California Anarchoblogs

One occasional tactic of tax resistance campaigns involves choosing a particular tax or portion of a tax to resist, not because that tax or that portion is particularly offensive, but because it is easier to resist or the ramifications of resistance are less frightening. This, in theory anyway, will encourage more people to begin resisting.

Today I’ll give some examples.

• The American war tax resistance movement for a long time targeted the excise tax on telephone service — both because it was a tax that had historically been instituted and raised to help fund war spending, and because it was a small and easily-resisted tax, so that people could start resisting quickly and without having to fear terrible government reprisals. The small amounts resisted also meant that government action against any particular resister would be unlikely to be cost-effective.
• War tax resisters in Denmark have a similar campaign of refusal to pay a small portion of their radio and TV tax (equivalent to the military spending percentage of the Danish budget). Individuals pay this tax, while income taxes are withheld automatically under a pay-as-you-earn scheme, so this is a concrete way war tax resisters can resist.
• Gandhi’s salt march and the salt-tax resistance campaign is now recognized as momentous, but at the time, many commentators ridiculed all of the fuss being made over a piddling little tax. War tax resister Joanne Sheenan notes:

  Gandhi’s Salt March initially involved only 80 people, but the act of picking up the salt from the sea and making their own salt in defiance of British taxed salt was revolutionary. The power of the Salt March was that it became a massive campaign — there was something everyone could do. Some packaged the salt, some sold it, all could refuse to buy the taxed salt and buy the alternative.

  The British occupation government knew that this piddling little tax had big symbolic value. At one point they hired hundreds of people to destroy natural salt deposits on a beach near Damni where Gandhi planned to try to harvest salt in violation of the ban.
• There are periodic attempts in the American war tax resistance movement to try to get people to resist at least some tiny, symbolic part of their income taxes. For instance:
  • In 1971, the group War Tax Resistance encouraged people to withhold and redirect $10–$50 from their income taxes — a small amount because “the expense to collect the tax that is not being paid is far greater than the additional penalty imposed for the delinquent action.”
  • In 1991, a set of anti-war groups tried to get people to withhold and redirect at least a single dollar from their taxes.
  • More recently, a “$10.40 for Peace” campaign asked people to withhold $10.40 (a sort of tribute to the IRS 1040 form used by people to file their income taxes) as “a small act of witness against war and for the rights of conscience.”
  • Most pathetically, a group of Quakers is now begging people to, if they are going to pay their taxes, at the very least “Pay Under Protest.”

Often in tax resistance campaigns, not everybody is able to be a tax resister, for instance because not everybody is responsible for the tax being resisted, or because the point of the resistance is that some of the people being taxed ought not to be (and so only that class of people is resisting).

In such cases it can be useful to inspire those who cannot themselves resist the tax to show solidarity for the movement in other ways, and it can also help to provide or suggest roles that non-resisting sympathizers can play in the campaign.

Today I’ll mention some examples.

• The Rebecca Rioters knew how to make their tollgate destruction popular among people who couldn’t (or even wouldn’t) participate directly. For example:
  • One night, Rebeccaites destroyed the Rhos Gate, the Rhydyfuwch Gate, and the gate on the Llangoedmore road near Cardigan. “The following day (Saturday) was market day in Cardigan, and every one who drove in was exempted from paying the usual toll, except those who came over the coach-road. The people, looking at things from that point of view, were filled with Rebeccaite enthusiasm. On that day nothing was heard at public-houses but proposals of good health and long life to Rebecca.”
  • On another occasion, they pointedly left intact the gates on “the Queen’s high road” but destroyed those on roads that the various parishes were required to maintain. “This rendered Rebecca not unpopular amongst some farmers and others, many of whom paid the fine, rather than be sworn in as special constables.”
• The Rebeccaites also sometimes resorted to threats to induce reluctant people to participate. In one example:

  All male inhabitants being householders of the hundred, were to meet at eleven o’clock on the following Thursday, at the “Plough and Harrow,” Newchurch parish, to march in procession to Carmarthen — to defy the Mayor and magistrates, and to destroy the gate on their return. Rich and poor were to be compelled to attend, and in case of illness a substitute must be found. All owners of horses were to ride. All persons absent without a sufficient excuse or substitute were to have their houses and barns destroyed by fire.

  and in another:

  [I]n order to ensure a full attendance of her followers, the church doors in the neighbourhood of Elvet were covered with notices in the dead of night, signed by “’Becca,” commanding all males above the age of sixteen and under seventy to appear at the “Plough and Harrow” on the morning of the 19^th under pain of having their houses burnt and their lives sacrificed. The time and place of meeting were also published by word of mouth at most of the Dissenting meeting-houses throughout the hundred, and wherever a disinclination was known to exist on the part of any person to join in the procession and to take part in the intended proceedings, he was privately admonished if he wished to protect his property from the firebrand of the midnight incendiary, and to excuse himself from personal injury, that he had better join the procession — “or else.” This species of intimidation had the effect of drawing together immense numbers to the place of rendezvous.

  despite the threats:

  [Their cheers] were lustily responded to by groups of spectators who had by this time completely filled Guildhall Square, so that the Rebeccaites could hardly pass through.

