On developed and developing countries difference

Some friends have asked me, why all this violence in Mexico? Are Mexican people prone to revolting in such a way that some have to die?

My answer is NO, Mexicans want peace at all cost. Demonstrations in Oaxaca have started peacefully and then with the intervention of hitmen, and police in plain clothes some violence has arisen. This is not, however, something that happens only in Oaxaca. I believe that elsewhere where people gather and further protest for something there is room for violence and related situations.

I have transferred the following video of British people protesting against the ‘poll tax’. Such demonstration ended up in violence and robberies. But I do not, by any mean, believe that British people are prone to violence or robberies. Instead, I believe that it has to do with human nature to behave that way in a specific circumstances regardless of ethnic or political backgrounds.





Talking of human nature, another video shows something that happened just about a month or so ago. It is taken from British television (BBC news) and it shows how people behave when opportunity arises. In Mexico, or any country in Latin America we would say that because people is poor they behave like that, but in England such excuse is not valid. Hence I strongly believe that it has little to do with wellbeing and much to do with human nature.



Further to my believe about human nature is also my understanding of development and moreover of the difference between developed and developing countries such as U.K. and Mexico. The difference, I think, is not that people in U.K. don’t protest or even revolt, as there are several episodes of revolt in British history, starting from the revolt of the peasants to the latest one about the poll tax. Instead is that in some way government reacts to those social demonstrations by changing policies or even changing leaderships, as it was the case of Mrs. Thatcher.

On the other hand in Mexico, we had have two big civil wars (independence 1810-1824, and revolution 1910-1921), with outbreaks every now and then (1968, 1971, Aguas Blancas, and Acteal massacres, Atenco, and Oaxaca revolts) and still have the same kind of government that only acts in the best interest of the richest people and organisations. This makes most of Mexicans behave defensibly before foreigners and especially multinational enterprises.

Below there are some explanations of the revolt itself and what a ‘poll tax’ is.

Rebel London
(http://www.londonnet.co.uk/ln/guide/themes/rebel-london-history.html)

Poll Tax to Poll Tax - Potted History of Rebellion
London's history is littered with popular uprisings, seditious conspiracies and radical assemblies, usually ending in the bitter taste of defeat for the change-hungry multitudes.

The first major uprising to visit the streets of London was the Peasants Revolt of 1381 when Watt Tyler marched at the head of a rag-taggle army demanding an end to the hated Poll Tax, a blanket charge levelled on every man in England regardless of wealth. More of that later. Tyler's army had the run of the city for almost a week before envoys of King Richard II lured him to his death and the revolt soon petered out.

In 1450 the government of Henry VI faced down the rebellion of Jack Cade who, like Tyler before him, was sent to his maker by the country's rulers in suitably violent fashion.

Parliamentary palaver
The ruling elite itself nearly succumbed to rebel ministrations in 1605 but Guy Fawkes' plot to blow up Parliament was foiled at the last moment and the traitor was torched to death, an event still commemorated with effigy burnings every year on November 5th.

The role of Parliament was at the centre of the English Revolution which ran from 1642-49 when Parliament leader Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army overthrew royal rule in the world's first bourgeois revolution, helped by the capital's citizenry who blocked a huge Royalist force at Turnham Green, west London.

Over a century later, the monarchy long restored and Parliament rife with corruption, the capital witnessed the Wilkes Riots of 1768 in which large groups of workers fought for reform of the discredited institution. A simlilar cry was to be heard during the 1831 Reform Riots as pressure for large scale change neared boiling point, a point reached in 1848, the year of revolution throughout Europe, when the Chartists gathered in their hundreds of thousands in central London.

Fighting for universal suffrage plus a range of economic demands, the Chartists had planned to march on the House of Commons but were held back by a huge show of police strength, a theme that was to become familiar in the next 150 years.

Police palaver
In 1887 a combination of the police and the army crushed the Bloody Sunday Riots of unemployed workers and state forces were again on hand in 1936 to defend the rights of Facsists to march in Cable Street, part of the then Jewish enclave of east London. As it turned out anti-fascists mobilised to defeat the scourge but the pattern of police intervention against progressive forces was confirmed.

