Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
South Africa →
Gandhi’s campaigns, 1906–1914
If a tax resistance campaign, or any civil disobedience campaign, anticipates that resisters may be imprisoned, it can give those resisters one less thing to worry about by organizing to help the families of those behind bars.
Gandhi in South Africa
Gandhi usually stressed that satyagrahis should be self-reliant and not expect much in the way of organizational assistance, but when he was planning a tax strike in South Africa in he thought that supporting imprisoned strikers’ families was a priority:
Finally the refusal to pay the tax!
Then, undoubtedly, the Congress should undertake to feed the wives and families of those who may be imprisoned.
The men would undoubtedly go to gaol, if there is a body of earnest workers. … The thing cannot be taken up haphazard.
If the men were asked to go to gaol today, I do not think you would find anybody taking up the suggestion, but if the preliminary steps as described above, are taken, by the time a final reply is received the men will have been thoroughly prepared to face the music.
Some of these families of resisters were put up temporarily at “Tolstoy farm” and donations from campaign supporters were used to provide for them.
Peacemakers at the Ohio cell organized a land trust to remove property from the market place and established the Peacemaker Sharing Fund, a mutual aid plan designed to insure aid to dependents of imprisoned Peacemakers and to help finance group projects.
During the Vietnam war, the sharing fund became the main vehicle for donations to meet the needs of war resisters’ families.
The Rosenburg Fund for Children
In the United States, The Rosenburg Fund for Children is designed “to provide for the educational and emotional needs of children whose parents have suffered because of their progressive activities and who, therefore, are no longer able to provide fully for their children.”
U.K. Poll Tax resistance
The Trafalgar Square Defendants’ Campaign provided some funds to help facilitate visits to imprisoned resisters from their families.
Durban, . — Eight Indians have been sentenced at Newcastle to imprisonment for two months for having taken part in the Indian miners’ strike against the tax of £3.
Bombay, . — Mr. [Gopal Krishna] Gokhale is arranging to send £2000 a month for the relief of the Indian “passive resisters” in South Africa. He hopes that ultimately the Imperial Government will intervene, and effect a compromise.
Capetown, . — Three thousand Indian miners, who are striking against the £3 poll tax, crossed the border into the Transvaal at Charlestown, , and thus courted arrest for contravening the Alien Immigration Act.
Capetown, . — Three thousand Indian miners who have struck against the payment of the poll tax crossed the Transvaal border at Charlestown. Five hundred others were previously arrested as deserters from a colliery.
Durban, . — The strike of Indian miners in Natal as a protest against the £3 poll-tax imposed upon them is developing alarmingly.
A reign of terror prevails on the north coast of Natal, the planters fearing
that if the strikers get the upper hand the sugar cane fields and sugar mills,
worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, are likely to be wiped out, as the
sugar season is now right at its height. On one plantation yesterday 150 acres
of cane were burned, the Indians standing by and cheering as the flames swept
along. The sugar settlements resemble military encampments. The coolies are
becoming more and more pugnacious, and, armed with cane-cutting knives, they
refuse the advances made by the employers and remain sullen and implacable.
The strikers yesterday besieged the Edgcombe estate with a view of inducing
the workers there to strike. The European women and children were placed in
the factories for safety, and the police were summoned. When the police
arrived the strikers assailed them with sticks and stones, and in the
encounter one trooper and 30 Indians were injured. The Indians on other
plantations set fire to the cane and caused serious damage.
The situation in Durban itself is extremely serious, as the strike is rapidly
becoming general. The harbour, corporation, and railway employees, as well as
the drivers, cooks, waiters, and messengers, have struck, and the work of
scavenging the city has had to be suspended.
It is officially stated that the men who have been sentenced will for the
most part work out their sentences in the compounds on the mines to which
they belong, as the gaol accommodation is insufficient. The flogging of
prisoners will not be allowed, and no arrests will be effected unless
violence is committed. The shooting of the Indians is prohibited unless it
becomes absolutely necessary for the maintenance of order.
A meeting of 4,000 Indians in Durban yesterday resolved to send to the Indian
and the Imperial Governments cable messages pointing out that there is no
organisation for the feeding of prisoners, and that if the Government does
not intervene many lives may be lost.
The Natal Indian Association, in a cable message to Lord Ampthill, a former
Viceroy of India, states: “Indians here are being sentenced to imprisonment
with hard labour for having absented themselves from the roll call. Two
magistrates have warned the Indians that if they refuse to work they will be
starved, mercilessly flogged, and driven underground with the lash.”
The “Cape Times” and the “Natal Mercury” have throughout supported the demand
for the repeal of the 60s.
poll-tax imposed upon the Indians.
Assistance From India.
Bombay, . — Mr. G.K. Gokhale, a member of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council, is organising a monster campaign to support the South African Indians in their resistance of the poll-tax. Both Hindus and Mohammedans are taking part in the meetings, which are being held in all the important towns in India.
Cape Town, . — The correspondence between the Secretary for the Interior
(Mr. E.H.L. Gorges) and Mr. Ghandi, the Indian solicitor, who has been
advising the Indians in their policy of passive resistance against the poll
tax of the Union Government, has been published. The net result of the
negotiations is that Mr. Ghandi promises to await the report of the Royal
Commission appointed recently by the Government before reviving the passive
resistance movement. Although Mr. Ghandi will not appear before the
Commission as a witness, he is willing that Sir Benjamin Robertson, the envoy
from the Indian Government, should do so on his behalf.