  At one point they explicitly threatened an attorney to make him join them on one of their destructive sprees, “so that if any proceedings were subsequently taken, he as local solicitor might be made a party to them.” They sometimes also forced the toll house operators to take part in the destruction of their own toll houses.
• When Palestinian Jews practiced tax resistance against the British occupation government in the 1930s at least one Jew back in London stopped paying his income tax as well.
• In 1981, in support of Palestinian doctors who were refusing to pay an Israeli income tax, shopkeepers in Gaza City launched multiple two-day strikes.
• Some men who were sympathetic to the tax resistance of the Women’s Tax Resistance League found that they could participate in the campaign by exploiting a legal technicality that made them responsible for paying their wives’ income taxes. If their wives refused to pay, and they were unable to pay and had no property to seize, they might be imprisoned for tax refusal — and some were.
• American revolutionaries who were using boycotts and other means to try to cut off the support of taxed and British-monopoly products found allies back in the home country in the form of manufacturers and exporters who begged Parliament to rescind the taxes so as to bring the boycotts to an end.
• War tax resister Vickie Aldrich recently got some pro bono legal assistance from law students in her battle with the IRS.
• When residents of Beit Sahour launched a tax strike against the Israeli occupation, Israel put the town under seige. Christian groups around the world attempted to bring humanitarian aid to the city, or even to visit (including the heads of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox churches), but were turned away by the Israeli military.
• The success of the anti-Poll Tax movement in Thatcher’s Britain relied on mass popular support. The Anti-Poll Tax Unions “had to make people feel wanted and included and give everyone a sense that they had a role,” said movement chronicler Danny Burns. “In order to sustain a long and protracted struggle, it was necessary for as many people as possible to feel responsible for some aspect of the movement, however small. In the fight against the bailiffs and sheriff officers, the kids hanging around the streets passed on the word as soon as they saw a suspicious-looking character. Parents and pensioners who were not out at work organised telephone trees and were ready to be at each others’ houses at short notice.”

Individuals can demonstrate their support for tax resisters in various ways. Sometimes just dropping them a line can be a good pat-on-the-back. Here are some examples of ways in which people and groups have given their thumbs-ups to tax resisters:

• When the IRS seized Amish farmer Valentine Byler’s horses to cover his unpaid social security taxes, Byler received dozens of letters of support from around the country, with sentiments like:
  • “I congratulate you on having the intestinal fortitude to stand up for your beliefs.”
  • “Your courageous stand for your religious principles is to be commended.”
  • “I am sincerely sorry this has happened.”
• When the “Texas housewives” banded together to refuse to withhold social security taxes from the wages of their domestic help, Vivien Kellems (another American conservative tax resister) sent a telegram of support.
• When Utah governor J. Bracken Lee started resisting his federal income tax to protest what he felt to be unconstitutional federal spending, he got hundreds of letters and postcards of support from across the country (including, again, one from Vivien Kellems). Among the messages:
  • “Good for you — both for having the courage to stand up to this tax-despotic government of ours and its paid press, and for being right.”
  • “When a man of your stature comes out as you have on such a vital issue it rekindles the hopes of the American people that all is not lost and that there is still a chance.”
• The [U.S.] National Woman Suffrage Association put forth resolutions at their conventions of 1874, 1875, and 1876 in praise of resisters Julia & Abby Smith, Abby Kelly Foster, and Sarah E. Wall.
• When the government tried and failed to auction off goods seized from a tax resisting doctor in the Dutch West Indies in 1921, “[a] cheering crowd carried the physician about shoulder high.”
• When the Wyoming Conference of the Methodist Church dismissed a minister for being a war tax resister, another minister, James Gail Garst, resigned from the Conference in protest.
• At NWTRCC gatherings, one regular activity is for the attendees to sign cards of support to send to resisters who have suffered property seizures, liens, levies and other such government reprisals for their resistance.

Here are a couple more dispatches from the Poll Tax rebellion in Britain a few decades back. First, this from the Catholic Herald of 21 October 1988:

Catholic MP leads “poll tax” assault

by Brian Dooley

Catholic MP John Battle revealed to the Catholic Herald this week he is set to embark on a campaign of “creative resistance” against the poll tax, which could involve refusing to pay.

