EARLIER this year 200 people heard Tony Benn and Peter Purton of the Socialist Outlook editorial board speak on the English Revolution. Here we publish the second part of Peter Purton's talk which outlines the role of the masses and the emergence of radical and revolutionary movements. THE ENGLISH Revolution went through traditional phases. In the beginning the propertied classes were united in opposing King Charles' attempt to impose an obsolete royal absolutism on an emerging capitalist But in the process of challenging the monarchy, they unleashed a massive popular movement which initially served as a battering ram for the parhamentary leadership. But this movement quickly came to develop its own political ideas. It began to take the process much further than the propertied classes wanted to go.
From the beginning of the combat with the King, when the Long Parliament took up the cudgels in 1641, the gentry divided and divided again over the question of how far to go. The first acts of the parlia ment, such as removing Charles' unministers were carried popular overwhelmingly.
Yet a short few months later, with the presentation of more radical demands, such as removing Bishops who were the King's most loyal supporters from parliament and placing the appointment of militia commanders under parliamentary HISTORY control the majority in the House of Commons was tiny. A very significant minority of members were deserting to the King's side.
Streets
Behind this split was the central question - the role of the common people in the political process. A critical role was played by the popular masses. Their mo bilisations on the streets of London repeatedly tipped the balance.
In many other towns the common people determined the political map at the outset of the fighting. And later, as the revolution unfolded, movements develof the monarchy.
20788 oped which put together unprecedented political programmes. The most impor tant were the radical Levellers and carly communists like the Diggers.
There was no modern working class. so who were these people? The teeming hundreds of thousands of London were craftsmen and artisans, clothworkers, apprentices, scamen, dockers, builders. petty traders, shopworkers, printers and domestic servants.
Many were fighting their own battles inside oligarchic company structures dominated by merchants of else the traditional guilds.
The guilds were not like trade unions today but were closed professional associations involving everyone from master to apprentice, i.e. both boss and worker.
In the countryside they were agricultural labourers or cloth workers operating from their cottages. Then there was the peasantry itself.
In the long hot summer and autumn of 1641 it was the continuous mobilisations of the masses of London which prevented the House of Commons from retreating from its programme of radical reform.
It was the masses that drove Strafford to impeachment and his appointment with the executioner, and who thwarted the King's attempted coup of arresting the five leading members of parliament.
It was the masses who drove the parliamentary leadership to the evermore radical measures which eventually drove the King to war. Their methods appear familiar to us - mass petitions, popular demonstratons. But tese were ucial strations unconcerned by formalities of law and playing by the rules. A mass spectacle as the old regime is violenty ended: the execution of King Charles / Not for the first or the last time, it was fear of the people which began to drive gentry members of the Commons to the King's side The outbreak of war in August 1642 saw the popular masses once more play a vital part. In town after town the common people took to the streets to shut the gates against the King's Commissioners and to force their local leaders to declare for parliament.
Now this was a very peculiar war be cause at the start neither side had an army. Although parliament, through its control of the Navy, London and the South, had access to far greater resources, in the short term the forces which rallied to Charles had far greater military training.
Probably the most decisive battle of the whole war took place very early on at Turnham Green. Dashing Prince Rupert was leading the King's advance on London after getting the better of the first battle of the war at Edgehill.
In November 1642 he stormed Brentford, which was held by a couple of regiments made up of butchers and dyers. He went on an ransacked it and spent the night at Syon Park.
Militia
The trained band of London, which was a militia composed of London workers and apprentices, turned out in sullicient force at Tumham Green to dissuade the Royalists from continuing their advance the next day and cared precious time for parliament to organise its forces.
The war, however, went badly for the Parliamentary side for the first year. Their generals were aristocrats who didn't really want to beat the King, fearing for the social order. They showed this by resisting popular clamour for arms and training.
In the end, as is well known, a certain Oliver Cromwell went off and organised his own army in East Anglia, composed of Puritan yeomanry and trained his famous Ironside cavalry.
At last in 1644 the radicals in parliament won a majority for the creation of a new professional army. And it was this 'New Model Army', commanded by Cromwell and Fairfax which rapped up the fighting at Naseby in 1645.