As the outcome of the correspondence, the Department for the Interior has
agreed to liberate all those Indians who were arrested for passive resistance
to the law, and to await the recommendations of the Commission. The
Government will then legislate to overcome the existing difficulty concerning
the 60/ poll tax. The Indians will not press
their charges of ill-treatment and brutality towards the strikers, while the
Government agree not to produce negative evidence on that phase of the
trouble, but reserve the right to investigate the occurrences resulting in
loss of life in the two affrays , when, as the outcome of an attack by the Indians on the
Premier mine, near Pretoria, three Indians were killed and 22 injured.
During the negotiations, the government agreed to drop the £3 (60 shilling)
tax on ex-indentured Indian workers that was the initial focus of the
resistance campaign.
Tax resistance movements have often coordinated with labor strikes or business shut-downs as a way of further restricting government resources, demonstrating solidarity, and freeing up the time of resisters to engage in more campaign-oriented activities.
In some cases, these strikes are themselves a form of tax resistance — reducing the income or sales tax base by simply reducing the amount of income earned or sales made.
Here are several examples:
Labor strikes
In Germany, in , “A movement for a general refusal to pay taxes, originating in Württemberg, spread rapidly to other towns, principally Stuttgart, which was without gas, electricity and water for several days.
The strike began in the Daimler motor works in Württemberg, where the workers refused to allow the deduction of the legal tax of ten per cent from their weekly wages…”
A tax strike in aimed at the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela was accompanied by a multi-week labor strike that “bled the Chavez’s government’s economic lifeline, costing it millions of dollars a day.”
Prisoner slave laborers in the American state of Georgia went on strike in , refusing to work for the profit of the prison system.
In Savannah, Georgia, in , the city tried to impose a $10 tax on “stevedores and other laborers on the wharves,” which they refused to pay.
The city then locked them out of the wharves.
This, of course, seriously interfered with the shipping interests of the city, and the Council, finding that the laborers were not at all disposed to yield, and that meanwhile the “strike” was damaging the business community to the amount of thousands of dollars, and was driving all the vessels from this to other ports, met and reduced the tax to $3.
This, however, only tended to increase the feelings of the laborers, who had resolved not to pay any tax whatever, deeming it unjust, unconstitutional and oppressive to tax unskilled labor, and they determined that none of their number should work, whether they paid the tax or not.
During the recent Household Tax agitation in Ireland, the Civil and Public Service Union threatened to strike if the government tried to deduct the tax from the paychecks of resisting union members.
Ship stokers in France went on strike when the government tried to tax their incidental benefits like meals as income in .
The standoff kept the largest French trans-Atlantic ship stranded in port until the stokers’ employer agreed to pay the extra tax on their behalf.
In Birmingham, Alabama, in :
The plant of… [a] Paint company at North Birmingham, employing 200 men, closed down because a deputy tax collector served garnishment on five employees for the non-payment of poll tax.
Many of the men quit work causing the plant to shut down.
… The men persist in their refusal because they claim the tax is an unjust one and not constitutional.
The citizens all side with the strikers.
Hartals and business strikes
“Bushel Bob” Williams’ produce stand
When Argentina tried to increase taxes in the midst of a drought in , farmers there went on strike for a week and set up highway roadblocks.
American farmer Bob Williams, disgusted at the U.S. military budget, decided in to henceforth donate all of his produce to charity rather than sell it for taxable income.
For a week in , a strike spread amongst the vendors in Tehran’s bazaar until hardly any were open for business.
They were protesting a new VAT that would have applied to them.
Apparently this was a nonviolent resistance tactic that bazaar merchants used successfully before the Iranian revolution, but this was the first time they’d done it since.
20,000 lawyers in Delhi went on strike in , “paralyzing the lower courts,” when India tried to extend its sales tax to cover legal services.
In in Benares, the British imperial government tried to impose a house tax.
The residents responded with a hartal, or general strike: “the shops were closed, every kind of occupation was abandoned… a solemn engagement was taken by all the inhabitants to carry on no manner of work or business until the tax was repealed.
Everything was at a stand: the dead bodies were cast unceremoniously into the river, because there were none to perform the obsequial rites; and the very thieves refrained from the exercise of their vocation…”
Hartals and strikes, sometimes of specific industries and other times general strikes, were also frequently used in the later Indian independence movement led by Gandhi, sometimes in coordination with tax resistance campaigns such as the salt raids.
During the Bardoli satyagraha, for example, shopkeepers frequently shut down their operations whenever officials came to town, and hartals sometimes broke out spontaneously on other occasions.
Gandhi also led a strike of Indian miners in South Africa in that was directed against a poll tax on Indian immigrants, a strike in which hundreds were arrested, and which eventually drew in strikers from “harbour, corporation, and railway employees, as well as the drivers, cooks, waiters, and messengers.”
That campaign was successful at forcing the government to rescind the tax.
A Parisian cafe owner holds down the fort during a one-day business strike during the Poujadist campaign.
When the tax inspector called at St. Cere during the Poujadist tax strikes:
“The tax inspector rapped on steel curtain after steel curtain, demanding to be let in to see the books.
