The councillors who went to jail

Even then, the Labour man did not back down.

He said: "If we have to choose between contempt of the poor and contempt of court, it will be contempt of court."

So it was that 25 men and five women were jailed in the Poplar Rates Revolt, an action which changed the law and highlighted the power of local politics.

It is a story that inspired station supervisor and RMT trade union member Janine Booth to write Guilty And Proud Of It, an account of the conflict between Poplar's socialist "guardians" and the authorities between 1919 and 1925.

She said: "I hope this book will inspire people. East London and the Docklands are rich in labour movement history. People know about the big dockers' strikes, the suffragettes and the battle of Cable Street. Not as many have heard about this."

Janine was fighting against the closure of her son's nursery in Hackney when she stumbled upon the story a few years ago. The council had announced it was being forced to make sweeping cuts to services against its will due to a lack of money.

Janine said: "I wanted to refer back to an example in which councils defied unfair laws rather than passing on the cuts to the local people.

"I had to go a long way back - but not far in terms of geography."

Thanks to the lowering of the property qualification in 1918 which allowed the working class to vote, councils welcomed new faces in post-war Britain.

Postmen, toolmakers and railworkers took their places in council alongside vicars and businessmen. But a slump in dock and rail work left many unemployed and living in appalling conditions. Of Poplar's 160,000 residents, 33,104 lived in officially "overcrowded" homes, with more than two people in every room.

Problems were worsened by the law of the time, which forced councils to support the unemployed entirely out of local rates.

As the rate was calculated by property value, the five wealthiest boroughs had a rateable value of £15million with just 5,000 poor, while the poorest five had to support 86,500 on £4million.

It was this situation that encouraged Poplar council to withhold the precepts owed to the Metropolitan Police, the LCC and the water board, reducing the quarterly rate from 6s 10d to 4s4d in March. It was a tactic it repeated until arrests began on September 1.

Refusing to back down, the imprisoned councillors even held 32 borough council meetings within the walls of Brixton prison until their release on October 12. Supporters would gather daily outside the prison, and over 40,000 marched through London in solidarity.

Their combined action led to the introduction of cross-London pooling of outdoor relief, a move that earned Poplar more than £250,000 extra per year.

Janine said: "This wasn't martyrdom in the sense that it was done by a handful of people.
"This was an outcrop of a mass movement of tens of thousands of people. This was not just about doing things for people but encouraging people to get out there as well.

"Nowadays, we have a few individuals standing up, but not whole councils. The Poplar councillors knew what they were doing was illegal, but they were making clear moral judgments, and standing up for the people they represented.

"Councils make speeches and write letters to papers saying they have no choice, but they always have a choice."

Guilty and Proud of It by Janine Booth is available through The Merlin Press, priced at £12.95. Archive pictures from Thompson Solicitors