Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
Ireland →
water charge strike, 2007
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
Some states, whose governments are suffering from bloated budgets and recession-spawned drops in tax revenue, have decided to issue IOUs instead of tax refunds .
This is causing some taxpayers, many of which are having financial problems of their own this year, to see things a little more clearly than usual.
Like this fellow, who says: “Now let’s be absolutely crystalline clear on this issue: A tax refund is not some kind of bonus.
It’s not a stimulus check.
Not welfare!
It belongs to the taxpayer.
In fact, it’s not much more than a loan that the unwitting taxpayer has made to their state, and as such the government has no god-damned right to the money!” Well, that’s all well-and-good, and I’ve heard such sentiments before, but what’s different and encouraging is that this fellow wants to take the next step and encourage taxpayers to end their tax withholding so that in the future, the government is coming to them, hat-in-hand, rather than the other way around.
Maybe it’ll catch on.
Timothy Coughlin, while serving a life sentence, successfully filed for millions of dollars in fraudulent tax refunds from the IRS.
Or so says this news report. What interested me about the news article was that the conspirators were being prosecuted by a State prosecutor, who expressed frustration that he couldn’t get the feds to take any interest in the case.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, among others, is promoting a non-payment campaign against the government water monopoly.
I honestly don’t know much about the issues behind this campaign, and most of the web sites seem to assume that visitors are already up-to-speed.
But this campaign’s bold picket signs helped me find a graphic and a title for my book We Won’t Pay! so I’ll give ’em props for that.
People will be less reluctant to take risks in a tax resistance campaign if
they know other people are willing to share those risks. One way of providing
this sort of reassurance is for resisters to join together in a mutual
insurance plan, so that if the government takes legal action against a
resister, or retaliates against them in some other way, they won’t have to
bear these consequences alone.
Today I’ll review some examples of how a variety of tax resistance campaigns
have created mutual insurance plans to protect resisters.
War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
reimburses American war tax resisters who have penalties & interest
seized by the
IRS.
The fund is operated by a team of resisters and sympathizers, and has hundreds
of subscribers:
In a core group of 83 people across the
country decided we could easily share $463.14 in penalties and interest
incurred by a few military tax resisters who appealed to the war tax
resistance community for help. The more people we could recruit to shoulder
the penalties and interest of resisters, the lighter the burden for everyone.
With the modest help we could provide, conscientious resisters were able to
keep on keeping on.
The penalty fund had the added benefit of making us all tax resisters, not
just those who withheld all or a portion of their income taxes. The base list
of supporters has been as high as 800 people sharing the weight. In nearly
every appeal, at least 200 people respond, usually more. In all we’ve paid
out about $250,000 to help resisters stay in the struggle.
Resisters who have had money seized by the
IRS
send the fund documentation showing how much of the seizure was the result
of interest and penalties, and then the fund sends out an appeal to its
members to help reimburse the cost:
We divide the total amount for all resisters by the number of active names on
the membership list to arrive at a “share.” We then send out an appeal to
both actives and inactive members. Each contributor pays all of a share or
whatever amount she can afford. Some pay more than a share. If we collect 75
percent of the total we ask for, each resister gets 75 percent of the amount
they requested. We cannot promise that we will collect the total amount
requested; usually, however, we can reimburse between 50% and 80% of each
appeal.
I have personal experience with this mutual insurance plan. In
the
IRS
seized some bank accounts of mine to recover taxes I had refused to pay. This
included $813 in interest and penalties. I applied to the War Tax Resisters
Penalty Fund, which sent me a check for $649 from the amount the subscribers
to the fund pledged.
Irish Land League
When the
National
Land League launched a rent strike targeting English absentee landlords in
Ireland in , it made sure resisters knew
it would have their backs if the landlords tried to evict them. The leaders
of the League issued a rent strike manifesto from Kilmainham Jail that
declared:
If you only act together in the spirit to which within the last two years
you have countless times pledged your vows, they can no more evict a whole
nation than they can imprison them.
The funds of the National Land League will be poured out unstintingly for the
support of all who may endure eviction in the course of the struggle. Our
exiled brothers in America may be relied upon to contribute if necessary as
many millions of money as they have contributed thousands to starve out
landlordism and bring English tyranny to its knees.
One of the ways this played out was for evicted tenants to be temporarily
put up, along with their livestock if any, on the property of unevicted
tenants and sympathetic landowners, in what came to be called “Land League
Villages.” Each family was given a small monthly allowance from the Land
League.
Dublin Water Charge Strike
In , the resistance campaign against the
water charge in Dublin initiated a mutual insurance fund. One of the campaign
leaders recalls:
Obviously the council/government tactic was to try to individualise their
intimidation. By summonsing individuals to court maybe they could bypass the
mass participation that the protests against disconnections had seen. The
campaign immediately took a decision that when any individual was summonsed
to court, we would turn up and contest every case — and that we would turn up
in force. It was at this time that we made a decision which would prove
crucial to the success of the campaign. We decided to initiate a membership
of the campaign at £2 per household. This money would go into a warchest to
pay legal fees so that no individual would be left facing a legal bill. The
idea that the individuals being taken to court were representing all of us
was paramount. Within weeks 2,500 households had paid the £2 membership fee,
and within 12 months there were over 10,000 paid-up households making the
campaign without doubt the biggest to have existed in decades.
Breton Association
When Charles Ⅹ of France attempted to bypass the legislature and enact his own
taxes in , French liberals in the Breton
Association organized tax resistance and created a fund to defray the costs of
any tax resisters who were prosecuted. By the terms of the Association’s
manifesto:
We declare… [t]o subscribe individually for ten francs… This subscription
will form a common stock or fund for all Brittany, destined to indemnify the
subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any
illegal contributions imposed upon the public…
And this is how the fund was to be administered:
[Elected procurators are to] receive the subscriptions, to afford indemnities
conformably to the [section quoted above], at the request of any subscriber
prosecuted for the payment of illegal contributions; to sue in his name…
for justice against the exactors by all possible means allowed by law…
War of the Regulation
The Regulator movement, a tax resistance rebellion in pre-American Revolution
North Carolina, had an oath that members took that committed each of them to
come to the aid of any others who might be arrested or whose property was
being seized for nonpayment:
I will, with the aid of other sufficient help, go and take, if in my power,
from said officer, and return to the party from whom taken; and in case any
one concerned should be imprisoned, or under arrest, or otherwise confined,
or if his estate, or any part thereof, by reason or means of joining this
company of Regulators, for refusing to comply with the extortionate demands
of unlawful tax gatherers, that I will immediately exert my best endeavors to
raise as many of said subscribers as will be force sufficient, and, if in my
power, I will set the said person at liberty…
The oath also created a mutual insurance pledge:
I do further promise and swear that if, in case this, our scheme, should be
broken or otherwise fail, and should any of our company be put to expense or
under any confinement, that I will bear an equal share in paying and making
up said loss to the sufferer.
Reformed Israel of Yahweh
Members of the small Christian group called the Reformed Israel of Yahweh
were, like its founder, conscientious objectors to military taxation. When
some of the members of the group were convicted on tax evasion charges, the
Reformed Israel of Yahweh organization paid their fines.
Pacific Yearly Meeting
A committee of the collection of American Quaker congregations known as the
Pacific Yearly Meeting administers something it calls “the Fund for Concerns:”
Its purpose is to assist members and attenders of Monthly Meetings to follow
individual leadings arising from peace, social order, or spiritual concerns.
… Up to $100 per fiscal year per person will be available to help with the
interest and penalty expenses of war tax resisters who are members or regular
attenders of a Monthly Meeting. The Monthly Meeting must indicate approval
and provide matching funds.
New York Yearly Meeting
During the Vietnam War, the New York Yearly Meeting advocated war tax
resistance and “promised financial help through special committees if [Quaker
resisters] changed jobs or refused to pay taxes in protest against the war.”
Papuan Courier
In 1919, Papua, which had been a territory occupied and run by the German
Empire until World War Ⅰ when Australia took over, began to agitate against
taxation without representation, and many people refused to pay.