Nowhere did he get an answer.
When they found that even the bistros were locked, the hapless inspector and his guards gave up their mission and beat a humble retreat…”
During the first intifada in Palestine, the Unified National Command responded to a crackdown on the tax strikers of Beit Sahour by calling “an unprecedented five day in six general strike,” while “[s]torekeepers in the town launched a commercial strike that lasted three months…”
The Israeli practice of seizing equipment, supplies, and goods from businesses that refused to remit taxes also had the effect of putting those businesses into a state of strike whether or not that was their intention.
In , in support of Palestinian doctors who were refusing to pay an Israeli income tax, shopkeepers in Gaza City launched multiple two-day strikes.
In , Greek kiosk owners held a one-day strike to protest an increase in tobacco taxes.
In the Dutch West Indies in , “[m]erchants, as a token of their approval of [a] doctor’s refusal to pay the tax,” (the government was attempting to auction off his goods that day) “closed their places of business during the afternoon.”
In the waning days of the rule of the Gyanendra monarchy in Nepal in , people stopped paying taxes and utility bills, and accompanied this with a general strike.
In , cashew traders in Guinea Bissau went on strike:
“We cashew exporters have decided to boycott the current marketing season to protest the payment of a 50 CFA franc ($0.11) per kilogram export tax,” said the head of the exporter’s association.
In sympathy with the tax protests in Turkey in , there were often business strikes:
…all shops and businesses [in Kastamonu] remained closed during the day…
…merchants [in Erzurum] closed their shops in solidarity… shops were closed again…
Erzurum’s example of closing shops… [was followed] at Hasankale…
In the Ruhr, during the French/Belgian occupation of , businesses shut down rather than pay reparation taxes:
The owners of the German coal mines and foundries in the Ruhr are determined not to pay the 10 per cent. export tax imposed on coal by the French…
The owners will refuse to export an ounce of coal or coke.
They will dump the supplies in the yards, and are prepared for a long seige.
This was accompanied by a large-scale labor strike, which the German government supported by directly financially supporting the individual strikers.
Consumer strikes
In Cairo in , a boatload of cruise ship passengers refused to disembark because of a landing tax they would be forced to pay.
This so upset the tourist-dependent shopkeepers that they rioted and forced the tax officials to waive the tax.
In Melbourne, Australia, in “[b]etween 500 and 600 young men refused to pay the amusement tax at the Stadium last night to witness a boxing match between Edwards and Palmer.
They were patrons of the lower-priced seats.
The manager of the Stadium argued with the spokesmen for the crowd for some time, but neither side would yield, and the result was that the attendance was much smaller than usual.”
In the U.S., school districts often get government funding based on how many students are attending on certain “count days.”
One parent decided to use this as leverage, saying she would keep her children home from school on count days, and thereby deprive the district of money, to protest against poor district policies.
(I’ll cover consumer strikes of government-monopoly products in another episode of this series.)
A very frequently-used tactic of tax resistance campaigns is to take public oaths or sign public pledges of resistance.
This signals to potential resisters that they will not be alone, and is a show of defiance to the authorities.
I’ve collected dozens of examples, which I’ll summarize here:
When Gandhi launched his first satyagraha-based campaign in South Africa in , a member of the meeting asked everyone present to take a solemn oath of opposition.
Gandhi remarked:
There is no one in this meeting who can be classed as an infant or as wanting in understanding.
You are all well advanced in age and have seen the world; many of you are delegates and have discharged responsibilities in a greater or lesser measure.
No one present, therefore, can ever hope to excuse himself by saying that he did not know what he was about when he took the oath.
I know that pledges and vows are, and should be, taken on rare occasions.
A man who takes a vow every now and then is sure to stumble.
But if I can imagine a crisis in the history of the Indian community of South Africa when it would be in the fitness of things to take pledges, that crisis is surely now.
… Resolutions of this nature cannot be passed by a majority vote.
Only those who take a pledge can be bound by it.
This pledge must not be taken with a view to produce an effect on outsiders.
No one should trouble to consider what impression it might have upon the local Government, the Imperial Government, or the Government of India.
Every one must only search his own heart, and if the inner voice assures him that he has the requisite strength to carry him through, then only should he pledge himself and then only would his pledge bear fruit.
His entire speech, which reflects on vows and the responsibility of vow makers, is worth reading in this context.
In , “98 per cent of the merchants at Stuttgart and… 60 out of 60 merchants at DeWitt,” Arkansas, signed pledges to refuse to collect a new sales tax from their customers or to pay it to the government.
Also in , in Verdun (then a suburb of Montreal), 164 shopkeepers, including the mayor, signed a pledge to refuse to collect or pay a Montreal city sales tax.
, merchants in Gadsen, Alabama followed suit: gathering and voting unanimously to refuse to collect or pay a sales tax.
In Ghana, in , the Akuashongs met and “swore not to… pay any tax, even if the government should fight with them, and to make war with any party breaking the agreement.”
In several French newspapers printed the text of a pledge in which French liberals vowed to resist any taxes that the monarchy instituted without going through constitutional channels.
The newspapers were themselves prosecuted for this.
However, in court, they pointed out that the King himself, before he took the throne, had signed a tax resistance pledge of his own, along with three other members of the nobility, as a protest against republican infringements on their privileges.
