POLL TAX ON WHEELS

The government has a thing about the mediaeval period. Charles Clarke complains that universities ‘have governance systems that stretch back to mediaeval times’. David Blunkett complains that the law takes ‘a mediaeval view of marriage’. The Ministry of Agriculture apologises for using ‘mediaeval’ pyres during the foot-and-mouth outbreak. The implication, one presumes, is that mediaeval times were coarse, cruel and elitist – the very anti-

thesis of the enlightened age that is Britain under New Labour.

But, from Monday, those driving into central London will suffer an inconvenience and indignity that would never have been tolerated in mediaeval times: being charged to use the Queen’s Highway. Drive up Cheapside between the hours of 7 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. and you will be forced to pay a tax equivalent to 300 groats. Fail to pay and your motor carriage will be seized and auctioned to the highest bidder. One can only imagine the riots that would have ensued had Richard II dreamed up such a repressive measure.

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Ross Clark

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Should the congestion charge turn out to be a failure – as with Mrs Thatcher’s poll tax there is widespread talk of popular revolution – it is certain that the government will wash its hands of any blame, secretly revelling in the discomfort of Ken Livingstone. This would be disingenuous. It was the government which introduced the legislation reversing our ancient freedom to use the Queen’s Highway free of charge; Mr Livingstone is merely one of many local politicians keen to make use of the provisions.

What is it about this government, and the many local authorities run in its image, which makes it harp on about how rotten everything was in the past, then merrily do away with freedoms which have existed for many centuries? Mediaeval government did not have to cope with the motor car and the pollution caused by the internal combustion engine, Mayor Livingstone will say.