Mr Battle, the Labour MP for Leeds West, said he would support local people who refused to pay the tax in their efforts, and would join with them in refusing to pay the tax voluntarily if they asked him to. Mr Battle’s stand against the poll tax follows last week’s declaration by Jesuit head Michael Campbell-Johnson that politicians should side with the poor (Catholic Herald, October 14). “In the end, the government can get the money out of you by deducting it from your income but there’s a lot of scope to resist this law”, he said.

Mr Battle elaborated on his plans at a “Poll tax — no way!” meeting on Wednesday night, organised by the Independent Labour Party.

“There is a lot of space to fight this tax from the ground upwards”, he said. Mr Battle spoke too at the meeting about the Housing Bill which is set to become an act within weeks. “This should also be resisted. The government can simply take over whole sections of cities from local authority control, and we’re just not going to accept it. Tenants are going to refuse to co-operate with government officials”, he said.

“Like with the poll tax, the law can be made to look an ass. There’s still a long way to go before they start taking the money for the poll tax — it was blasted through the House of Lords by wheeling in peers, despite the opposition in the House of Commons. It’s unfair and it’s certainly not a fait accompli that it will be enforced”, he stressed.

Mr Battle was applauded for his stand by fellow Catholic MP Denis Canavan, the Labour MP for Falkirk West, who has already been fined £50 for refusing to register for the poll tax. The tax is due to be introduced in Scotland in 1989, a year before it is implemented in England and Wales.

“We’ve tried every means to stop it, but the only way to defeat it is if enough people like John Battle stand up and refuse to pay”, he told the Catholic Herald.

Mr Canavan has refused to pay the fine he has received, and said the money will have to be taken from him against his will.

However, Mr Battle suggested that a firm undertaking not to pay the tax was not necessary at the stage. “What I don’t think I should do as a public official is to encourage people to get into a situation where I’m all right but they’re not”, he said. He believes the bureaucracy involved in the bill will provide ample opportunity for resistance.

“There is a line in the bill at the moment, for instance, which concerns registering for payment of the tax. It says ‘if no-one lives at this address, please fill in that no-one lives here’. It’s ridiculous”, he said.

John Battle’s campaign has drawn criticism from other Labour MPs, however. Catholic Keith Vaz, Labour MP for Leicester East, voiced his concern to the Catholic Herald.

“The only way to beat this poll tax is by a united campaign which must come from a decision taken by the Party at a national level. Without that large scale sort of action, people are not really in a position to take individual action”, he said.

Vaz turned out not to be right about that. The Party floundered around, trying to milk the controversy, while individuals organized at the grassroots level in a civil disobedience campaign independent from Party leadership that proved to be successful in defeating the tax.

Here’s an article from the same paper the following year:

Halifax priest fined for poll tax refusal

by Rita Wall

A Halifax priest has said he will go to jail rather than pay the poll tax in a public stance which mirrors the mounting national opposition to the planned reform of local government finance.

Fr Peter Sheridan of St Bernard’s Presbytery in Boothtown, Halifax, is one of the first poll tax protestors to be fined for his opposition to the tax. Calderdale Council fined him £50 for refusing to complete a community charge registration form. He now faces a further £200 fine and ultimately a possible jail sentence.

“It’s an unfair and unjust tax and will place a burden on millions of people who can ill afford to pay it,” said Fr Sheridan. “This is like a reversal of the Robin Hood trend where the poor are being robbed to help the rich. It’s ridiculous.”

Having worked with the Catholic Housing Aid Society (CHAS), Fr Sheridan stressed that “this tax will cause homelessness, and will weigh heavily on the already vulnerable in our society including the elderly, the handicapped and the poor.”

Having talked to the local media and the national radio, Fr Sheridan is hopeful that other religious will follow his example in refusing to pay. “This is a totally unChristian tax, and the government has most certainly failed the people of Britain here,” he said.

“As yet the Church in England has not taken a public stance against this tax”, said Sr Deirdre Duffy, of the St Joseph of Peace Order who is active in the social justice field. “However, at a grassroots level there are many like Fr Peter Sheridan who are opposed to this tax which will cause many to suffer,” Sr Duffy said.

The poll tax will tax poor and rich alike at a consistent level, with no means test, and will most certainly contribute to the rising poverty and homelessness in Britain, Sr Duffy said. “There is also a considerable amount of confusion among religious about what orders will have to pay the tax,” she said. “There are some orders who have property and will be liable for a noncommunity tax, which works out higher than a poll tax, and many orders are exempt but they have not received exemption forms,” Sr Duffy said.

The Christian churches in Scotland have been united in their stance against the Poll Tax, taking part in many public demonstrations against its imposition in Scotland.

“Catholic social teaching stresses that those who are better off should be responsible for those who are less well off,” said Sr Kilpatrick of the Peace and Justice Commission in Glasgow. “We have been opposed to this tax from the start”.

