Not only Scots hated Maggie’s Poll Tax
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had a lot at stake when she introduced the Poll Tax to Scotland – though she had fewer admirers to lose there than in other parts of the UK.
It was on April 1, 1989, a day we traditionally have a giggle at fake news stories, that Scots woke up to the fact it was all very real indeed.
Opposition leader Neil Kinnock said he would get rid of the Community Charge, its official title, as soon as he was in power.
Even Maggie’s colleagues thought about cancelling the whole thing, following the Poll Tax Riots.
Michael Heseltine challenged her for the leadership, while many Scots said they’d refuse to pay.
For others, who were renting and would be moving out of Scotland soon, they found ways of avoiding it, too.
English police bosses said they may refuse to bring everyone avoiding payment to court, simply as there would be so many of them.
Maggie’s authority, in other words, was facing one of its most serious challenges.
She did see off Heseltine’s challenge by 50 votes, but would be gone by late 1990.
All three candidates to replace the Iron Lady had promised to get rid of the Poll Tax, but when John Major took office, he got Norman Lamont to raise VAT to pay for a large reduction in it instead.
By 1992, the whole thing was replaced by the Council Tax that we know today.
The Tories would go on to clinch a fourth term, Kinnock would be nowhere again, and it dawned on us all that the Council Tax was awfully like the old rates system the Poll Tax was supposedly replacing.
The funny thing is, if people had kept a close eye on what Margaret Thatcher thought about such things, they would have noted her keen interest in it as far back as 1974.
At that time, as shadow environment secretary, she had the idea of abolishing the rates system, and it had been added to the Tories’ manifesto in the October elections.
Rates, for those too young to know, were a method of working out what tax each household should pay based on the rental value of their property.
Today, many experts reckon the Poll Tax was Maggie’s biggest blunder and spelled the beginning of the end for her.
And the main reason wasn’t because she angered lots of Scots – the Poll Tax also hurt the people who had loved her.