This event and other similar smaller ones are collectively known as the tax riots. A large number of people flat out refused to pay the tax. With so many people not paying it was hard for the government to enforce everyone to pay. With all this discontent going on about the poll tax, the Conservative party started thinking about the next election.
Early polls showed the Labour party with a strong lead over the Conservative party mainly due to the poll tax issue. Some conservative part members considered abolishing the poll tax, but they knew Thatcher would never go for that while she was the Prime Minister. Thatcher was challenged for leadership of the conservative party by Michael Hesteline in November of Thatcher won the challenge by 50 votes, but the margin missed the threshold to avoid a second vote. Thatcher consulted with her cabinet who could see the political winds of change coming.
On November 22, , Thatcher announced she was resigning as Prime Minister after more than a decade in office. John Major, her successor as leader of the conservative party, quickly announced that he would abolish the poll tax. By the time of the general election new legislation had passed that replaced the poll tax with the council tax.
This gesture saved the election for the conservatives as they won a 4th straight election. The Council tax closely resembled the rates tax with a few tweaks. Thatcher returned to be a constituency parliamentarian before retiring from politics for good after the elections. All the map does is give you an overview of the region. When she got power and the backing of her party, she was intent on making this idea law.
Thatcher and her people could only see or think about all the good the new tax structure would bring to the U. One would think a significant party would do some polling beforehand before introducing some major legislation like that right?
It appears the Conservative party did no such thing. Thatcher and her party were only looking at the map and seeing what they wanted to know from it. If they got out in the terrain before introducing the bill, they would have seen that the law was going to be challenging to implement and that it would be wildly unpopular. Even with all of this, Thatcher could have saved herself by cutting bait on the law after it became readily apparent that the law was vastly unpopular.
From: poll tax in A Dictionary of World History ». View all reference entries ». View all related items in Oxford Reference ». Search for: 'poll tax' in Oxford Reference ». All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice.
Oxford Reference. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Subscriber sign in You could not be signed in, please check and try again. To pour salt into the wound, the property-based council tax replacement was largely devised by Michael Heseltine who, more than anyone else, had brought about her downfall.
The cabinet papers for , released by the National Archives at Kew on Thursday, also show that Major, as had been the case for Thatcher before him, needed to be sent a reminder by Westminster council to register for the poll tax, or community charge as it was officially known.
It was particularly difficult to maintain an up-to-date register of everyone liable, he explained. The result has been that responsible citizens, overwhelmingly our supporters, are being asked to make good the shortfall from non-payers. But, having consulted widely throughout the party, I am convinced that it would never be accepted as equitable and that it would never be properly collectable either.
I do not think we could long defend a situation in which some people were paying more in community charge than in income tax.
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