On to the 60s, when student-led demonstrations first became a feature of life in London. Some particularly brutal clashes between police and anti-Vietnam war protestors took place in Grosvenor Square outside the US Embassy in this era but students were not to be put off and continued to invade the capital over issues such as nuclear weapons and animal rights.

While students often favoured the big moral gesture, black Londoners took to the streets (Brixton 1981, 1985 and Tottenham,1986) to demand changes in their everyday lives, specifically treatment at the hands and batons of an overwhelmingly white police force.

Then it was back to the future in 1990 when Trafalgar Square became the battleground during the second street disturbances to be casued by a Poll Tax.
Furious Five

- LondonNet's Round Up of Rebellion Sites
Trafalgar Square - Scene of some historic political street battles such as 1990s Poll Tax riots and the Bloody Sunday clashes of 1887 when unemployed protestors were crushed by police.

Hyde Park - Meeting place for huge demonstrations including the Hyde Park riots of 1866 and anti-nuclear demos during the 1980s. Also home to Speaker's Corner, where radicals down the ages have climbed on their soapboxes to spread the word, although it is now more common to see quasi-religious cranks spouting their stuff.
Brixton - Scene of two major riots in the past two decades. Now basking in new found role as one of London's coolest districts, in part based on its rebel status.

Clerkenwell Green - Site of various rebellious gatherings in the 19th century from Chartist meetings to the Clerkenwell Riots of 1832. Now, incidentally, home to the Marx Memorial Library.

Cable Street - Sunday 5th October 1936 saw bitter clashes between Fascist and anti-Fascist demonstartors around Cable Street in London's east end.

FAQs
Where do I go for a good demo nowadays?
It's still the usual suspects of Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square. Demo organisers want to be as high profile possible and the two central London venues are the best bet.

Why has London never succumbed to a good old popular uprising?
Leaders of the biggest rebelions down the ages from the Peasants' Revolt to the Chartist challenge have succumbed rather meekly to the authorities. Peasant chief Watt Tyler, for example, agreed to meet the King to discuss things but when he turned up was killed by His Majesty's sidekicks. Confronted by armed police, Chartist leaders agreed to hand in a petition instead of marching on Parliament.
Conversely, smaller scale uprisings have often flopped through lack of organised leadership.

What constitutes a riot?
The offence of riot is set out in Section 1 of the Public Order Act 1986:
"(1) Where 12 or more persons who are present together use or threaten unlawful violence for a common purpose and the conduct of them taken together is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety, each of the persons using unlawful violence for the common purpose is guilty of riot.

(2) It is immaterial whether or not the 12 or more use or threaten unlawful violence simultaneously.

(3) The common purpose may be inferred from conduct"
What is the punishment for riot?

Up to ten years' imprisonment, or an unlimited fine, or both.

Poll tax in the United Kingdom
The poll tax was essentially a lay subsidy (a tax on the movable property most of the population) to help fund war. It had first been levied in 1275 and continued, under different names, until the 17th century.

People were taxed a percentage of the assessed value of their movable goods. That percentage varied from year to year and place to place, and which goods could be taxed differed between urban and rural locations.

Churchmen were exempt, as were the poor, workers in the Royal Mint, inhabitants of the Cinque Ports, tin workers in Cornwall and Devon, and those who lived in the Palatinate counties of Cheshire and Durham.

The 14th Century
John of Gaunt, the regent of Richard II of England, levied his poll tax in 1377 to finance the war against France. These poll tax payments covered almost 60% of the population, which is far more than the lay subsidies that came before it.

It was levied three times, in 1377, 1379 and 1381. Each time the basis was slightly different. In 1377, everyone over the age of 14 and not exempt had to pay a groat (2p) to the Crown. By 1379 that had been graded by social class, with the lower limit raised to 16, (and 15 two years later).
The levy in 1381 was perceived was particularly unpopular, as each person aged over 15 was required to pay the amount of one shilling, which was a large amount then. This provoked the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, due in part to attempts to restore feudal conditions in rural areas.

The 20th Century: Community Charge
The abolition of the rating system of taxes (based on the notional rental value of a house) to fund local government had been in the manifesto of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party in the 1979 general election. A Green Paper, Alternatives to Domestic Rates, issued in 1981, considered a flat-rate poll tax as a supplement to another tax, noting that a large flat-rate poll tax would be seen as unfair.

