How residents defeated the Poll Tax in Haringey, and countrywide.. (1988-1993)

An unfair and hated tax

In the late 1980s the Government had decided to implement a new tax to replace local government taxation systems. It was immediately seen as a tax on the poor, and an extension of government powers over the population. The government named it the 'Community Charge', but protestors dubbed it 'the Poll Tax', drawing parallels with the legendary Poll Tax mass uprisings in 1381 which successfully defeated the idea for 600 years!


Mass opposition

It was first introduced into Scotland in 1988, causing uproar, massive defiance, and popular independent local campaigns in every neighbourhood encouraging non-cooperation and non-payment. A majority refused to pay.

Inspired by hatred of the government after the long industrial battles with miners and printworkers in the mid-1980s, and inspired by Scotland, a mass movement grew up in every community in England in the build up to the registration procedure (1989) and the implementation date of April 1st 1990.


Organised resistance throughout Haringey

Haringey was one of the first areas in England to launch a strong campaign. In 1988 independent and radical activists called for mass non-payment and defiance of the tax. 30 residents attended the first planning meeting at the Unwaged Centre in Tottenham and very quickly the campaign spread like wildfire. Many local anti-poll tax groups met weekly or fortnightly, co-ordinated through delegate meetings of Haringey Anti-Poll Tax Union.

The next 4 years saw possibly the most vibrant, sustained and uncompromising mass popular movement in Haringey's, and the UK's, history. This is some of what happened:

· simultaneous weekly street stalls all around the borough
· regular mass door-to-door leafleting calling for total non-cooperation with registration, payment, court notices and eventually bailiffs.. over half a million leaflets and window posters distributed in Haringey alone (including all 90,000 homes getting a leaflet/poster on the eve of the implementation of the tax).
· a network of over a dozen smaller neighbourhood groups and up to 500 street reps
· regular public meetings, including one with 1,000 people in Hornsey Town Hall
· many local pickets, protests, burning of forms, 2 or 3 marches and a mass rally of 1000 people blockading the Civic Centre and the road outside on the night the Council set the tax rate - the highest in Britain!
· organised and systematic back up support for people facing threats, fines, bailiffs and even imprisonment
· trade union opposition to the tax, in some cases refusing to implement aspects of the process
· constant efforts to link up effectively with other campaigns around London and the whole country. Haringey groups played a key role in developing London and national initiatives, communication and solidarity.

As a result, 50,000 Haringey adults refused to register at all, and eventually 97,000 refused to pay despite the whole range of threats and intimidation from the Council and the Courts.


Co-ordination and protest across the country

In early 1989 Tottenham Against the Poll Tax was the main group behind a London-wide meeting which led to the setting up of the London Federation of Anti-Poll Tax Groups - TAPT was elected as the secretarial group. Later that year HAPTU initiated and co-ordinated a national conference in London attended by 70 APTs and Federations, who continued to work closely together to ensure communication & co-ordination across the country.

On March 31st 1990, the day before the tax was to be implemented, over 200 Haringey residents met up at Turnpike Lane tube to travel together to join over 250,000 people marching through Central London calling for mass non-payment and resistance to the tax. It was a carnival atmosphere. As the demonstration passed Thatcher's headquarters (Downing St) there was a confrontation with police, and it soon turned into a battle with mounted police and riot units. Eventually, Trafalgar Sq became a battleground as thousands of people fought police for control of the square and the area around it. The anti-poll tax movement gained world-wide coverage.

Up to 500 activists from all over the UK (including Haringey) were arrested during and after the demo, and many faced heavy charges. Politicians and the media attacked the anti-poll tax movement. The police called for a ban on such demos. However, HAPTU and other independent groups helped set up the defendant-run Trafalgar Square Defendants' Campaign which supported all those arrested and helped them fight their cases, as well as campaigning for the anti-poll tax movement to back those arrested. Initial meetings were held in the Tottenham Unwaged Centre. It was a very strong and significant campaign, including a solidarity march of 3,500 people to Brixton prison to support poll tax prisoners there and around the country.