The Papuan Courier, which was sympathetic to the
tax resisters,
…as evidence of its bona fides on the question, has decided, to form a fund
for the defence of any resident who may by victimised, persecuted, or
prosecuted for failure to pay the tax, and to that end we open the list with
a contribution of Five Guineas.
Tithe War
In , Irish Catholics rebelled
against paying government-mandated tithes to the Anglican church. In this
case, the Catholic church itself provided some insurance to the resisters.
The Anglican archbishop Richard Whately complained:
Every possible legal evasion has been resorted to to prevent the incumbent
from obtaining his due. A parish purse has been raised to meet law expenses
for this purpose, and the result has been that in most instances nothing
whatever, in others a very small proportion of the arrears, has been
recovered. … [One Anglican clergyman] instituted a tithe-suit which was
decided in his favour; but, instead of receiving the amount, he was met by an
appeal to the High Court of Delegates, and is informed that a continued
resistance to the utmost extremity of the law is to be supported by a parish
purse.
Addio-Pizzo Movement
In , a number of individuals and businesses
opposed to paying mafia protection money began to use a number of techniques
to interrupt the payments and to support those resisters whom the mafia was
threatening with reprisals. The mayor of Palermo, Diego Cammarata, pledged
€50,000 to assist merchants who had been victims of extortion.
Peacemakers
The group “Peacemakers,” which launched the modern American war tax resistance
movement , had a mutual
insurance component from the beginning:
Peacemakers at the Ohio cell… 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.
Penalty Sharing Community
The Iowa Peace Network maintains a mailing list of persons who have made a
commitment to the Penalty Sharing Community
to share in the penalties assessed to individuals and families who have
chosen to resist war taxes or have participated in civil disobedience or
non-violent direct action. When a request for assistance is received, a
mailing is sent out which explains the resister’s situation and the amount of
money needed. For example, if the resister was assessed a $300.00 penalty,
each of the persons in the Community would pay an equal portion of the
$300.00. Thus if there were 200 people in the Community, each would pay
$1.50. The Iowa Peace Network will also add into the amount requested its
costs for printing and mailing. Such costs have proven to be minimal.
Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters
Members of the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters redirected their federal taxes
into an “alternative fund” that served partially as an escrow account, and
partially as a way of redirecting some of the money to charitable
organizations. Part of the fund was reserved to help defray any legal costs
incurred by members in the course of their resistance.
“New Rush” Resisters
White miners at the “New Rush” in Kimberly, South Africa, voted in
to form “a Defence League and Protection
Association… not to assail the Government, but to protect individuals if
assailed unrighteously by the Government.” The pledge of the association said
in part:
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.
The pledge had a clause that made it binding when it would be signed by 400
men, whereupon:
The Government will be defied if they dare to touch a single claim for
non-payment of license. The diamond buyers will refuse to pay further license
and will be defended from harm.
Ruhrkampf
When the Ruhr region of Germany began resisting reparation payments to the
victorious nations of World War Ⅰ, France and Belgium occupied the region
to take the payments by force. Germans responded with a campaign of mass
nonviolent resistance, including tax resistance, and were backed up by their
own government.
One of the ways the German government supported the campaign was by paying
the strikers itself, to the tune of 715 million marks. It did this in part by
printing off more currency, which helped fuel the hyperinflation of
(itself a sort of resistance strategy that
made it difficult or impractical to account for reparations payments).
Louisiana Anti-Reconstructionists
During the “Reconstruction” period after the American Civil War, white
supremacists in Louisiana refused their allegiance to a federally-backed,
mixed-race state government, and demonstrated this through tax resistance.
Several attorneys issued a statement offering to “engage themselves, without
compensation, and as a matter of public service, to defend professionally all
[tax resisters].” A mass-meeting issued a tax resistance pledge, and resolved:
That a committee of five be appointed to draw up a plan by which the citizens
may co-operate, to employ counsel and mutually assist each other in their
refusal to pay taxes.
Satyagraha in South Africa
Gopal Krishna Gokhale, an officer in the Indian National Congress fighting
for the independence of India, pledged £2,000 a month to support Indian
satyagrahis in South Africa who were engaged in tax resistance and other
tactics under Gandhi’s direction.
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 people are arrested, tried, or imprisoned for tax resistance, their comrades have sometimes used this as an occasion to hold rallies or other demonstrations.
This shows support for the people being persecuted, demonstrates determination in the face of government reprisals, and can be a good opportunity for propaganda.
Here are some examples:
When Russell Kanning was convicted for leafletting at the IRS office in Keene, New Hampshire, supporters demonstrated at the jail, holding up “Free Russell Kanning” signs.
Supporters of jailed war tax resister Russell Kanning protest near the IRS office in Keene, New Hampshire
During the Dublin water charge strike, according to one organizer:
“The campaign immediately took a decision that when any individual was summonsed to court, we would turn up and contest every case — and that we would turn up in force. …
And when the first court appearances took place, over 500 people turned up outside Rathfarnham courthouse to support their neighbours.
We marched to the courthouse, had stirring speeches, several songs including ‘You’ll never Walk Alone’ and ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ and an amazing sense of our unbeatability.”
Sylvia Hardy, an elderly woman from Exeter, refused to pay her council tax, calling it highway robbery that the tax rates have risen by double-digits per year, while her pension rises at only 1.7% annually.
When she was summonsed to court, she walked alongside banner-waving supporters and was met by a crowd of supporters outside the courthouse.
Another pensioner who refused to pay his council tax bill for similar reasons, David Richardson, was taken to court in .
About fifty supporters demonstrated outside, singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” for Richardson.
Brian Wright was the first person imprisoned for failure to pay Margaret Thatcher’s “Poll Tax” — 700 people held a rally outside the prison to show support.
Other prisons holding poll tax resisters were later picketed by protesters.
When J.J. Keon, a Socialist from Grafton, Illinois, was jailed for refusing to pay what he contended was an illegal poll tax in , Socialist Party spokesman Ralph Korngold came to town and gave a speech outside the prison urging people to join Keon in resisting and to ask why no rich tax dodgers were behind bars.
Maurice McCrackin was jailed for war tax resistance in .
While there, war tax resister Richard Fichter picketed the federal prison camp where he was held.
Before that, he’d picketed the courthouse where McCracken was being tried.
When the IRS took war tax resister Ed Hedemann to court in to try to force him to turn over financial documents to the agency, some 25 supporters, waving signs and handing out leaflets, joined him to demonstrate outside the courthouse before the hearing.
Prior to war tax resister Frank Donnelly’s sentencing on tax evasion charges in , dozens of supporters rallied outside the courthouse.
One supporter noted that “[i]n addition to showing up at his sentencing, Donnelly’s friends in Maine threw three ‘Going-Away-To-Jail Parties’ for Donnelly in the days leading up to his prison sentence.
In one party surprise, Donnelly cut into a fresh Maine blueberry pie, and he found a file baked into the pie.”
The women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom was particularly noted for its courthouse and jailhouse rallies:
When Clemence Housman was jailed for failure to pay about $1 of tax in — with the authorities telling her that they were authorized to keep her in jail until she paid up, however long that took — the Women’s Tax Resistance League held a protest outside the prison, and “gave three rousing cheers for Miss Housman, which… it is hoped reached the lonely prisoner in her cell.”
The league then organized a procession to the prison gates.
The four mile walk, over muddy streets on a rainy day, ended in a surprising victory, as the government had thrown in the towel and released Housman — without getting a penny from her — after five days.
When a Women’s Suffrage wagon full of activists descended on the courthouse where Janet Legate Bunten was being charged with refusal to take out a license for her dog, the authorities panicked.
“The court was twenty minutes late in taking its seat,” a sympathetic observer noted, “and it was freely rumoured that the reason of the delay was that more police were sent for to be in attendance before the proceedings began!
There certainly was an unusual number present for so insignificant a court.”
