mobilised to provide support for non-payers in the courts.
Tens, if not hundreds of activists in each region attended legal briefing sessions.
These were run both by activists and sympathetic local lawyers.
People were given ideas about how they might disrupt or delay the court proceedings.
These included simple things, like asking for a glass of water because their throat was dry, demanding to see the identity cards of everyone present in court, to fainting in court or arranging for fire alarms to go off.
People were told to demand their rights to see and read every document which was produced as evidence against them.
They were also given briefings on the basic technical arguments.
By , when most of the court cases had started, virtually every Anti-Poll Tax Union in the UK had trained at least two or three of its members to become conversant with the Poll Tax law.
Throughout England and Wales over a thousand people were trained to do court support work and could quote the relevant legislation.
This is unique in the history of popular campaigning.
The Anti-Poll Tax Unions hoped to use the legal precedent of McKenzie versus McKenzie (), which said that a person can “attend a trial as a friend of either party (to) take notes and quietly make suggestions and give advice to that party.”
This person would be known as a “McKenzie friend.” McKenzie friends had no right to address the court, but they could advise the non-payer what to say.
In this way everyone would be able to offer technical defences and thereby delay the proceedings.
The campaign needed lawyers only in the most technical cases.
Lawyers were often seen as a liability, because they represented an individual client, and it was in their interest to get through the procedure as quickly as possible.
It was in the campaign’s interest for everything to proceed as slowly as possible.
Nevertheless, legal knowledge and guidance was essential.
This arrived with the creation of the Poll Tax Legal Group… [which] researched legislation and case law.
It set up a network of lawyers throughout England and Wales who could support the legal challenges of Anti-Poll Tax groups and produced over 30 accessible legal bulletins on the Poll Tax and a book called To Pay or Not To Pay.
These underpinned the legal needs of the movement and helped ordinary people to get to grips with the law they needed to use.
Delaying tactics were mixed with serious legal technicalities.
Councils were challenged for sending notices to the wrong addresses.
Given the rate at which people moved houses, it was difficult for the councils to keep up, and as a result many cases were dropped because people hadn’t received proper notice.
Big legal challenges were also made over “correct procedures.”
These came in the first few weeks and resulted mostly from the inexperience of councils in dealing with this sort of process.
The first day of Medina Council’s cases (on the Isle of Wight) is probably the most famous example.
The reminder notices were sent out with second class stamps, they consequently arrived late, people didn’t receive the statutory notice which they were entitled to, and the court threw out all 1,900 cases.
The council had to start again.
When police attacked an anti-poll tax demonstration in London, many of the demonstrators fought back, and hundreds were arrested.
Elements of the campaign leadership distanced themselves from the defendants, embarrassed to have the campaign associated with violence.
So other activists helped to form and coordinate an independent group — the Trafalgar Square Defendants’ Campaign — with the following mandate:
The campaign will:
Unconditionally defend all of those arrested on .
Be controlled by and be accountable to the defendants
Be totally independent of any other organisation.
Seek support from the whole Anti-Poll Tax movement and all other sympathetic organisations.
Seek to co-ordinate the legal defence of all those arrested.
Seek to build a coherent picture of events of from the point of view of those arrested.
Publicise the points of view of defendants.
Raise money for a bust fund, controlled by the defendants to cover their legal and welfare costs.
Ensure that at all future Anti-Poll Tax events there will be proper legal cover and support for anyone arrested.
This will include an office and workers to visit places of detention and look after prisoners’ welfare.
Danny Burns again:
About a dozen people volunteered to carry out the court monitoring process.
They attended every hearing, systematically took notes of everything that was said, recorded the numbers of police officers and approached the defendants asking them to attend the now weekly TSDC meetings… By the summer, over 250 of the defendants had been contacted.
The TSDC ran advice sessions on prison, produced legal briefing notes and mailed out the minutes of the weekly meetings to every defendant every week.
A solicitors’ group was established with a core of three, but at the peak of early activity they managed to get over fifteen solicitors involved.
This proved important because the solicitors’ group managed to get hold of over 50 hours of police videos and handed them over to the campaign.
The police videos were crucial in getting a lot of people off, and a number of people in the campaign worked extremely hard editing videos and rejigging them for particular trials.
