Today sees the official unveiling of a statue of women’s rights campaigner Millicent Fawcett, 100 years after women were granted the vote, which will include the names of several members of the Women’s Tax Resistance League whose role in the fight for female suffrage is being highlighted by the Association of Taxation Technicians (ATT)
Fawcett’s statue, the first ever woman to be commemorated in Parliament Square, marks the centenary of Representation of the People Act 1918, which gave the vote to women over 30 who met a property qualification and all men over 21.
It has 59 names on the plinth honouring those who helped in the campaign for women’s right to vote.
They include three members of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, which was founded in 1909 and was part of the suffrage movement: Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, Edith How-Martyn and Charlotte Despard.
The league campaigned on the subject of tax under the slogan ‘No Vote No Tax!’, as members felt keenly the injustice of paying tax on their income, homes and servants when they lacked a parliamentary vote.
Helen Thornley, technical officer for the ATT, has made an extensive study of the league’s archives held at the Women’s Library at the London School of Economics and says its role deserves wider recognition.
‘League members who refused to pay their taxes would have their goods distrained and taken to auction. The league used these auctions as political theatre, protesting in and outside auction houses.
‘Tax resisters and their husbands also risked imprisonment, with school teacher Mark Wilks being imprisoned for two weeks as a result of his wife Dr Elizabeth Wilks’s tax resistance,’ Thornley said.
Members of the league included Ethel Ayres Purdie, the first women admitted to a professional accountancy body who provided members with tax advice, Clemence Housman, the sister of the poet A E Housman who was imprisoned as a result of her tax resistance, and Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, who was a goddaughter of Queen Victoria.
The league campaigned for married couples to be taxed separately as, at the time, married women were classed under tax law in the same category as ‘infants, lunatics and the insane.’
Assisted by the tax skills of Ethel Ayres Purdie, the league was able to take cases to court to highlight inconsistencies between tax law and the Married Women’s Property Acts of the late 1800s. Members also met with then Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George to press their case.
Thornley said the league’s main achievement was to realise that the position of ‘no taxation without representation’ was so just and reasonable that it was difficult to oppose. When members such as Clemence Housman or Mark Wilks were arrested, the government had the power to inflict life sentences for unpaid tax, but in the end chose not to impose such stern sentences and both were released without paying their tax debts.
Thornley has given a number of presentations based on her research and her latest talk, which includes details of the links between the tax resistance movement and the push for universal suffrage, has been recorded and available to view on the ATT website.
No Vote, No Tax – The Women’s Tax Resistance League is here.
Report by Pat Sweet
