Robin Brookes, one of the Peace Tax Seven, talks to Jessica Holtaway about financial conscription, having agency and using it to contribute to peace-building.
On 15th February 2003,between 1 and 2 million people marched through the streets of London to protest the Iraq war. It was the largest political demonstration in UK history. Toy-company director Robin Brookes was there. The UK government’s decision to invade Iraq was, for him, ‘the final straw’, and after the march he decided to withhold tax payments that he understood would be supporting the invasion.
Robin was one of the ‘Peace Tax Seven’, a group of individuals who, as a form of conscientious objection, fought to redirect a portion of their taxes away from military funding and into peace-building. They argued that although UK law recognises freedom of conscience as a basic human right, the current UK tax policy refuses to recognise this right. The Peace Tax Seven took this case to the European Court of Human Rights. Their goal was to seek a legally binding declaration that could allow individuals to choose for their taxes to contribute to non-military purposes.
After the UK government decided to invade Iraq, Robin remembers, “I just said, no, I'm not paying forit”. But it had not been a quick decision. As the director of a toy company, and with a family to support, he knew there would be challenging consequences and impacts on those around him.
Robin had joined the Peace Tax Campaign (later Conscience) in the 80s. Founded in 1977 by Cornish Quaker Stanley Keeble, the campaign argued that people should be able to choose for their tax to go towards non-military activities such as nonviolent conflict resolution. Robin was aware that other campaigners had been bankrupted and sent to prison. He knew that legally, his decision to withhold tax would be an expensive one. But with the public loudly protesting the invasion of Iraq, he felt that the time was right to raise awareness of the use of public funding for military activities.
“We have agency. How we get money and where we spend it is really crucial,” argues Robin. Reflecting on the changes in modern warfare (the complexity of weaponry and training that conditions soldiers to be able to kill) he says: “Military chiefs don't want conscripts. They do want our money though, and that's why we say, we're still conscripted, we're conscripted through our taxes.”
In the past, the use of conscription has led to a large number of individuals who are ultimately, not willing to fight. And this may be true not only of conscripts - in 1947, US Army historian Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall published research that indicated that most soldiers are reluctant to take human life. Conscription is no longer practiced in the UK, but as the methods and costs of warfare change, public funding is ever-important in sustaining military programmes and industries.
Reflecting on The Marshall Study, academic and former paratrooper, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman explains: ‘‘the intentional miss can be a very subtle form of disobedience". In this way, we might understand how intentionally missing out a carefully-calculated portion of tax from an annual tax payment can also be a powerful disobedient gesture. Yes, fees were incurred, but the act of disobedience itself was irreducible. The Peace Tax Seven raised awareness of how each of us are complicit in the systems of power we live within but showed us that we can still fight to change it.
Over a year after Robin made the decision to withhold tax, a bailiff turned up at Robin’s house to find the ‘owed’ money pinned to a board, accompanied by information about alternative uses for it, such as medical care or food for a family. Robin wanted to ‘rehumanise’ the money and promote peace-building as ongoing practice of care that can, and should, be supported by the state.
Robin discusses spending money on alternative approaches to conflict
Peace-building is ‘‘something that goes on after the thing's been resolved as well,” explains Robin. Sustaining connection and dialogue is essential even when, and especially when, one is surrounded by extreme political opinions. For Robin, one way of sustaining dialogue is to acknowledge that there is a spectrum of engagement in an ideology, and that reaching out to people who are at the less extreme end of the spectrum can help us move forward non-violently.
Collective engagement with, and critique of, political decisions around armament is important. Awareness of how public funding is being used is essential. The Peace Tax Seven were vanguards in this sense – they put their livelihoods and freedom on the line to raise awareness. But we must remember that their bold action took place at a time when many people were refusing to sink into apathy. Dis-allowing apathy to numb our responses to inequality is perhaps then, the first step we can take in contributing to a culture of peacebuilding.
Robin’s book recommendation: War Prevention Works by Dylan Matthews
