ON television we had the unedifying spectacle of Alex Salmond taunting Michael Ancram to apologise for the imposition of the poll tax on Scotland in 1986.
The community charge was not imposed on Scotland. It was part of the Conservative manifesto of 1982 that the method whereby local government was funded should be changed from a property-based tax to one based on the individual.
This was in response to Labour-controlled councils going daft and upping the rate per pound beyond reason. The argument was that a tax based on the individual would make local councils more accountable to their electorate.
The re-rating of property in Scotland was always a year ahead of that in England and Wales, and when it was carried out discontented ratepayers got rocketing demands for money (local councils never ask for money, it is always ''demanded'', with menaces) and the Government chose to do something about it.
In 1986 Scotland got the community charge, a year ahead of England. Scots ratepayers in general were delighted. Why should those who have used or were using local facilities not pay for them? The principle was sound.
But, having got the principle right, the Conservatives then went and made a hash of the system. They insisted that all those eligible to be charged had to pay a minimum of 20% of the charge set by their local councils. It did not take more than a blink of an eye for its opponents to see that such a bottom line was a political gaffe, a political disaster of Titanic proportions.
Not all could pay 20% as the Conservatives set about scalping the poor to support the rich. The Tommy Sheridan brigade, the low-paid, and the non-property owners who saw that their spending habits would have to change to pay for services they thought came ''free,'' supported by the Can Pay - Won't Pay campaign, led the charge, and we all know that the community charge folded in a welter of riots and recriminations.
Even principled Liberal-Democrats quietly forgot their policy of a local income tax to fund local services and joined in the general stampede to trash the Conservatives.
All I can criticise Tories for is not getting the system right.
I think they introduced the fairest way of funding local government ever proposed but they messed it up with sheer vindictiveness. Now we are back to a system based on property, which bears no relation to ability to pay, and which has spawned a bureaucracy required to administer council-tax benefits.
The myth makes better politics than the truth. The truth is that in the community charge we had a sound principle badly applied, but which honest politicians should have improved, not destroyed. The temptation to go for the Conservative jugular proved stronger. Sad, really, but maybe a parliament elected on a system of proportiality will prove less adversarial.
Alexander Good,
19 Kekewich Avenue,
Edinburgh.
September 13.
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