The Women’s Tax Resistance League organized “a great gathering” to support Kate Harvey who was charged with ten counts of failing to pay national insurance taxes on her gardener’s salary.
Following the sentence, they shouted “Shame!” to the judge, then held a “poster parade” to the town square and held a mass meeting there.
Tax resistance groups have used surveys to gauge public support for a possible campaign and to reassure potential resisters that they will not be alone.
Some have also tried the gambit of asking people to commit to resist if and only if a certain critical mass of people also makes such a commitment.
Today I’ll give some examples.
Surveys to gauge support or to “push poll”
The Secretary of the Federation of Dublin Anti Water Charge Campaigns remembers that the government initially challenged anti-tax activists by saying that they were an unrepresentative, radical fringe, and that most people supported the tax:
Our immediate response was to challenge his contention and to propose a survey of the area to find out what people really thought, and a further public meeting to report the findings.
Within 15 minutes we had a dozen volunteers to carry out the survey and these went on to form the nucleus of what became one of the most active campaign groups in the federation.
The follow-up meeting 3 weeks later heard that something like 85% of the local residents opposed the tax.
The fact of carrying out this survey gave everybody the confidence that the silent majority were with us, and for those who carried out the survey, they realised that it wasn’t such a difficult thing to knock on their neighbours’ doors and talk to them and it gave them the confidence to go on to become key campaign activists.
It’s something I would recommend that campaigners try — doing a survey such as this or even collecting a petition in an area, knocking on doors and talking to people about the issue gives those people who we are hoping will become campaign activists a sense of ownership of the local campaign as well as demonstrating quite clearly the strength of feeling on the issue.
People need to feel that it’s their campaign — not one either owned by or controlled by any political organisation or party.
In the anti-Poll Tax movement in Thatcher’s Britain, a Bristol organizer, remembers that in his neighborhood group:
[Our] network was strengthened by a door-to-door survey of over 500 households.
The survey was not intended to be scientifically accurate.
Its purpose was to give the APTU a fairly accurate picture of what was happening on the ground, and, perhaps more significantly, it was a pretext for engaging people in conversation about the Poll Tax, informing them of the non-payment campaign and encouraging them to join their local APTU.
The results were interesting.
Only 20% said that they would definitely pay.
The same number said that they would definitely not, but more significantly, 55% said that they wouldn’t pay if a lot of other people in the area weren’t paying either.
So even at this early stage we knew that non-payment was going to be massive.
Over a third of the people canvassed became paid up members of the union.
By the end of the exercise Easton had over 300 members and street reps for almost every street.
The canvass was not left there.
The key to its success was the second visit.
The group compiled all the statistics on a street by street basis and many of the reps then went back, door-to-door, and told people the results of the survey in their street and the neighbouring streets.
A newsletter was delivered to everyone telling them what the overall results were for Easton.
This meant that people knew how few of their neighbours were going to pay and it gave them confidence not to pay themselves.
They had spoken to the canvassers personally, so they knew that the survey was genuine.
In the American war tax resistance group NWTRCC surveyed resisters, former resisters, and anti-war activists who had never resisted taxes, to find out about their attitudes toward war tax resistance.
They used some of the information, for instance a question for the never-resisted group about their reasons for not resisting, to help them refine their outreach message.
Almost two-thirds of those never-resisters answered “yes” to the question:
Would you consider participating in a one-year commitment to refuse a portion of your federal income taxes and redirect your taxes to a humanitarian cause if thousands joined you publicly?
This encouraging response led the group to launch what it called the “ War Tax Boycott.”
Although the Boycott itself did not generate the hoped-for “thousands,” the group found it to be a useful outreach platform, and has continued to use it in subsequent years.
Women’s suffrage activists in Wisconsin in said they “will take a census of the women taxpayers, [and] the list of names will be published and used as a basis of a ‘protest to the Legislature against taxation without representation.’ ”
Ask people to vow to resist once a critical mass of people take the vow
The women’s suffrage activists from Wisconsin I mention above also said that “when 10,000 names have been secured to a pledge, the women will refuse to pay taxes, and the questions involved will be taken to the courts.”
Another version of the pledge put the number at 5,000:
We, the tax paying women of Wisconsin, hereby agree to do what we can by protest and argument to emphasize the fact that taxation without representation is tyranny as much for American women today as it was for American colonists in .
And we also pledge ourselves that when 5,000 or more women in Wisconsin shall have similarly enrolled we will simultaneously take action by whatever method may seem best in accordance with official advice from the Wisconsin Suffrage Association to the end that public attention may be thoroughly and effectively called to the injustice and injury done to women by taxing them without giving them any voice as to how their money should be employed.
The American anti-war activist group Code Pink launched a campaign called “Don’t Buy Bush’s War” in , saying:
When there are 100,000 of us who have the courage to pledge no more money for war, we will join in an act of mass civil disobedience and refuse to pay the portion of our taxes that represents the % we spend on the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Nina Utne explained:
There is safety in numbers.
The idea is to get people to sign a pledge that they will engage in civil disobedience by withholding a percentage of their taxes, but only if a critical mass of 100,000 signers is reached by .
The campaign’s ambitions were a little too high, as it turns out, but they did get over 2,000 pledges, and started many conversations about war tax resistance.
Miners at the “New Rush” in Kimberly, South Africa in signed a pledge of tax resistance, mutual protection, and boycott of non-resisters that included a minimum-signers trigger:
This pledge is to become operative, and shall be enforced, when signed by 400 men.
… This pledge is a serious matter.
If it is passed to-night it will only be a Resolution; but as soon as it is signed by 400 men, which will most likely be on Monday next, it will be the law of the people which must be abided by and ruthlessly enforced.
Another way people can assist and show solidarity with tax resisters is by coming to their assistance if their property is seized.
Here are some examples:
Practical support
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund was established in .
It helps war tax resisters who have had penalties and interest added to their tax bills and seized by the IRS by reimbursing them for a large portion of these additional charges.
The more people we could recruit to shoulder the penalties and interest of resisters, the lighter the burden for everyone.
With the modest help we could provide, conscientious resisters were able to keep on keeping on.
The penalty fund had the added benefit of making us all tax resisters, not just those who withheld all or a portion of their income taxes.
The base list of supporters has been as high as 800 people sharing the weight.
In nearly every appeal, at least 200 people respond, usually more.
In all we’ve paid out about $250,000 to help resisters stay in the struggle.
The story of the seizure of the Kehler/Corner home was the subject of the documentary An Act of Conscience.
When the home of war tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner was seized for back taxes, supporters came from near and far to maintain a 24-hour occupation of the home:
[David] Dellinger and others have come from as far away as California to the Colrain [Massachusetts] house…
Mr. Kehler and Ms. Corner continued to live in the house until they were arrested by Federal marshals last December.
Since then, friends and supporters of the couple have arrived to occupy the almost empty house in week-long shifts marked by the Thursday “changing of the guard” ceremony.
Because the house was sold in a Government auction in , all who go inside risk arrest for trespassing.…
For Bonney Simons of St. Johnsbury, Vt., sleeping on a bedroll in the house is her first official act of civil disobedience.
At 72 years of age, she said, it is time to “put your body where your mouth is.”
Suffragist tax resister Dora Montefiore barricaded her home and kept the tax collector from seizing her property for several weeks in , in what came to be known as the “Siege of Montefiore.”
She noted:
The tradespeople of the neighbourhood were absolutely loyal to us besieged women, delivering their milk and bread, etc., over the rather high garden wall which divided the small front gardens of Upper Mall from the terraced roadway fronting the river.
The weekly wash arrived in the same way and the postman day by day delivered very encouraging budgets of correspondence, so that practically we suffered very little inconvenience…
A woman sympathiser in the neighbourhood brought during the course of the [first] morning, a pot of home-made marmalade, as the story had got abroad that we had no provisions and had difficulty in obtaining food.
This was never the case as I am a good housekeeper and have always kept a store cupboard, but we accepted with thanks the pot of marmalade because the intentions of the giver were so excellent.