18 million refuse to pay, and Thatcher resigns

The stakes were very high. Gradually the whole movement backed the campaign, and their call to demonstrate again in Trafalgar Sq. This uncompromising and principled stance echoed the continuing public defiance of the tax. The movement stayed united and defiant, and public support increased.

By the following year 18 million were refusing to pay the tax. Thatcher resigned, largely as a result of the damage to her credibility and strategy over the poll tax fiasco. The new Prime Minister John Major eventually announced that the tax was uncollectable and would be scrapped - to be replaced by the current Council Tax.

However, the movement needed to continue in order to defend those facing threats and repressive measures for the next few years. This we did in Haringey. The main Haringey groups decided to develop into general Solidarity Groups, continuing poll tax work as part of a commitment to support a wide range of independent radical struggles and local initiatives. The groups eventually merged into Haringey Solidarity Group, which has continued to be active ever since.


The aftermath

This historic victory showed that:

- the right to public services shouldn’t depend on systematic robbery of working class people of their income
- any oppressive law or measure can be defied and defeated by mass non-cooperation
- grass roots self-organisation with public support can be inspirational and an unstoppable force for change
- the right to protest can be defended
- radical ideas and ways of working do not need to be marginal, but can be mainstream and a real alternative to electoral politics

There is also the power of collective folk-memory, even across 6 centuries, that an unjust measure can be beaten. That demonstrates the importance of celebrating our radical history.


This summary has mainly been drawn from the pamphlet 'The Poll Tax Rebellion In Haringey' which was written and published collectively by members of Haringey Solidarity Group in 1999

20 years of organised anarchist, and related, activity in Haringey, North London [1980-2000]

I’ve been active in various local libertarian, class struggle and community groups and campaigns in Haringey, North London for about 20 years. This is my personal recollection and summary... it is just one view.

250,000 people live in Haringey, North London - the generally middle-class western side (Crouch End, Hornsey, Muswell Hill) and the generally working-class eastern side (Tottenham), with a very mixed centre (Wood Green) dominated by the commercial High Rd and its ‘Shopping City’. In the predominately working-class areas there’s a very high percentage of people from minority ethnic groups, mainly african and carribean, and greek, turkish and kurdish.

100 years ago Tottenham’s population mushroomed as new rail lines were built and industry expanded. Most factories (except maybe clothing) have closed down and employment is now mainly service and shop work, with the Council being the largest employer.

I haven’t heard about local anarchist activity before the 70s, although there was: the so-called ‘Tottenham Anarchist Outrage’ in 1911 when apparently 2 russian anarchists killed a copper chasing them after a robbery; Albert Meltzer, the founder of Black Flag grew up in Tottenham (where he went to the same synagogue as my dad); and there was an anarchist bookshop, Libertaria Books, in the area in the early 70s.

In the late 70s and early 80s local anti-nuclear power campaigners were very active, and there was a strong Haringey Women’s Centre. The local labour movement was also strong, but dominated by the Communist Party. When I moved to Tottenham I was initially active in the Haringey and Islington Claimants Union - a libertarian group who’d been highly involved with claimants struggles since the late 1960s. A few of us set up the Tottenham Claimants Union (TCU) in 1983, at first meeting in someone’s home, then in a newly-set up council-funded Unemployed Workers Centre dominated by the Communist Party.

The TCU flourished, concentrating on empowering claimants to fight for their needs, exposing fraud squads, and making good links with local labour movement activists, the pensioners’ action group and short-life housing co-ops. Women at the centre set up Haringey Unwaged Women’s Group. Our high point was calling a 200-strong occupation of the Civic Centre to demand emergency payments during a DSS strike. We were also very active in the Federation of Claimants Unions and helped organise a few of their annual camps.

Some Haringey activists got heavily involved in the Stop ‘The City’ mass protests/carnivals in 1983-4. We decided to form the Haringey Community Action (HCA) anarchist collective, to support and encourage autonomous, radical local campaigns and groups - it also set up a pro-squatting group Homes For All. Some of us started an anarchist paper, The Free Tottenham Times.