In Castine, Maine, in , the pledge took the form of a vote: the town voted 125 to 65 at a specially-convened town meeting, to refuse to collect a school funding tax in defiance of a superior court order to do so.
In , some 5,000 businessmen in Belfast vowed to “keep back payment of all taxes which they can control, so long as any attempt to put into operation the provisions of the Home Rule Bill is persevered in.”
In the Women’s Tax Resistance League, members signed “pledge cards” that indicated which taxes they would be resisting if the government persisted in denying women the vote.
The Reform Act agitation really hit its stride in when a huge rally, 150,000 people strong, vowed as a group to stop paying taxes until the Act’s passage.
One account of the meeting read:
He declared before God, that, if all constitutional modes of obtaining the success of the reform measure failed, he should and would, be the first man to refuse the payment of taxes, except by a levy upon his goods [tremendous cheering, which lasted some minutes].
I now call upon all who hear me, and who are prepared to join me in this step, to hold up your hands [an immense forest of hands was immediately elevated, accompanied by vehement cheering].
I now call upon you who are not prepared to adopt this course, to hold up your hands and signify your dissent [not a single hand appearing, loud shouts and cheers were repeated].
In South Africa’s “New Rush” in , a number of miners signed a pledge reading, in part, “I promise on my honour and in presence of the people that I shall not from this day forward — until released from this obligation by the officers of the League — pay any taxes or impositions whatsoever to the Government, id est, for the support and maintenance of the Government of this territory; and that I shall buy from, sell to, or deal with only such men as have also taken this pledge or obligation; and that I shall to the utmost of my power, with purse and person, protect any and every officer and member of the League against coercion or consequences of what nature soever arising out of the action necessitated by this pledge.
At least 1,000 taxpayers in Elmira, New York, signed a declaration in saying that “The undersigned taxpayers… believing the county, city, and school tax rates as levied are too high, hereby refuse to pay until the budget has been thoroughly examined by the committee of the Taxpayers’ league.
We also refuse to pay penalties until such revision has been made and a lower tax adopted.”
500 taxpayers in Cadillac, Michigan, signed a petition in in which they vowed to refuse to pay taxes for two years unless the local government cut its budget by 20%.
In , 36 New Jersey residents signed their name to a petition to the home country in which they declared that they would refuse to pay any further taxes so long as a Roman Catholic was in charge of tax assessment.
At a “monster meeting” at Castlemaine in Australia in , a group of miners unanimously adopted a resolution to refuse to take out licenses.
Taxpayers in Zeehan, Tasmania, met in an open-air meeting in and passed a resolution stating that they “hereby express our solemn determination to passively resist the payment of the unjust income tax imposed by the late Government.”
A Queensland, Australia stealth tax on rural irrigation improvements, was resisted by the farmers there in , who, organized in groups called “Local Producers’ Associations,” passed motions vowing to resist.
For example, the Association in Rockhampton “unanimously decided that all members pledge themselves to offer passive resistance to the operation of the Act by refusing to make the required applications or to furnish any returns, or to make any payments as demanded by the Act.
Further, it was decided to invite all other LPAs and kindred bodies to adopt a similar attitude.”
, about twenty households near Paddock Wood, England, “signed a declaration to withhold [tax] payments” to protest the lack of government action against vagabonds camping in their neighborhood.
When the Russian Duma-in-exile issued the Vyborg manifesto in , calling on Russians to refuse to pay taxes to the Czarist autocracy, a number of villages responded by voting whether or not to heed the call and then taking the results of the vote as a pledge they were bound to abide by.
In , 149 members of a Catholic War Veterans post vowed to refuse to pay their real estate taxes unless the government dismissed a Communist Party member from his post as an advisor to the Borough President of Manhattan.
At a meeting of the Charleston Board of Trade in South Carolina in , the white supremacist group unanimously passed a series of resolutions declaring that they considered debts incurred by the reconstruction government to be illegitimate and that they would resist the payment of taxes meant to pay them off.
At a mass meeting of white supremacists in Louisiana in , they passed a resolution vowing that “we will pay no more taxes to State or city.”
Some resisters of Thatcher’s poll tax made their resistance dramatically public by burning their “final reminder notices” at demonstrations.
This tactic has been prominent in the American war tax resistance movement.
For example:
In the American pacifist group Peacemakers released a statement, signed by 59 members, in which “the undersigned state hereby that we are not going to pay our federal taxes.”
In , some 370 people signed a public oath saying “We will refuse to pay our federal income taxes voluntarily.”
In , more than five hundred writers and editors added their names to a war tax resistance pledge that appeared as a newspaper advertisement.
The names included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K. Dick, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Grace Paley, Susan Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, William Styron, Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Pynchon, Betty Friedan, and Kurt Vonnegut.
Also in , a letter was circulated largely among academics, and signed by more than a dozen professors, among others, organized as the “No Tax for War Committee” in which the signatories pledged to “withhold all or part of the taxes due” and urged the recipients to join their public pledge.
As early attempts to get methodical about nonviolent resistance theory and practice, these are interesting works.
I’ll note some of what he had to say about tax resistance as a nonviolent resistance tactic here today:
Tax resistance against the Education Act of
This was the organized opposition to the English Education Act of , which extended the private school system of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches at the expense of the general taxpayer.
