Sunday, 24 May 2020

Thatcherism and the Poll Tax

For no reason apart from the fact I've just finished writing a short piece about the Poll Tax for the book, here's a "charming" party political broadcast from the Tories back in the day. It's useful not just because they were happy to indulge openly homophobic propaganda (1988 is the year of Section 28, after all) but because it lays bare the neoliberal logics underpinning Thatcher's justification of the tax. A logic, sadly, that survived its abolition by John Major and persists to this day in the Council Tax.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A community charge that was sold as LOWERING the cost to households and it caused MORE HARDSHIP to those it was said to benefit, TORY BULLSHIT LIES

Jon Hegerty said...

That is brilliant.

However, that's a horrid cup of tea. And the teapot would've overflowed before it was full. Presumably Labour inefficiency?