The 1980s saw a period of general confrontation between central government and Labour-controlled local authorities, that eventually led to the abolition of the Greater London Council and the six metropolitan county councils. The commitment to abolish the rates was replaced in the 1983 general election manifesto with a commitment to introduce the ability for central government to cap rates which it saw as excessive. This was introduced by the Rates Act 1984. However, Mrs Thatcher's government thought spending was still generally excessive and that poor voters would be deterred from voting in high spending councils if they had to pay a greater share of the tax.

Although the ratings system was supposed to have regular revaluations in order to minimise discrepancies, the revaluations in England and Wales had been cancelled in 1978 and 1983. The Scottish revaluation of 1985/1986 led to a great deal of criticism, and gave added urgency to rates reform or replacement.

The Green Paper of 1986, Paying for Local Government, produced by the Department of the Environment from consulations between Rothschild, William Waldegrave and Kenneth Baker, proposed the Community Charge. This was a fixed tax per adult resident, hence a poll tax, although there was a reduction for poor people. This charged each person for the services provided in their community. Due to the amount of local taxes paid by businesses varying, and the amount of grant provided by central government to individual local authorities sometimes varying capriciously, there were dramatic differences in the amount charged between boroughs.
This proposal was contained in the Conservative Manifesto for the 1987 General Election. The legislation introducing the Community Charge was passed in 1988 and the new tax replaced the rates in Scotland from the start of the 1989/90 financial year and in England and Wales from the start of the 1990/91 financial year. Additionally the uniform business rate, levied by local government at a rate set by central government and then apportioned between local authorities in proportion to their population, was introduced.

The tax was not implemented in Northern Ireland, which continued, as it still does, to levy the rating system, despite some unionists calling for the province to have the same taxation system as the rest of the United Kingdom. That the tax was introduced in Scotland a year before England and Wales is often described as causing the death of the Tories in Scotland, and cementing their image as an English party. However, in 1992 the Tory vote increased in Scotland compared to 1987 (before the introduction of the poll tax), and it was not until 1997 that they were wiped out completely.

Protesters complained that the tax shifted from the estimated price of a house to the number of people living in it, with the perceived effect of shifting the tax burden from the rich to the poor. It did not help that Mrs Thatcher, close to the end of her period in office and losing popularity, chose to champion the Community Charge herself and apparently chose to be both ruthless in imposing it and adamant that there would be no "U-turns" (reversals in policy).

Additional problems emerged when many of the tax rates set by local councils proved to be much higher than many earlier predictions. Some have argued that local councils saw the introduction of the new system of taxation as the opportunity to make significant increases in the amount taken, assuming (correctly) that it would be the originators of the new tax system and not its local operators who would be blamed.

The charge was bitterly opposed and people sought to protest through mass protests called by the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation to which the vast majority of local Anti Poll Tax Unions were affiliated. In Scotland, where the tax was implemented first, the APTU's called for mass non-payment. These calls rapidly gathered widespread support in Scotland and then in England and Wales, even though non-payment meant that people could be prosecuted.

As the charges began to rise, large numbers of people refused to pay the tax (up to 30% of former ratepayers in some areas according to the BBC)[3], enforcement measures became increasingly draconian, and unrest mounted and culminated in a number of Poll Tax Riots. The most serious of these happened in London on March 31, 1990, during a protest at Trafalgar Square, London, which more than 200,000 protesters attended. The Labour MP, Terry Fields, was jailed for 60 days for refusing to pay his poll tax.

For this among other reasons, Mrs. Thatcher was challenged by Michael Heseltine for the Tory leadership. Although she prevailed by a margin of 50 votes, her opponent had far too many votes for comfort, and on November 22, 1990 Mrs Thatcher resigned and all three contenders to succeed her pledged to abandon the tax.

The successful candidate, John Major, appointed his defeated rival Michael Heseltine to the post of Environment Secretary responsible for replacing the Community Charge. In 1991 the Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont announced a raise in Value Added Tax from 15% to 17.5% to pay for a £140 reduction in the tax. By the time of the 1992 General Election, legislation had been passed replacing Community Charge with the Council Tax from the start of the 1993/94 financial year.

The Council Tax strongly resembled the rating system that the Poll Tax had replaced. The main differences were that it was levied on capital value rather than notional rental value of a property, and that a 25% discount for single occupancy dwellings was introduced.