There has been great opposition to the tax in Scotland not only because it discriminates against the poor, but also because it was introduced into Scotland first, and “it was using Scotland as a ‘guinea-pig’ trial for this tax, and is coming from a government which is not supported in Scotland,” said Sr Kilpatrick.

“We are also opposed to the centralisation of this tax, which militates against the autonomy of the local authorities who are being bypassed and will not control the allocation of the local tax money,” Sr Kilpatrick said.

The churches in Scotland have opposed the poll tax on economical, political and cultural grounds in Scotland “and we are determined to keep up our stance against it,” she said.

“Hopefully we can now join with those who are protesting in Britain so that we can protect those who will directly suffer as a result of this unfair tax,” said Sr Kilpatrick.

Tax resistance groups have used surveys to gauge public support for a possible campaign and to reassure potential resisters that they will not be alone. Some have also tried the gambit of asking people to commit to resist if and only if a certain critical mass of people also makes such a commitment.

Today I’ll give some examples.

Surveys to gauge support or to “push poll”

• The Secretary of the Federation of Dublin Anti Water Charge Campaigns remembers that the government initially challenged anti-tax activists by saying that they were an unrepresentative, radical fringe, and that most people supported the tax:

  Our immediate response was to challenge his contention and to propose a survey of the area to find out what people really thought, and a further public meeting to report the findings. Within 15 minutes we had a dozen volunteers to carry out the survey and these went on to form the nucleus of what became one of the most active campaign groups in the federation. The follow-up meeting 3 weeks later heard that something like 85% of the local residents opposed the tax. The fact of carrying out this survey gave everybody the confidence that the silent majority were with us, and for those who carried out the survey, they realised that it wasn’t such a difficult thing to knock on their neighbours’ doors and talk to them and it gave them the confidence to go on to become key campaign activists.

  It’s something I would recommend that campaigners try — doing a survey such as this or even collecting a petition in an area, knocking on doors and talking to people about the issue gives those people who we are hoping will become campaign activists a sense of ownership of the local campaign as well as demonstrating quite clearly the strength of feeling on the issue. People need to feel that it’s their campaign — not one either owned by or controlled by any political organisation or party.

• In the anti-Poll Tax movement in Thatcher’s Britain, a Bristol organizer, remembers that in his neighborhood group:

  [Our] network was strengthened by a door-to-door survey of over 500 households. The survey was not intended to be scientifically accurate. Its purpose was to give the APTU a fairly accurate picture of what was happening on the ground, and, perhaps more significantly, it was a pretext for engaging people in conversation about the Poll Tax, informing them of the non-payment campaign and encouraging them to join their local APTU. The results were interesting. Only 20% said that they would definitely pay. The same number said that they would definitely not, but more significantly, 55% said that they wouldn’t pay if a lot of other people in the area weren’t paying either. So even at this early stage we knew that non-payment was going to be massive. Over a third of the people canvassed became paid up members of the union. By the end of the exercise Easton had over 300 members and street reps for almost every street.

  The canvass was not left there. The key to its success was the second visit. The group compiled all the statistics on a street by street basis and many of the reps then went back, door-to-door, and told people the results of the survey in their street and the neighbouring streets. A newsletter was delivered to everyone telling them what the overall results were for Easton. This meant that people knew how few of their neighbours were going to pay and it gave them confidence not to pay themselves. They had spoken to the canvassers personally, so they knew that the survey was genuine.

• In 2006 the American war tax resistance group NWTRCC surveyed resisters, former resisters, and anti-war activists who had never resisted taxes, to find out about their attitudes toward war tax resistance. They used some of the information, for instance a question for the never-resisted group about their reasons for not resisting, to help them refine their outreach message. Amost two-thirds of those never-resisters answered “yes” to the question:

  Would you consider participating in a one-year commitment to refuse a portion of your federal income taxes and redirect your taxes to a humanitarian cause if thousands joined you publicly?

  This encouraging response led the group to launch what it called the “2008 War Tax Boycott.” Although the Boycott itself did not generate the hoped-for “thousands,” the group found it to be a useful outreach platform, and has continued to use it in subsequent years.
• Women’s suffrage activists in Wisconsin in 1903 said they “will take a census of the women taxpayers, [and] the list of names will be published and used as a basis of a ‘protest to the Legislature against taxation without representation.’”

Ask people to vow to resist once a critical mass of people take the vow

• The women’s suffrage activists from Wisconsin I mention above also said that “when 10,000 names have been secured to a pledge, the women will refuse to pay taxes, and the questions involved will be taken to the courts.” Another version of the pledge put the number at 5,000:

  We, the tax paying women of Wisconsin, hereby agree to do what we can by protest and argument to emphasize the fact that taxation without representation is tyranny as much for American women today as it was for American colonists in 1778. And we also pledge ourselves that when 5,000 or more women in Wisconsin shall have similarly enrolled we will simultaneously take action by whatever method may seem best in accordance with official advice from the Wisconsin Suffrage Association to the end that public attention may be thoroughly and effectively called to the injustice and injury done to women by taxing them without giving them any voice as to how their money should be employed.

