Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” → Quakers → 19th century Quakers → Nathaniel Morgan

From the diary of Nathaniel Morgan, for this day in 1822:

I told [the Duke of Gloucester] of my ancestors being fined for holding a meeting in Ross at the time of the Conventicle Act, and that they on being turned out of it sat in the streets to worship God, and that their goods were sold for such behavior. He asked me if such losses were made up to them. I said “not anything of the sort was done,” or to that effect. 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.” I told him I believed there was not six in the kingdom as had done so and that I myself had brought the subject many times before the Yearly Meeting in London, and could never be once well seconded or supported; this seemed to him a matter of surprise, saying, “Do you say you brought it forward, and no one seconded it?” I said, “Yes, few saw it from the same point of view.” I told him we had written the commissioners saying we would suffer loss of goods, fine, or imprisonment rather than pay it, it being specifically collected for war, and that if for any other purpose we would most willingly pay it, it being the most just mode of raising money, as had been adopted.

Tax resistance campaigns can increase their visibility by adopting particular uniforms, badges, ribbons, or other emblems to identify resisters and those working in concert with the campaign. Today I will summarize some examples of this.

Gandhi’s satyagraha in India

An important part of the Indian independence struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi was the wearing of khādī (homespun cloth). This had three purposes:

To encourage the development of Indian self-reliance and industry as the economic foundation of Indian independence.
To hurt the British government by boycotting and thereby reducing the profits from exports of British fabric to India.
To serve as an emblem to identify and express the commitment of Indian patriots.

Gandhi wrote:

[T]he most effective and visible cooperation which all [Indian National] Congressmen and the mute millions can show is by not interfering with the course civil disobedience may take and by themselves spinning and using khādī to the exclusion of all other cloth. If it is allowed that there is a meaning in people wearing primroses on Primrose Day, surely there is much more in a people using a particular kind of cloth and giving a particular type of labour to the cause they hold dear. From their compliance with the khādī test I shall infer that they have shed untouchability, and that they have nothing but brotherly feeling towards all without distinction of race, colour, or creed. Those who will do this are as much Satyagrahis as those who will be singled out for civil disobedience.

Gandhi himself put in many hours at the spinning wheel, and demanded this of his followers as well.

“Gandhi caps” made from khādī became almost a uniform of the resistance. One news dispatch from around the time of the Dharasana salt raid noted:

The correspondent said the growth of the Gandhi movement was shown by the increased number of persons wearing the Gandhi caps. In the cities, he said, a majority of the people wear them; they also are beginning to be worn in villages in Punjab while even in aristocratic Simla one person in six of the population in the bazaars have donned caps, which is the symbol of the nationalist campaign.

Homespun cloth in the American revolution

But Gandhi’s campaign wasn’t the first blow against the British Empire that was struck in part by homespun cloth and conspicuous consumption of locally-manufactured goods. This was also an important part of the American Revolution.

Here is an example reported in a 1770 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette:

On Wednesday evening the honorable speaker and gentlemen of the House of Burgesses gave a ball at the capitol… and it is with the greatest pleasure we inform our readers… [of] the patriotic spirit… [that] was most agreeably manifested in the dress of the ladies on that occasion, who, to the number of near one hundred, appeared in homespun gowns; a lively and striking instance of their acquiescence and concurrence in whatever may be the true and essential interest of their country.

“Spinning bees” at which patriotic Americans worked together to card, spin, weave, and sew, so as to avoid having to import clothing from England, were ways that everybody could demonstrate their revolutionary spirit and participate in the resistance. Resisters also made a point of eschewing imported tea in favor of locally-produced substitutes (such as dried raspberry leaves).

One patriotic poem of the time advised “young ladies”:

Wear none but your own country linen;
Of economy boast, let your pride be the most
To show clothes of your own make and spinning.
What if homespun they say is not quite so gay
As brocades, yet be not in a passion,
For when once it is known this is much worn in town,
One and all will cry out— ’Tis the fashion!
And, as one, all agree, that you’ll not married be
To such as will wear London factory,
But at first sight refuse, tell ’em such you will choose
As encourage our own manufactory.
No more ribbons wear, nor in rich silks appear;
Love your country much better than fine things;
Begin without passion, ’twill soon be the fashion
To grace your smooth locks with a twine string.

Massachusetts patriots vowed in 1768:

…that we will not, at funerals, use any gloves except those made here, or purchase any article of mourning on such occasion, but what shall be absolutely necessary; and we consent to abandon the use, so far as may be, not only of all the articles mentioned in the Boston resolves, but of all foreign teas, which are clearly superfluous, our own fields abounding in herbs more healthful, and which we doubt not, may, by use, be found agreeable…

Rebecca Riots

The Rebecca Riots in Wales in the mid-19^th century were notorious for the distinctive garb donned by the resistance groups who would gather to tear down tollgates.

The leader of the party was usually a man dressed up in women’s clothing and a large bonnet, sometimes wearing a long horse-hair wig or carrying a parasol, who was given the name “Rebecca.” Rebecca’s followers also were men wearing women’s clothes, or at least white blouses over their clothes, and sometimes bonnets or other high-crowned hats, occasionally with fern fronds, feathers, or other decorations on them. They would paint their faces black or yellow, and sometimes drape their horses in white sheets.

