piffle is it?
Thus it remains conventional wisdom two decades after the poll tax was introduced in Scotland on 1 April 1989. The trouble is that it isn't true. A badly thought-out and unfair tax? Certainly. A tax maliciously "tested" on Scotland? Certainly not. On the contrary, Margaret Thatcher's decision to allow the Scottish Office to legislate before England and Wales was a pragmatic reaction to perceived Scottish demands.
The chronology was this: In spring 1985, Scotland's ratepayers (domestic rates were paid directly by homeowners and indirectly by those in rented housing stock) endured a particularly punitive revaluation. In Morningside, for example, hundreds of single, elderly ladies were hit with bills of more than 2,000. These "little old ladies", be they in Troon, Bearsden or Morningside, became the impetus behind what became known colloquially as the poll tax.
There was uproar in Scotland's remaining Tory heartlands, a reaction which convinced Mrs Thatcher that a review of local government finance – which had begun the previous autumn – should swiftly reach a conclusion. There was little doubt as to what that conclusion might be. "The burden should fall, not heavily on the few," she informed the Scottish Tory conference in May 1985, "but fairly on the many."