The army became a highly politicised force. But Cromwell and the other gencrals were also landowners and however radical they were in confronting the monarchy, reforming the Church or abolishing the House of Lords, there was a limit.
That limit was the popular involvement in political power and the question of property rights. They needed the army to purge and control parliament but they didn't need the Levellers Sothey astutely outmanoeuvred them, broke up their power bases and finally crushed them by force at Burford in 1649.
The period from 1647 to 1650 was the high point of popular radicalism in England. In the end ine bourycoisgentydivided though it was into many competing factions, united in defence of the social order. They feared the people more than the return of the monarchy.
But what frightened them so much? The Levellers were the largest popular movement. Their leaders proposed a programme which at its widest included untversal male suffrage, abolition of the House of Lords, the election of judges, magistrates and parish priests.
They proposed the abolition of the tithe, religious freedom, the abolition of indirect taxes in favour of income tax, the ending of enclosures in the countryside, methods for tenant farmers to purchase the land. And in addition they proposed the reform of the judicial system including ending imprisonment for debt.
This was a radical programme for the time. It included elements which would make today's Shadow Cabinet blanche.
In the Putney Debates of Uctooet 1647, the highest ranking Leveller, Colo*Really I think that the poorest he that is in England has a right to live as the greatest; and therefore truly sir I think its clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own conThe Party of Cromwell, republicans and religious independents played out the
game with great skill. They used the strength of the army and the people to purge their opponents, and then purged the army of its most radical elements, while seeing through a programme of reforms in the interests of their own class. ...The way was cleared for the evolution of a thoroughly bourgeois state. But it was one in which the quaint trappings of a feudal monarchy were left in place. sent to pur himself under that gover"And I do think that the poorest man that is in England is not at all bound to that government that he hath not had a voice to pur himself under".
To which Henry Arden. Cromwell's sorruw, and a scout detender Of the propertied gentry responded at once by going to the heart of the matter. 'Where will you end? And why you should not take away all property?
The heart felt cry of the bourgeois of all time crying wolf when ever anyone Where will it all end? What about my property?
Rainsborough knew this argument though, unlike many poople around today, and he knew the answer too, because he replied, As to the thing itself, property. I would feign know how it comes to be the property of some men and not others'.
And on the question of legal right his colleague John Wilde also had the truth of it: "Our case is to be considered thus. that we have been made under slavery. Our very laws were made by our conquerors.
"And whereas it is much spoken of in the chronicles I conceive that there is no credit to be given to any of them. And the reason is that because those that were our lords and made us their vassals suffered What a shame our own TUC doesn't share the Levellers understanding of the role of the law over the question of the pits.
However, it was the property question which derailed the Levellers politically. and the strong sections among them, because of their own origins amongst craft. workers and yeomen, defence of the right to private property was as vital to them as to tear opponents and on wis matter Ene split.
In the end they supported the property qualification for the right to vote. I should add that the title of Leveller was laid on The Levellers advanced demands which embraced both urban and country masses. If the Levellers were best placed because of their strength among the rank and file of the army they weren't alone.
One contemporary counted 199 religers and the Ranters were the libertarians of the age. The met in city taverns to smoke tobacco and to experiment in new lifestyles - communal living. free love. misoicace to an autonsy My favourites are the Diggers, rightly known as the true Levellers. Under the guidance of a failed draper born in Wigan, Gerard Winstanley, the Diggers were sentine carly communists combined theory with practice, and wang were an houng and must dic for action is the life of all' Winstanley On April 1 1649 they occupiod common land at St Georges Hill near Walton in Surrey and began to cultivate it in common. Winstanley theorised a whole alternative programme in a wonderful book called "The Law of Freedom'. The caperinem was broken up oy the army:
We've seen this great dynamic popular movement bursting the bounds of accepted politics and morality, driving the House of Commons before it to overturn the monarchy and set up a Republic in the end unable to impose its will.
The power resided with the gentry and the Palace of Westminster. And though parts of the army were steeped in politics.
Property
And in particular - although only the Diggers represented a full programme for the propertyless masses - the threat to property was a terror of the new rulers. Starting as early as 1644 the conservative majority in the House of Commons wanted to start negotiating with the King and continued until 1648 to try to demobilise the army.
