BY NIALL McCRAE & SLOBODAN ANTONIJEVIC
High taxes levied to fund war, leading to hundreds of thousands of dead conscripts and a shattered economy: since the birth of nations, this pattern has repeated. Sometimes the ordinary people resist, through individual or collective tax avoidance. In the eighteenth century, as the British government waged costly wars with America and France, ruinous duties on imports and exports provoked civil disobedience. The illicit trade of smuggling, however, is not merely a part of our social history. We argue that it had much more significant impact, as an influence on the American Constitution.
Cross-channel smuggling began in the thirteenth century, when heavy taxes were imposed on export of wool. Fleeces shorn from thousands of sheep on the marshes of Pevensey and Romney were taken to France directly, rather than through docks, to evade customs. Instead of returning empty, smugglers filled their boats with high-duty items such as wine, brandy, tea, tobacco and lace, much of this booty finding its way to the affluent class in London.
Smuggling became a lucrative activity in the eighteenth century, when taxes were increased to finance expansion and defence of the British Empire. Most of the money went into the pockets of the gang leaders, but ordinary folk benefited too, and whole communities were involved in the carefully planned enterprise.
Landing the contraband was like a military operation. As they worked only at night the smugglers were known as ‘owlers’. Ships had dark sails, and a cloudy night was preferred. Several landing places were planned, as a contingency for the presence of a prevention squadron. To check that the coast was clear, a spotman on board lit a lantern and waited for a positive response from land. The vessel entered a cove where the goods were swiftly taken from the hold and carried ashore. Batmen, armed with poles, bats and sometimes muskets, were posted around the landing area. Tubmen took the barrels to a safe house, typically an inn but sometimes a vicarage or manor house.
The authorities were weakened by excise officers living in the same area as the smugglers and being enticed to look the other way. Reputedly Dutch gin became so plentiful that housewives used it to clean their windows! However, coastal surveillance was better manned and equipped in the late nineteenth century, when Great Britain needed to finance the Napoleonic wars. Smugglers risked being shot or arrested and sent to the gallows. Gang members, when caught, were given an offer that they couldn’t refuse, to inform on fellow miscreants. To maintain secrecy, smugglers intimidated local communities, making them more feared than revered.
The establishment view of smuggling is illustrated by Chris McCooey’s book Smuggling on the South Coast, which depicts not ‘honest thieves’ but outlaws who protected their infamous trafficking by dreadful acts of extortion and murder. This is true but overlooks the widespread community support for the organised bypassing of impoverishing taxes. Smuggling was not necessarily regarded as crime, but as economic survival.
Smuggling on the Sussex coast culminated in the Battle of Sidley Green. On 3rd January 1828 a consignment of contraband was landed on the beach near Bexhill, and a gang was spotted by the coastal blockade manning the Martello tower on Galley Hill. Outnumbered, the blockade men watched the smugglers take their cargo up Sea Lane, but they intervened two miles from the shore, where the bounty was about to be secreted in The New Inn. Tubmen escaped with barrels of alcoholic liquor and parcels of tobacco, as batmen, wielding long staves, fought about forty blockade men armed with swords, muskets and bayonets. Two smugglers died in the battle, and eight were transported to Australia. The Coastguard, from then onwards, prevailed.
Returning to the heyday of smuggling in the late eighteenth century, an intriguing connection may be made with the battle for American independence. In 1770 Customs House in Boston, the port of entry for British dignitaries, was attacked by an angry crowd, with three killed by soldiers. Three years later came a pivotal event in the American Revolution, when 342 chests of tea were dumped in Boston harbour, in defiance of the excessive Tea Act. The Boston Tea Party demonstrated that if the people are pushed too far, they will revolt.
The link between the smuggling gangs of Sussex and events on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean has been overlooked by historians.
A founding father of the United States of America was Thomas Paine (1737-1809). Son of a farmer in Thetford, Norfolk, Paine (in main picture) was appointed as an excise officer in 1761, and he was in such employment in the Sussex county town of Lewes until 1774. The biggest form of tax evasion at that time was the smuggling trade on the nearby coast. Paine was dismissed after airing too many grievances. He became a passionate pamphleteer for liberty, contributing to the radical spirit in the town (a theme that continues today, in the burning of political effigies at the annual firework display).
In 1774 Paine went to America, with a letter of introduction by Benjamin Franklin. While holding various positions in the fledgling American Army, in 1776 he wrote the pamphlet Common Sense, which made a passionate case for independence. He returned to England in 1787, and five years later completion of his book The Rights of Man caused such commotion that he was at risk of prosecution for blasphemy. He fled to France, where he was installed on the National Convention, before he was jailed and fortunately outlived the guillotining fanatic Robespierre.
The wording of the United States Constitution was profoundly influenced by Paine: –
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Paine knew that the smuggling trade was the result of overzealous taxation, and that ordinary people do not respect laws that are unjust.
The relevance of smuggling and the American Constitution, with its early amendment for the right to bear arms, is highly relevant today. Evaluating the current situation in the UK, history is repeating itself. Exasperation, confusion and anger are intensifying in the British people, driven by a combination of economic hardship, a tax system perceived as inherently unfair, and a visible decline in public services. Widespread public discontent is aggravated by a dysfunctional government that seems disconnected from its citizens.
What is perhaps more dangerous is the evident subservience of government to a global oligarchy. The overwhelming majority of people would never agree to the agenda being pursued by the powers-that-be, but they must pay for it nonetheless. Sabre-rattling by the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary, and direct involvement of British intelligence in attacks on Russia are likely to escalate to war. The projected increase in military spending will inevitably require significant tax hikes, causing austerity and poverty. Many jobless poor will be forced into recruitment to fight a war that they cannot explain.
We wonder if a new Thomas Paine will emerge in our time. Our livelihood and survival are at stake. But we should not wait for a saviour to free us; instead, it will be you—your consciousness, your awareness, and your critical thinking—that will help to write a better chapter of our social history. Let us repossess a slogan misused by socialist ideology: ‘welfare not warfare’.
Niall McCrae is an officer of the Workers of England trade union and author of ‘Green in Tooth and Claw: the Misanthropic Mission of Climate Alarm’. Slobodan Antonijevic is a physiotherapist and critical health commentator.