Examples like this also proved to be vivid anecdotes that the press could use when describing the siege and the support from sympathizers.
When the U.S. government seized Amish tax resister Valentine Byler’s horses and their harnesses while he was in the field preparing for spring planting, sympathetic neighbors allowed him to borrow their horses so he could continue his work.
Other sympathizers throughout the country who heard about the case sent Byler money — more than enough to buy a new team.
An auctioneer who was dragooned into helping the government sell some of the livestock of a man who had been resisting taxes meant to pay for sectarian education in , donated the fee he had earned for conducting the auction to the resister.
During the water charge strike in Dublin, “local campaign groups successfully resisted attempts to disconnect water and in the couple of instances where water was cut off, campaigners re-connected it within hours.
The first round was won hands down by the campaign and it was back to the drawing board for the councils.”
Similar monkeywrenching is being practiced today in Greece, where activists promptly reconnect utilities of people who have been disconnected for failure to pay the increased taxes attached to their utility bills.
During the Annuity Tax resistance in Edinburgh, people sympathetic to the resisters would bid on and return furniture and other items that had been seized and sold by the tax collectors.
The Rebecca Rioters, on the other hand, were characteristically more direct in their resistance:
Warrants of distress were issued… and the constables proceeded to execute them…
The constables then went towards Talog; but when on their way there they heard the sound of a horn, and immediately between two and three hundred persons assembled together, with their faces blackened, some dressed in women’s caps, and others with their coats turned so as to be completely disguised — armed with scythes, crowbars and all manner of destructive weapons which they could lay their hands on.
After cheering the constables, they defied them to do their duty.
The latter had no alternative but to return to town without executing their warrants.
The women were seen running in all directions to alarm their neighbours; and some hundreds were concealed behind the hedges, intending to appear if their services were required.
The entire district seemed to be aroused, and awaiting the arrival of the constables, who were going to levy on the goods of John Harris of Talog Mill for the amount of the fine and costs imposed upon him by the magistrates.
There could not have been less than two hundred persons assembled to resist the execution of process, and vast numbers were flocking from all quarters, in response to the blowing of a horn, the signal of the Rebeccaites to repair thither.
Various mounted messengers were scouring the country and sounding the trumpet of alarm.…
At Maesgwenllian near Kidwelly, several bailiffs were put in possession for arrears of rent to the amount of £150, but about , Rebecca and a great number of her followers made their appearance on the premises, and after driving the bailiffs off, took away the whole of the goods distrained on.
As soon as daylight appeared, the bailiffs returned, but found no traces of Rebecca, nor of the goods which had been taken away.
A group in Olive Hill, Kentucky in followed the Rebecca model, to an extent, “in a raid… by a band of between 800 and 900 men, who forced Levi White, Collector of Taxes, to give up a stock of goods which had been seized.
The goods were then taken back to the store of Levi Oppenheimer, where the official had seized them.”
Last year in Oaxaca, the PRI said that the would “defend up to the point of injunctions those citizens who suffer from liens imposed as well as judgments in order to prevent the impounding of vehicles, considering it unconstitutional that the police will impound them to stop the driver and remove the unit if the striker does not pay the corresponding [vehicle] tax.”
The IRS auctioned off a portion of Ralph Shinaberry’s property in after he refused to pay a fine for growing more wheat on his farm than his government-assigned quota.
“I don’t believe the Government can tell me how much I can grow,” he said, explaining his resistance.
The winning bidder, Herbert Jessup, told a reporter:
“I have no intention of taking possession of the property.”
When war tax resister Cosmas Raimondi’s car was seized by the IRS in , a handful of families in his parish offered to permanently loan him their car so he could still get around, and many others loaned him their cars temporarily.
“I’ve not had to ask one person,” he said.
In Beit Sahour, when the Israeli occupation authorities seized furniture and appliances from resisters, relatives and others would loan them spares, or camping furniture to use as replacements.
“In Bedfordshire in community pressure persuaded a minister to return goods seized from a Quaker for non-payment of tithes.”
Moral support
When Dora Montefiore was first formulating her “siege” strategy with fellow-activists Theresa Billington and Annie Kenney, they agreed to organize daily demonstrations outside of her home while she was defending it.
Montefiore remembered:
The feeling in the neighbourhood towards my act of passive resistance was so excellent and the publicity being given by the Press in the evening papers was so valuable that we decided to make the Hammersmith “Fort” for the time being the centre of the W.S.P.U. activities, and daily demonstrations were arranged for and eventually carried out. …
The roadway was… ideal for the holding of a meeting, as no blocking of traffic could take place, and day in, day out the principles for which suffragists were standing we expounded to many who before had never even heard of the words Woman Suffrage.
At the evening demonstrations rows of lamps were hung along the top of the wall and against the house, the members of the W.S.P.U. speaking from the steps of the house, while I spoke from one of the upstairs windows.
…shoals of letters came to me, a few sadly vulgar and revolting, but the majority helpful and encouraging.
Some Lancashire lads who had heard me speaking in the Midlands wrote and said that if I wanted help they would come with their clogs but that was never the sort of support I needed, and though I thanked them, I declined the help as nicely as I could. …
The working women from the East End came, time and again, to demonstrate in front of my barricaded house…
When the IRS seized and auctioned off the home and farm of Art Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos in , other war tax resisters and supporters were by their sides:
“I might have cried if I were alone,” Gravalos admitted.
But she was far from alone.
About 75 supporters gathered outside the building and spoke of their solidarity with Elizabeth and Arthur.
About 35 supporters turned up for the second auction, this time held at the IRS office in Lewiston, Maine.
Demonstrators read excerpts from letters to IRS officials and to President Clinton urging them to call off the auction.
In , the IRS levied 78-year-old war tax resister Ruth McKay’s social security checks to recoup the taxes she had been refusing to pay over the previous 20 years.
To show their support of her stand, 40 activists from New Hampshire Peace Action joined her for a vigil at the federal courthouse in Concord, New Hampshire.
When war tax resister Maria Smith’s wages were garnisheed by the IRS in , fifty supporters held a special church service in her honor.
“One of the Valod Vanias,” whose land was seized by the government during the Bardoli satyagraha, “who thus lost all his valuable property, celebrated the event by inviting friends and soldiers of Satyagraha to a party.”
On the other hand, some campaigns have taken the position that sacrifices for the cause are their own reward — that martyrdom is a blessing and that it would be foolish for such resisters to seek or accept recompense.
Nathaniel Morgan was speaking with someone curious about the Quaker stand on war and war taxes, and had this to say:
I told him then that I and my father had refused to pay the income tax on account of war, and had refused it on its first coming out, and withstood it 16 years, except when peace was declared, and that our goods were sold by auction to pay it.
This seemed to excite his curiosity, and made a stand to hear further, on the steps above the engine, going down to the river; asking me if we got anything by that, meaning, was anything refunded by the Society for such suffering.
I immediately replied: “Yes, peace of mind, which was worth all.”
Social boycott can also be a potent tactic to use against tax collectors or collaborators with the tax collection process.
Here are some examples:
Adolf Hausrath writes about how social boycott was used to discourage tax collectors in Roman-occupied Judaea:
The people knew how to torment these officials of the Roman customs with the petty cruelty which ordinary people develop with irreconcilable persistency, whenever they believe this persistency to be due to their moral indignation.
In consequence of the theocratic scruples about the duty of paying taxes, the tax-gatherers were declared to be unclean and half Gentile.… among the Jews the words “tax-gatherersand sinners,”“tax-gatherers and Gentiles,”“tax-gatherers and harlots,” “tax-gatherers, murderers and robbers,” and similar insulting combinations, were not only ready on the tongue and familiar, but were accepted as theocratically identical in meaning.
Thrust out from all social intercourse, the tax-gatherers became more and more the pariahs of the Jewish world.
With holy horror did the Pharisee sweep past the lost son of Israel who had sold himself to the Gentile for the vilest purpose, and avoid the places which his sinful breath contaminated.
