ALFRED RIDLEY is a retired vicar who is prepared to go to prison on a point of principle: that pensioners, and anyone else living on a low, fixed income, should not be required to pay council-tax increases above the rate of inflation.
Talking to him and his wife, Una, in their neat semi-detached home in Towcester, Northamptonshire, about a possible prison sentence is surreal. The Rev Alfred Forbes Ridley, a law-abiding citizen, is not gung-ho about going behind bars. Far from it. He is 70 and has a heart condition. “I am fit but not terribly fit,” he says. “If I were sent to a category A prison that would be hard, but I presume I would be sent to an open prison and that would not be so bad.”
He finds himself in this extraordinary position because last April a council-tax bill from South Northamptonshire Council for £1,038.65 dropped through his letterbox. This was a 6.8 per cent increase over 2003, when the couple’s tax was £974.51. Like many other pensioners since last April, he decided to take a stand and pay only a 2.5 per cent cost-of-living rise above last year’s community charge.
By August the council decided that it was not going to accept the Ridleys’ underpayments and they were summoned to appear in court for non-payment of council tax. Ridley says: “The chairman of the bench said that she understood our point of view but had to stick to the law. A liability order was granted against us.”
They ignored the order — and the bailiffs arrived. Una Ridley, who gives piano lessons, explains in a soft voice the bizarre rules of engagement with bailiffs. Three times they have knocked on her front door with the intention of “removing goods for sale at public auction” to recover enough money to pay their taxes. Most of us would quake. She is resolute.
“So long as you make yourself secure, close all the downstairs windows and all the upstairs ones, too, the bailiffs cannot make an entry,” she says. “They are not allowed to break the door down, so you have to make sure that they cannot get in easily.
“Alfred talked to them through the glass panel so that they could see each other. The first bailiff was a young man who looked a bit intimidating; he had a shaved head, but he had a quiet voice and spoke politely. Eventually he pushed a form through the door and left.
“The third bailiff came at 7.30am and I had a nice little chat through the bedroom window, when I told him that nothing had changed; we were not moving our position. He said ‘Right’ and left us a committal notice telling us that we could go to prison for up to 90 days for ‘wilful’ non-payment of the community charge.”
With their unpaid taxes and the bailiffs’ costs, they now owe £635.15. But they are not the only ones protesting. Councils raising community charges last year have been challenged by ordinary householders in many places. Pensioners and local bureaucrats are meeting across courtrooms the length and breadth of Britain, and huge costs are being incurred.
Many people will remember the diminutive Elizabeth Winkfield, of Westward Ho!, who, at the age of 83, was summoned to Barnstaple Magistrates’ Court in Devon for withholding £98.80 of her £747.81 council tax. Other protesters were chagrined when it was discovered that she was a member of the UK Independence Party, and she sold her story to a tabloid newspaper through Max Clifford, the publicity guru who was working for UKIP at the time. But that does not invalidate pensioners ’ genuine grievances.
Bills now arriving on our doorsteps have suspiciously modest increases, but the protesters are not fooled. They know that after an election the tax is likely to rocket again. And there is the threat looming of properties being rebanded.
In Wales, where rebanding has already happened, some householders’ tax liability has increased by between 12 and 33 per cent, according to Christine Melsom of IsItFair, a group that campaigns against the current council tax system. “We were led to believe that the ups would be balanced by the downs,” she says. “But for every four houses that have been moved up in the property bands, only one has moved down.”
The Ridleys live on a basic state pension of £131.20, plus a £400-a-month church pension, which means that they do not qualify for the pension credit — which Help the Aged says is so complicated to claim for that thousands of poorer old people don’t get it anyway.
Ridley is well aware of the biblical lesson “render unto Caesar” and is not making a stand against paying taxes per se — just against what he considers to be unfair increases. And he is not proposing to sacrifice his liberty simply for his own ends. “I am doing this for everyone affected by these increases as much as for myself,” he says. “Therefore I think it is the right thing to do.
“We have thought it through. Other people cannot afford to protest because they have young families to look after, or they are elderly and on their own. We are independent and we can give each other strength and support.”
His wife adds: “We do sometimes get depressed and wound up. But it helps enormously when we get a phone call from other people having difficulty paying and who are taking a stand. That fires us up again. We can warn them about court procedures which are so baffling that, if you are not used to going to court, can catch you out.
“We nearly missed our own case because of a misunderstanding on the part of the court usher; it was so traumatic after everything we had been through. I don’t think it was deliberate but it is easy in the circumstances to become paranoid.”
No one disputes that deciding who pays what in local taxes is a complex issue. But according to IsItFair, the less income you have, the higher percentage you pay in council tax.
In a statement, South Northamptonshire Council says that it is obliged to take recovery action against taxpayers who do not keep up to date with their payments. “We issued council-tax bills to 34,186 households this year,” it says. “Since April 1, 2004, 1,533 summonses have been issued and the courts have granted 846 liability orders.”
The Ridleys are learning more than they ever wanted to know about the law, which makes them anxious but not intimidated. They expect their final summons to arrive in May, when a prison sentence could be handed out.
The thought of a member of the Establishment (he still takes services occasionally) having a “record” does not disturb the former vicar, because he is determined not to surrender.
“I believe we can call on a duty solicitor but I’m not sure that we will,” he says. “As I am retired, I don’t have a bishop but I asked the Church of England pensions board if what I am doing would affect living in their house, and they said no.
“I tried to speak to our MP, Tim Boswell (Con), but he told us that we had to obey the law. Going to prison is the right answer for me.”
www.isitfair.co.uk
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