The Party of Cromwell, republicans and religious independents played out the same with great skill. They wed the strength of the army and the people to nurse their opponents, and then purscu the army of its most radical elements, while seeing through a programme of reforms in the interests of their own class.
We've already looked at the outcome, from the point of view of the restoration of Charles 2nd in 1660. In so many ways this was a predictable compromise.
The way was cleared for the evolution of a thoroughly, bourgoois state. But it was one in with the quant trappings of a feudal monarchy were left in place.
The Crown itself. the House of Lande the great estates and political power of They the surviving nobility all remained be"Words cause of the cowardice of the parliamentary lesders.
It would seem true today that the monarchy is more likely to self-destruct than to be abolished. Yet this seemingly harmless throw back is actually the pinnacle, the capstone of class rule. for ones betters, myths of polite English ways of doing things, sitting atop a conreal democracy at every level. Some very painful lessons have still not been learnt owning classes will go to any lengths to preserve their oconomic interest. Those who rely on such forces for political reform or expect furlamental social ad vance without destroying this corrupe political system can expect no different tion did not have these illusions. God is actually reason in every human being and that heaven had to be created on cart wrae to tie new republican government: "Thou hast made many promises and protestations to make the people to whom thou hast made such protestations of liberty are oppressed by thy courts, assizes, sessions, by thy justices and clerks of the peace, so called. bailiffs and committees are imprisoned and forced to spend their bread that should save their lives from famine. maintain their universal liberty and freedom which not only is our birthright but which thou hast promised to restore from under the former oppressing powers which had gone before and which likeWinstanley said.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 47, July-August 1993. Page 13 taxes and bloodshed. It encourages deference and respect When it comes to the crisis, property sures. One participant in the English Revolubailiffs and state servants. Gerard Winstanley who believed that love. *And yet at this very day the same "And it's all because they stand to shed'. English Revolution!
Oliver Cromwell: turned on radical leaders wise we have bought with our money in 'All of which thou hast received at our hands and yet thou hast not given us our Winstanley was clear what was nococo: Take nobce that England is exx a free people until the poor that have no land have the free allowance to dig and labour the Commons and so live as comfortably as the landlords in their encloTyranny "For the necole have not laid out their monies and their blood so the landlords, the Norman powers, shall still have its liberty and freedom to rule in tyranny. with its lords, landlords, judges, justices, *But that the oppressed might be set irce, pason coors operica and te poor peoples hearts comforted by universal consent of making the carth a common treasury that they may live together as OUR HISTORY one house of israel united in brotherly *And truly you councillors and powers of the earth, know this, that wheresoever there is a people thus united it will become the strongest in the world. Whereas and single interest, divides the people of the land and the whole world into parties and is the cause of all wars and blood.
That Norman power still crowns our bourgeois state. I say follow the course of the true Levellers, trust in no strength but our own and complete the work of the
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 47, July-August 1993. Page 14 Fingers deep in the gravy among the Henley Regatta set: whose till produced the cash? right way, it seems. And in what city was the slush fund failure of its official leadership. socialsii, to lackie is crisis. war Tory high command. using the full powers of the state. Facing mass unemployment, rampant employers equipped with savage anti-union laws, and a war on hard-won education, health and welfare services, the working class in Britain taces a real crisis - an avoidable crisis created by the historic Socialist Outlook exists to fight for a new type of working class leadership, based on the politics of class struggle and revolutionary The capitalist class, driven and politically united by its own crisis. its requirement to maximise profits at the expense of the workers. has been given determined, vanguard leadership ty a brutal classThe Tory strategy has been to shackle the unions with legislation. and to fragment and weaken the resistance of the working class and oppressed, allowing them to pick off isolated sections one at a bme.
In response, most TUC and Labour leaders have embraced the defeatist politics of 'new realism", effectively proclaiming total surrender on every front. while ditching any pretence that they offer a
The period from 1647 to 1650 was the high point of bourgeois/gentry, divided though it was into many competing factions, united in defence of the social order. They feared the people more than the return
Under the guidance of a failed draper born in Wigan, Gerard Winstanley, the Diggers were genuine early communists. They combined theory with practice, 'Words and writing were all nothing and must die for action is the life of all'