During the 1983-4 miners’ strike both HCA and TCU got involved in support, with TCU members putting strikers up in their homes. In 1985, TCU’s active support for the Wapping printworkers was the last straw for the local Communist Party who decided to try to suppress our ideas, example and influence, producing a hilarious local scandal sheet attacking us. All to no avail - the CP itself collapsed soon after following the overthrow/demise of the Soviet and eastern european Communist regimes. The Socialist Workers Party are now by far the most dominant Left party in Haringey.

In 1985, following some years of black people’s self-organisation and anger at injustice, there was the local Broadwater Farm anti-police uprising - the resulting defence campaign has since inspired a number of other local campaigns against police brutality and racism. There were also battles that year between police and anti-fascists when anti-fascists attacked a National Front meeting in Tottenham.

HCA ground to a halt in the late 80s, but libertarian activists in the west and central parts of the borough were involved in renewed anti-nuclear campaigning and strike support. TCU and the Unwaged Women’s Group decided we’d had enough of the way the Unemployed Workers Centre was run, and set up our own Unwaged Centre (which we kept open daily for over 5 years).

Then came the poll tax - a huge turning point. Through our contacts with Claimants Unions in Scotland (where the tax was first brought in) we in TCU thought it could be beaten. In 1988 Tottenham Against the Poll Tax (TAPT) was set up - one of the first such groups in England - and soon after, libertarian activists elsewhere in the borough were the key to the setting up of Hornsey & Wood Green APT, followed by Green Lanes APT. These three groups were the basis of a Haringey-wide mass non-payment campaign (HAPTU) involving the distribution of hundreds of thousands of leaflets, 500 street reps and up to 20 independent neighbourhood groups. As a strong and active organisation we helped set up London-wide and national anti-poll tax networks and federations, including the Trafalgar Square Defendants’ Campaign after the poll tax riot.
As the campaign drew to a close in the early 90s, all 3 main groups decided to build on what was achieved and to transform themselves into local general solidarity organisations. After a year or two, the three groups merged into Haringey Solidarity Group which continues today.

HSG has been involved in a wide range of issues, campaigns and initiatives - including support for community struggles, anti-police brutality groups (in particular the Delroy Lindo campaign), strikes (including support for a bitter local strike by turkish factory workers), unwaged claimants issues (including Job Seekers Allowance and housing benefits), and opposing privatisation or anti-social regeneration and development projects. All the while we have run a small office, done monthly info/minutes mailouts to about 140 local people, held discussions and produced a number of leaflets and for many years a free local door-to-door newssheet. HSG has always tried to encourage other people around London to form community-based local solidarity organisations, taking an active part in helping organise national networks and events, doing an annual mailout to other groups - and helping produce The Agitator directory of anti-authoritarian groups countrywide (now up on our website). Numbers have fluctuated, with up to 20-30 people regularly attending meetings a few years back. There’s currently about 8-15 people actively involved. I myself have recently got stuck in again after being slightly side-tracked for about 6 years by the McLibel case. I helped produce a new set of HSG stickers, and I have argued at great length for activists to set up neighbourhood based residents’ groups throughout the borough, such as the one going so well on my estate.

The group’s politics has been flexible and there is often debate and sometimes controversy - but in general we have promoted libertarian/anarchist ideas, activities and collective forms of decision-making, and grass roots working-class solidarity and struggles. Apart from some turkish comrades, there have been very few black and ethnic minority people in the group. Men are always well in the majority at meetings, and women in the group have set up their own HSG Women’s Group. There are few parents involved. These are major challenges to us if we want to involve more people, have real influence, and overcome marginalisation.

Other recent dilemmas have included: agonising over the excellent 1998 Reclaim The Streets mass party which took over Tottenham High Rd but with unfortunately no prior involvement with local activists or residents; how community and class issues intermix; whether to set up our own local workers network, ...and continually asking why aren’t we achieving so much more when there’s so much fucking potential out there?! Many of these questions affect any and every anarchist group. If we are going to become a popular mass anti-authoritarian movement then we need to see similar locally-based solidarity groups everywhere, sharing ideas and experiences and thereby developing successful strategies for long term community resistance and real alternatives. I want to see an independent residents’ group in every street, a solidarity group in every workplace, and an anti-authoritarian/anti-capitalist organisation in every borough and town.

