100 years ago today, 29th July 1921, thousands of ordinary people including many trade unionists holding banners, proudly and defiantly marched several miles from Poplar in East London to the High Court on the Strand, in support of local Labour politicians who had taken a stand with them to protect their living standards being eroded by unreasonable demands. This was the Poplar Rates Revolt in which Poplar’s radical local council refused to levy additional rates on an impoverished population for cross-London services, because it argued that the formula for assessing this additional rate – known as the precept – discriminated against the poorer boroughs in favour of London’s richer boroughs. These are some extracts from my book Rebel Footprints

Poplar’s councillors were summoned to court on 29 July and told that, if they did not levy the precept they would be sent to prison. Minnie Lansbury [a council alderman and daughter in law of George Lansbury] said: ‘Poplar will pay its share of London’s rates when Westminster, Kensington, and the City do the same.’

The councillors marched to court with thousands of supporters. Lansbury assured them: ‘ …if we have to choose between contempt of the poor and contempt of court, it will be contempt of court.’ The question, he said, was not whether their refusal was legal or illegal but whether it was ‘right or wrong’.

John Scurr said the government was ‘on the horns of a dilemma. If they send us to prison they will not get their money; and if they don’t send us to prison they will bring the law into contempt. Poplar does not care on which horn they choose to impale themselves.’ The councillors’ legal team included the Fabian Henry Slesser and W. H. Thompson, who had been jailed three times for conscientious objection during the First World War.

They lost. The judge told the councillors to prepare to stay in prison until their contempt was purged. The arrests took place at the beginning of September. Twenty-five male councillors were placed in Brixton prison; Five women councillors, including Minnie Lansbury and other former ELFS [East London federation of Suffragettes] activists, including Nellie Cressall, were sent to Holloway Prison, where Julia Scurr was also imprisoned while her husband was locked up in Brixton.

Just a few councillors remained to run the administration in their absence. The night before the first arrests, the council discussed how to function with such depleted numbers. Outside the Town Hall, 6,000 supporters gathered. As the meeting ended councillors sang ‘The Red Flag’, ‘bringing particular passion’, Lansbury recalls, to the lines ‘Come dungeon dark or gallows grim, this song shall be our parting hymn’.

In prison they fought for their rights. Lansbury recalls:

We all refused to …[wear] prison uniforms …[and]to do any work and …drink the tea or eat the food. In a few days the food was changed … we all went on strike against being locked in our cells all day, and as a result we had them opened after breakfast until after supper. Then we went into the police commissioner’s room and entertained ourselves with lectures and discussions …we were entertained after 8 o’clock by public meetings and singing outside our windows

They won daily visits instead of two per week. Family members, MPs, magistrates, churchmen, councillors and council employees, including dustmen, roadsweepers, surveyors and engineers visited. They won the right to hold council meetings in prison, the first one (of 32) held on 11 September. From 27 September, women councillors in Holloway were bussed to Brixton for these meetings.

Lansbury was pleasantly surprised by a comment made by a warder soon after the councillors arrived: ‘He said “Don’t worry, you’ll win. Every cause has to be fought for, and always prison opens up the way to reform”.’ The government threatened other boroughs that if they followed Poplar’s example they would be imprisoned too. The threat backfired. Stepney Council and Bethnal Green Council both voted to withhold the precept too. With the rebellion spreading, the government and LCC backed down. Poplar’s rebels were released on 13 October. That same week a conference was convened to equalise cross-London rates…

For the Lansburys though, this victory was soon overshadowed with great sadness. Minnie Lansbury had become ill in prison, and struggled with her health after being released. Over Christmas, a heavy bout of flu became pneumonia. She died, aged 32, on 1 January 1922. Thousands took to the streets to pay respects as her coffin was borne on the shoulders of four Poplar councillors, amid a procession led by hundreds of unemployed workers. At Bow Bridge the coffin was transferred to a hearse for a service at Ilford crematorium. Her ashes were later interred in East Ham Jewish Cemetery.

Mourners described her as a ‘lover of justice’ who dedicated ‘a life of toil and labour in the relief of distress and the upliftingof her fellow men (sic)’. William Morris’s poem, Hear a Word, was read:

Mourn not, therefore, nor lament it,
That the world outlives their life
Voice and vision yet they give us
Making strong our hands for strife.

*****

Comment 29 July 2021: This flashback to 1921 shows us how far Labour has to go to recover the courage and spirit of resistance, to fight within and alongside the people for what is right. Between 2015-19 we knew what that felt like again. Let’s use this anniversary to maximise pressure on the current leadership to present a real challenge to the cabinet of billionaires who are running the country, with the help of their friends in the mainstream media.

Buy a copy of Rebel Footprints today

Follow in the footsteps of George Lansbury, Minnie Lansbury and the other rebel councillors, as well as those of the East London Federation of Suffragettes by signing up for my walk Rebel Women and Men of Poplar: 1920s-1930s from 10.30am-12.30pm on Sunday 8th August