Poplar Rates Rebellion

Poplar, much like the rest of east London, is fairly impoverished, unemployed, and overcrowded. Labour came into power on the Poplar Borough Council, with one of these council members being George Lansbury. The way that the taxes worked was that Poplar would have had to pay more money compared to other richer boroughs, so the council itself would have had to raise the rates derived from property values (Alchetron). In response, the council raised the rates for expenses of the Poplar Council itself and refused to pay the central rates (which would go to the Metro police and the like), which the London City Council and Metro Asylums Board responded to by taking things the High Court and imprisoning the councillors for six weeks. (Men were imprisoned in Brixton and the women were put up in Holloway, where they received comparatively better treatment.) Bethnal Green and Stepney (an historical part of Poplar) both joined Poplar's refusal to pay the rates (National Archives). This led to widespread support among the working-class base of Poplar and marching in the streets (Alchetron). Battersea was going to join in on the joint strike as well, but then the rebellion came to an end once the councillors were released, and Parliament rushed through an Act to equally distribute the rates between the richer and poorer boroughs (Hartland, Local Authorities [Financial Provisions Bill], National Archives). George Lansbury would go on to be the leader of the Labour Party (Alchetron).

Nowadays Poplar is almost equally white/POC and majority Muslim; the ratios probably would have been even higher majority POC and Muslim (Tower Hamlets Corporate Research Unit) - as such this area would be subjected to the same issues as a majority POC neighborhood in the US would: poor health, high child mortality, reliance on social safety nets, etc. These workers would have been working on railways, in factories, on the docks building or unloading ships, or in domestic work (nannying, cooking, etc.).

Hartland, Nicole. "Parliament and the 1921 Poplar Rates Rebellion." UK Parliament, 16 Aug. 2021, https://archives.blog.parliament.uk/2021/08/16/parliament-and-the-1921-p.... Accessed 23 Apr. 2025.

Iglikowski-Broad, Vicky. “The rebel councillors: The 1921 Poplar Rates Rebellion.” The National Archives, 29 Jul. 2021, https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/the-rebel-councillors-1921-poplar-rates-rebellion/. Accessed 21 Apr. 2025.

Joly, Gordon. Mural in support of Poplar Rates Rebellion. Wikipedia, 21 June 2006, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mural_Poplar_Rates.jpg. Accessed 20 Apr. 2025.

“Local Authorities (Financial Provisions) Bill.” Parliament, 8 Nov. 1921, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1921/nov/08/local-authorities-financial-provisions. Accessed 24 Apr. 2025.

“Poplar Rates Rebellion.” Alchetron, 10 Dec. 2024, https://alchetron.com/Poplar-Rates-Rebellion. Accessed 21 Apr. 2025.

“Poplar Ward Profile.” Tower Hamlets Corporate Research Unit, May 2014, https://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/Documents/Borough_statistics/Ward_profiles/Poplar-FINAL-10062014.pdf. Accessed 24 Apr. 2025.