Alex Snowdon has been pondering the poll tax revolt and its relevance for resisting austerity today.

What was it that stopped the poll tax? The new Thatcher biopic, ‘The Iron Lady’, has prompted recollections of the poll tax era. The film’s apparently depoliticised approach means less media attention, however, is devoted to the movement which brought both Thatcher and the poll tax down.

I think it is generally recognised that mass non-payment was the really decisive factor. This is acknowledged even by those who were initially sceptical or hostile to making the non-payment tactic a priority at the time. The fact that many millions of people simply didn’t pay the tax was a powerful gesture of collective defiance, but also made it unworkable.

The poll tax issue was an outright victory for our side: there was a poll tax, then there wasn’t a poll tax. Simple. It is impossible to imagine that happening without non-payment. But does that mean other tactics – most obviously demonstrations – were irrelevant?

One reason why other methods were relevant was their impact on people’s confidence to refuse payment. Even if someone didn’t attend a demo themselves - maybe they just heard about it from a friend or saw a report on TV - the protest culture fed people’s confidence. They knew that in refusing to pay they were one of many, and had a mass movement behind them.

What about austerity today? How can we stop the cuts?

The ‘how can we stop the cuts?’ question is rarely asked. We discuss how particular cuts can be stopped, or concessions won, or how the political climate can be shifted. But actually stopping the whole austerity programme, or even substantial chunks of it? This is rarely considered.

This is partly because it seems such a daunting and formidable task. We have done a great deal as a movement, including the student protests and occupations, the biggest trade union demo for generations and two major days of co-ordinated strike action. But we’re still some way off achieving our goals.

It’s also to do with politics. Moderate elements in the movement ’accept’ a ‘need’ for some cuts. Their objective is – in a telling phrase recently used by a senior Unison negotiator -  ’damage limitation’. Yet radical elements have a more ambitious aim – and we should consider how it might feasibly be achieved.

Strike action had no role in defeating the poll tax (a fact worth recalling when some socialists speak as if strikes are the be-all and end-all). But it does have a role today. This is because some of the cuts impact on people in their capacity as workers – an obvious example is pension reforms. So it makes complete sense to use the strike tactic in response.

But public sector strikes are essentially political strikes. They don’t directly affect profitability for employers, like strikes in the private sector do. They work by piling on political pressure. This means it always makes sense for a public sector strike to be accompanied by a political campaign, e.g. demonstrations, campaign stalls, to have maximum effect.

Strikes can also only be one tactic – combined with others – because many cuts don’t affect workers (or don’t, to be more precise, affect people in their capacity as workers). Library closures won’t be stopped by strikes. Nor will cuts to disability living allowance, or day centre closures, or a thousand other aspects of the austerity package.

So if cuts are going to be defeated there needs to be a powerful combination of methods. Whereas one particular tactic had a decisive role in smashing the poll tax, I can’t see any one tactic (even a general strike, unlikely to happen but let’s consider it hypothetically) being able to play an equivalent role here. This is because austerity is a whole pack of policy cards, without a single weak spot that - if attacked effectively - will bring the whole thing tumbling down.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be particular tactics that come to the fore in specific phases or at key moments, because they can be particularly effective. There are and there will be. It’s also worth noting that austerity can only be defeated through truly mass action. The context of deep, and growing, international crisis (and the UK’s place in that) ensures the government is utterly committed to its project, and only serious pressure will budge them even partially.

However, it’s only through a combination of massive street demonstrations, mass strikes and a sustained political and ideological campaign – refuting the austerity myths, outlining alternatives, and agitating around concrete demands – that we stand a chance of winning. What we do now can help us towards that.

From Domestic Extremist blog