Tax freedom day

Tax freedom day 2004 falls on May 30th, this Sunday. Sickening isn’t it, but what choice do we really have about it? Not much really.

I mean we can stop buying beer, stop using petrol, stop going to work etc but none of those options really appeal. I want to enjoy myself a bit and that generally means getting out there to earn and spend a little money. Fast cars, expensive women, grain and grape products; man that’s living but living means paying taxes.

Perhaps history can give us the answer. Let’s see, something about little people and big government. Kings. Lords and Ladies. Peasants. Aaaaha! The peasants’ revolt of 1381.

What a good name for a pub that would be, “The Peasants’ Revolt”, I’d drink there (wow, this train of thought stuff is weird).

Apparently these peasants were really annoyed. I mean really, really miffed. The reasons were complicated but much of it had to do with the insistence that they pay a tax of 5 pence on demand by the King of England, Richard II. Three times in four years they were asked to pay and eventually they couldn’t take it anymore.

The peasants went ape shit.

Some of them decided not to pay, which I guess is a reasonable method of protest. You see back then taxes had to be collected or handed in by hand. There were no computer transfers or pay-as-you-earn schemes. People had to hand real money over to real people, face to face like, so holding back on payment was relatively simple. You just stayed in bed, or wherever.

In May 1381, which was just about when our annoyed peasants were enjoying their own self made tax freedom day, a tax collector went to visit a village in Essex called Fobbing to find out why the people there were not paying the tax.

They kicked the bugger out of the village.

The state, not taking kindly to this kind of proactive protest by the masses, sent a bunch of the king’s soldiers to the village, swords and all, to sort the peasants out.

They too were kicked out.

Fobbing, clearly, was not the kind of village to be taken lightly.

The thing about the English, certainly back then, was that when they had enough that was generally it. No bargaining, no small talk, no dancing around the issue. They were serious people.

So they got together with a whole bunch of other peasants from other villages for a party or something, had a few drinks and thought about what their next move should be. A guy called Wat Tyler emerged as a natural leader of revolting peasants and, given that they now had a leader, a cause and a whole bunch of people the villagers decided to march on London to have a word in the King’s shell-like (he means ear – Ed).

On the way to London our annoyed villages burnt down buildings that housed government records, destroyed tax registers and records and generally left a trail of anti-state propaganda in the form of charcoal on their route. It was a messy business.

They eventually reached the gates of London which, oddly enough, were left open by the townies in support of their countryside brothers (there’s about a foxes chance in hell of that happening nowadays), walked in and marched straight towards the centre of town.

Then something happened that had never happened before and has not happened since. These villages captured the Tower of London. The Tower of London! The French couldn’t do it, the Dutch couldn’t do it, the Germans couldn’t do it. But these guys did. I told you they were annoyed.

Now, just about then things started to go a bit pear shaped and the villages took to drinking heavily in London’s pubs and bars. Had Bohemian Rhapsody been written then I am sure that the city streets would have heard a drunken rendition or two.

Wat Tyler tried his best to keep the peasants in line but what with all the big city lights and the pleasures on offer to the cities rural visitors things just got more and more out of hand. It’s a shame really because the protest was going really well up until that point.

On the 14th of June the King, who was only 14 years old at the time, met the villages and offered them all that they asked for. No more unpopular taxation and no repercussions. He suggested that they now go home, their point having been well made and some of them did. But others were still angry and, I am sure, the hangovers didn’t help.

Instead of going home they wondered over to Tower Hill, near the Tower of London, and cut the heads of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the King’s Treasurer. That’s how unfair these guys though their taxes were. No writing to the Inland Revenue, no blogging, no moaning over a pint or two in an unusually named pub. Cutting off heads; that’s the way they protested over taxation in those days.

The Mayor of London, a right old bugger then as he is today, in an attempt to get the peasants out of the city organised a meeting with them at Smithfield (outside the city walls). This meeting took place on the 15th of June during which the Mayor made a point by sticking his sword into the rebel leader, or so the story goes. Seeing this and hearing confirmation of the King’s promises was enough to encourage the villagers to go home.

By the summer the king had gone back on his word. A bunch of peasants were hanged and, though the special tax was not re-introduced, things generally went back to the way they were before.

Nothing changed in the intervening few centuries and this Sunday we find ourselves again enjoying tax freedom day. Perhaps, one day, we’ll see another revolt against high taxes, the state and its half baked ideas. Maybe it will start in rural England again. Maybe it will end up on the streets of London.

If it does the peasants should take my advice. Don’t listen to the Mayor of London. He’s a slick little bugger who’d stab you in the back as soon as look at you.