Their testimony was not accepted by Jewish tribunals.
It was forbidden to sit at table with them or eat of their bread.
But their money-chests especially were the summary of all uncleanness and the chief object of pious horror, since their contents consisted of none but unlawful receipts, and every single coin betokened a breach of some theocratic regulation.
To exchange their money or receive alms from them might easily put a whole house in the condition of being unclean, and necessitate many purifications.
From these relations of the tax-officials to the rest of the population, it can be readily understood that only the refuse of Judaism undertook the office.
The current Greek “won’t pay” movement included a joint statement from several outraged groups that called for a social boycott of legislators who went along with the tax-and-austerity plans: “do not talk to them, do not listen, do not socialize, do not invite, do not serve them, do not put gasoline in their cars…”
A social boycott of tax collectors was practiced in the years before the American revolution.
John Adams wrote:
At Philadelphia, the Heart-and-Hand Fire Company has expelled Mr. Hughes, the stamp man for that colony.
The freemen of Talbot county, in Maryland, have erected a gibbet before the door of the court-house, twenty feet high, and have hanged on it the effigies of a stamp informer in chains, in terrorem till the Stamp Act shall be repealed; and have resolved, unanimously, to hold in utter contempt and abhorrence every stamp officer, and every favorer of the Stamp Act, and to “have no communication with any such person, not even to speak to him, unless to upbraid him with his baseness.”
So triumphant is the spirit of liberty everywhere.
Sam Adams led those opposed to the tea tax to declare “That whoever shall directly or indirectly countenance this attempt [to send and collect duties on East India Company tea to America], or in any wise aid or abet in unloading, receiving, or vending the tea sent or to be sent out by the East India Company while it remains subject to the payment of a duty here is an enemy to America.” and to decide “that a committee be immediately chosen to wait on those gentlemen, who it is reported are appointed by the East India Company to receive and sell said tea, and to request them from a regard to their own characters and the peace and good order of this town and province immediately to resign their appointment.”
During the Whiskey Rebellion, the rebels passed a social boycott resolution that said in part:
…[W]hereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country, as to accept offices for the collection of the duty:
Resolved, therefore, That in future we will consider such persons as unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them; withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby most earnestly recommended to the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them.
Islanders living off the coast of Galway County in Ireland refused to appoint tax collectors from among their number, and “where collectors are available on the mainland owners of boats have refused to facilitate their passage to the islands,” according to a newspaper account.
“On a few occasions the Civic Guards have persuaded the owners to lend their service and their boats, or their boats alone, for the guards to cross.
In such cases the guards have met with anything but a cordial reception.”
During the Dublin water charge strike:
Through contacts in the trade union movement we were able to discover the names of all the water inspectors and imagine their surprise the night before disconnections were due to begin when each of them received a hand-delivered letter appealing to them as trade union members not to cut people’s water off.
They decided not to respond positively to our polite request so the next morning when they left home under the cover of darkness, they each discovered a car-load of activists sitting outside their homes ready to follow them wherever they might go to try to do their dirty work.
One of them didn’t like it so much that after driving around and being followed for an hour he went to the local copshop to complain about being intimidated.
During the Bardoli satyagraha, tax collectors and collaborators were vigorously shunned.
Here are some excerpts from Mahadev Desai’s The Story of Bardoli:
There were meetings in talukas contiguous to Bardoli… calling upon people in their respective parts not to cooperate with the authorities engaged in putting down the Satyagraha… by helping in the attachment of property by engaging as labourers or sending carts on hire…
…the police proceeded to hire a taxi.
The driver, whose car had been engaged by the Satyagrahis, refused to break his engagement and place his bus at the disposal of the Collector.
His licence was demanded, it was not with him, but he showed his brass badge, which he was asked to surrender.
Another taxidriver whose car had been engaged by [campaign commander] Sjt. Vallabhbhai was deprived of his licence too.
Kadod… was trying to go one better than other villages by resolving to cut off supplies of provision, etc. to the attachment officer posted in the village.
Sjt. Vallabhbhai in a long and moving speech expounded the principles of Satyagraha, and told them that their resolution was not in keeping with principles and must be canceled: “In a struggle based essentially on truth and nonviolence we must not do anything in resentment or anger.
It is a sign of weakness.
…do not refuse them the ordinary amenities of life.
They must get whatever they want at market rates.”
It would appear, that three carts were commandeered. for removing the kit and luggage belonging to the Deputy Collector from the Bardoli thana [district] to Valod.
The man to whom the carts belonged came to realise his mistake and went to the thana in company with Sjt. Ravishankar to call back his men.
One of the cartmen, as soon as he saw his master, said, they were not at all willing to go but they were helpless.
Sjt. Ravishankar pleaded with the Mamlatdar that if the men were not willing they should not be forced.
He was ordered to leave the thana which he did; and the cartman leaving the cart followed him.
The other cartmen also ultimately left leaving the carts in the thana compound.
Moderate reformist K.M. Munshi wrote to the government after visiting Bardoli:
Your japti officer has to travel miles before he can get a shave.
Your officer’s car which got stuck would have remained in the mud but for Mr. Vallabhbhai, officially styled “agitator living on Bardoli.”
Garda to whom lands worth thousands have been sold for a nominal amount does not get even a scavenger for his house.
The Collector gets no conveyance on the railway station unless one is given by Mr. Vallabhbhai’s sanction.
The threat of social boycott also played out at other points in the Indian independence struggle, with one account noting for instance that “the native police, fearing social boycott if they pressed their own kinsmen too hard, in some cases sat idly by and watched proceedings,” during the Dharasana salt raid.
When the salt march reached the sea near Danmi, where Gandhi planned to harvest sea salt in violation of the taxed monopoly:
The police and labourers [who had been hired by the government to try to destroy all the natural salt deposits in the area] are boycotted by the villagers in the neighbourhood and have to journey to a village ten miles away to procure food.
During the Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance, social boycott was practiced against tax enforcers:
Of late months, no auctioneer would venture to the Cross to roup for stipend.
What human being has nerve enough to bear up against the scorn, hatred, and execration of his fellow-creatures, expressed in a cause he himself must feel just?
The cabman who brought the officers, seeing they were engaged in such a disagreeable duty, took his cab away, and they had some difficulty in procuring another…
During the government investigation of the Annuity Tax resistance campaign the following exchange took place:
Q: What was Mr. Whitten’s express reason for declining to act as auctioneer?
A: He was very much inconvenienced on that occasion, and he believed that his general business connection would suffer by undertaking these sales, and that he would lose the support of any customer who was of that party.
During the Fries Rebellion, social pressure made it difficult for the government to recruit collaborators:
[I]n every tavern [Jacob Eyerley] stopped at, the law was the subject of general conversation and denunciation, and great pains were taken to find the friends of government, in order to persuade them not to accept the office of assessor.
In consequence of this feeling there was great difficulty in finding suitable persons for these appointments.
When Thatcher’s poll tax was being introduced, the government tried to recruit convenience stores and newsstands to be tax collection points.
When the resistance got wind of this, they contacted the stores, letting them know they would be boycotted if they allowed themselves to be used in this way.
Several then refused to participate.
A threat of social boycott was used to deter potential buyers of property seized from Steuben County resisters of taxes meant to pay back purchasers of crooked railroad bonds:
The scene was upon the farm of William Atkins, where 200 of the solid yeomanry of the town had assembled to resist the sale… A Mr. Updyke, with broader hint, made these remarks: “I want to tell you folks that Mr. Atkins has paid all of his tax except this railroad tax; and we consider any man who will buy our property to help John Davis and Sam Alley as contemptible sharks.
We shall remember him for years, and will know where he lives.”
The tax collector finally rose and remarked that in view of the situation he would not attempt to proceed with the sale.
During a tax resistance campaign in the German countryside between the world wars:
The carters refused, even with police protection, to carry off the distrained cattle, for they knew that if they did they would never again be able to do business with the peasants.
