The last three years have witnessed the emergence of a most remarkable mass movement in the UK.
In announcing to the House of Commons his intention to abandon the poll tax the Prime Minister, John Major, explicitly admitted that the primary reason for this stunning about-turn was the fact that the tax had been made uncollectable. The anti-poll tax movement had, by 1990, become possibly the largest mass campaign of civil disobedience in modem British history and this has been achieved without any support, indeed in the face of opposition, from the organised Labour movement. In this article we seek to provide an anatomy of the movement based upon our experience of it in the South West. We also attempt to look at the responses of Labourism in all its guises-orthodox, soft, hard and municipal-to this movement, a movement which despite being alternatively ignored or despised may well have provided the basis for Labour’s future electoral success.
Authors
