issing 300,000
Poll Tax: In September, Labour-dominated Strathclyde Regional Council sent out 293,000 first warnings against those who had failed to pay their poll tax. This figure represents 20.4% of the 1.45 million bill issue base calculated by the Council's finance department.
However the actual number of people eligible to pay the poll tax in Strathclyde is 1.75 million. The missing 300,000 are those who avoided registration and those who were either late or failed to apply for rebates. Playing down the level of resistance, regional finance chair John Mullin said at the time the warnings were issued, 'it was no real surprise" and added, "we feel that once the reminders are sent out we might get a firmer picture of exactly what the non-payment situation is."
On 26 October it was revealed that only 4% had responded to threatening reminder notices, leaving 16.4% or 236,415 non-payers. The figure for Glasgow (part of Strathclyde) is a massive 27.3%. All these non-payers have now been sent final wamings, demanding they stump up the full year's payment within 14 days or have their cases processed by the Sheriff Court, where a 10% surcharge will be added. In the whole of Scotland there are only 200 sheriff officers; to date they have tried to carry out only a handful of Every week seems to bring more bad news for the Tories. JANE WELLS tries to catch up with the crises and find out what's up. The anniversary of Thatcher's decade in power earlier this year marked what is starting to feel like the beginning of the end for Conservative rule. A month later in June, the Tories lost their first national election since 1979, winning only 34.7% of the vote against Labour's 40.1% in the European election and losing 13 of their 45 seats. It's been downhill for them ever since.
Now, 'old' ideas, long discounted by the right and happily discarded by even some of the fashionable 'left' in the labour movement as outmoded romantic notions, are coming back in favour again. Examples include strikes (the summer of discontent has led even the AEU to call out members), and now troops are on the streets running ambulances for the first time in 10 years. Another unfashionable item has also reappeared - the working class -Page 10
FEATURES warrant sales against poll tax non-payers, and all of these have been successfully blocked by anti-poll tax activists. In the two cases where they did carry out a poinding (first stage of a warrant sale), one in Macduff outside Aberdeen the other in Paisley, outside Glasgow, anti-poll tax demonstrators occupied the sheriff officers premises and successfully halted the warrant sale process. At this rate it would be well into the next century before sheriff officers catch up with the 1989 non-payers!
What is now beyond dispute is that mass non-payment is a fact. This level of resistance completely shatters the right wing line. repeated by Dewar at Labour Party conference that: "Those who were boasting about the numbers who had not yet paid their poll tax in Strathclyde should note that it was about the same percentage of those who at this stage had not paid their rates."
Comrade Dewar and Co should note firstly that there are 1,750,000 who are supposed to pay the poll tax in Strathclyde which compares to only 900,000 under the system of domestic rates. This means even if the percentages were comparable to the level of nonrates payment the actual number of people involved would still be almost doubled. Second, as mentioned above the latest figure of 16.4%. 236,415 leaves out the 300,000 missing perT