The solicitors’ group also got the Crown Prosecution Service to hand over a full list of all of the defendants and the names and addresses of their lawyers.
The lawyers were all contacted and, although many were initially reluctant to co-operate with the campaign, they soon realised that TSDC had a lot of information which their clients needed.
Every possible legal angle was pursued by the campaign’s legal team — down to legal definitions of what constituted a householder, making the councils prove that the person they had summonsed actually lived at the address, that they owned the property, etc., etc. We weren’t doing this because we had any illusions in the impartiality of the court system.
We knew that even though we were successful in finding various legal loopholes these would all be closed one by one and that the judges would be doing their best to facilitate the councils.
This was demonstrated most clearly when a judge in Swords invoked the Public Order Act to close several streets around the courthouse to prevent a protest outside it.
But by contesting every detail of every summons we could make the system unworkable.
There were tens of thousands of non-payers.
After several months the councils had only managed to get a couple of dozen cases through the courts.
Someone calculated that at the rate they were managing to proceed it would take them something like 220 years to process all the cases.
And it was costing them more in legal fees than they could ever hope to take back in charges — even if they managed to bully everyone into paying.
Any time the council did manage to get a court order, it was appealed — again the objective being to clog up the system.
George Cony’s aggressive lawyers
When Oliver Cromwell knocked the English king off his throne, he did so in part in the cause of Parliamentary democracy.
Upon assuming charge of the English government, however, he grew impatient with Parliament and decided to enact some taxes on his own.
One of Cromwell’s more radical supporters, George Cony, taking Cromwell at his word (Cromwell had said that “the subject who submits to an illegal impost is more an enemy of his country than the tyrant who imposes it”) decided to refuse to pay one of these arbitrary taxes.
Cony’s lawyers argued his case so successfully that Cony’s tax evasion case threatened to call the legal underpinnings of Cromwell’s regime into question.
The judges in the case seemed sympathetic, and Cromwell was so alarmed that he had all three lawyers imprisoned in the Tower of London until they repented, upon which the chief-justice who was hearing the case resigned.
Hugh Williams and the Rebecca rioters
Radical lawyer Hugh Williams was of great help to the Rebecca movement in Wales — some say he was more than a legal advisor, but one of the instigators of the movement, or even “Rebecca” herself!
One account says: “[Williams] did all the legal work for the rioters, also drafting various petitions for them.
He was a prominent member of the Chartist movement, acting as their solicitor, and he defended the prisoners at Welshpool Assizes in July, 1839, for taking part in the Chartist Riots.
He rendered similar services to the Rebecca prisoners gratuitously; but was eventually reported to the Lord Chancellor and struck off the Rolls.
He, however, continued to do a considerable amount of legal work, and whenever it became necessary for him to appear in court, he invariably employed [another attorney] to appear for him.”
His familiarity with the law and the legal process helped him help the Rebeccaites translate their grievances into formal petitions, which in turn helped the Rebeccaite “people power” movement effect change in government policy.
White supremacists in Reconstruction-era Louisiana
When white supremacists in New Orleans decided to actively withdraw their consent from the mixed-race Reconstruction government of “scalawags” and “carpet-baggers” there in , they formed “The People’s Association to Resist Unconstitutional Taxation” and declared a tax strike.
Fifty-eight New Orleans attorneys signed the following statement of support:
The undersigned attorneys at law, citizens of New Orleans, engage themselves, without compensation, and as a matter of public service, to defend professionally all citizens, residents, or property-holders in this city, who shall desire their assistance in resisting the collection by municipal authorities of the taxes known as the “school-tax,” the “park-tax,” and the “metropolitan-police tax,” and other taxes the collection of which may be lawfully resisted.
The Smith sisters of Glastonbury
Abby & Julia Smith refused to pay taxes to a local government that denied women the vote and that took advantage of this by excessively taxing women’s property in order to ease the tax burden on male voters and to redistribute the money to male patronage recipients.
In response, the government periodically seized and auctioned off the Smith sisters’ cows (“Votey” and “Taxey”).