Dave Morris

Note: This was written in 2001 - as of December 2006 Haringey Solidarity Group has continued to meet monthly, to produce regular newsletters, to support residents associations, to support 'single issue' campaigns (eg HSG has been instrumental in the launch of the ongoing 'Haringey Against ID Cards' ) and support workplace disputes. HSG is currently helping develop a nationwide 'Community Action' network of grass roots anti-authoritarian activists, and helping people throughout London to set up groups similar to HSG in all London boroughs.

Contact: HSG, PO Box 2474, N8 hsg@haringey.org.uk We have produced pamphlets on the local anti-poll tax campaign, and on a local support campaign for a strike. Stickers and various leaflets are available.

Haringey's Lost Hospitals with Sue Hessel

Wednesday 9 September at 8 pm
Meetings for the autumn will be at a new venue; the North London Community
House, 22 Moorefield Road, N17. [The old Post Office
building] This is just around the corner from Bruce Grove British Rail
Station, where Bruce Grove meets the High Road in Tottenham.]


Following the vicious round of hospital closures in the 1980s , resisted by several NHS hospital occupations [see our The NHS is 60 booklet], Haringey has suffered from a less dramatic but equally damaging losses of hospitals. In Tottenham High Road both the Prince of Wales and Jewish Hospital were shut, Despite the opposition from campaigners. The Haringey Health Emergency committee , part of the still existing London Health Emergency, was set up with support from Unison Heath branch and the Trades Union Council. HHE campaigned on health issues for some years and several RaHN supporters were part of this. The health provision for residents in the borough took a severe dip from the closures. Sue Hessel describes the events round the Hornsey Hospital closure. In 1998, when the health authorities first tried unsuccessfully to close it, the then health spokeswoman was quoted as saying (People Power saves Hospital", Hornsey Journal, July 23rd 1998) We listened and learned that the hospital was loved and extremely popular, and an essential requirement in the area".

They didn't listen for long. However it would truer to say that the hospital, our last in Haringey, was left to crumble by the Haringey Primary Care Trust. It cost the taxpayer a fortune over the years in security fees, as it lay idle, leaving our community with no services on the site for nearly a decade.

But what is just as scandalous is that when they did manage to close our cottage hospital in 2000 it was with a promise that it would be used to care for the elderly. They silenced much of the opposition saying that there would be sheltered housing, and then that 64 rehabilitation and respite beds would be provided.

The sad tale of Hornsey Central Hospital is a cautionary one, and shows that people should never believe what they are told ! We were never told it was going to be a glorified GP centre with add-ons until recently and certainly not at the time we were "consulted" on its closure. We were not told that it would require the closure of Middle Lane Health Centre or sale of Fortis Green clinic.

A more successful campaign has been described in the RaHN booklet The NHS is 60, published in May last year. Peter Sartori and Paulette Case Robinson were part of a joint action committee working to oppose the closure of Haringey Mental Health Day Hospitals from June 2003 .

The Day Hospital Campaign Group again supported by Unison and HTUC - managed to reverse the loss to MH Users and get one unit re-opened. The campaign has gone on and as the ACTive EIGHT group has functioned as a Europe-wide body advising hospital and health authorities, and generally promoting the interests of Service Users. Again, RaHN supporters were active in this, making history as well as celebrating it.

Haringey Solidarity Group - some activities past and present [1990-2005]

In an attempt to look forward at where HSG fits into any political strategy in Haringey, we first thought we would look back. So, here is a look at what we have done over the last 15 years based on the minutes of our monthly meetings. The information is huge, so this can be no more than a brief and a bit chaotic look. I have tried not to see things as “successes” or “failures”. Where one person will see failure, another will see success. And vise versa.

