Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class

by Owen Jones

In the first Budget, top bracket taxes of 83 per cent on earned income and 98 per cent on unearned income were slashed to 60 per cent, and corporation tax went from 52 to 35 per cent. In 1988 the then-chancellor Nigel Lawson went even further: the top rate of tax was reduced to 40 per cent. Geoffrey Howe is unrepentant about what he calls ‘changing the tax structure to make it incentivized and not obstructive of enterprise’. Yet the reality of this part of Thatcher’s class war is that it shifted the tax burden from the rich to everybody else. ‘Whether or not it had the right impact on distribution of wealth or income, I can’t tell,’ Howe says. ‘But it certainly did liberalize, enhance the chances of making money, saving money, expanding business