That failing to discourage the Smiths, the town decided to fight dirty, and the Smiths fought back legally in a way that brought further attention to their cause:
[A]n inconspicuous advertisement in the Hartford Courant announced the sale at public auction of fifteen acres of Smith pasture land on , a date contrived to fall just before the grass would be cut.
Though the sisters set out on that day with ample funds, the collector adroitly shifted the meeting place, and when the two women caught up with the auction, the gavel had just gone down transferring for $78.35 land worth nearly $2,000 to none other than a covetous neighbor who had tried for years to get possession of it.
Abby and Julia were daughters of a lawyer.
They brought suit against tax collector George C. Andrews on the grounds that he had violated a law which plainly stated that movable property must first be sold for unpaid taxes before real estate could be seized.
The case was tried in the home of Judge Hollister of Glastonbury, who gave a verdict in favor of the sisters and fined Andrews damages of $10. Threatening terrible consequences, Andrews appealed the case.
The new trial, which lasted three days in the Hartford Court of Common Pleas, had a farcical aspect.
There were misplaced records; there was distorted evidence.
The judge, in absentia, reversed the Glastonbury decision and decided in favor of collector Andrews.
At this point the Smiths’ lawyer backed out.
Abby and Julia, both now in their eighties, began the study of law with the intention of conducting their own case.
Happily a capable lawyer finally agreed to place a second appeal before the Court of Equity.
For two years a wide and sympathetic public followed this devious litigation.
Across the nation, even in England and France, editors and columnists lauded the Glastonbury cows in prose and poetry.
Reporters visited the town, drank tea in the elm-shaded farmhouse, admired the cows, polled public opinion in Glastonbury, and returned with highly flavored and often inaccurate stories.
With whatever condescension these reporters arrived, they seem, one and all, to have found the Smith sisters irresistible.
The hospitality, wit, and charm of the two elderly spinsters captivated the world beyond Glastonbury.
When the final verdict was made in their favor, in , women the country over rejoiced.
To be sure, Julia and Abby did not vote in Glastonbury, but from that time on their property was undisturbed.
The Greek “Won’t Pay” movement
The current Greek “Won’t Pay” movement, which is resisting a number of stealth taxes the government has added to things like utility bills and road tolls, has also carried its struggle into court — at one point winning an injunction that forbade the state power company from cutting the power of people who were refusing to pay the new utility bill tax.
Newly-enfranchised Pennsylvania women
When women in Pennsylvania won the vote, many discovered to their chagrin that they had also become subject to taxes to which they had previously been immune.
Thousands of them, deciding the package was not worth it, decided to refuse to pay.
And they were able to take advantage of a quirk in an law that did not permit the authorities to send women to prison (though they could imprison men) for tax refusal:
Nothing herein contained shall authorize the arrest or imprisonment for non-payment of any tax of any female or infant or person found by inquisition to be of unsound mind.
It took a few years for the state legislature to pass a law allowing for the jailing of women who refused to pay their taxes.
Maurice McCrackin’s lawyers
Not all legal help is helpful.
When American war tax resister Maurice McCrackin was convicted of refusing to cooperate with an IRS summons, he was following a strategy of complete noncooperation that he kept following right into the courtroom — where he refused to stand for the judge, refused to plead to the charges, refused to answer questions, refused to consult with his court-appointed attorney, fasted while behind bars, and had to be wheeled into and out from his court appearances because he wouldn’t walk there under his own power.
For the same reason, upon his conviction, he emphatically said that he was not interested in pursuing an appeal: “I said I wanted to file no appeal, nor did I want steps taken to keep the door open, so an appeal could be perfected later.
I do not recognize any appeal on my behalf… My position is not changed.
This is a moral, not a legal, struggle.”
One of the lawyers who had been assigned to defend him, however, convinced that the judge had betrayed bias against McCracken in his statements from the bench, said that he intended to appeal anyway.
“Constitutionalist” tax protesters
And then there are the “Constitutionalist” “show me the law!”-style tax protesters.
For years they have been bedeviling the IRS with their baroque, ever-evolving, quasi-legal arguments and pleadings based on the real Constitution, or common law, or tortured interpretations of excerpts from a variety of cherry-picked statutes and court rulings.
While they typically know just enough about the law to get into trouble, without knowing enough to get out again, there’s no question that they cause headaches a-plenty for the powers that be.
