Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/02/bbc-coverage-of-1990-tax-riots.html
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I’m not familiar with all the particulars, but it’s unbelieveable that the tories still won the next election.
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Broadwater Farm or Brixton 1985 might be better analogies. Or even Orgreave.
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Possibly the Brixton and Broadwater Farm riots of 1985 are examples closer to what is happening now, since both involved police killing innocent people of color during searches.
They were also early examples of kettling, which UK police had basically invented the year before during a miners’ strike; kettling has been used this past week in the US as a way to turn innocent protesters into Covid-19 superspreaders.
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That’s burying the lede somewhat- It proved difficult to collect due to a massive, three-nation campaign of civil resistance and non-payment, which made the policy impossible to implement fully.
The tax was then “softened” with large discounts to make it more palatable, then eventually dropped entirely.
Also of note- it’s almost impossible to get across how regressive the tax change was. The previous system of property taxes was levied on the value of the house and was paid by the owner. The poll tax (and its replacement) were paid by all individuals. So it shifted the cost of the tax from homeowners, landlords and people in expensive properties to renters, people house sharing and large families.
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There was widespread protesting, rioting, looting and arson in 2011 in the UK following the shooting dead by the police of Mark Duggan, an alleged minor criminal of mixed race.
It was very weird because of the scale and extreme nature of the violence, and the broad range of ages, ethnicities and social classes of the protesters. There was no real coherence to any of it. It was like the whole country suddenly lost it’s reason. It looked like you imagine the fall of civilisation will look.
It went on for a couple of days, and then it was never spoken of again. It was like it never happened.
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Also, the police in the UK have never been averse to murdering people…
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When your empire is built upon the notion of everyone but you and your imperial partners being savages, it really tends to color your perception for a few hundred years.
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It has been suggested that it was because there was misinformation going round that if you weren’t on the electoral register then you wouldn’t have to pay poll tax.
I wonder who would start spreading a lie like that?
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Also Toxteth.
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Don’t leave out the fact that Thatcher (may her soul rot in hell) imposed the poll tax on Scotland first as an experiment. And, yeah, it was pretty unbelievable that the Tories still won the next general election.
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Class War’s video of the poll tax riots was more fun though.
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Pretty unbelievable that they keep winning elections.
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Personally, I found it pretty unbelievable that when Labour did actually win an election, they turned out to be Tories too…
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Tory Lite at best, certainly not Old School Labour - but then that was the old Edward Bernais “Ask them what they want and say you’ll stand for it” approach to campaigning that’s been all the vogue since.
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Yeah, maybe.
But if you remember all the buzz about Cool Britannia and the Spice Girls and the feeling of optimism and change and it was all great. It was similar to Obama in 2008.
And then Blair’s first act was to cut nurses’ pay. And I remember going - Whut?
And then ultimately that fucker went all in on the War and Iraq and Afghanistan.
Maybe not…
Edit - Of course you are right about the subsequent Labor leaders, but Blair was a Tory
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More recently:
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If you remember Blair simply handing over the Prime Ministership to Brown, then the UK voting for Clegg but getting Cameron, then more recently Johnson slinking in, it’s been a fair old while since we actually voted for the person we wanted at all.
It’s a wonder we haven’t had more protests.
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What is going on with embedded video clips on Boing Boing these days? Every single time there are huge black bars above and below.
Here it’s so bad nothing else even fits on my screen.
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