• The American anti-war activist group Code Pink launched a campaign called “Don’t Buy Bush’s War” in 2007, saying:

  When there are 100,000 of us who have the courage to pledge no more money for war, we will join in an act of mass civil disobedience and refuse to pay the portion of our taxes that represents the % we spend on the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

  Nina Utne explained:

  There is safety in numbers. The idea is to get people to sign a pledge that they will engage in civil disobedience by withholding a percentage of their taxes, but only if a critical mass of 100,000 signers is reached by April 15, 2008.

  The campaign’s ambitions were a little too high, as it turns out, but they did get over 2,000 pledges, and started many conversations about war tax resistance.
• Miners at the “New Rush” in Kimberly, South Africa in 1874 signed a pledge of tax resistance, mutual protection, and boycott of non-resisters that included a minimum-signers trigger:

  This pledge is to become operative, and shall be enforced, when signed by 400 men. … This pledge is a serious matter. If it is passed to-night it will only be a Resolution; but as soon as it is signed by 400 men, which will most likely be on Monday next, it will be the law of the people which must be abided by and ruthlessly enforced.

A typical government gambit in its battle against tax resisters is to say, “okay, if you won’t pay us taxes, we’ll seize your property instead.”

Some tax resisters have responded to this by taunting back: “you’ll have to find it first.” And one way they have made good on this is by arranging to have other people hold their property in their names. Here are some examples:

• Some war tax resistance “alternative funds,” into which resisters pay their taxes into rather than submitting them to the government, have a dual purpose: they serve as ways to redirect tax money to causes the resisters find more palatable than government expenses, and they serve as a holding tank for funds that the resisters can later reclaim if back taxes are ever seized from them.



• The tax collector was so frustrated trying to seize anything at all from tax resister Ammon Hennacy that, when Hennacy was picketing the IRS office one day, the agent assigned to his case walked up to him and seized his picket sign — telling him he planned to auction it off! The next day, Hennacy was picketing again with some new signs that he and a friend had hastily made the night before… each one carefully marked “this sign is the personal property of Joseph Craigmyle.”
• In the Irish Tithe War, farmers would give temporary pasturage to the livestock of people when seizures were impending:

  An organised system of confederacy, whereby signals were, for miles around, recognised and answered, started into latent vitality. True Irish ‘winks’ were exchanged; and when the rector, at the head of a detachment of police, military, bailiffs, clerks, and auctioneers, would make his descent on the lands of the peasantry, he found the cattle removed, and one or two grinning countenances occupying their place. A search was, of course, instituted, and often days were consumed in prosecuting it.

• Observers noted that during the resistance by British nonconformists against the taxes for sectarian education included in the Education Act, “they are taking the precaution of putting their property out of their own names, so that the collectors will not have anything to levy on.” Resister John Clifford said, “In the hope of preventing the authorities from getting their money in this way I made over all my household effects to my wife, but the collectors seized them just the same.” Another resister, Thomas Watson, foiled the collectors for at least eight years with the same technique.
• Tax resister Karl Hess sold the rights to royalties from his book to a community organization he worked for, so as to get a more easily-concealable lump sum of cash instead of a more-seizable royalty stream.
• War tax resister Aleck Dodd transferred his property into his wife’s name when he began to resist, in order to “protect my family from the possible results of my action, and not to evade the collection of my tax by due process of law.”

Today, I’m finishing off Violence Week here at The Picket Line.

• Thursday I gave some examples of attacks directed at tax offices
• Friday some examples of attacks on the apparatus of taxation
• Saturday some examples of tax resistance campaigns using particularly humiliating violent attacks against individual tax collectors
• Sunday some examples of attacks directed at the property of tax collectors
• Monday some examples of direct violent attacks on individual tax collectors
• Tuesday some examples of attacks and intimidation aimed at tax system collaborators
• and Wednesday some examples of attacks on police and soldiers trying to enforce tax laws or to take reprisals against resisters

Violence certainly can be an effective way to disrupt the tax collecting bureaucracy. Most tax collectors are not particularly enthusiastic about their calling, and so a little intimidation can go a long way in discouraging them. This in turn makes tax collection more expensive for the government, decreasing its return-on-investment and compelling it either to tighten its belt or to resort to higher taxes and thereby expand the ranks of resisters.

The IRS even now is complaining of “a surge of hostility towards the federal government” that threatens its employees. “Attacks and threats against IRS employees and facilities have risen steadily in recent years.” Taxation is such a political hot potato, and politicians are so venal, that the people who most profit from taxes are often the first ones to fan the flames of hostility.

