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Pay taxes for peace not war

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peace tax bill, Ruth Cadbury MP, Conscience, The Taxes for Peace Bill was given its first reading in the House of Commons earlier this week.

Ruth Cadbury, MP for Brentford and Isleworth, and a Quaker, introduced the Income Tax (Non-Military Expenditure) Bill under a Ten Minute Rule motion.

The Bill would allow people to stop paying for war and weapons.

It is not an exemption from paying taxes – it aims to get the appropriate percentage of income taxes redirected away from military spending and towards conflict prevention programmes sponsored by the government.

Taxpayers would be able to express on their tax return their conscientious objection to the expenditure of their taxes on war or the preparations for war.

The Bill’s second reading is scheduled for 2 December.

Conscience, who campaign to create a world where taxes are used to nurture peace, not pay for war, see military taxation as the new form of conscription.

And the right of conscientious objection has been acknowledged in the United Kingdom for centuries.

In the late 17th century, the government sought to pressure Quakers to engage in military activities. They resisted the state’s capacity to compel them into military service, and in the Militia Ballot Act of 1757, Quakers as a body were excluded from conscription.

The general right to refuse on the grounds of conscience to participate as a combatant in military service was included in the Military Service Act 1916, which introduced conscription during the First World War.

The right to conscientious objection has also been recognised in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the European Union Convention on Human Rights. The legal right to act in accordance with one’s conscience was placed firmly on the statute book by the UK government by the Human Rights Act 1998.

The United Kingdom does not currently fight using a conscripted army in which a conscientious objector can refuse to serve. So today we are not conscripted to fight; instead, our taxes are conscripted to pay for the cost of sustaining a modern professional army and the technology it wields.

We are, as taxpayers, conscripted to pay for some of the most lethal military equipment in the world.

We are also compelled to pay for people to be trained in the operation of this deadly equipment which enables them to kill.

We are therefore complicit in a system of killing by proxy which interferes with established principles protecting individuals of thought, conscience and religion from unjust force from the state.

For those who object to war, there is little moral difference between actually firing lethal weapons and paying for someone else to do so.

This Bill simply extends the already legally recognised right of freedom of conscience in the modern world where military taxation is the new form of conscription.

If the right of conscientious objection is to have any real meaning today, it must be the right not to support state violence with our taxes. We must allow those who object to war the right to have their taxes used for the non-violent conflict resolution

The UK is a world leader in sponsoring conflict prevention initiatives by means other than armed force and, through mechanisms such as the Conflict Security and Stability Fund (CSSF), greatly contributes to global peace and security through non-military means.

By enabling citizens to redirect the proportion of their income tax that goes to the military towards a non-military security fund such as the CSSF and its successors, this Bill will allow all citizens to be able to contribute to the tax system with a clear conscience.

War is a very specific type of government spending with a very specific remit: deliberate killing to achieve foreign policy objectives.

It has long been legally recognised that, given the very specific nature of military activity, individual involvement needs a very specific set of laws to govern it. This is why we can have a legal conscientious objector status to military conscription, but not, say, a conscientious objection to education, welfare or health spending.

Her Majesty’s Government budgeted for more than £34 billion of military expenditure in 2014. That represents close to 5 per cent of the Government’s total expenditure and an annual contribution of around £1,200 per taxpayer for military activity.

1916 was a pioneering moment in the conscientious objection movement as it provided the first legally recognised inclusive right to conscientious objection.

It is 100 years since the legal recognition of conscience within the 1916 Military Service Act. So the centenary of the Military Service Act, and the heightened awareness of conscientious objection that accompanies it, provides a unique opportunity for modern conscientious objectors to have their voices heard.

An update in the law is required so that conscientious objectors to military taxation can have their rights fully recognised too.

“Believing all life is sacred. Quakers abhor war and conscientiously object to paying someone to kill on our behalf,” Helen Drewery, of Quakers in Britain, explained.

“To prepare for war is failure; instead we want to invest in nonviolent solutions to conflict.”

Please ask your MP to support this bill at its second reading.

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