A call to conscience

Robin Brookes writes about his personal witness

I had been waiting in trepidation for this phone call. It had been a few years since the last one. A reasonable sounding young man from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) debt collection asked if I was aware that I owed £2,800 in income tax. After assuring him that I did, I asked if he knew that I am deliberately withholding my taxes and have been since 2003 on conscientious grounds. I told him I do want to pay all this tax and that I have it ready in a separate bank account, but that I need an assurance, before I hand it over, that none would be spent on the military.

A long history

Conscientious objection to military taxes has a long history with Quakers. As early as 1659, ‘books of sufferings’ record persecutions of English Quakers for refusing to pay war taxes with names like ‘trophy money’, the ‘charge of the trained-bands’ and the ‘charge of the militia’.

Robert Barclay wrote in 1676 that Quakers ‘have suffered much… because we neither could ourselves bear arms, nor send others in our place, nor give our money for the buying of drums, standards, and other military attire’.

John Woolman refused to pay taxes for the ‘Seven Years War’ against the French. The New York state constitution of 1777 protects persons with ‘scruples of conscience’ from forced military service and requisition for armament (this did not apply after men were conscripted by federal government).

In recent British history Stanley Keeble, of Cornwall Area Meeting, brought a concern in 1980 regarding taxes and military spending and Meeting for Sufferings supported it. At the time it was felt that a separate organisation should be formed and that it should encompass a wider membership/audience than just Quakers. Thus the Peace Tax Campaign was born. This is now known as Conscience – Taxes For Peace Not War. Since its inception, Conscience has campaigned in parliament, at one time building a large body of support from more than eighty MPs.

A general obligation

The HMRC officer put me on hold while he went and consulted with colleagues. He came back with some familiar responses: income tax is a general obligation that applies equally to everyone; you are withholding taxes that are used for social benefit; there is no hypothecation of taxes; and you are moving the burden of defence onto others.

On the first point, I have no objection to paying my taxes in full and, indeed, I want to contribute to the wellbeing of this society. But, with regard to the second point, at least six per cent goes directly to the Ministry of Defence and more goes to military uses via circuitous routes. It is hard for us to find an exact figure, but this is something the Treasury should be able to work out. Whatever we pay, a known proportion will go to the military and neither they nor we can pretend that it is not our money being used in this way.

The third point often carries the observation that administering such a tax would be burdensome and costly. In fact, the government does hypothecate some taxes. For instance, the congestion charge is funneled into Transport for London, and Gift Aid is a complex system for repaying to individual charities from multiple tax accounts. A system for diverting a proportion of taxes to a peace fund would be relatively simple.

The last point assumes that the conscientious objector does not want to support the security of their fellow citizens. This is certainly not the case. We argue that there are nonviolent ways of resolving conflict that we would gladly pay for. Money would be better spent in this way, tackling the underlying problem and leading to a solution, which war certainly isn’t.

A peace tax fund

Invariably, I have to go through this procedure of explaining my stance, but I have always had a sympathetic response, coupled with the insistence that they, HMRC, have no power or mechanism to divert taxes and that they will be pursuing payment via a credit agency or court action. We cannot expect an official from HMRC to divert our taxes. There needs to be legislation from parliament to enable the setting up of a peace tax fund, which would be used as the government sees fit, as long as it does not go to the military. Ideally, it should be used for peacebuilding work.

Conscience has worked to inform, educate and promote the cause; has brought four peace tax bills before parliament; and has supported war tax resisters with advice, publicity and legal help. The most recent were the Peace Tax Seven – seven individuals from all around the country, from a wide span of ages and different professions, who came together under Conscience’s auspices to jointly bring a case under the 1998 Human Rights Act, citing Article Nine of the European Convention on Human Rights: The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. While this was unsuccessful in even getting as far as a judicial review hearing, the preliminary hearing and appeal heard the full length of our arguments.

Taxes for Peace Bill

We were received with surprising sympathy from the benches. The three law lords who heard our appeal went as far as to say in their summing up, after referring us on to the European Court of Human Rights: ‘The Strasbourg authorities… have taken what may be thought to be a rather strict or narrow line on the manifestation of religious and philosophical belief in a number of areas central to the daily life of the individual citizen in the modern state, such as employment, education and fiscal responsibilities. In some respects the reasoning may be legally and logically unsound.’ The European Court summarily dismissed our case without a hearing. Thus a proper and thorough test case still eludes us.

Conscience’s latest action is a ten minute rule bill: the ‘Taxes for Peace Bill’ put before parliament in July 2016 by Quaker MP Ruth Cadbury, 100 years after the Military Service Act was enacted. This was the law to conscript men into military service at a time when Britain was running desperately short of volunteers (tens of thousands having been slaughtered in a meaningless war).

Despite government desperation, they made a provision in that law to allow those with a genuine conscientious objection to do an alternative service that did not entail killing. The two main MPs who argued for this clause were Quakers – Arnold Rowntree and Thomas Harvey – so it is fitting that another Quaker should present this bill.

Mobilise now

The Bill was put before parliament and passed its first reading on 19 July. A second reading was tabled for 2 December but, rather unusually, it was postponed until 24 March. The usual fate of these bills is that they are on a list and if the House of Commons runs out of time on the day then the remaining bills are simply dropped. This happened to a previous bill. We don’t know why this one has been postponed, but it gives us another opportunity to show a wide level of support for it.

Friends can sign a petition in support or write a personal statement of conscience and send it to Conscience, which is presently building a permanent body of witness that will lend strength to the case. Friends can also register as a conscientious objector and write to their MP to make them aware that the bill is still live, and why they want them to support it. For me, the issue is about human rights, an extension of the right to exemption from military service, and the diversion of taxes to peace.

Meanwhile, I await HMRC’s next move.

Further information:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/166611
www.conscienceonline.org.uk

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