ANARCHISTS are calling on unemployed residents hit by new council tax charges not to pay them.

The Huddersfield Anarchist League (HAL) say plans to cut council tax support by up to 29% will “pauperise” some residents.

They’re calling on Kirklees Council to stand up to the Government and abandon various welfare reform changes they say will hit residents in the pocket.

But Clr Mehboob Khan, the leader of Kirklees Council, says every paying taxpayer would end up footing the bill if unemployed people followed the anarchists’ call.

At 4.30pm today members of the Huddersfield Anarchists League will protest outside Huddersfield Town Hall before the meeting of the full council.

Ian Brooke, a member of HAL, said: “We are calling for people not to pay these invidious taxes and also for council and housing workers not to implement these measures or force evictions.

“If every Labour council in the country refused to implement these changes they would collapse.

“I don’t think the modern day Labour Party has the courage to do so, but what will happen is people will be unable to afford these changes and in the long-term they will become untenable anyway.

“It will eventually collapse because people won’t be able to afford to pay them, it’ll end up like the Poll Tax and unfeasible.

“I certainly wouldn’t want to see anybody go without food or heating etc, just to pay a council tax bill they can’t afford to pay because they’re unemployed.” Labour’s Clr Khan said the tactics have been tried before and didn’t work.

He said: “Labour councillors tried these tactics in the 1980s and many of them were very close to bankruptcy.

“At the time the then government just completely ignored these type of protests. The result of this would be every paying taxpayer having to pay more. “I am old enough to remember the Poll Tax and Labour Party at the time discussing withholding paying the Poll Tax as a matter of principle, but whilst it was an unfair and unjustified tax, if we didn’t others would have to pay more to make up the shortfall.

“It’s the law of the land, if people don’t like it then in 2015 at the ballot box people can make that point to the Government.”

Every local council has to bring in its own council tax benefit support scheme for working-age residents, but the Government has cut Kirklees funding by 10%.

Pensioners’ council tax support is unchanged, so Kirklees has had to pass the £3.2m funding shortfall onto working-age residents.

Around 19,900 working age households in receipt of some council tax benefit will see their bills increase by 29%. Those who receive full benefit will have to pay an amount equivalent to 29% of their council tax liability.

Around 10,000 of those will have to pay some council tax for the first time.

HAL members will also campaign against the so-called ‘bedroom tax’, a Government-led change to how housing benefit is paid.

Anyone with a spare bedroom will receive a cut in housing benefit by 14% if they have one spare bedroom, or 25% if they have two or more spare bedrooms.

The council has some discretionary powers, but around 3,200 tenants are said to under-occupy their home in the borough.

Mr Brooke added: “The Bedroom Tax is a cruel way of making the poorest sections in society pay for the economic crisis whilst the taxpayer pays for MPs to have more than one home and Cabinet members have spare mansions with spare bedrooms that should be taxed.

“In Kirklees the council tax rebate will be cut by a massive 29% compared to 19% in Leeds, leaving unemployed people £5.60 per week worse off.

“Both these measures will pauperise a whole sector of the community.”