In 1921, a group of thirty Labour councillors of the London Borough of Poplar were imprisoned as a result of their approach to poor relief in the borough. This almost forgotten episode, known as the Poplar Rates Rebellion or Poplar Rates Revolt, highlights the fraught relationships between national and local politicians in interwar Britain, as well as the diverging approaches to how poverty should be treated.

The Labour Party was founded in 1900 and it grew steadily in popularity in the first decades of its existence. The Party primarily targeted working-class voters. Two extensions to the franchise helped Labour gain more votes and seats in parliament: the 1918 Representation of the People Act gave the vote to all men over 21, regardless of their income or background. It also gave the vote to women over 30 who met a property qualification. In 1924, Labour delivered its first Prime Minister, Ramsey McDonald. In 1928 the vote was given to all men and women over 21, leading to the 1929 general election being dubbed the ‘flapper election.’  

For some in the Conservative Party, the extension of the franchise to include ‘the poor’ risked corrupting democracy. If those from poor backgrounds were allowed to vote, they argued, politicians could in effect ‘bribe’ voters by promising high rates of poor relief.[1] As historian Liam Ryan has pointed out, this argument echoes Victorian values which equate poverty with ‘a lack of the moral qualities needed to sustain independence in society.’[2] The actions of the Poplar Labour Party in 1921 would serve to evidence this argument.

In addition to the national party, Labour was active at a local level. The party controlled 34 out of 85 local authorities in London for at least part of the interwar period.[3] Poplar was one of London’s poorest boroughs at this time: in 1932, nearly a quarter of residents lived below the poverty line.[4] By focusing on providing generous poor relief, the Poplar Labour Party was able to build up a sold voter base even before the First World War.[5] The local councillors were themselves from the East End and from working-class backgrounds, which further embedded them in the community.[6]

Immediately following the First World War, the Poplar Labour Party decided to implement an extensive, and expensive, poor relief programme including a minimum wage of £4 a week for municipal workers. Such a local initiative had to be funded from ‘rates’, taxes on property levied on local inhabitants and businesses. A proportion of the rate income was for the local council, but some of it was supposed to be passed on to fund the London County Council, the police, and the Water Board.

Due to the high levels of poverty in the area, rate income was low, and rates could not be raised without harming the local community. When an application for financial support from the national government was denied, the local party refused to collect the proportion of the rates that was supposed to fund London-wide initiatives.[7] When the council ignored a court order to levy the rates, almost all the councillors were arrested and sent to prison for contempt of court – the men to Brixton and the women to Holloway. They remained imprisoned for six weeks, during which they received much popular support.

The Poplar Rates Protest gave rise to what became known as ‘Poplarism’ – ‘a polemical epithet used by Conservatives to refer to high-spending, left-wing poor law guardians in the 1920s.’[8] The leader of the revolt, George Lansbury, who had been a Labour MP between 1910 and 1912, returned to Parliament in 1922 and became leader of the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935. He remained on the left of the party for the rest of his career. The Conservative governments of the interwar period eventually abolished local poor law boards, which prevented a repeat of the Rates Rebellion.[9] Ultimately, though, it became accepted at both sides of the political aisle that offering poor relief did not equate to political corruption.

---

[1] Liam Ryan, ‘Socialism and corruption: Conservative responses to nationalisation and Poplarism, 1900–40’, in The many lives of corruption: The reform of public life in modern Britain, 1750-1950, eds. Ian Cawood and Tom Crook (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022), 239-258, (248)

[2] Ibid.

[3] Dan Weinbren, ‘Building Communities, Constructing Identities: The Rise of the Labour Party in London’, The London Journal, vol. 23, no. 1 (1998), 41-60 (41)

[4] Gillian Rose, ‘Imagining Poplar in the 1920s: contested concepts of community’, Journal of Historical Geography, vol. 16, no. 4 (1990), 425-437 (427)

[5] Weinbren, 45

[6] Rose, 432

[7] Ryan, 248

[8] Ibid., 240

[9] Ibid., 254