A RETIRED 71-year-old vicar yesterday became the first pensioner in England to be jailed for failing to pay his council tax on a point of principle.

Alfred Ridley arrived at Towcester Magistrates’ Court carrying his toothbrush after refusing to comply with a court order that he repay £691.15 in arrears that he owed to South Northamptonshire Council. He was jailed for 28 days.

“We have been very patient with you,” John Woollett, a magistrate, told him. “As you have failed to pay we have no alternative but to enforce the suspended prison sentence.”

Mr Ridley replied simply: “All right,” but his supporters, who had packed the courtroom, cried “Shame!” “It’s a disgrace!” and “Kangaroo court!” Mr Ridley then addressed the court, saying: “The council tax has risen by 76 per cent in the last few years. I’m not paying it because it’s an illegal tax.”

Mr Woollett had to be escorted from the court complex by police after he was surrounded by booing protesters.

Mr Ridley said that despite being anxious about going to jail he would not pay an “unfair” council tax increase. “I am prepared to go to jail today but I am only the first,” he said. “I am anxious about it, I don’t know what it is like in prison.”

Mr Ridley and his wife Una, 72, had paid an increase of 2.5 per cent on their previous bill to cover inflation, leaving them only £63 in arrears, but with court and bailiff costs the amount they owe now stands at nearly £700.

After the hearing Christine Melsom, the founder and leader of the national anti-council tax pressure group Is It Fair?, said she was shattered by the decision: “It is a really wicked tax, and an upside-down world when a man goes to prison for witholding a portion of his council tax when you can hit someone over the head with a bottle and get a caution. People have come here from as far away as Sheffield, Blackpool and Cornwall to support Mr Ridley. We have thousands of members of all ages from across the country.”

Mrs Melsom added that she was considering staging a protest march in London.

Meanwhile, Mr Ridley’s son Joel, 35, said: “He is a man of principle and he might well go through all this again when he comes out. It all depends on how he finds the next 28 days.”

Mrs Ridley said that she was proud of her husband’s stance and that she was preparing to write letters to Tony Blair every day during his imprisonment: “The state of the council tax system is a very serious issue. The Government needs to listen and put things on a basis of people’s ability to pay. We knew this would be the end of a long journey.”

Earlier Mrs Riley told The Times how the couple had managed to foil efforts by bailiffs to remove property. “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 said.

Joe Harris, general secretary of the National Pensioners’ Convention, said: “It is a disgrace that in a country with the fourth-richest economy in the world we are locking up pensioners because they can’t afford to pay their council tax.

“While ministers are sunning themselves on foreign beaches, English courts are sending older people to prison because their state pension is so pitifully low.”

The Ridleys receive £400 a month church pension as well as the basic state pension of £131.20, so they do not qualify for pension credit.

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “The average cost of keeping someone in jail for a month is more than £3,000. Surely there must have been a cheaper way of dealing with the £63 originally owed?”

She added: “Protest and civil disobedience also raise the question of whether campaigners should be able to choose prison to publicise their cause.”

Mr Ridley’s prediction that he is “only the first” is likely to be realised when Sylvia Hardy, 73, appears before Exeter magistrates on September 26. The former social worker faces seven days in jail for non-payment of her council tax bill.

The Local Government Association said: “The LGA has consistently argued that council tax needs fundamental reform . . . This debate, however, can not be used as an excuse for non-payment of council tax.”

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