One day three peasants even appeared in the slaughter yards at Hamburg and announced that unless the distrained cattle disappeared at once from the yard’s stalls the gentlemen in charge of the slaughterhouse could find somewhere else to buy their beasts in the future — they wouldn’t be getting any more from Schleswig-Holstein.
Tax resisters and tax resistance campaigns have at times made use of barricades, blockades, and occupations to keep tax collectors at bay.
Here are some examples:
There were a number of prominent “sieges” in the tax resistance campaign that accompanied the British women’s suffrage movement.
Dora Montefiore barred the arched doorway to her home against the bailiffs in and held out for six weeks before the bailiffs broke through,
…addressing the frequent crowds through the upper windows of the house.
WSPU meetings were held in front of the house daily, and resolutions were taken “that taxation without representation is tyranny.”
After six weeks, the Crown was legally authorized to break down the door in order to seize property in lieu of taxes, a process to which Montefiore submitted, saying, “It was useless to resist force majeure when it came to technical violence on the part of the authorities.”
The “Siege of Montefiore” was a publicity coup for the movement, and served as a useful rallying point for activists.
On the little terrace of the front garden hung during the whole time of the siege a red banner with the letters painted in white: “Women should vote for the laws they obey and the taxes they pay.”
Kate Harvey barricaded her home in and it took seven months for the authorities to crowbar their way in and seize her dining room furniture to auction for back taxes.
The following year they needed battering rams to break her barricade.
The Women’s Freedom League reported, of her first barricade:
Passers-by read the bold declaration that she refuses to be taxed by a Government that refuses her representation because she is a woman.
Her continued resistance has aroused keen interest in the London and Provincial Press, and afforded excellent “copy” for numerous illustrated papers.
and of the second:
An ingenious plan of protection had been devised and carried out, and the King’s officers wrestled with the fortifications for two hours before an entry was effected by means of a battering-ram!
A newspaper article gives more details:
Finally, after a heavy beam was used as a battering ram, the door went in with a crash.
The door, however, led only to a narrow passage, where a still more obstinate door barred the way.
A crowbar, battering ram, and a small jemmy were here brought into use, but even with those it was nearly half an hour before the door, almost splintered, gave way.
Later, the hall was entered, where the tax collector was met by Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard.
Here was little furniture visible, and it was not until a locksmith had forced the door of the dining room that the bailiff was able to place his levy upon goods.
The amount of the tax, it is understood, is about £15.
When the tax collector and bailiff came to seize goods from Isabella Harrison,
Mrs. Harrison then gave instructions for the tradesmen’s entrance and windows to be locked and bolted, and herself opened the inner front door, closing it behind her and keeping her hand on the handle.
The Tax Collector, who was standing with the bailiff inside the outer front door, asked if he was addressing Mrs. Darent Harrison, and hoped she would allow him to execute his trying task and produced his paper.
Mrs. Harrison asked and was told the names of the local magistrates who had signed the warrant, and explained that her house could only be entered by force.
… The Tax Collector protested that he could not employ force against a woman — that was quite out of the question.
Mrs. Harrison then suggested that if he did not intend to stand there till he or she collapsed he must either employ force or call in the police to do so.
He scoffed at the idea of sending for the police, but finally sent the bailiff to see if he could find any.
But no police were to be found.
The bailiff was next sent to get his dinner, and when he returned he reported “still no police anywhere to be found.”
It was a complete impasse.
They had been facing one another for three hours, and the Tax Collector seemed equally determined to “do his duty” and not to be guilty of even a technical assault on an elderly woman.
It was only after being taunted with cowardice — with fear of the consequences of meeting moral with physical force — that he finally made an effort to get control of the handle of the door, and so with the assistance of the bailiff to force his way in.
On an earlier occasion, Harrison had barricaded herself inside her home.
Supporters brought her food and supplies by means of a basket she lowered from a window by a rope.
There is at least one report of similar barricades in the American women’s suffrage movement.
Lillie Devereaux Blake addressed a New York Women’s Suffrage Society meeting in , and
…narrated several anecdotes of vigorous ladies, who, in the security of their own castles, had defied all the approaches of the tax collector.
One lady, she said, was in the habit of barricading herself in her house whenever the tax collector made his appearance, getting into a top room of the house, and from that coign of vantage, delaying the minion of the Government with potations from her parlors.
[Laughter.]
In this case, Mrs. Blake said it was suspected that the collector had paid the taxes himself, rather than submit to the convincing streams of the lady’s eloquence.
[Laughter.]
The story of the seizure of the Kehler/Corner home was the subject of the documentary An Act of Conscience.
War tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner refused to leave their home when it was seized by the U.S. government in , defying a federal court order.
When Kehler is arrested and imprisoned for contempt of court, a dozen affinity groups maintained a round-the-clock occupation of the home through .
During the Dublin water charge strike:
People were told how to block up their stopcocks to make it difficult for their water to be cut off.
Empty bean tins and a little bit of cement were the necessary ingredients.
In a group of French syndicalists and unemployed workers rallied at the home of “two of their comrades who refused to pay the income tax” and successfully deterred the police and bailiffs from appearing.
During the Fries Rebellion, officials tried to arrest Henry Shankwyler, but were foiled by a crowd of fifty supporters, who “went in advance of the officers, and, reaching the house before them,” intimidated the marshal into withdrawing without his prey.
“Some said if he were taken out of his house they would fight as long as they had a drop of blood in their bodies.
… Seeing that nothing further could be accomplished there, the officers took their leave.
As they left the house the people set up a shout and hurrahed for ‘Liberty.’ ”
Irish “Blue Shirts” held a rally in County Cork to protest government property seizures against tax resisters, and “[w]hile the conference was sitting, County Cork farmers felled trees in the roads, cut telephone wires and made other efforts to prevent further seizure of cattle for unpaid annuities.”
At one point “police fired upon a crowd attempting to prevent the forced sale of cattle seized for non-payment of taxes,” killing one.
Una Ridley, an English council tax resister, told a reporter in :
…how the couple had managed to foil efforts by bailiffs to remove property.
“So long as you make yourself secure, close all the downstairs windows and all the upstairs ones too, the bailiffs cannot make an entry,” she said.
In Samoa in , officials tried to arrest Tamasese, the head of the Mau movement, for tax refusal:
…a party of civil police attempted to arrest Tamasese at Apia, but were prevented by crowds of Mau supporters, who obstructed the police and managed to get him away in a car.
On , at Vaimoso village, another attempt was made by a party of civil police at his home.
On that occasion the police were covered by a party of 30 men from the cruisers.
Resistance was again made, and the police and the naval party, to avoid bloodshed, retired. further attempt to make an arrest was made at the home of Tamasese at Vaimoso on .
The party of six military police was stoned by women and others, and it retired.
Barricades were used successfully in the battle against Thatcher’s Poll Tax.
In one early case:
Over 300 people turned up outside [Jeannette McGuin’s] house.
Banners were hung out of the window saying “God Help the Sheriffs.”
The sheriffs didn’t show up and Jeannette McGuin never heard another word from them.
In some others:
[I]n Edinburgh over 300 people filled a central high street to prevent a poinding… 200 activists guarded flats in the Grass Market area… and 150 people guarded 11 flats in Stockbridge and Comely Bank.
In another:
Demonstrators threatened to form a human blockade outside the home at Irvine of Mr Alex Smith, MEP for Scotland South, who has refused to pay a £50 penalty imposed for not registering for the community charge.
However, before the protesters arrived, two sheriff’s officers, who called at Mr Smith’s home, left without trying to force entry after he refused to let them in.
Jackie Moyers of the Mayfield/Newtongrange Anti-Poll Tax Union reported:
The very first poinding which was supposed to have been taking place was in a small village called Pathead…
The back of eight o’clock everybody started coming up, they actually started running a relay service, a shuttle service with cars going to collect people, and I’d say by about half-past nine to ten o’clock we had 110 people standing in the garden.