Violence also has a way of backfiring. Tax resistance campaigns often show great success right up to the point where they start relying on violent tactics, whereupon they lose popular support, become subject to an easier-to-justify draconian crack-down, or reinvigorate their opponents. Violence also, in a less-obvious way, harms the body politic by increasing fear, divisiveness, and tension, by giving precedent to people who already have tendencies to resolve conflicts violently, by making it harder for opposing sides to come to a reconciliation, and so forth. And of course, in many cases, it is just cruel and wrong in its own right.

I have presented examples this week largely without passing judgement as to whether they were justified or helpful to their cause. Some examples, for instance the Rebecca Riots, are hard to imagine without violence. Other examples, for instance the Regulator movement in colonial North Carolina, seemed to me to be cases where violent tactics were counterproductive to the point of being disastrous. And in some cases, the violence was so cruel or misdirected that even if you were being generous about the ends justifying the means, you would be hard-pressed to defend it. (You can read my personal views about whether violence directed at tax collectors can be justified or helpful at an earlier Picket Line post.)

A good example of violence being used successfully is also an unsavory one. White supremacists in the defeated states of the Confederacy after the U.S. Civil War used violent white militias to back up their tax resistance campaign against the reconstruction state governments that were being propped up by the victorious Union forces. In Louisiana, dozens of armed men from the paramilitary “White League”…

…came to prevent the deputy tax-collector effecting a sale, armed with revolvers nearly all. Mr. Fournet came and threatened the deputy and tax-collector. The deputy and tax-collector ran into their offices. I came down and called upon the citizens to clear the court-house, but could not succeed. I then called upon the military, but they had no orders at that time to give me assistance to carry out the law.

When the deputy tax-collector attempted to make a sale Mr. Fournet raised his hand and struck him. The deputy then shoved him down. As soon as this was done forty, fifty, or sixty men came with their revolvers in hand.

White supremacist paramilitary groups went from terrorizing tax collectors and auctioneers to initimidating voters, assassinating office-holders, and massacring blacks. Their terror campaign was ultimately successful at wearing down the will of the North. The U.S. withdrew federal troops, whereupon the white supremacist forces retook political control, the white paramilitaries were absorbed into the state militias, and the white supremacists held absolute political control for generations after.

So, yes, sometimes the terrorists do win, and sometimes violence is successful, for some definitions of “success.”

Here are a few examples of attacks on tax officials that I wasn’t sure how to categorize… I include them below in a sort of catch-all miscellany category:

• In one of the more amusing cases in my archive, when colonial Governor John Evans tried to impose a tax on shipping on the Delaware river, in violation of the colonial charter, and to enforce this by firing cannons on vessels that tried to pass his fort without paying, Richard Hill decided to defy the tax. First he sent men “with the ship’s papers to the fort, to show that the vessel had been regularly cleared at the custom-house, and to endeavour to persuade the officer to suffer her to pass without molestation,” but that didn’t work. Then he just tried to sail by, “steering as near to the opposite side as he safely could,” and almost got through “without damage, except [for] the main-sail, which was shot through.” Then:

  The officer at the fort, not willing to miss his prize, immediately had his boat manned and went in pursuit. [Hill’s] ship’s sails were now slackened, and the boat was allowed to come alongside, and having fastened a rope to the ship, the officer and his men came on board. Whilst engaged in a warm controversy with the owner and his friends, some one on board (no doubt advisedly) quietly loosed the boat and let her drift astern. The ship was now under full sail, and when the officer at length discovered that he was in danger of a voyage to the West Indies, and that all his hopes of retreat were cut off, his courage failed, and he suffered himself to be led as a prisoner into the cabin.

  Hill landed on the Jersey side of the river, run by Evans’s rival-governor Lord Cornbuty, “who claimed in his own right the exclusive jurisdiction of the river” and, being “a proud and haughty man, on hearing the case, was quite indignant at this encroachment on his prerogative, and he threatened the officer in no measured terms of rebuke, who now became seriously alarmed at his situation, and sued for pardon, making many professions of sorrow for the offence he had committed. At length, having promised never to attempt the like again, he was suffered to depart.” Evans then gave up on his pet tax.
• When a higher court ordered county court judges in Missouri to institute taxes there to pay off the owners of fraudulently-issued railroad bonds, “a gang of armed men rode into the county seat of Osceola and held tax officials at gunpoint while its members stole all the official tax records. The gang warned the county court judges that they would be lynched unless they resigned immediately. Lawmen recognized individuals in the gang but took no action because they knew residents admired the gang more than they did the court. … All three judges resigned and, at a special election, voters selected three dedicated Greenbackers, one of them a relative of train robber Cole Younger who could presumably be trusted not to ally with railroads” … “Under renewed popular threats of physical harm, county courts in Knox and Macon devised schemes in 1879 that prevented the county treasuries from ever having enough funds to pay railroad debts.”
• British Constitutionalists last year stormed a courtroom where a man was challenging his council tax bill and attempted to place the judge under citizens’ arrest. “In chaotic scenes, police rescued Judge Michael Peake from the clutches of a mob and escorted him safely from the County Court…”

