Kmflett's Blog

Tony Benn on the poll tax demonstration 31^st March 1990

Below are a couple of edited passages from what Tony Benn wrote about the poll tax demonstration which took place 36 years ago.

Benn avoids commenting on the riot that took place at the end of the demonstration beyond underlining that in his view the way it was policed didn’t help, at best.

While there may well have been people who wanted matters to end in some form of riot-and realistically it was probably the coverage this got that gave a significant impetus to the non-payment campaign, in reality it is very difficult for quite small groups to create a riot- as opposed to some disorder-and it is very often related to mistakes in policing that push others to join in.

There remains much work to be done to fully understand the nature of riots- as I’ve written before they are not something that can be predicted.

Saturday 31^st March

To the anti-poll tax demonstration, which started from Kennington Park and marched to Trafalgar Square.

We came up Whitehall and on into Trafalgar Square, which was absolutely crammed. There must have been 150,000 people… before I was due to speak the rally was stopped because of the trouble that had occurred.

I got off the platform and began walking back down Whitehall but found the police had thrown a barrier across the road so that people couldn’t get up or down, though they let me through. In the crowd I found myself being pressed from behind by riot police and mounted police. People were terribly frightened. I forced my way through until I came to the line of police who didn’t look like police at all….

Wednesday 11^th April

Most of the letters are pretty supportive. Three Anglican bishops, a Catholic bishop and five free churchmen came out today in favour of non-violent protest against the poll tax.