Alas, this does not seem to actually be their objective.
Instead, they seem convinced that they’re not just whistling Dixie, but they’re right, and if they can just figure out how to pick the lock of the court system with the right argument, they’ll be able to walk out free into a new world where their Constitution holds sway and the perverters of the true law are vanquished.
Alas, most of what they have discovered is an enormous and inventive catalog of things that don’t work, so in spite of all of their creativity and effort, they have given the rest of us little to work with.
But if you ever have a “that’s so crazy it just might work!” idea about going up against the IRS, you might want to research these folks first — they may have already tried it.
And every once in a while they rack up a courtroom victory — not often one that amounts to much in real terms, but it fuels the movement.
One observer of the movement reacted to a twist of this sort by saying: “This is going to encourage thousands more people who were on the fence, who were paying taxes only because they were afraid they would be criminally prosecuted.
If too many people do this, the tax system will collapse because it is based on people voluntarily complying.”
(I’m most familiar with the U.S. variety, but similar groups exist in Canada, the U.K., and probably elsewhere.
Earlier this year in England, for instance, hundreds of Constitutionalist tax protesters stormed a courtroom where one of their number was on trial, whereupon they attempted to put the judge under citizens arrest, and began making their own rulings from the bench!)
When you’re trying to expand the ranks of tax resisters in your campaign, you need good educational tools.
People are often reluctant to resist either because they aren’t sure how to go about it, or because they only have a vague idea of the likely consequences (and so are likely to exaggerate their frightfulness).
When NWTRCC conducted a survey of non-resisting anti-war activists , the most popular answer to the question “Which resources would help you decide to participate [in a tax resistance campaign]?” was: “clear idea of likely consequences” and the two top responses to the question about “the most important reason you have not done war tax resistance” were “fear legal consequences” and “need more information.”
People like to stick with the familiar, and if you ask them to take a jump into the unknown, they will imagine the worst as a way to justify their reticence.
If you can be clear, thorough, and credible in demonstrating how to resist and what the consequences are likely to be, you can eliminate the biggest obstacle to the growth of your campaign.
This is easier said than done, however.
It can be difficult to be clear and thorough if you are going up against a tax agency that is arbitrary or that changes its rules suddenly, and it can take time to establish credibility.
Today I’ll give a few examples of how tax resistance campaigns have dispelled ignorance about tax resistance.
Ethel Ayers Purdie ran what she called the “Women Taxpayer’s Agency” and counseled British women’s suffrage activists both on how to best resist their taxes on no-taxation-without-representation grounds, and on how they could exploit legal quirks to avoid taxes (for instance, archaic laws that made husbands wholly legally liable for their wives’ taxes).
She also published a pamphlet about that particular legal quirk, which concluded:
Many married women, including leading actresses, doctors, titled women, business women, and various others having property, businesses, investments, &c., or being in receipt of salaries, have succeeded in demonstrating their non-taxability, and thereby involved the Revenue in a total loss of the tax illegally charged on them.
Members of the Women’s Tax Resistance League regularly gave lectures on their tactic of choice at suffragist meetings, and thereby recruited new resisters.
The American war tax resistance group NWTRCC publishes a number of specialized how-to pamphlets that cover various techniques of tax resistance (such as refusing to file, filing and refusing to pay, living on a non-taxable income) and strategies for coping with possible consequences (such as government collection efforts).
They also have a nationwide network of people who offer one-on-one counseling sessions for potential resisters or for current resisters who are running into snags.
Local groups in the network periodically run workshops at which people can come to learn about the variety of war tax resistance methods and ask questions of people who have experience with them.
The current tax resistance movement in Spain, which has its roots in the war tax resistance movement there but which has expanded to a broader anti-government pro-autonomy critique, recently published half a million copies of a tabloid that included its call to resist alongside some practical instruction on how to go about resisting both the pay-as-you-earn income tax and the value-added tax.
American constitutionalist, “show-me-the-law”-style tax protest often spreads by means of workshops run by self-styled experts who have discovered or invented new (and increasingly baroque) legal arguments that prove that most people are not legally liable to pay the federal income tax.
Although these arguments don’t typically stand up in court, they are sufficiently credible to the lay audience that they can convince many people to begin resisting.
