Liverpool and the poll tax timeline

March 1980: To compensate for Tory government cuts Liverpool’s Labour-led council passes a 50% rise in rates (the local tax levy then), against opposition from Militant.

May 1980: Labour loses six Liverpool council seats and a Liberal-Tory coalition takes control.

August 1982: Croxteth Comprehensive School occupied to prevent closure plans.

April 1983: One day city-wide strike against privatisation.

May 1983: Labour gains 12 seats to take back control, with 51 councillors (30 Liberals, 18 Tories).

June 1983: In the general election Labour wins five of Liverpool’s six seats, including Militant’s Terry Fields in the Tory marginal Broadgreen constituency.

November 1983: 25,000 demonstrate in support of the council.

29 March 1984: Council budget day, with a one-day strike and a 50,000-strong march to the Town Hall to back the deficit budget proposal. But seven Labour councillors refuse support so no budget gets a majority.

May 1984: After election further gains Labour has 58 councillors, the Liberals 28 and Tories 13.

July 1984: A budget is set after Tory Environment Secretary Patrick Jenkin makes concessions worth up to £60 million (over £190m in 2025 values).

November 1984: 30,000 demonstrate in London against rate-capping and the abolition of the Greater London Council (GLC).

March 1985: 50,000 march in Liverpool but the ‘no rate’ campaign of 20 Labour councils collapses, leaving Liverpool to fight alone.

June 1985: After the collapse of the ‘no rate’ campaign, Liverpool sets a deficit budget.

8 September 1985: 49 Liverpool councillors are surcharged £106,000, not for setting a deficit budget but for the delay in setting a rate until June.

25 September 1985: While voting by a narrow majority against an all-out strike, almost all the council’s workforce comes out on a 24-hour strike to support its stand against the government.

1 October 1985: Neil Kinnock makes his infamous speech attacking the Liverpool councillors at the Labour Party conference.

November 1985: A new council budget is set with a £30 million loan.

January 1986: The government publishes a green paper proposing an individual poll tax to replace the household rates system based on a property’s notional rental value.

March 1986: The High Court upholds the surcharge on the Liverpool councillors.

March 1987: After a four-year struggle against Margaret Thatcher’s government – and Neil Kinnock’s Labour leadership – the Liverpool councillors are finally removed from office by the Law Lords, who dismiss their final appeal. A Liberal-Tory administration takes control.

May 1987: Labour wins the Liverpool elections and the by-elections to replace the surcharged councillors, ending with 51 seats to the Liberals 44 and four Tories to take back control.

June 1987: The Tories win a 102-seat majority in the general election, with the poll tax a ‘flagship’ manifesto policy.

April 1988: A Scottish conference of Militant agrees to organise anti-poll tax unions to spearhead a mass campaign of non-payment.

July 1988: The Strathclyde Anti-Poll Tax Federation is formed at a conference of delegates from 105 anti-poll tax groups, tenants’ associations and community councils.

April 1989: The first poll tax bills issued in Scotland.

July 1989: A TUC national demonstration in Manchester is attended by 30,000, with the ‘Pay No Poll Tax’ placards dominating the march contrasting with the lack of a lead from the platform.

November 1989: Two thousand delegates in Manchester Free Trade Hall form the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation (ABAPTF).

December 1989: Backbench MP Sir Anthony Meyer stands as a stalking-horse Tory leadership challenger, with 60 Tory MPs, 16% of the parliamentary party, failing to back Thatcher.

February-March 1990: Protests outside at least 55 council poll tax-setting meetings across Britain, attended by over 22,000 people, are denounced by Thatcher as “intimidation organised by the Militant Tendency”.

31 March 1990: In Glasgow 40,000 march peacefully on an ABAPTF-organised demonstration but police attacks on the simultaneous 200,000-strong London march lead to the so-called Trafalgar Square ‘riot’.

April 1990: Poll tax bills are issued to 35 million people in England and Wales.

June 1990: An ABAPTF trade union conference held in Liverpool is attended by 1,287 delegates from 651 union bodies representing 870,000 workers.

November 1990: Thatcher resigns as prime minister, replaced by John Major.

March 1991: The Major government announces the poll tax’s abolition, although legal proceedings against non-payers continue. To reduce bills before the first replacement council tax bills are issued in 1993 the Tories increase central funding of local government by £4.3 billion (about £9.6 billion in 2025), a material measure of the victory.

May 1991: After 16 Liverpool Labour councillors are suspended for voting not to implement the poll tax, six ‘Real Labour’ candidates stand in the council elections, winning in five wards.

July 1991: Liverpool Broadgreen Militant MP Terry Fields is imprisoned for 58 days for non-payment of the poll tax and, with Dave Nellist MP, is expelled from the Labour Party before the end of the year.

February 1992: Founding conference of Scottish Militant Labour.