The interest of the matter for the purposes of the present discussion lies in the fact that it was explicitly an example of passive resistance, inasmuch as the agitators called themselves “passive resisters” and published, for a decade or more, a periodical called “Passive Resistance,” from whose pages this account is drawn.
Their method was to refuse to pay the school tax, which they held to be grossly unjust to dissenters, but to submit obediently to the penalty prescribed by the law for delinquency.
This punishment came with great regularity in the form of fines, which the passive resisters steadfastly and consistently refused to pay; whereupon their goods were distrained, or, in default of goods, the recalcitrant was cast into prison.
The magnitude of the movement is shown by the fact that within two and one half years of its inauguration the league had on file reports of seventy thousand summonses and 254 commitments to prison.
The character and social standing of the members of the movement are facts of significant interest.
According to the secretary of the organization,1 “The men and women whose goods have been sold belong to all classes and ranks.
They are clergymen and ministers, journalists and teachers, manufacturers and magistrates, members of Parliament and candidates for Parliament, farmers and gardeners, aged women and young men.”2
The movement was losing momentum in , in response, as was supposed, to a feeling on the part of some that the Liberal victory of , for which the Passive Resisters seem to have been more or less responsible, insured the repeal of the obnoxious law.
But the decline was doubtless due also to the proverbially early exhaustion which overtakes all sudden expressions of popular indignation.
The secretary admitted in that the Passive Resisters were “fewer in number compared with the hosts which at first resisted the fraudulent legislation of .”3
“Passive Resistance,” ; p. 7.
Ibid.
Ibid.; p. 4.
Tax resistance in the American Revolution
The merchants, true to the intuition of their class, were by no means revolutionary or even reckless as regards the foundations of law and order, although in this case they permitted their zeal for prosperity to encourage social forces which, in turn, eventually raised a tempest that they could not quell.
Their intention, both real and apparent, was the organization of a boycott against British trade, particularly in commodities subjected to taxation or other restrictions under the recently enacted revenue laws.
This boycott was planned with clear comprehension of the interplay of interests that obtains in human affairs, and particularly the dependence of political policies upon personal and business influences.
Consequently the colonial merchants did not aim a general broadside at the whole British Empire, but planned to reach particular interests with a well-directed blow.
More specifically, they hoped, by means of their boycott measures, to give the British mercantile and manufacturing people a motive, in the person of their own imperiled interests, for seeking the ear of Parliament with a demand for the repeal of the objectionable legislation.
The straight, or primary, boycott was the method used to impress the minds of the British trading class, which was, of course, the British government for practical purposes.
The secondary boycott, as now known, was in turn brought to bear upon Americans who failed to observe the original agreement and resorted to dealing within the limits prescribed, either as to persons or goods.
For instance, in the earlier struggle, waged against the stamp tax, communities that paid the same were made to feel the disapproval of their neighbors, as in Charleston, South Carolina, where a radical fire company agreed that ”no provision should be shipped “to that infamous Colony Georgia in particular nor any other that make use of Stamp Paper.’ ”1
During the later boycott, directed against the Townshend taxes, Rhode Island yielded to that temptation which constitutes the greatest peril for any concerted movement of this kind, namely the impulse to reap a rich harvest by seizing the opportunities deliberately left to go begging through the self-denial of one’s competitors.
This incident also discloses another weakness inherent in such organized “voluntary” efforts, which is that they are really seldom, if ever, completely voluntary.
Enthusiasts for every cause, however worthy, almost invariably make use of coercion by means of the hundred and one devices known to social pressure, and thereby incorporate the seeds of their own disintegration.
Thus a contemporary Rhode Islander wrote that they “were dragged in the first place like an ox to the slaughter, into the non-importation agreement,” and that adherence to the same “would have been acting out of character and in contradiction to the opinion of the country.”2
The resistance of the colonists was destined, however, to run the entire gamut of forms known to social opposition and constraint.
Evasion of law had long been an established business in the form of smuggling; the peaceable boycott, both primary and secondary, was now well under way; but political action, litigation, social ostracism, mob violence, and armed revolution were either already coming into play or waiting to enter the stage as the historic drama proceeded.
And this list makes no mention of those subtle methods of persuasion and “influence” which operate between friends and relatives, business and scientific associates, boon companions, and numberless other channels of daily intercourse, not to mention the more overt persuasion of pulpit, press, and platform.
And one of the most significant aspects of it all is the tendency of any one of these situations to transform itself into one or more of the other members of the series, so that one method can hardly be used without sooner or later invoking the others.
This truth is clearly exemplified in the events now before us.
For example, in the secondary boycott directed by Charleston against Georgia, as quoted above, the resolution threatened death for future offenders, with destruction of their vessels.
In Boston, especially during the earlier contest over the Stamp Tax, the disturbances were most serious.
The rioters were led by one Mackintosh, a shoemaker, endowed by nature for “government by tumult.”
Under his leadership, the mob, which was currently reported to include “fifty gentlemen actors” partly disguised in workman’s attire, not only razed the stamp office but also attacked the house of the registrar of the admiralty, and even the residence of Governor Hutchinson himself.
In all these scenes the Sons of Liberty, composed largely of workingmen, did the strong-arm work.
Meanwhile the merchants, ostensibly committed exclusively to the boycott and orderly methods, lent in private an anxious but effective moral support.