It was a beautiful day, it was like everybody was sunbathing, having a day out; we stood about there, everybody singing songs, we had the records on, a couple of them had a wee drink, things like that, waiting on the sheriff officers coming…
The sheriff officers turned up, got on the phone and, lo and behold, a police car turned up… So the police came up and asked us if the sheriff officers could get in and I said, “Well, I’m telling you, under no circumstances whatsoever are we allowing any sheriff officers into anybody’s house to carry out a poinding.”
…So the sheriff officers turned around to the police, and says “I want him arrested, because he’s organising this,” and the police says, “well, we can’t do a thing.”
And everyone in the garden, I says to them, well, “They want me arrested.”
They says, “Well, if you’re getting arrested then all of us are getting arrested.”
And by this time, the local coalman had come up the road in his lorry, stopped his lorry and blocked the street.
The two guys at the back jumped off, and the coalman who was driving the lorry, they jumped over the fence and joined us.
The local council workers, who were doing the windows at the time, downed their tools and got in the garden and supported us.
It’s worse than jungle drums, because the local baker heard it, he came around with his baker’s van and started dishing out cakes to us.
The sheriff officers were getting quite panicky by this time.
The police got in their car and left the sheriff officers.
I told them again.
I said, “You’d better get going.
It’s a waste of your time.
We know you’re not going to get in, so there’s nothing else you can do.”
… They tried to get in for five or ten minutes and by this time the crowd were getting quite hostile, and I says, “I think you’d better go to your car while you’ve still got four wheels and you’re still able to walk.”
At Bishops Lydeard, people “divided up into small groups, and blockaded every road into the village.”
Barricades were constructed and every vehicle which tried to enter was stopped and asked its business.
… In the end, the bailiffs didn’t come near the place.
Poll tax resisters also sometimes occupied or blockaded the offices of sheriffs and bailiffs.
During the Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance, blockades were used to obstruct the movement of constables when they were seeking to arrest resisters, and barricades were used to prevent property seizure.
Here are excerpts from one government investigation of the Annuity Tax disturbances:
…I saw sledge hammers and other instruments there to open the premises and get at the goods, but after labouring for half an hour or more they could not effect an entrance.
Q: Was that because Mr. Dun used some of the metal in which he was a dealer to barricade his premises?
A: Yes; tons of metal were put up against the back door, and it was impossible for them to get in.
Mr. Dunn had barricaded the door of the room where the poinded effects were, so that an entrance could not be had… I found that the room where the poinded goods were was filled up to above the centre of the room with boxes filled with plates of iron of immense weight.
We were told that the poinded goods were lying beneath those, and that we might get at them as we could.
I sent for labourers, and had the whole of those boxes removed into the front shop until I got access, after great trouble, to the sheets of brass, which were the poinded articles.
These were then declared by the sheriff officers to be of a different description, and inferior to what they had previously poinded; they refused to take them; and the only articles they recognised were some coils of copper wire; those they took to the police office, and those were all that were obtained on that occasion.
During the Bardoli satyagraha, farmers famously barricaded their homes with their cattle inside to protect them from seizure.
When the attachment operations began, minute instructions were issued to meet every situation.
In the beginning only those who had received notices were to greet the attachment parties with closed doors.
Then whole villages were turned into blackholes, and people who could not put up with the terrible strain involved were humourously asked to undertake a pilgrimage.
When it was found that in spite of the greatest precautions, the Pathans managed to carry away carts, break into enclosures and unhinge closed doors, the Sardar [resistance commander] said: “Pull your carts to pieces.
Keep the body in one place, wheels in another, and shafts in a third place; make your hedges extra strong with thorns and bushes; and fortify the doors in such a way that they might not be able to open them except by breaking them open with axes.
Exhaust them thoroughly.”
In order to save their beloved cattle 80,000 men, women, children with these cattle have locked themselves up in small and insanitary houses for over three months.
As I passed through villages, silent, empty and deserted with sentinels posted at different ends, I saw women peeping through the barred windows to see whether it was the arrival of the japti [attachment] officer and on being reassured the doors being opened I was taken inside and I saw the darkness, the stench, the filth; and the men, women and children who had herded for months in the same room with their beloved cattle — miserable, lacerated, grown whitish by disease — and as I heard their determination to remain in that condition for months rather than abandon their cattle to the tender mercies of the japti officer I could not help thinking that the imagination which conceived the dire japti methods, the severity which had enforced them and the policy which had sanctioned them were difficult to be found outside the pages of a history of medieval times.
In Alwar, India, in , blockades were used against tax collectors:
Thousands of armed Hindu Moslem [sic] peasants of splendid physique with fighting spirit are concentrating in an area of 22 square miles to repel the State tax gatherers.
The roads by which the lorries have been bringing troops have been made impassable.
The paths are blocked by huge boulders…
“Early one morning in Karl North (Rochester, N.Y.) was alerted by neighbors that the IRS had seized his car and was about to have it towed for $11.29 in unpaid telephone tax.
Without time to grab his car key, Karl rushed out of the house and lay down under the car.
This disconcerted the IRS enough that when they stopped everything to call the police, he ran back into the house, got the key, rushed back out, and drove the car off.”
Landholders in Tasmania launched a tax strike in , and when the police came with distress warrants, “Householders padlocked their gateways, and mastiffs were chained at the approaches.”
The tax resisters at the “New Rush” in South Africa in assembled a force to prevent the jailing of one of their comrades who had refused to pay a fine.
The Hut Tax War in Sierra Leone began when a king named Bai Bureh assembled an armed group which successfully defended him against an expected attempt to arrest him for refusing to pay the Hut Tax — an attempt that a later government investigator labeled “aggression pure and simple on the part of the authorities.”
Other angry kings and people, inspired by Bai Bureh’s successful action, rallied to his side.
In , drivers parked their cars in the middle of the streets in downtown Paris, blocking all traffic for 45 minutes at mid-day to protest a fuel tax.
Property seizures were also used by the British women’s suffrage movement as opportunities to hold protest rallies or for propaganda.
Here are some examples from the news of the time:
“Miss Muller, far from relenting to save her property, publicly advertised the date of the seizure, and invited the women of England to come and witness the disgraceful spectacle of a woman being robbed by the minions of the law because she dared to ask for a voice in the disposition of her taxation.
The invitation was accepted by hundreds of well-dressed but excited and indignant women, who crowded into Cadogan Square and nearly mobbed the bailiffs while they were removing the lares and penates from the Muller residence.
An indignation meeting was afterward held in Miss Muller’s drawing-rooms and many bitter and vehement denunciations of the tyranny and injustice of the law were indulged in.”
“Miss Raleigh naturally made use of the occasion for propaganda purposes, conversing with the tax collector for some time on the subject of Woman Suffrage, and presenting him with Suffrage literature, which he accepted.”
“A very successful protest was made at Finchley on in connection with the seizure of property belonging to Miss [Sarah] Benett, late hon. treasurer of the W.F.L. By courtesy of the auctioneer, Miss Bennet, was allowed to explain her reason for resisting payment of taxes.
A very successful open-air meeting was held afterwards.”
When trying to bring new tax resisters into a movement, there are lots of hopeful short-cuts, but sometimes there is no substitute for addressing potential resisters individually: whether that be through letters, petitions, or face-to-face meetings.
When the United States approved a billion-dollar military aid package to the government of Colombia in , the president of the Mennonite Church of Colombia, Peter Stucky, and Ricardo Esquivia, the director of that church’s Justapaz organization and the coordinator of the Evangelical Council of Colombia’s Human Rights and Peace Commission, wrote a letter to their sister churches in the U.S..
In that letter, they explained the disastrous consequences of fueling the civil war and the military wing of the war on drugs there, explained how the church there was trying to respond more productively to the crisis, and called on churches in the U.S. to do their part:
In reality, the government of the United States, using the tax-payers money, is supporting the Colombian government in what we consider to be a negative form.
This means that the message arriving from the North to the Colombian people becomes a message of death and destruction.
