A HISTORIAN and journalist at the centre of Northwich’s anti-Poll Tax ‘civil disobedience’ campaign in the early-90s has published a full and frank history of the period.

In the late 1980s, Chris Robinson was editing a newspaper for American soldiers in Germany, but when he came home to Northwich in 1989, he found a country reeling from a new tax - the Poll Tax - which left the poor poorer and the rich richer, critics claim.

Sir John Deane’s-educated Chris joined Northwich’s Trotskyist Militant tendency group, which went on to form the Northwich Anti-Poll Tax Union at an emergency meeting at Memorial Hall in February 1990, attended by more than 600 people.

Union members clogged up the court system by contesting non-payment cases and formed human walls around people's homes to stop bailiffs getting inside to repossess their belongings.

Northwich Guardian: Can't Pay, Won't Pay, was published in March this year Can't Pay, Won't Pay, was published in March this year (Image: Thinkwell Books UK)

Chris's latest book, Can't Pay, Won't Pay: A short history of the anti-poll tax struggle 1987 to 1983, sets the political scene from a national perspective, then shifts to the mass resistance the poll tax was to inflame. 

He said: “This book is about their story – of how they took on Thatcher and won.

“It was a historic victory – one that demonstrated we don’t have to take everything a government dishes out to us. 

“I think, with the way things are going today, we can learn a lot from the anti-poll tax campaign.

“The vital lesson is - don’t get mad, get organised. And fight back.”

Chris's book reveals who did what and when, including some big political names, and how actions at the top inflamed the anger of people who had no other choice but to get organized.

He uses Northwich as an example of a town whose people were among the millions expected to foot the bill, while the wealthier members of society would benefit directly.

Chris added: “I grew up in Northwich and always thought it was just a sleepy, run-of-the-mill place.

“But I’d never been so proud of its people, and all the other townspeople of Cheshire, and across the country, who showed they could stand up, fight back and win.”

Can't Pay, Won't Pay: A short history of the anti-poll tax struggle 1987 to 1983 was published earlier this month, and is available from Amazon, and all good book shops, price £12.99.