For example, in , an epidemic of tax protest swept General Motors plants in Flint, Michigan, as thousands of employees there told GM to stop withholding income tax from their salaries after they attended seminars or listened to lectures on tape from the tax protester group “We The People ACT.”
a flier used to educate people about their rights concerning property seizures by bailiffs
Resisters to Thatcher’s Poll Tax gained confidence thanks to the efforts of the Poll Tax Legal Group which, among other things, “produced over 30 accessible legal bulletins on the Poll Tax and a book called To Pay or Not To Pay.”
To combat the threat of property seizure — often the threat itself was enough to intimidate people into stopping their resistance — the movement made efforts to educate the public about the seizure process and about ways to frustrate it:
[T]he first task of Anti-Poll Tax Unions was to inform people about what the bailiffs could and couldn’t do.
In Scotland, people were advised not to tell the sheriffs where they worked, not to tell them which banks they used, and not, under any circumstances, to let them into their houses.
They were also told to inform the local group as soon as the sheriffs threatened anything.
The Anti-Poll Tax Unions advised people to move possessions to local friends’ houses before the date of the poinding and offered to help with the moving.
People were told to leave their cars well away from their homes.
They were informed that a wrongful poinding could be appealed against and, in many cases, this was done successfully.
People were also told how to avoid bailiff action by signing away their possessions to people who lived outside of the area or, preferably, to their children.
There are now young children who technically own all of their parents’ possessions.
Some local law centres went onto the offensive against the bailiffs, providing information to the public, which totally undermined their actions.
One morning in , the bailiffs delivered over 4,000 intimidation notices to people throughout Bristol.
By 7:30 a.m. the law centre had heard about this and contacted all local radio stations.
By 8:00 p.m. the news bulletins which went out every fifteen minutes, reported:
Today bailiffs have delivered notices for payment to over 4,000 people in Bristol.
A spokesperson from the law centre said that they were illegal and should be ignored.
So most people ignored them.
The Bardoli satyagraha depended on regular distribution of news bulletins from campaign headquarters to the scattered villages of the province, to make sure everyone was on the same page about strategy, and to counteract government propaganda and rumor.
These also came to be powerful propaganda tools to affect Indian opinion outside of the resisting region:
A campaign like this could not be carried on without a publicity department.
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.
A publicity office was therefore opened with Sjt. Jugatram Dave at its head.
With an artist’s pen and with a knowledge of the whole taluka [district] at his fingertips, he took to this work like a duck to water.
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 agriculturists all over the taluka: For four or five days cyclostyled [mimeograph-like] copies were issued, but arrangement was soon made to get them printed daily at Surat, and a start was made with 5,000 copies.
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.
Special mention must be made of one of the many Suffrage Societies which sprang into existence during the decade before the outbreak of war.
With the Freedom League originated the idea that in view of the dictum that taxation and representation must go together, a logical protest on the part of voteless women would be to decline to pay Imperial taxes until they should have a share in electing Members of the Imperial Parliament.
From onwards, Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard had adopted this form of protest, with notable results.
In the following year, some of her goods were seized, but difficulties occurred, as one auctioneer after another refused to have anything to do with selling them.
When one was finally found, the sale was attended by a large number of Mrs. Despard’s followers, who succeeded in holding up the proceedings until requested by her to desist.
When her piece of plate was at last put up for sale, the bidding was very brisk, and the article was eventually knocked down to a certain Mr. Luxembourg for double its estimated value.
This gentleman insisted on returning it to Mrs. Despard, who accepted it on behalf of the Women’s Freedom League, among whose archives, suitably inscribed in memory of the occasion, it holds an honoured place.
In subsequent years, various devices were adopted with the object of compelling Mrs. Despard’s submission.
Thus she, for whom prison had no terrors, was threatened with imprisonment in default of payment; she was summoned before the High Court, when, in her absence, judgment was pronounced against her.
On only two other occasions, however, was distraint levied.
, a separate society, with the above title, was formed, with Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes as secretary, for experience showed that a special knowledge of the technicalities of the law was necessary, and special machinery had to be set up.
Those who addressed themselves to this business were rewarded by the discovery of curious anomalies and irregularities of the law where women were concerned.