The obvious place to start, as it was the forerunner of HSG, was the anti Poll Tax Campaign. Much has been talked about this campaign [see our booklet], so I won’t say much. However, we were one of the only local anti Poll Tax groups who stayed together after the defeat of the poll tax. This was a very positive decision. It’s a shame more groups didn’t do likewise. If they had, maybe……. In 1998 we played a large role in organising a national gathering in Bradford, and more recently the local groups Community Action. If the 100 or so anti poll tax groups around London had formed into independent community action/solidarity groups back in 1990 maybe we wouldn’t be reinventing the wheel as we seem to be doing. But, hey, we live and learn…

In April 1991 we had the first meeting as Haringey Solidarity Group and by January 1992 we had formed three separate groups around the borough in Tottenham, Green Lanes, and Wood Green. Not being able to sustain three separate groups we all came back together as HSG in September 1994. I have attached the first (and present) set of aims and principles of HSG. In 1991 we had sub groups of HSG for: the environment; housing; publicity; transport; women; anti racism; industrial; police monitoring; council monitoring; and disability issues. There were something like 30/40 active people though. In the early days we were using an office in West Green Road. Later 1997 we opened up our own office just of Green Lanes, which we have just decided to give up due to the costs involved..

Looking back it’s ironic to see present day issues cropping up. In 1993 we were campaigning (and won) against the council taking parts of our parks for financial gain. In 1994 we were already trying to stop the slow invasion of Controlled Parking Zones and Red Routes. And in 1995 we talked about the future of the Independent Working Class Association (IWCA), which the Hackney Independent group has recently formed out of. Then there is the continual racist attacks we have been a small part in trying to fight: Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign; Tottenham Three Campaign; Joy Gardner, Michael Menson, Roger Sylvester, Winston Silcott Campaign, and most recently the police harassment of Delroy & Sonya Lindo and their family. After 15 years: same harassment different targets. But, at least we have been there to help where we can, sometimes in fairly minor ways.

We have always tried to support other struggles and all we can do here is name a few. If anybody wants more detail just ask. We have supported workers in struggle for the last 15 years where we can. There has been the Arnaouti bakery workers; council workers; postal workers; Building Workers Group; Hillingdon workers; Liverpool Dockers; and of course one of the major campaigns we were involved in the JJ Fast Food workers dispute in Tottenham (see booklet on this for fuller details).

There have been dozens of campaigns we have been part of as well. As a flavour some are: anti MacDonald’s campaign, endless campaigns and demos against Council cuts, campaigning against harassment of local prostitutes, fighting the 1996 Asylum Bill (Act), against the Private Finance Imitative (PFI), campaigning against the unsustainable redevelopment of the Hornsey Waterworks; anti-war / anti-arms trade stuff; going down to Newbury to support the road protestors; helping set up a Haringey Squatters Group; being par of the group in the 1990s who were fighting the Council’s plans to privatize Alexandra Palace and it’s parklands; police monitoring and publicity; trying to help and support other groups around London and the UK who wanted to form HSG type groups; The campaign against the Child Support Agency in 1993/4; supporting the setting up of the Haringey Furniture Project; and putting teams in for a London wide 7 a side football competition.

There have also been a number of campaigns we have started and run in Haringey (sometimes linking up with other groups to form London or nationwide campaigns). Again, because of space, I will be brief. We had a very active claimants group which not only campaigned against the JSA, New Deal and Project work, but for better conditions for workers in job centres. We were linked with other groups to form the nationwide Groundswell claimants network. We met nationally for 2 or 3 years and organised two large London demos. This was one of the first times we had managed to link claimants and job centre workers in one campaign.

We worked with lecturers and students at the College of North East London in Tottenham to fight both cuts to the college and attacks on staff conditions. Linking staff and students was an important part of this one that came from them not us. Tottenham Law Centre was threatened with closure by Haringey Council. Because of our links with the local community we help over a year or so to fight this closure. Without HSG the campaign wouldn’t have been as effective. In 1995 we were part of a larger Haringey campaign to Fight Against Cuts in Education. Again, we linked with other groups around the borough. We were instrumental in planning & calling the initial meeting of a Haringey Anti Racist Group after a number of racist incidents in Haringey. We planned the meeting (with others and secured the venue so those attending felt safe. Unfortunately this group declined quickly once they sought respectability and became the Haringey Anti Racist Alliance, elected steering committees and wanted a lot of council input. It became no more than a talking shop and soon collapsed.

