Maybe the Poll Tax was a good idea after all!

When I was a kid I used to leave the tap running while I brushed my teeth. Living in London in the 1960s, ecology was mere frogspawn struggling to hatch in the raging river of Cold War paranoia.

Nowadays I’d find impossible to concentrate on brushing my Hampsteads if the tap was gushing good clean water down the drain. Even if it’s flushing fluoridated dodgy water, it’s still a waste.

At that same young age, I complained about having to eat my greens. In return, I received lectures from Dad about the starving people of Africa that made no sense to me at all. Yes, Dad, but they’re not going to get this cabbage if I don’t eat it, are they?

Then I travelled and saw women carrying huge containers of water for miles across baked scrubland. It made me feel incredibly lucky to have water on tap at home, but even that didn’t really change my behaviours.

When you fly low over Ireland you look down on an almighty puddle, out of which occasionally rise green bits, so it’s absurd that while living here I’ve started to feel conscious of wasting water. Maybe I’m just such a contrary sod that I had to find a flooded country to begin to value and care about water.

Soon enough we’ll all be thinking about water, because we’ll be paying for our usage. The outrage the Irish are feeling about all these new taxes reminds me of Thatcher’s Community Charge, or Poll Tax as it was known by everyone but herself.
The British are used to paying taxes for the common good. When Aneurin Bevan introduced the world’s first health service, the Brits were happy and proud to pay their collective contributions. However, they found something inherently offensive about the Poll Tax. It appeared to be a tax on life itself.

Then, just like Frank and Nancy Sinatra, Thatcher went and spoilt it all by trying it out on Scotland first. It was a stupid decision on many levels. The Tories’ electoral presence north of Hadrian’s Wall has never been more significant than a grouse’s poop on a highland moor. Aside from that, it’s no secret that the Scots have never felt affectionate to their southern neighbours, and have built a justice system of their own that dwarfs the English in its compassion and understanding. You cannot go to jail in Scotland for non-payment of a fine.

So naturally the Scots refused to pay this Poll Tax, imposed upon them from distant Westminster (ringing any Irish bells?), and inspired the English to respond similarly. Campaigns of non-cooperation sprouted up all over the England.

One of the most effective was a nationwide effort that created tens of thousands of false identities, for whom Community Charge registration forms were submitted. We were all at it, filing on behalf of Mr. Bun the baker, Mr. Banky Fatcat, Maria Julie-Andrews and good old Elsie Boadicea.

It screwed up the government database and made the obscene tax unworkable.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.