Thus, for instance, it was revealed that whereas married women are not personally liable to taxation (the Income Tax Act of never having been brought into line with the Married Women’s Property Acts), nevertheless payment of taxes was illegally exacted of them whenever possible.
With the assistance of the expert advice of Mrs. [Ethel] Ayres Purdie and others, many cases of injustice and overcharges were exposed and circumvented, Somerset House officials being mercilessly worried.
Imprisonments for Non-Payment of Taxes
It was in , that the first imprisonments in connection with this particular form of protest took place.
Miss [Constance] Andrews of Ipswich was sent to prison for a week for refusing to pay her dog’s tax, and about the same time, Mrs. [Emma] Sproson of Wolverhampton served a similar sentence for the same offence.
The latter was, however, rearrested, and sentenced this time to five weeks’ imprisonment, being placed in the Third Division in Stafford Gaol.
She thereupon entered on the hunger strike, and on the personal responsibility of the Governor, without instructions from the Home Office, she was transferred to the First Division, where she completed her sentence.
Imprisonments in various parts of the country thereafter took place with some frequency, but whenever possible this extreme course appears to have been avoided, and resisters’ goods were seized and sold by public auction, the officials reserving the right of adopting whichever course they deemed most suitable.
By this means, auctioneers’ sale rooms, country market-places, corners of busy thoroughfares, and all manner of unlikely spots, became the scene of protests and demonstrations.
Miss Housman’s Imprisonment
The case which excited the most interest was that of Miss Clemence Housman, sister of the well-known author, who, having stoutly declined to pay the trifling sum of 4s. 6d. (which by dint of writs, High Court Procedure, etc., in due course mounted up to over £6), and not having goods which could be seized, was arrested by the Sheriff’s Officer, and conveyed to Holloway, there to be detained until she paid.
A storm of protest arose, meetings being held at Mr. Housman’s residence in Kensington, outside Holloway Gaol, and in Hyde Park on .
After a week’s incarceration, Miss Housman, who had been singularly well treated in the First Division, was unconditionally released, and on inquiring of the Solicitor of Inland Revenue how she stood in the matter, she was informed that it was closed by her arrest and subsequent release.
By way of celebrating victories such as these, the League held a John Hampden dinner at the Hotel Cecil in , when some 250 guests assembled and listened to speeches from prominent Suffragists of both sexes, when we may be sure that the moral of the story of John Hampden was duly pointed, and many a modern parallel was quoted.
A novel feature of the evening’s proceedings was the appearance of a toast mistress, in the person of Mrs. Arncliffe Sennett.
Mr. Mark Wilks’ Imprisonment
In an incident occurred which illustrated both the anomalous position which married women occupy under the law and also the impossibility of enforcing the law where consent is withheld.
Dr. Elisabeth Wilks, being one of those who held with the Liberal dictum that taxation and representation should go together, had for some years past refused to pay her Imperial taxes, and on two occasions a distraint had been executed on her goods, and they had been sold by public auction.
Then it struck her that her “privileged” position under the law would afford her protection from further annoyance of this kind, and being a married woman, she referred the officials to her husband.
When application was made to the latter for his wife’s income tax return, he told the harassed officials that he did not possess the required information, nor did he know how to procure it.
After some delays and negotiations, the Treasury kindly undertook to make the assessment itself, charging Mr. Wilks at the unearned rate, though Mrs. Wilks was well known to be a medical woman, whose income was derived from her practice.
After over two years of correspondence and threats of imprisonment, since Mr. Wilks sturdily refused to produce the sum demanded, he was arrested on and conveyed to Brixton Gaol, there to be detained until he paid.
Still he remained obdurate, while friends outside busied themselves on his behalf.
Protests poured into the Treasury offices, Members of Parliament were inundated with the like, deputations waited on everybody concerned, and public meetings on the subject were held in great number.
The result was that, at the end of a fortnight, Mr. Wilks was once more a free man.
Other Tax-Resisters
Legislators had recently provided women with additional reasons for refusing to pay taxes.
In the National Insurance Act became the law of the land, and defects in that Act as far as it concerned women, which were pointed out at the time, have become more and more apparent every year that the Act has been in force.