Thursday I gave some examples of attacks directed at tax offices, Friday some examples of attacks on the apparatus of taxation, Saturday some examples of tax resistance campaigns using particularly humiliating violent attacks against individual tax collectors, Sunday some examples of attacks directed at the property of tax collectors, Monday some examples of direct violent attacks on individual tax collectors, and yesterday some examples of attacks and intimidation aimed at tax system collaborators.

Today I’ll continue our look at the violent side of tax resistance campaigns by giving some examples of attacks on police and soldiers when they attempt to enforce tax laws or to take reprisals against resisters.

• Earlier this year, a crowd of people on the Greek island of Hydra attacked local police after they detained a restauranteur for tax evasion:

  [T]he inspectors wanted to transport the restaurant owner to Athens, an hour’s ride away by fast boat. They were set upon by a local crowd, which also attacked the boat’s crew.

  The police, along with the restaurant owner, had to retreat to the island’s police station, which was besieged until riot police arrived Saturday morning. Locals cut off the station’s electricity and water supplies.



• In 2009, protesters in China “overturned police cars and blocked roads over plans to more strictly enforce payment of taxes.” In 2011 another mob of tax protesters in China destroyed ten police vehicles including an armored car.
• There were battles between police and protesters during the Poll Tax rebellion in the Thatcher years. In Bristol, the crowd charged the police and rescued arrested demonstrators. “One police officer was kicked unconscious when he tried to make an arrest. Six more were dragged out of their van.” In London, “As the police baton-charged the crowd… they were resisted by a hail of bricks, bottles, and stones.” Police brutality turned a peaceful demonstration into a riot in Trafalgar Square. “Mounted riot police baton-charged the crowd. The crowd, angered by this violent provocation, retaliated by throwing sticks, banner poles, bottles — anything they could find. Young people, armed only with placards, fought hand to hand with police. … As the missiles began to rain down the police retreated:

  …Pedestrian isles were being torn up and real serious lumps of concrete being thrown at the romper-suited police. I found myself with rock in hand. The first I threw was aimed at a group of police. I watched it bounce off a shield. My second rock was more specifically aimed at their front line. Again, it was well-deflected. I saw a rock strike a policeman’s visor and he didn’t even blink. The police were shielding themselves from the missiles raining down, but they were vulnerable to rocks aimed at their legs and midriffs. The police were taking a battering. Every now and then a policeman would crumple to his knees and the crowd would roar.”