We campaigned against the destruction of some of Downhills Park to make way for private football pitches which would then be hired back out to the people of Tottenham. And we won this one. We were instrumental in starting and part running the Haringey Local Exchange & Trading Scheme (LETS). This worked independently for a few years but eventually joined the larger North London LETS, as numbers were falling. We started a local anti-advertising campaign, campaigning to get billboards removed whilst encouraging 'subvertising' of them. We have continually, over the last 15 years, campaigned against elections both locally and nationally, by trying to leaflet flypost and inform people as to their pointlessness. Each time we tried to use the opportunity to show local people there is a different, and in our view, better way of organizing their lives and communities.

In 2002 we held a week of events around Mayday week. This included stalls, leafleting and a highly successful local Mayday conference. This included producing 15,000 copies of a new free local paper. We've also publicised and taken part in many London Mayday events and national anti-capitalist / anti-G8 protests, and many other countrywide events and initiatives. Every year we do a national mailout to similar local radical groups and centres to encourage better communication and co-operation.

Five years ago some members of HSG came together to form a housing co-op. Although they still do not have housing, the group have stayed together and tried continuously to find land in Tottenham to build a housing co-op and community space. Most recently, it was HSG who initiated the Haringey Against ID Cards campaign, by calling the first public meeting of the group in Tottenham. Some of us are involved in local residents' associations and the group has been able to support them and the Haringey Federation of Residents Associations.

Just a few of the other things I can think of in no particular order were. Women within HSG formed a successful women’s group for 2 or 3 years. We also formed a men’s group to challenge our attitudes as men and look at claims of oppression and overbearing within HSG. This group didn’t last very long! Michael Portillo dared to have a party to celebrate him being a politician for 10 years in Haringey (at Alexandra Palace). After some fierce campaigning work we got a large noisy crowd to the event. The party was “spoiled” for a lot of those attending as the crowd threw eggs, flour, tomatos and more at those attending. Gordon Brown also attended a meeting in Wood Green and was met with customary eggs and stuff. Oh the good old days! And loads of us raised money for the group by working behind bars at festivals. Money which we used to pay for everything we did and also managed to donate to a lot of other groups who needed it including setting up a 'bust fund' to support any Haringey activists arrested.

Throughout the last 15 years there has been one thing consistent within HSG, although this ebbs and flows depending on how strong the group is. That is our solidarity work and propaganda. HSG has produced dozens of leaflets and posters in huge quantities. We must have produced at least 10,000 posters and 100s of 1000s of leaflets on a huge variety of issues. We have regularly been on street corners, at festivals, going door to door giving out this literature. On top of this we have had two regular newsletters “Haringey Community Action” and “The Haringey Independent”. The former got up to 12 pages and 12,000 copies four times a year. There was also a newletter called “Tottenham Free” but before HSG’s time.

We have consistently put up posters all around the borough informing people about a number of issues and generally rabble rousing. Whenever we have heard of racist or fascist graffiti or posters they been removed very quickly. Over the years we have run many stalls, and at our height we had a telephone tree of 40 people so we could react to issues immediately. And every month without fail we mail out our minutes and a range of independent local and national literature to all local residents on our mailing list (currently 120). Lastly the office and our PO Box have come to the rescue of many a group. The office had been used by a number of other groups, as has our telephone, photocopier and postal address.

RaHN at Haringey Independence Day

Radical History Network will have a stall at the Haringey Independence Day on Saturday 30 May. If your are interested in finding out more about the Radical History Network please come along and meet us.

Haringey Independence Day is an event organised by local Haringey groups who wish to see local change that involves local people. There are stalls, films, workshops etc.

Venue : West Green Learning Centre, Park View Academy
West Green Road (next to Downhills Park, London N15 3RB
nearest tubes Seven Sisters and Turnpike Lane
Buses 41, 67, 230, 341

For further info e-mail: independence@haringey.org.uk or click on the link above for the web page