Impact of the Women’s Tax Resistance League

Sunday 8 March is International Women’s Day and this year’s theme concerns the impact of individual actions on wider society. Despite being formed more than a century ago the concept of bringing together individual protests to make a larger impact is something that members of the Women’s Tax Resistance League (WTRL) would have known and understood very well.

The WTRL was a small but unique part of the campaign for women’s voting rights who marched under the banner of ‘No Vote No Tax’. The educated independent women of the group were angry that they paid tax on their income property and even their pets (in the form of compulsory dog licences) but were not entitled to vote.

That tax resistance was part of the vast web of interconnected groups and individuals that formed the suffrage campaign...