Mr McConnell said the poll tax was one of the worst policies imposed by the Tories on Scotland.
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Those who regarded the poll tax as an evil abomination will, equally, neither forgive nor forget.
That the poll tax was tried out in Scotland as some form of gruesome experiment.
And Labour's Baroness Hollis of Heigham warned the move risked a "repeat of the poll tax".
Take the council elections of 1990, at the height of the row over the poll tax.
Despite his distinctly un-Thatcherite views, he pushed along some of her most controversial legislation - including the poll tax.
He also rejected comparisons with the poll tax, saying "we have moved on somewhat with the system since then".
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Now, he says the poll tax riots seem less significant after violence at last year's G20 summit left a man dead.
He said he joined the Labour Party "to make a difference", but by 1989 he had been expelled for his high-profile stance against the poll tax.
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The second is some policy or political blunder, such as the Tories' bungling of Suez in the 1950s or the poll tax in the late 1980s.
At second reading Labour's John Healey, a former local government minister, described the legislation as the "most fundamental change in local government funding since the poll tax".
John Healey, who served as a local government minister under Gordon Brown, described the legislation as the "most fundamental change in local government funding since the poll tax".
It was a time of great political ferment - the controversy over the poll tax, the splits within the Conservative Party over Europe, the downfall of Margaret Thatcher.
However, the sight of prisoners "capering around" on the roof, having taken control of the jail, stayed with him much longer than the poll tax trouble, the peer adds.
They remember the Poll Tax - and they also know that local taxation raises a relatively low proportion of council funding but provokes a huge degree of voter ire.
"Like the poll tax, it is a big change being forced through too fast and, like the poll tax, there is not a consensus of support behind it, " he concluded.
In an opposition day debate on the policy on 9 November 2010, he also compared the package of changes to the poll tax as he urged ministers to "think again".
He said she was "fortunate in her enemies" in the likes of Arthur Scargill, the miners' leader, while her "judgement wasn't fully working" in bringing in policies like the poll tax.
Moreover, Mr Major also inherited the poll tax, the product of his predecessor's attempt to reform local-government finance, which had young rebels on the streets and old rebels deserting the Conservatives in droves.
By the late 1980s an increasingly strident Margaret Thatcher was beginning to be seen as an electoral liability by her colleagues - with policies like the poll tax causing the party to haemorrhage support.
It was a pattern which Sheridan would repeat many times - serving jail terms for refusing to pay the poll tax and a fine after taking part in blockades at Faslane nuclear submarine base.
One of her first actions was to introduce the poll tax or community charge, a flat-rate tax for local services which was based on individuals rather than the value of the property in which they lived.
He joined the Labour Party "to make a difference", but, while Stirling contemporaries like future first minister Jack McConnell stayed in the party's mainstream, by 1989 Sheridan had been expelled from the party for his high-profile stance against the poll tax.
But when the poll tax - a levy on individuals -- and her "no, no, no" response to Europe frightened her party into dumping her in 1990, they woke up the next morning and felt guilty about what they had done to their one-time heroine.
The voting barriers that King and the civil rights movement battled in the 1960s had their historic origins in such 19th century measures as the Mississippi Plan of 1890, in which the state instituted the poll tax as well as the requirement that a voter be able to read or interpret any section of the new Mississippi State Constitution.
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Lord Jenkin told BBC Radio 4's The World at One he was not proud of having "dreamt up" in the 1980s the Community Charge - which became known as the "poll tax" and faced mass protest and a central London riot before being replaced by the Council Tax.
For all that, identity cards are unlikely to turn into a repeat of the poll-tax fiasco.
Margaret Thatcher paid dear for her decision to replace domestic rates based on property values with the reviled poll tax.
The test - most commentators agreed - would come when he was forced to decide the future of the community charge, or poll tax - the policy that had brought ruin to his predecessor.
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