In this case, the reasoning behind the costuming was not so much to express public pride than for other purposes. For instance:

To disguise the participants so that the government would be less able to take reprisals against them.
To resonate with ancient folk forms of grassroots vigilantism and protest that had a similar character (cross-dressing, face painting, a carnival atmosphere).
To intimidate toll gate keepers with their strangeness and reputation.
To create a figurehead for the movement that could be adopted and then set aside by multiple people, so as to make the movement’s leadership harder to target for reprisals.
To make the resistance more festive and carnivalesque and thereby encourage participation.
To make it easier to identify fellow-resisters in the confusion of late-night raids on dark country roads.

Badges awarded by the Women’s Tax Resistance League

Women’s suffrage activists in the United Kingdom awarded badges to resisters who had been imprisoned for their resistance. Here is a description of one such badge given to Kate Harvey:

The badge is cast in the form of a shield on which is depicted the entrance to Holloway Prison. On the reverse is a card inscribed in a faint hand: “Given to Mrs K Harvey By Women’s Suffrage After She Had Been In Prison For Tax Resistance.”

These badges were the equivalent of medals for meritorious service. An American woman who visited her counterparts across the waters observed:

It was a queer sensation in those days to look upon sweet and ladylike young women… and to know that they had actually been prisoners. It was not long before they were looked upon as something sacred, as those who had made special sacrifices for the cause, and they wore badges to show that they had been prisoners and in every place were given the post of honor until their numbers mounted up to the hundreds.

Relics of the Glastonbury cows

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”).

Emblems made from hairs of the cows’ tails, woven into the shape of flowers, and tied with ribbons emblazoned with the slogan “Taxation Without Representation,” became popular adornments for supporters of the Smiths’ tax resistance.

“I refuse to fund this war” stickers

In 2007, an American anti-war group held a “Stop Funding the War in Iraq” rally near the offices of a Congressional leader.

A war tax resistance group was there to hand out stickers for people to wear that read “I refuse to fund this war!” I was there and noted:

I figured a few people would take them and wear them without thinking much about it, a few people would refuse to take them without thinking much about it, and the remainder would have to think about whether they should start refusing if they hadn’t already.
As it turned out, just about everyone we offered the stickers to was eager to wear one, though it’s hard to tell which of these will put their money where their mouths are. Hopefully a few, anyway, had that light bulb go on, and then looked around and wondered “have all these other people wearing these stickers started resisting their taxes?”

French cockades and militia uniforms in the Fries Rebellion

The Fries Rebellion in the United States took place about a decade after the enacting of the United States Constitution, and shortly after the successful French Revolution.

The United States government was under the presidency of John Adams, who represented the more authoritarian, aristocratic, pro-English faction; the faction out of power was more populist, democratic, and pro-French.

Tax resisters who participated in the Fries Rebellion sometimes signaled their loyalty (and frightened the Adams government) by wearing French tricolor cockades in their hats to demonstrate their affinity with the democratic revolutionaries across the pond, and/or by wearing their old American revolutionary militia uniforms to show their belief that their current rebellion was more in harmony with the spirit of the American Revolution than were the policies of the federal government.

Masks at the Carnival of Viareggio

The Carnival of Viareggio is today a parade and bacchanal, but it began with a tax protest in which “a number of local citizens, as a sign of protest… decided to put on masks in order to show their refusal of high taxes they were forced to pay.”

Australian miners wear a red ribbon

Australian miners, who in 1854 were resisting a license tax, held a “monster meeting” at which they passed a number of resolutions, including these:

[A]s it is necessary that the diggers should know their friends, every miner agrees to wear as a pledge of good faith, and in support of the cause, a piece of red ribbon on his hat, not to be removed until the license tax is abolished.

That this meeting… desire to publicly express their esteem for the memory of the brave men who have fallen in battle [during “the late out-break”], and that to shew their respect every digger and their friends do wear tomorrow (Sunday) a band of black crape on his hat…

Taking pride in resistance

Many of these are examples of resisters showing pride in their resistance. This can be a way of short-circuiting a traditional government gambit used against tax evaders: to publish their names as a way of calling them out as bankrupts or deadbeats. If the government tries to shame tax resisters as irresponsible tax evaders, but the resisters have already willingly made their resistance public, this government tactic loses its force.

When local council governments in the United Kingdom tried to use this tactic against Poll Tax resisters in the Thatcher years, the newspapers who published the lists of “shame” found themselves on the receiving end of letters to the editor from resisters who were outraged that they had not made the list — insisting that their names be included too!

Here are some similar examples of people taking pride in their resistance or in things incident to resistance:

When the Women’s Freedom League (a British suffrage group which refused to pay taxes on the salaries of its employees), was threatened with a legal writ by the government, it decided to auction the writ as a fundraiser.
Greek tax resisters in Penteli (near Athens), who have been refusing to pay the new taxes attached to their utility bills during the recent “won’t pay” movement, hung their urgent “past due” notices from a Christmas tree in the town square as ornaments.
When somebody asked Quaker Nathaniel Morgan whether he and his father had “got anything” in the course of their war tax resistance (by which he meant, did his Quaker meeting reimburse them for their losses when their goods were distrained and sold), Morgan replied: “Yes, peace of mind, which was worth all.”

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 1982. 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.

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 February, 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 1906, 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 1903, 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 one o’clock on the morning of 11^th September, 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 1906 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 1960 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 1982, 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 1657 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 1996, 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 1997, 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 2005, 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.”