Elizabeth Winkfield

How an 83-year-old woman became a council tax martyr (with a little help)

She was hailed as 'the rebel dressed in tweed'. But, asks Oliver Burkeman, is Elizabeth Winkfield the political innocent she appears?

Oliver Burkeman

The windswept Devonshire seaside resort of Westward Ho! has long had a single claim to fame - it is the only place in Britain with an exclamation mark in its name - and until last week there was no reason to suspect that Elizabeth Winkfield, of all people, was about to provide another. But then the diminutive 83-year-old former shopworker was summoned to appear before magistrates, having refused to pay the whole of a council tax bill she considered excessive. She walked out of the courtroom on Thursday to be greeted by a crowd of placard-waving supporters - and by the time Friday's Daily Mail arrived in newsagents, she was well on the way to becoming a national hero.

"The tax rebel dressed in tweed," as the Mail's front-page headline gleefully anointed her, seemed almost too good to be true. She was as different from the aggressive poll tax protesters as it was possible to imagine; she had never claimed benefits; she had never been in trouble with the law. As the national media descended on Winkfield's bungalow, Labour politicians seemed to severely misjudge the mood. "You have to face up to your responsibilities," an unsympathetic John Prescott told Winkfield during a joint appearance on the BBC's Breakfast With Frost.

You would have had to study last week's coverage in considerable detail to catch even a hint that there was a deeper story behind the sudden fame of Elizabeth Winkfield - an operation in which the rightwing UK Independence party (UKIP) turns out to have been centrally involved, laying the groundwork for a media sensation that the country's leading publicist, Max Clifford, last night admitted he had "engineered". "To begin with," says Mark Clough, a reporter for the Plymouth-based Western Morning News, who had been following the story, "I thought it was 'little old lady couldn't afford to pay'. But now it seems possible that Miss Winkfield was coming from a very different angle."

The Devon Pensioners Action Forum had been promoting the cause of elderly people unable to pay their soaring council tax bills for the best part of six years, but Albert Venison, the 79-year-old who runs the group from his Axminster home, had not exactly been inconvenienced by overwhelming national attention. "When we started, eight or nine of us formed a committee, and we held a public meeting in a church hall," he says. Membership increased gradually, reaching about 500. Many, including Winkfield, agreed that they would not pay any council tax rise beyond the rate of inflation, but few had been summoned to appear in court before her. "I think they're just picking people at random," Venison says, "and this time they picked the wrong one." Venison - who says his group is non-party-political, and that he voted for Tony Blair in 1997 - was widely quoted in the coverage of the Winkfield case, making the case for low-income pensioners, who become ineligible for council tax exemption if their income exceeds the £77 weekly state pension.

This does not, however, appear to have been the main reason for Winkfield's protest - and certainly not the main reason why it was catapulted to national prominence. The 83-year-old is an active member of another organisation, the UK Independence party, which is staunchly opposed to British membership of the European Union: when she became unable to drive three years ago for health reasons, a party spokesman said yesterday, she even donated her car to the local party so that it could be sold to raise funds. It was at a UKIP meeting, a Sunday newspaper reported, that she had heard about how some council tax revenue is spent on EU-level regional assemblies, motivating her to decide to withhold payments. "She argues that her council is guilty of making illegal payments to the SW Regional Assembly and a SW Brussels office, for which it has no mandate, and that council tax should be only for local services," reads a UKIP press release. (Fred Estall, 80, who appeared in court in January for refusing to pay his tax, is also a member.)

When Winkfield was ordered to appear in court, she told her friend David Johnson, another UKIP member. He told Nigel Farage, a UKIP member of the European Parliament who represents south-east England. And on Wednesday, the day before Winkfield was due to appear before magistrates, Nigel Farage told Max Clifford.

"[Farage] spotted her and he phoned me to say 'What do you think of it?' and I said 'It's a national story.'" Clifford told the Guardian last night. "You don't have to be a brain surgeon, do you? It's a little old lady of 83, who's bright, and got principles, et cetera, et cetera." The publicist, who had been doing public relations for UKIP for several months, seized his chance. "I planted it," he says. "If it hadn't been on the front page of the Mail, it would have been on the front page of the Sun the next day. I knew it was a front page."

Winkfield has been quoted as saying that she would have been "terrified out of her wits" had she predicted the media frenzy that followed. "She's a little old lady who's thrown herself into what she thought would be a local storm, and found it's a national storm, which I suppose I've engineered," Clifford says. UKIP made sure there were supporters ready to greet her at the court: John Kelly, the party's regional spokesman, estimates that about half of the placard-wavers were members.

Mark Croucher, national spokesman for UKIP, insists that the decision to involve Clifford was a charitable one - made after the story blew up. "Nigel Farage made that decision ... because Elizabeth couldn't keep up," he says. "Her house was surrounded by TV cameras and reporters. People wanted to buy her life story, so it was decided to direct everybody through Max."

A note on Winkfield's door yesterday explained that she was suffering from bronchitis and laryngitis and would not be speaking to the media. Her phone rang unanswered and she was understood to be at Johnson's house. There was an additional reason for her silence. She has sold her story to the Daily Mail for an estimated £10,000, and will appear on Tonight With Trevor McDonald tomorrow night. "She could have done 20 interviews but she's done none," Clifford says. "She's had quite a relaxing day because she's a little asthmatic today."

Working on behalf of UKIP, some of whose members have been linked to extreme right-wing organisations, seems an odd departure for Clifford, who has never made any secret of the fact that he is a Labour supporter. He remains one, he says, but opposes the government's position on Europe and has agreed to handle UKIP public relations until the election. He denies that Winkfield's involvement with the UKIP undermines her stand. "It's not a party-political broadcast. It's her standing up for what she thinks is right."

Winkfield, says one reporter who worked on the story, "always admitted that she was a member of the UK Independence party, but I think it was conveniently forgotten by the media. Everybody knew about it, but didn't really mention it, because it would have affected the story. They just wanted the pint-sized pensioner." Meanwhile, the impression continues to spread that Winkfield refused to pay the bill because she could not afford to: Venison says he has been telephoned by her local authority, wondering what they should do with the cheques people are sending them to help settle her account. And a new twist was added yesterday when Nick Raynsford, the local government minister, pointed out that, if Winkfield is only receiving her state pension, she ought not to be paying any council tax at all. (She has not revealed her income, but says she would have made the same protest had she been a millionaire.)

Winkfield may have been taken aback by the national storm that she has caused - or that, perhaps, has been caused on her behalf - but Albert Venison, at the Devon Pensioners Action Forum, does not think she is likely to be defeated by it. "She's quite an independent maiden lady, you know," he says. "She's used to knowing what she wants to do and going her own way."