One of them testifies in a private letter of the time that they were endeavoring “to keep up the Spirit” of resistance but were “not a little pleas’d to hear that McIntosh has the Credit of the Whole Affair.”3…
“The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, ,” by Arthur Meier Schlesinger; Vol. ⅬⅩⅩⅧ, Whole Number 182, of “Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law,” edited by the faculty of political science of Columbia University.
New York, ; p. 82.
Ibid.; p. 215.
Ibid.; p. 72.
Economic pressure through the boycott and physical force in the form of violence were constantly supported by the more subtle forms of social coercion.
Thus the Boston agreement of was to be enforced by a discountenancing “in the most effectual but decent and lawful manner” of all who should fail to aid the movement.
At Philadelphia, any person failing to support the boycott was to be branded “An Enemy of the Liberties of America,” and it was the plan to publish such names in the newspapers.
The commercial resisters of Savannah likewise agreed that “every violator should be deemed ‘no Friend to his Country’ ”; while in South Carolina non-supporters were “to be treated with the utmost contempt.”
In the Boston boycotters circulated thousands of handbills throughout their own and neighboring provinces calling on the inhabitants to have no trade relations with persons whom they named as lacking in regard for the public good.
While this is apparently merely a case of the secondary boycott already described, the publicity methods connected with it are of interest just here.
Public disapproval, aside from withdrawal of patronage, was a factor held in view.
It was an effort to revive the ancient pillory upon its mental though not its physical side that prompted some of these acts — perhaps that of the Harvard College seniors who resolved never again to deal with Editor John Mein, who championed the non-boycotters.1 The town meeting went a step further, and ordered the names of seven persistent offenders inscribed on the town records in order “that posterity may know who those persons were that preferred their little private advantages to the common interest of all the colonies.”2
Boston, the scene of so many stirring activities, staged a prototype of our present-day “peaceful picketing” on a mass scale, when, during the struggle to prevent disintegration of the boycott forces, in , a procession of more than a thousand persons proceeded, in what Professor Schlesinger describes as “impressive and orderly array,” to the homes and shops of the recalcitrant merchants, among them two sons of the governor, whom they sought under the roof of the executive mansion itself.
Having made their demonstration and protest, in every place the multitude quietly dispersed.3
Ibid.; pp. 112, 130, 148, 149, 158, 172.
Ibid.; p. 173.
Ibid.; p. 176.
Francis Deak’s campaign against Austrian domination in Hungary
Deak proceeded to organize a scheme for national education and industry, and a boycott against Austrian goods was set in motion.
As relations between the two governments became more tense, “Deak admonished the people not to be betrayed into acts of violence, nor to abandon the ground of legality.
‘This is the safe ground,’ he said, ‘on which, unarmed ourselves, we can hold our own against armed force.
If suffering be necessary, suffer with dignity.’
He had given the order to the country — Passive Resistance”; “and the order was obeyed.
When the Austrian Tax Collector came to gather the taxes the people did not beat him nor even hoot him — they just declined to pay.
The Tax Collector thereupon called in the Austrian police, and the police seized the man’s goods.
Then the Hungarian auctioneer declined to auction them, and an Austrian auctioneer had to be introduced.
When he arrived he discovered that he would have to bring bidders from Austria also if the goods were to be sold.
The government found before long that it was costing more to distrain the goods than the tax itself was worth.”
Gandhi’s campaigns against anti-Indian measures in South Africa
The long struggle, which the London “Times” declared, according to Mr. Polak’s report, “must live in memory as one of the most remarkable manifestations in history of the spirit of Passive Resistance,” was drawing to its close in .
Mr. Gandhi, in connection with the discussion in Parliament and elsewhere in England, just prior to the great “March” of , above described, had accepted full responsibility for his advising the Indian community to resist the law.
His plan, which he held to be “of educational value, and, in the end to be valuable both to the Indian community and the State,” consisted, as he worded it himself, in “actively, persistently, and continuously asking those who are liable to pay the £3 tax to decline to do so and to suffer the penalties for non-payment, and what is more important, in asking those who are now serving indenture and who will, therefore, be liable to pay the £3 tax upon the completion of their indenture, to strike work until the tax is withdrawn.”1
This, as has been shown, was his plan of procedure at , when he proposed the strike of protest for .
But the new year opened with a series of conferences with the authorities, a truce was declared, and the principal points in the long dispute were finally settled by the Indian Relief Act, passed in …
“Speeches and Writings,” p.
ⅩⅬⅦ.
Gandhi’s independence campaign in India
At the close of his year of silence we find Gandhi organizing the ryots of the Kaira district in his own province in a passive resistance movement, i.e., Satyagraha, against the payment of taxes which they asserted should have been suspended because of a partial failure of their crops.
The struggle continued to , when the passive resisters were released from jail and their contention accepted.
Meanwhile the non-coöperation movement, the strangest revolution in human history, had been launched at a special session of the Indian National Congress, which met in Calcutta in .
the program was amended and strengthened in what are known as the Regular Congress Resolution, or the Nagpur Resolutions, of .
The resolution is based upon the two fundamental propositions, (1) that the British Government in India had forfeited the confidence of the country, and (2) that it should be brought to an end by the non-violent method of simply refusing to cooperate with it longer.
The program of non-cooperation was planned to culminate in “civil disobedience,” specifically in refusal to pay taxes for governmental support.
