ParaHandy
Active member
Excerpt reprinted from History of Britain Chapter XII The early years of the 21st century with the permission of the author Simon Charmois-leather
Once the Rope Tidy orders were on the statute book, the local councils followed the same practice as with speeding cameras and formed partnerships with the marine authorities to catch and fine offenders. However evidence began to appear that the Orders were being enforced with undue force. One headline in the Daily GetsWorse was typical of the day “Masada Zealots alive and well – rivers of blood in Portsmouth’s South Sea”. Attention was drawn to the staff in the partnerships who dressed and behaved similar to 1960s hippys with open-toed sandals and who came to work on a bike and had a pony tail. The public revulsion at this and other activities forced the Blair government to rethink and the Rope Tax was quickly introduced.
In common with other stealth taxes, the progressive effect of the tax soon began to hit boat owners. The value of the mooring warps soon exceeded the boat. Theft of mooring ropes was endemic and many ropeless boats foundered or went adrift. Customs & Excise enforced a two-boat-lengths rule for sailors and white vans importing rope from the continent. The cross channel ferry operators offered booze’n’rope excursions to Europe and the Mafia collared the illegal trade. The most infamous was the Rope Gang who sailed a vessel over from France attached to a rope. Once in the UK the end was pulled and many hundreds of kilometres was illegally imported before the gang was caught after several illegal immigrants, attached to the rope, expired.
There were many demonstrations against such an iniquitous tax; port blockades and the like. The most effective was the Portsmouth Rope Party when whole bolts of rope were cast overboard into the seas and quickly brought all shipping to a complete standstill. By this time, 100,000 civil servants were employed to enforce and collect the tax and the government calculated that the cost of enforcement exceeded the revenue generated so it was quietly dropped …
(aahhh, I do like happy endings … )
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Once the Rope Tidy orders were on the statute book, the local councils followed the same practice as with speeding cameras and formed partnerships with the marine authorities to catch and fine offenders. However evidence began to appear that the Orders were being enforced with undue force. One headline in the Daily GetsWorse was typical of the day “Masada Zealots alive and well – rivers of blood in Portsmouth’s South Sea”. Attention was drawn to the staff in the partnerships who dressed and behaved similar to 1960s hippys with open-toed sandals and who came to work on a bike and had a pony tail. The public revulsion at this and other activities forced the Blair government to rethink and the Rope Tax was quickly introduced.
In common with other stealth taxes, the progressive effect of the tax soon began to hit boat owners. The value of the mooring warps soon exceeded the boat. Theft of mooring ropes was endemic and many ropeless boats foundered or went adrift. Customs & Excise enforced a two-boat-lengths rule for sailors and white vans importing rope from the continent. The cross channel ferry operators offered booze’n’rope excursions to Europe and the Mafia collared the illegal trade. The most infamous was the Rope Gang who sailed a vessel over from France attached to a rope. Once in the UK the end was pulled and many hundreds of kilometres was illegally imported before the gang was caught after several illegal immigrants, attached to the rope, expired.
There were many demonstrations against such an iniquitous tax; port blockades and the like. The most effective was the Portsmouth Rope Party when whole bolts of rope were cast overboard into the seas and quickly brought all shipping to a complete standstill. By this time, 100,000 civil servants were employed to enforce and collect the tax and the government calculated that the cost of enforcement exceeded the revenue generated so it was quietly dropped …
(aahhh, I do like happy endings … )
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