For that reason we are calling the churches in the North to redeem their taxes, on one hand by demanding that the U.S. government invests this money in life-producing projects, and on the other hand by redirecting part of their taxes toward a different project in your community or the world that promotes abundant and dignified life, as our Lord Jesus Christ has commanded us.
The American Mennonite Central Committee responded by urging taxpayers to redirect their taxes from the U.S. government to the Mennonite-run “Taxes for Peace” fund, which in turn would be dedicated that year to peace-building efforts in Colombia.
This sort of advocacy can be dangerous, as this next example will show.
In , R.W. Benner, a Mennonite minister, got worried reports from members of his congregation who were being told in no uncertain terms that they would buy so-called “Liberty Bonds” to support the U.S. war effort, or they would answer for their refusal.
Benner wrote to his bishop, L.J. Heatwole, who responded with a letter in which he reiterated the position of the church that Mennonite brethren “Do not aid or abet war in any form… [and] Contribute nothing to a fund that is used to run the war machine.”
He noted:
In a number of places where brethren have refused to contribute to the different war funds, outlandish threats have been made and in a few cases have been put into execution — such as, tar and feathering, painting houses yellow, decorating autos and buildings with flags to test them out on their principles of nonresistance.
But he urged his fellow-Mennonites to keep the faith and to embrace this sort of martyrdom like good Christians.
Benner conveyed this message to his flock.
For this, both of them were charged under the Espionage Act and convicted.
(To give you some idea of the railroading involved, Heatwole did not learn that a guilty plea had been entered on his behalf by his court-appointed attorney until after he appeared for the trial!)
Letters, or “epistles,” from war tax resisting Quakers to their fellow-Friends were an important way of spreading and maintaining the practice in the Society.
American war tax resistance can be said to have begun on , when John Woolman, Anthony Benezet, and several other Quakers addressed a letter in which they explained to other Friends why
as we cannot be concerned in wars and fightings, so neither ought we to contribute thereto by paying the tax directed by the [recent] Act, though suffering be the consequence of our refusal, which we hope to be enabled to bear with patience.
David Cooper reflected on how thoughtful letters like these helped him maintain his war tax resistance in times of doubt:
I read with singular satisfaction the piece which you lent me respecting taxes, as it was very strengthening to my mind, which before was somewhat encompassed with weakness on this account.… I have since felt much weakness, and had come to no solid conclusion of mind, until I read your little manuscript, which caused my heart to rejoice, under a feeling sense that it is the truth which leads those who walk and abide in it to hold forth this testimony unto the world.
And oh, says my soul, that I may yield faithful obedience to its monitions, let what will be the consequence.
Yearly Meetings would sometimes send letters to Quarterly or Monthly Meetings to reiterate the Quaker position on war tax resistance and give instructions as to how it should be enforced.
For instance, this is from an letter from the North Carolina Yearly Meeting:
…all our members should stand firm, and be faithful in bearing their testimony against war and military operations; taxes and fines appertaining thereunto, either directly or indirectly; or any way conniving or compromising with the specious and plausible offers of the legislature, by the tax proposed in the late act, to screen us from muster fines or military services.
And in order that all our members may be clearly informed on this subject, and be fully prepared to meet the trial likely to come upon us by this law, we have thought it best to send it down in this epistle.
An organizer of the Dublin water charge strike recalls:
…months of work had been done in local areas convincing people of the primacy of [non-payment].
This was done through local public meetings, door-to-door leaflets and even knocking on doors and talking to people… The building of the campaign in this way was crucial.
Local campaign groups were built and then came together and federated, rather than a central committee being formed first and then coming along to organise people.
…it became clear that while people might not have come out to the meeting, they had kept the information about the campaign and the campaign contact numbers had their place on a lot of fridge doors.
American women’s suffrage activist Anna Howard Shaw wrote a letter to women in the movement in , urging them to refuse to fill out income tax returns.
“In this manner we can show our loyalty to those who struggled to make this a free republic and who laid down their lives in defense of the equal rights of all free citizens to a voice in their own Government.
… Let our protest be universal, and let every believer in justice unite in this mode of passive resistance and steadfastly refuse to assist the Government in its unjust and tyrannical violation of its fundamental principle that ‘taxation and representation are one and inseparable,’ and thus prove ourselves worthy descendants of noble ancestors, who counted no price too dear to pay in defense of liberty and equality and justice.”
She told a reporter: “Since my letter was sent all over the country, I have received letters of encouragement and support from all directions,” and she soon thereafter won support for her stand from the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage.
Only some of the women’s suffrage activists in Britain were responsible for paying taxes, so although tax resistance was an important part of the campaign there, it was a part not everybody could participate in.
The movement made a special effort to find women who had taxes they could resist.
For example, at one meeting in , Margaret Kineton Parkes “asked anyone present who knew women who paid taxes to send in their names, that they might be approached by her society.”
In , Marie Lawson launched what she called a “snowball” protest: a sort of chain letter in which she sent out letters that advocated tax resistance (and protested on behalf of an imprisoned resister) and that asked the recipients to join her and to in turn send the same letter “to at least three friends.”
Public burnings of poll tax notices were good excuses for people to join in festive resistance activities.
The campaign to resist Thatcher’s Poll Tax used some creative outreach techniques (quotes from Danny Burns’s history of the movement):
“The Aberdeen Anti-Poll Tax group was formed when people from the radical bookshop came together with a community arts group:
“…The local community arts group had a theatre group called “Wise Up” and they got a show together about the Poll Tax.
They took this show around the estates with information for people about registration and how to fight it, to encourage them to set up local groups and support networks.
The plays were performed in local community centres.
Attendance for the plays varied from about 10 to 40 or more.
The meetings which followed were encouraging because people gave their names as contacts or asked people to set up future meetings.”
“In my local group… the union was built up through a door-to-door campaign.
A group of five or six people (mostly friends) formed the core.
They advertised a public meeting on the Poll Tax and about 50 people turned up.
Out of these some joined the organising group.
This small group then mass-produced a window poster which said ‘No Poll Tax Here.’
The poster was dropped through the letter-boxes of 2000 households and the group waited to see who put them up.
Posters appeared in about 100 windows.
Activists then went round and spoke to these people individually, inviting them to attend the next organising meeting; about fifteen did — enough to form the core of a group.”
“[Our] network was strengthened by a door-to-door survey of over 500 households.
The survey was not intended to be scientifically accurate.
Its purpose was to give the APTU a fairly accurate picture of what was happening on the ground, and, perhaps more significantly, it was a pretext for engaging people in conversation about the Poll Tax, informing them of the non-payment campaign and encouraging them to join their local APTU.… Over a third of the people canvassed became paid up members of the union.
By the end of the exercise Easton had over 300 members and street reps for almost every street.
The canvass was not left there.
The key to its success was the second visit.
The group compiled all the statistics on a street by street basis and many of the reps then went back, door-to-door, and told people the results of the survey in their street and the neighbouring streets.
A newsletter was delivered to everyone telling them what the overall results were for Easton.
This meant that people knew how few of their neighbours were going to pay and it gave them confidence not to pay themselves.
They had spoken to the canvassers personally, so they knew that the survey was genuine.”
“An independent television company approached the Easton group in order to work with us on a film about the Poll Tax.
The film was never shown, but the way the community was engaged in the process of making it is instructive.
The film producers wanted a shot of all the doors in the street, opening one by one as the occupants came out of their houses with banners and signs.
Charles, the local street rep, went round to people’s houses every evening for a week and explained to them what was wanted.
Out of 30 houses in the street (a cul-de-sac) 28 agreed to participate.
The street is multi-racial with a fairly wide class mix.
It was inspiring to see white working class men standing shoulder to shoulder with Asian women and their kids, holding the same banners and engrossed in conversation.
Some of them had never spoken to each other before.
The film was made, but more importantly, as [a] result of making it, virtually every one of those households joined the Union, and most still had posters in their windows a year later.
People were brought into the campaign, not through a leaflet or a canvasser, but through an interesting activity.
They didn’t have to go to the campaign, it came to them.”