Some few modifications were made in their favour, but they had no effective means of expressing their views.
Again, by means of a Resolution, which occupied a few hours of discussion on , Members of Parliament voted themselves a salary of £400 a year, and only one member, Mr. Walter McLaren, raised his voice to protest against the fresh injustice which this proposal inflicted on women, who were not only subject to legislation in the framing of which they had no voice, but were further called upon to pay those who thus legislated for them…
The Revenue authorities did not repeat the experiment of arresting any women resisters on whom it was not possible to levy distraint, with the result that the Women’s Tax-Resistance League claimed to have a growing list of members who paid no taxes, and who, in spite of repeated threats of imprisonment, were still at large.
Distraint for non-payment was, however, frequent, with the result that up and down the country, and as far north as Arbroath, the gospel of tax-resistance was carried, and secured many adherents, including members of the enfranchised portion of the community, some of whom, in their official capacities, gave public support to the rebels.
Many auctioneers of the better class refused to sell the goods of tax-resisters, and it is on record that one who had done so sent his fee as a donation to the League.
Two members of the League, Mrs. [Isabella] Darent Harrison of St. Leonard’s and Mrs. [Kate] Harvey of Bromley, barricaded themselves in their houses, and succeeded in keeping the officials who came to make the distraint at bay, the former for a period of several weeks, and the latter for a period of no less than eight months.
In both cases, an entry was eventually made by force, but much public sympathy was evinced in both cases, and crowded meetings of protest were held in the largest local halls available.
It is interesting to record that on , a statue was unveiled in the market-place of Aylesbury to the memory of John Hampden, who in the time of Charles Ⅰ. had refused the ship money which that monarch had illegally levied on his subjects.
The sum involved was the trifling one of 20s., but, rather than pay it, John Hampden suffered himself to be imprisoned.
He was subsequently released without a stain upon his character, and a statue to this rebel stands in no less hallowed a spot than the House of Commons, of which assembly he was a Member.
An application on the part of the Women’s Tax-Resistance League of the twentieth century to be officially represented at the unveiling by Lord Rothschild of the statue erected to his memory in Aylesbury was met with a refusal.
That the spirit which animated this seventeenth-century fighter was not, however, dead was evident when, at the conclusion of the official ceremony, a little procession of tax-resisters, supported by men sympathizers, approached the statue and silently laid a wreath at its foot…
Tax Resistance
Throughout tax resisters continued to defy the revenue officials, with varying results.
Among those who resisted paying their taxes for the first time may be mentioned [Mary Russell] the Duchess of Bedford, Miss Beatrice Harraden, Mrs. Flora Annie Steele, and Miss [Ethel] Sargant, the last-named of whom presided over a section of the British Association later in the year, being the first woman to fill such a position.
Mrs. Harvey successfully withstood another siege in connection with her inhabited house duty, and her goods, when eventually seized, failed to realize the sum required by some £8, for the uproar created in the auction-room by sympathizers was so great that the auctioneer abandoned his task.
Mrs. Harvey also refused to take out a licence for her gardener (by name Asquith), or to stamp his Insurance card.
For these two offences she was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment, in default of a fine, but was released at the end of one month, in a very weak condition of health, which was in no way attributable to her own “misconduct.”
There were many other cases of resistance to the Insurance Act, it being an open secret that the Freedom League did not insure its employees.
Captain Gonne, who refused to pay his taxes as a protest against the treatment to which women were being subjected, was also arrested, but was released within a few hours, the reason being, so it was claimed, that in arresting him the revenue officials had been guilty of a serious technical blunder.
Several other resisters besides Mrs. Harvey barricaded their houses against the tax collector, and at Hastings the demonstration arranged in connection with the sale of Mrs. Darent Harrison’s goods led to an organized riot, the result being that the local Suffrage Club brought an action against the Corporation for damage done, which they won.
Undeterred by warnings that it would be impossible to hold a public meeting in Hastings in support of tax resistance, the League nevertheless determined to do so, and, as a matter of fact, everything passed off in a quiet and orderly manner, Lady Brassey being in the chair.
In subsequent years, this policy of open and constitutional rebellion on tax resistance lines has been maintained by Mrs. Darent Harrison.
