ROAMING THE RATES REBELLION Stop 1 - The Museum of London Docklands “Nobody lives in Poplar who can afford to live anywhere else. It goes without saying that owners of industrial and house property live somewhere else. Even the worker, as soon as his wages permit, lives somewhere else.” - George Lansbury, speaking about Poplar You are standing outside the Museum of London Docklands, deep in the heart of Tower Hamlets. The building itself is an old sugar warehouse, built in 1802 during the expansion of the docks. Turning around, you can see only a tiny patch of water, the rest blocked out by the towering skyscrapers of nearby Canary Wharf. But imagine what this looked like 100 years ago - a noisy, industrial, open series of interconnected docks, laced with criss-crossing railway lines, packed with cargo and machinery and teeming with boats and workers. This area used to be the epicentre of industry in the borough, key to the understanding of the rebellious nature of its citizens and leaders. Tower Hamlets was only established as a borough in 1965 - before that, the area you were standing in was known as Poplar. Poplar was formed in 1907, taking its name from the native trees Poplar canescens and Populus nigra. By the 1920s, it was the poorest borough in London. The inhabitants depended on the docks and railways to provide employment - in 1921, 26% of men in the borough worked in transport. Employment was also provided by the sweatshops, factories and workshops that crowded the area. But these jobs were scarce, badly paid and relied on casual labour contracts, leading to mass poverty, overcrowding in low-rent properties and uninhabitable living conditions. To make matters worse, the post-war slump in trade hit the dock workers hard, causing mass unemployment in the early 1920s. Of the 160,000 people living in Poplar, almost a quarter were unemployed during this period. It was against this backdrop that seismic shifts in the politics of the area would lead to an extraordinary uprising, and a battle for the welfare of the borough. We’re about to learn more, but in the meantime, you can pop in to the museum to read about the history of the docklands, or walk round Canary Wharf, an emblem of greed and wealth beyond the wildest imaginings of the old dockworkers. When you are ready, with the river behind you, head back around the museum and to your right and follow the map to the next stop. Stop 2 - Hale Street Mural “I thought I should always be in opposition and fighting a forlorn hope. But something like a miracle has happened, and here I am!” - George Lansbury, speaking at his first council meeting in 1919 You are standing on Hale Street, in front of the Tower Hamlets parks department, on the wall of which is painted a mural by local artist Mark Francis. It was painted in 1990, and commemorates the extraordinary event we are going to unfold on this walk - the Poplar Rates Rebellion. The mural lists the names of those involved, the men and women who served on Poplar Council in 1921. And in the centre, you can see a slightly wonky depiction of a man in a bowler hat. This is George Lansbury, a remarkable campaigner who instigated and led the rebellion. George Lansbury was a passionate and inspirational man, and in 1919, where we begin our story, was already a well-known and formidable politician. He was a pacifist and socialist, a past editor of a national newspaper and a future leader of the Labour Party. He was also the newly-elected mayor of Poplar council, appointed after a dramatic change of government in the borough. Prior to WW1, most Poplar councillors came from Poplar’s small middle class. They were always Conservative or Independent, often living outside the borough but with a registered business address in Poplar. Sometimes they were sponsored by large businesses. This was the case with councils all over London - the leaders rarely represented the views or interests of local people. During this time, the Labour Party were viewed as erratic and inefficient troublemakers, so when Labour were elected to lead Poplar borough in 1919, winning 39 of the 42 seats on the council, even they couldn’t believe it. George Lansbury was elected mayor, leading a group of councillors who were unusual in their makeup - they consisted of industrial workers, postmen, labourers and housewives. The desperate conditions in Poplar had caused the people to vote for representation that understood them and would fight for their interests. The first council meeting was packed with constituents, who cheered when Lansbury entered, and celebrated in the streets with a Irish marching band when the meeting was over. The council immediately started to make changes in the borough, expanding public services, health provisions and housing. They even gave council employees a minimum wage of £4 a week, with equal pay for men and women. But no one yet realised how militant the council were willing to be to protect the interests of their constituents. As you make your way down Poplar High Street to the next stop to hear what caused the councillors to revolt, why not ponder the local government in your area? Do they fight for your communities and interests, and what would it take for them to put everything on the line for their constituents? Stop 3 - Tower Hamlets Council “Keep steadily in your minds that everybody whether rich or poor that gets something without themselves working, get it at the expense of those who do work.” - Written by labour councillors of Poplar in a letter to local school children in 1921 You are now standing outside the Tower Hamlets Town Hall in Mulberry Place. There are nods to history here - as you can see from the water behind you, the area also used to be docklands, and if you look to your right, you can see a steel sculpture by David King called Shadowplay, memorialising the past working life of the site. It is here that you pay your council tax, parking fines and business rates, where bin collections are organised, where parks are maintained, where local schools managed - in short, your council building will run the minutiae of life in your area, and will directly influence the quality of services and provisions available to you. So it is now, and so it was in 1921. Poplar had elected a new mayor, Sam March, and George Lansbury remained an influential councillor. The new Labour council had been battling for a better quality of life for their residents. But they were facing an extraordinary problem, brought about by several arcane tax laws weighing on the borough. Firstly, the Poor Law, instigated in 1834, ruled that local councils must provide their own poor relief. Poor relief was given to those who were unemployed, in the form of either money or a workhouse place, and with no centralised support from the government, Poplar had to pay poor relief out of their rates. Rates were an individual property tax, a precursor to what we now know as council tax. Everyone had to pay rates, and the amount you had to pay depended on the rent or value of the property you lived in. As Poplar was such a poor borough with low rents, the council didn’t get much money from the rates - but with so many unemployed, Poplar had the highest poor relief bill in London. The system therefore penalised the poorest boroughs - for example, in 1921 Poplar collected £4m of rates with almost 87,000 unemployed to support, whereas Kensington, the richest borough, collected £15m but had only 4800 people without jobs. Because Poplar had the lowest rate income and the highest poor relief bill, it was struggling. The second law that Poplar had to contend with was the paying of precepts. These payments were collected from every borough and pooled to pay for several cross-London services, such as the Metropolitan Police. The precept amount was the same regardless of borough. So poor boroughs had to pay the same amount for some common services as wealthier boroughs, even though there was no common funding for poor relief. Lansbury had long argued the unfairness of this, and that some equalisation should be necessary to lift the burden from poorer boroughs. Poplar council were crumbling under the weight of the combined rates, in a system which penalised the poorest by making them pay more. It took a momentous decision to change the status quo - and we’ll journey now to the place where that decision was made. Stop 4 - Lansbury Heritage Hotel “We are happy about going to prison for a principle. We expect all working women to carry on the fight for rates equalisation while we are there.” - Julia Scurr when taken to prison in 1921 You are standing outside a luxury boutique hotel, the Lansbury Heritage Hotel. This impressive Victorian grade-II listed building used to be the Poplar Town Hall, where daily council business was enacted, and where we find ourselves, in 1921, on the brink of a momentous decision. We left the council struggling to pay unfair tax rates and provide for their constituents. Drastic action was needed, and George Lansbury suggested a novel solution - they would simply not pay the unfair precept rates, which every borough was expected to contribute to to maintain services in the city. In March 1921, the council were in agreement, and they decided to withhold this payment from the government, and spend it on their poor relief bill instead.