It was realized, however, that this drastic measure would subject the social order to a terrific and perilous strain.
Therefore a more or less extended period of discipline was seen to be necessary by way of preparation for the final stroke.
It will be recalled that the Non-cooperation Resolutions promised Swaraj within one year.
But as the tumult tended to increase with the passing months of , it became necessary, time and again, to postpone the most drastic measure, namely civil disobedience or refusal to pay taxes or remain in the government service, in which it was planned to culminate.
In , the All-India Congress met at Delhi, where Gandhi, according to the despatches to London of , declared it necessary to accelerate the movement by using all the measures in the non-cooperation arsenal.
“This,” he declared, “embraces the policy of civil disobedience, which means civil revolution.
Whenever it is practised it will end Government authority.
It means open defiance of the Government and its laws.
I will launch this campaign in my own district, in Gujarat, within the next fortnight.
The nation must await the result of this example, which should open the eyes of the whole world.”
The congress committee pointed out in a resolution that only a little more than a month then remained of the year within which Swaraj had been promised.
In view of this and the “exemplary self-restraint” observed by the nation in its adherence to non-violence, the committee then authorized “every province on its own responsibility to undertake civil disobedience, including non-payment of taxes,” provided they would observe Hindu-Moslem unity and all the other features of the non-cooperation program.
So much for the individual provinces, but, as for the nation as a whole, the decision was that it must await Gandhi’s signal.
And so it came about that at a meeting of the working committee of the All-India Congress on , with Gandhi presiding, a resolution was adopted postponing civil disobedience until , or pending the final result of the negotiations at the round-table conference then in progress between leaders of all parties…
During an interview with an American correspondent, in ,1 Mr Gandhi admitted that mass civil disobedience had been abandoned on the very eve of its promised inauguration, because “the country was not ready.”
“The principles of non-violence,” he explained, “had not yet made themselves felt.”
But he declared it merely a postponement, adding, “We will continue individual disobedience and boycott.”
Mr. John Clayton, in the Chicago Tribune, .
Shortly thereafter, Gandhi was jailed, and he was still in jail when Case was writing his book.
Pickets and other such public demonstrations commonly accompany tax resistance
campaigns. Here are some examples that caught my eye:
During the Tithe War in Ireland, one parliamentarian noted with some panic
a news account of a mock funeral held in Ireland, attended by 100,000
people “who assembled to carry in a procession to the grave two coffins,
on which were inscribed ‘Tithes’ and ‘Rent’.”
The Women’s Tax Resistance League used signs, banners, handbills,
chalked-slogans, and sandwich boards to help get their “No Vote — No Tax”
message across at their public demonstrations.
The Benares hartal of was in
part a strike, but in part a huge demonstration, the duration and peaceful
discipline of which pointed out the determination of the
demonstrators.
When the Rebecca Rioters came to Carmarthen, they came en masse and
during the daytime, almost as a parade. They were “preceded by a band of
musicians playing popular airs, and men bearing placards with the
following enscriptions in large printed letters:” “Justice and lovers of
Justice are we all.” “Freedom and better food.” “Free tolls and
Freedom.”
The tax strike in the French wine-growing region in
was preceded by huge demonstrations and
parades. Wrote one observer:
All observers were struck by the extraordinary perfection of the
organization. It was not necessary once for the troops or police to
interfere with the multitude which was variously estimated was made up
of from 400,000 to 600,000 persons. A feature of the parade was the
large proportion of women participating. Groups from various cities bore
banners with various inscriptions and carried coffins, guillotines,
&c.
Another wrote:
…all night long trains entered the station every quarter of an hour with
crowds, many of whom had been travelling fifteen and twenty hours.
Looking worn and dishevelled, they formed in serried battalions, and,
headed by bands and trumpets and drums, young and old, men, women, and
children, marched to their quarters…
This morning five huge columns, approaching from various quarters,
welded at the Arch Peyrou into one procession nine miles long, and the
march through the streets began at
. Placards threatened, “The
day of reckoning is at hand,” “We will take up arms,” “Down with the
deputies.” Here were 200 handsome Norbannese women in mourning, there
500 young girls robed in white muslin, with tricolor robes.
In in Turkey, mass tax refusal was
backed up by mass demonstrations of as many as 20,000 people, demanding
the repeal of the taxes.
In , anti-Chavez protesters launched a tax
strike by tearing up their income tax forms in a demonstration in which
thousands of demonstrators marched on the tax offices in Caracas.
Farmers in New Zealand threatened to drive their farm equipment onto the
highways to jam the roads in protest against a new greenhouse-gas-targeting
“flatulence tax” on livestock in .
When the authorities tried to impose a tax on dogs in Breslau, Germany,
in 5,000 dogs (and their owners)
descended on city hall to protest.
One of Gandhi’s first experiments with satyagraha was
a strike in South Africa to protest against a tax on Indian immigrants
there. The culmination of that campaign was a massive protest march of
striking workers that deliberately violated laws restricting the right of
travel of Indians.
Ammon Hennacy was fond of accompanying his solitary tax resistance with
periodic fasts and picketings at
IRS
headquarters, typically around the time of the anniversary of the
Hiroshima bombing. He would hand out to passers-by copies of the
Catholic Worker as well as leaflets that
described his own particular protest — while also carrying a sign and
wearing a sandwich-board that put things more concisely.