  More than 100 police officers would be treated for injuries sustained during the riot. A spokesman for the police said, “I have never seen such sustained and savage violence used directly against the police.”
• During the Poujadist tax rebellion in France in 1955, “unabashed Poujade vigilantes went right on chasing tax collectors down the roads, mobbing police and defying troops assigned to escort them.”
• At the tail end of the Dharsana Salt Raid, some Indian nationalist sympathizers, disregarding Gandhi’s guidelines and “abandoning, it was said, all pretenses at non-violence, stoned guards and police. Five police and three excisemen were injured by the pebbles. Six police who went to the rescue of some hardly pressed excisemen were themselves surrounded by the mob and obliged to retire.”
• In Spain in 1911, when guardsmen tried to disperse protesters angry at the arrest of a tax resisting cattleman, the crowd fought back — “two persons were killed and five wounded. Among the latter is a Sergeant of the Civil Guard.”
• After the Russian duma-in-exile issued a tax resistance manifesto, the government said that if people refused to pay taxes, it would send in troops who would show no mercy. “Without waiting for soldiers to put the threat of the government into execustion the peasants have inaugurated a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the troops already in the province. … Within the last few days a number of military sentinels have been shot down in ambush or attacked by the peasants.”
• In 1892, the military were called in to Guerrero, Mexico, to put down a tax rebellion. Instead, the rebels defeated the troops and took General Ranjel prisoner.
• “Half-breeds” (people of mixed European immigrant and Native American parentage) in the Dakota Territory refused to pay taxes in 1889. When the Sheriff tried to collect, “the half-breeds assembled from all directions, and pressing about the Sheriff and his one man they forced him to surrender his well-earned pittance of taxes … and say they will resist to the last man. Sheriff Flynn has been notified that he will be shot on sight if he again makes a similar attempt.”
• “When a deputy sheriff went to make seizures” against Irish settlers in Canada who were resisting taxes in 1881, “the residents threatened to string him to the nearest tree. finally, they compelled him to eat the writs he had, and then gave him a limited time to get out of the township.”
• A sheriff trying to enforce the “foreign miners tax” in California “in attempting to compel the foreigners to yield, was killed by them, and one or two of his posse wounded.”
• The Rebecca Rioters in Wales targeted the constables who tried to stop or investigate the riots, or to conduct tax seizures:
  • Two or three hundred Rebeccaites met at a Pontyberem village, and while there “made some special constables promise not to serve, and took away their staves.”
  • “They then attacked the house of the blacksmith, who had previously said he would face fifteen of the best Rebecca boys, and who also had been sworn in as a special constable; according to his own statements he was a man devoid of fear. The smith — fearless man of Vulcan — had, however, departed; but smash! went in his door and windows, and his deserted smithy was practically destroyed.”
  • “At the outset of these proceedings the toll-man ‘Dick’ contrived, by running over ditch and dell, to warn a parish constable, one Evan Thomas, otherwise ‘The Porthyrhyd Lion,’ of his own mishap, as well as the peril to which he thought him exposed, Evan being somewhat unpopular in the neighbourhood. On receiving this hint, away bolted ‘Ianto,’ scampering over the ditches and fields until he found a cow-house where he lay concealed in anxious suspense the remainder of the night. Notwithstanding the retreat of ‘Ianto,’ about seventy of the tribe visited his domicile, smashed in his windows and doors, destroyed his shelf and dresser, and all his crockery, as well as the spokes of a new cart, put a cheese on the fire, cut down some of the trees in the garden, and then simultaneously raised the cry, ‘Alas! poor Ianto!’ … Evan the constable… if found, was to have his ears cut off.”
  • “These riotous proceedings caused considerable excitement and alarm… The different persons in the neighbourhood who were sworn in as special constables… gave up their staves, with the determination of refusing on any future occasions to interfere with the movements of Rebecca or the protection of the toll-house.”
  • “John Evans and John Lewis, two Sheriff’s officers from Carmarthen, were sent… to make a distress on the goods and chattels of William Philipp… They were attacked by about twenty-five of the ’Beccas, and beaten in a dreadful manner.… John Evans was compelled to go on his knees before them, and put the distresses and authority to distrain in the fire. He was then made to take his oath on the Bible, which one of them put in his hands, that he would never again enter the premises to make another distress. He was compelled to make use of the following words: ‘As the Lord liveth, and my soul liveth, I will never come here to make any distress again.’ After taking the oath, he was set free, and the two bailiffs returned to town.”
  • William Chambers, who led a police unit that wounded and arrested some Rebeccaites, was targeted multiple times. On one occasion, a stack of his corn was burned, on another, a stack of straw met the torch. Later his farm and outbuildings were all engulfed in flames. A horse of his that had been rescued from another of his farms as it burned down was later shot.



• During the Tithe War in Ireland, British troops killed 18 resisters who were trying to reclaim distrained livestock. In return, the resisters killed 18 troops in an ambush:

  A number of writs against defaulters were issued by the Court of Exchequer, and intrusted to the care of process-servers, who, guarded by a strong force, proceeded on their mission with secrecy and despatch. Bonfires along the surrounding hills, however, and shrill whistles through the dell, soon convinced them that the people were not unprepared for hostile visitors. But the yeomanry pushed boldly on: their bayonets were sharp, their ball-cartridge inexhaustible, their hearts dauntless. Suddenly an immense mass of peasantry, armed with scythes and pitchforks, poured down upon them — a terrible struggle ensured, and in a few moments eighteen police, including the commanding-officer, lay dead. The remainder fled, marking the course of their retreat by their blood… In the mêlée, Captain Leyne, a Waterloo veteran, narrowly escaped. A coroner’s jury pronounced “Wilful murder.” Large Government rewards were offered, but failed to produce a single conviction.

• In Issoudun, France in 1830, a general who was sent to try to quell a tax rebellion there “entered the town only through a capitulation; the moment he reached the Hôtel-de-Ville a man of the Faubourg de Rome put his pruning-hook around his neck, exclaiming, ‘No more clerks where there is nothing to do!’”
• During the Fries Rebellion in the early United States, “it came to the knowledge of the authorities that several of the magistrates themselves were disaffected, and others were prevented doing their duty through fear of injury.”
• During the French Revolution, when the people of Peronne and Ham got wind that an order had been issued to rebuild destroyed toll-houses, they destroyed the soldiers’ barracks. In another case: “M. de Sauzay, commandant of the ‘Royal Roussillon,’ who was bold enough to save the [tax] clerks, is menaced, and for this misdeed he barely escapes being hung himself. When the municipal body is called upon to interpose and employ force, it replies that ‘for so small a matter, it is not worth while to compromise the lives of the citizens,’ and the regular troops sent to the Hôtel-de-Ville are ordered by the people not to go except with the butt-ends of their muskets in the air.”