I rebelled against the poll tax – could we do the same with energy bills?

Few of us would want to risk having to shiver in the dark through winter because of a political protest. But we can and should drag our feet about payment

What would happen if nobody paid their inflated gas and electricity bills? That is, whether they could actually afford to, or not? The short answer is that it would help force the government to act. We know this because something similar happened some years ago. And, reader, I did my bit in that little battle for social justice by indulging in minor lawlessness.

The nearest thing we ever came to the kind of “don’t pay” campaign currently getting underway was the mass non-payment of the poll tax in 1990. The community charge, as it was officially termed, or council tax as we know it today (in greatly reformed shape), was widely despised, even by moderate Conservatives, because of its manifest unfairness and harshness.

Put at its simplest, and with an uncomfortable echo in today’s gas and electric bills, the poll tax took no account of anyone’s ability to pay. Within any given borough or county, a duke would pay the same as a dustman, in the phrase of the time, and the idea was to improve accountability. However, in practice it gave rise to strange anomalies across the land, which were egregiously unfair. It was going to leave some people, rather harshly, destitute, while others had nothing to pay at all.

The then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher wasn’t in favour of “handouts” to deal with the manifest drawbacks of the poll tax, and she believed that resolute, strong leadership meant facing down the opposition, because she’d be proven right again, as she had been in all her previous struggles against inflation, former leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) Ken Livingstone, the miners, the Argentinian invaders of the Falklands, the European Commission and former Labour leader Neil Kinnock. So we rioted.

Well, some of us did, in the worst civil disturbances of their kind in many years. Being rather cautious, I didn’t go up to Trafalgar Square to throw bottles at the police horses, but I did refuse to pay my poll tax. At first, the letters from Bromley Council were routine, then more insistent, as if I was just forgetful, and then more and more threatening. But I was heartened by the knowledge that 17 million people were also dragging their heels and making the financing of Britain’s local government services almost impossible.

Like any band of revolutionaries, our fervour for the cause varied. Some would crumble at the first overdue reminder, others when legal action was threatened, and The Communards of 1990 waited for the bailiffs to come round. I’ll admit I hesitated at the stage just before I would have had a county court judgement against my name (as far as I can recollect), which would have made getting a mortgage or bank loan in future impossible. It was close, though.

Of course, not paying the gas or electricity bill is a rather more difficult thing. All the council could do was send letters and take one to court – they weren’t in a position to boycott my bins or ban me from the local library or impose an exclusion zone round the park.

The energy companies, however, can cut you off, if you don’t fall into one of the “vulnerable” categories (not the same as poor). They can do this more easily outside UK official “winter”, which lasts from October to March inclusive. They can forcibly enter your home to stop the supply of gas and electricity, and can also take you to court for the debt. They can make life unbearable in the way no local authority can.

Few of us would want to risk having to shiver in the dark through winter because of a political protest. But we can and should drag our feet about payment, and rightly question some of the crazier assumptions that are being made when assessing direct debits. We have to face the fact, though, that slow payment isn’t that easy to achieve, and larger commercial users of gas and electricity will be paying their bills as usual. So the impact is bound to be smaller, unless bills climb so high that it won’t be a matter of people refusing to pay due to choice and protest, but simply because they haven’t got the money. And we all know Liz Truss’s tax and national insurance (NI) cuts won’t help those who are so poor they don’t pay much tax or NI in the first place.

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The way to get a Truss-led government, in particular, to respond to this crisis is exactly the same, in principle, as what happened with Thatcher and the poll tax. Non-payment will be a factor, voluntary or otherwise. Protests help, and so will a campaign of disobedience, though a winter protest might start to get uncomfortable. Perhaps the mere threat of mass action will be sufficient to force a change in policy on the contemptibly-labelled “handouts”.

But all these things only work if accompanied by normal parliamentary and political pressure. One of the unintended consequences of the shift from rates to the poll tax was that it happened to hit people who lived in Victorian terraced houses especially hard, and they tended to make up a large number of households in areas with marginal seats, such as in Lancashire and around Southampton.

The poll tax decimated the Tories in local elections and by-elections, and the hatred felt for it even in genteel places such as Windsor frightened usually docile Tory backbenchers into rebellion. Eventually, they had to ditch their leader (who also had awkward views on Europe and was becoming increasingly imperious) and her successor, John Major, had to spend billions fixing the system.

Unless she wants to be one of the shortest-serving prime ministers in history, Truss will be handing out the cash as never before this winter.