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of local government finance. I still believed that the local accountability which the community charge did so much to strengthen would have a salutary effect. It would, not so incidentally, help ensure that low-spending councils — generally Conservative — were elected. But I had also seen — and did not intend to forget — the perversity, incompetence and often straightforward malice of many local councils. High-minded talk of local democracy must not be allowed to obscure the low-level politics of the people we were up against. That meant that central government must have adequate powers — and be prepared to use them — to protect the individual citizen against rogue authorities.

But the most public opposition to the community charge came not from the respectable Tory lower-middle classes for whom I felt so deeply, but rather from the Left. From 1988 a number of Labour MPs, mostly in Scotland, had proclaimed their determination to break the law and refuse to pay the community charge and the far Left were agitating effectively in England too. They found little sympathy from the law-abiding mass of Labour supporters. But there were enough people ready to take the lead in organizing violent resistance. On Saturday 31 March, the day before the introduction of the community charge in England and Wales, a demonstration against the charge degenerated into rioting in and around Trafalgar Square. There was good evidence that a group of troublemakers had deliberately fomented the violence. Scaffolding on a building site in the square was dismantled and used as missiles; fires were started and cars destroyed. Almost 400 policemen were injured and 339 people were arrested. It was a mercy that no one was killed. I was appalled at such wickedness.

For the first time a government had declared that anyone who could reasonably afford to do so should at least pay something towards the upkeep of the facilities and the provision of the services from which they benefited. A whole class of people — an ‘underclass’ if you will — had been dragged back into the ranks of responsible society and asked to become not just dependants but citizens. The violent riots of 31 March in and around Trafalgar Square was their and the Left’s response. And the eventual abandonment of the charge represented one of the greatest victories for these people ever conceded by a Conservative Government.

The trouble was that, because of the size of the bills now being sent out, the new system had the very same law-abiding, decent people — on whom we depended for support in defeating the mob — protesting themselves. The riot did not, therefore, shift me from my determination to continue with the community charge itself or to see the criminals of that day brought to justice. But it did reinforce the conclusions I had reached about the need to take effective action to limit the burden it was placing on what I had described to John Major as the ‘conscientious middle’.

In fact, unbeknown to me, the rioters were on their way up to Whitehall as I was addressing the Central Council in Cheltenham.

I began my speech with what was to be the first of a number of increasingly risky jokes about the political threat to my leadership. Cheltenham’s reputation as the traditional retirement centre for those who governed our former empire provided the peg. I began:

It’s a very great pleasure to be in Cheltenham once again. To avoid any possible misunderstanding, and at the risk of disappointing a few gallant colonels, let me make one thing absolutely clear: I haven’t come to Cheltenham to retire.

I then went almost immediately to the heart of the issue about which the Party was agonizing.:

Many of the bills for the community charge which people are now receiving are far too high. I share the outrage they feel. But let’s be clear: it’s not the way the money is raised, it’s the amount of money that local government is spending. That’s the real problem. No scheme, no matter how ingenious, could pay for high spending with low charges.

But I did go on to announce a number of limited special