Hondarribia, Spain 1994

Fifth International Conference on War Tax Resistance
and Peace Tax Campaigns

Workshop 11:
Increasing the number of war tax resisters and peace tax funds supporters.

The preparatory document

There was not any. Another fail of the organization.

The report

First, I have to say that we didn't get material before this workshop, and the person who had to coordinate it was not here.

There were people from different countries: England, Sweden, Holland, USA, Palestine, Belgium, Iraq, Italy, Denmark and Spain (10 countries)

We did small summaries about the history and the situation in each country. This part was more extensive than we thought at the beginning.

It would be interesting to have a summary of these data, and to renew them before each International Conference.

Above all else, we emphasized that is fundamental that every country has to choose its own strategy, because the conditions are very different.

So, the main ideas we had to increase the number of WTR and PTFS were these:

1.- Getting a specific legislation that would give security to some people who don’t want to transgress the law.

2.- Looking for ways into the legal system.

3.- Improving methods used in the campaign such as:

3.1.- Making the purpose more specific and concrete

3.2.- Tailoring messages to different sectors of the population.

3.3.- Making information about the true levels of military expenditures known to the general public.

3.4.- Using key people to diffuse our idea .

3.5.- Contacting sympathising groups (ecologists, religious, ...).

3.6.- Giving WTR’s money to closed projects.

4.- Creating a war tax resistance which isn’t too expensive.

5.- Improving non-violence defence and civil disobedience.

6.- Caring for the identity of our group.