The previously-untaxed caste of Bhats in India responded to being subjected
to the income tax in dramatic fashion: “Two thousand men turned out to
remonstrate with the Superintendent of Police who appeared on the scene.
He remained firm, whereupon they cut themselves with knives, cursed the
Assessors, bespattering them with their blood, and declared they would
rather die than surrender their birthright. When several were apprehended,
their wives began to hack their persons, and so severely that several have
since died. Up to the last intelligence the Bhats still gloried in their
refusal.”
American war tax resisters frequently hold rallies, pickets, street
theater, and other such actions around “Tax Day” (the date when federal
income tax returns are due). This among other things helps make sure that
their message is one of those represented in the obligatory tax day news
stories. Here is an example:
The group then left for the federal building, in which the
IRS
and a number of other offices are located, at which 75 people burned tax
forms and blockaded the street for a bit. There were no arrests. In
conjunction with the tax form burning, they used a banner with the
quote: “Pardon us, friends, for the fracture of good order, for burning
paper instead of babies,” sent from prison during the Vietnam War by
Daniel Berrigan… They offered their apologies for burning tax forms
instead of Colombian villages, Palestinian schools, Iraqi hospitals,
Filipinos’ mosques and Afghan homes.
In another case:
After a mock President Clinton bragged to onlookers about the many areas
in which the
U.S. was #1 -
military spending, arms sales, violent gun deaths,
etc. — he
drove home the point with an 8-foot Patriot missile tossed into a group
of students, parents, nurses and other ordinary people.
Mass dying ensued, followed by an appearance by the grim reaper himself. Ostensibly there to collect bodies, he assented to an interview with M.C. Daniel Woodham.
Death was the only one at the rally willing to even attempt an explanation of the maniacal logic of a still-bloated U.S. military budget.
Some war tax resisters in Wales brought their tax payment to the tax office in a bucket of blood. When the payment was refused, they poured the blood over the steps of the building.
In members of the Magdalene House Catholic Worker held a demonstration at the IRS office in which they “laid out a cloth altar with candles, flowers, and health care items to represent life, and tax forms with their blood poured on them to represent death.
They held a worship service and talked about why they were there.”
This was enough for several of them to get arrested.
During the rebellion against Thatcher’s poll tax, there were several demonstrations.
The Scottish Trade Union Conference organized a number of rallies,
including a 30,000-person march in Edinburgh, but then it put its weight
behind a strange 11-minute-long general strike at which people all over
Scotland were supposed to briefly stop working to engage in some short
anti-poll-tax activism. That protest didn’t go anywhere and the Union
Conference lost some credibility as a movement organizer.
Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to demonstrations in England,
with some of these rallies and marches turning into riots (or being
attacked by police, depending on whose stories you believe). On such
occasions, the riots became the message of the demonstrations, whatever
the intentions of the organizers were. This had mixed consequences for
the movement.
Gandhi developed his satyagraha theory of nonviolent conflict during a
tax resistance struggle in South Africa. Here are a couple of contemporary
newspaper accounts that reference that struggle.
First, from the Western Times of
:
Indians in South Africa
Pietermaritzburg,
. A mass meeting of 5,000
Indians passed a resolution
declaring their resolve to go on general strike until the Government repeals
the £3 tax, and releases passive resisters now in prison. One of the speakers
was subsequently arrested.
Next, from the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough of
:
Right of the Husband.
Cape Town,
. The Indian Grievances
Commission has issued its report. Dealing with passive resistance and the
strike at the end of , the Commission finds
that it was absolutely necessary for the police to use force during the recent
disturbances at Mount Edgecombe and Esperanza.
The Commissioners regard the marriage question as the most difficult of all,
and point out the impossibility of legalising polygamy in South Africa, but
recommend the validation of monogamous marriages under a system which
recognises the right of the husband to marry one or more other wives. They
also recommend the repeal of the three-pound tax on the ground that it serves
no good or useful purpose. –Reuter.
Next, from the Liverpool Echo of
:
Indians in South Africa.
A New Bill of Rights.
Johannesburg,
. — With reference to the
newly-published bill dealing with the grievances of Indians in South Africa,
which in the main follows the lines of suggestions made by the recent
Commission of Inquiry on the subject, Mr. Polak, who has been intimately
associated with the Indian movement since its inception, stated
in an interview with Reuter’s
representative that the bill dealts [sic] with two of the
points on which the passive resistance campaign was based which could be dealt
with by statute — the £3 tax and the validation of the monogamous marriages.
Mr. Polak said he had received a telegram from Mr. Gandhi, the Indian leader,
stating that the bill appeared to be satisfactory. In order to comply with the
requirements of the passive resisters, however, Mr. Polak said it would be
necessary to get assurances from the responsible Minister as regards a more
sympathetic administration of the Immigration Act, and an undertaking that due
regard would be paid to vested interests in the application of the gold and
licensing laws. Mr. Polak further pointed out that acceptance of the present
bill with every measure of thankfulness did not mean the abrogation of the
general claim to civil equality in South Africa.
The remaining two points — namely, the right of South African Indians to enter
the Cape and the question of declaration on entrance into the Orange Free
State, Mr. Polak described as small matters of administration. –Reuter.
