In perspective

 

The periodical, Red Pepper, is not my usual reading matter but, at the end of last month, it carried a laudatory review by John Rees of Norah Carlin’s book on petitioning by civilian and military radicals in the final months of 1648. Rees thought it made a notable contribution to the understanding of “the role of ordinary people in the climax of the English Revolution.” Radicals in the New Model Army and across the country sent a wave of petitions to the Long Parliament demanding justice against King Charles I, that “man of blood”, and for a fundamental transformation of the English state. He links this petitioning campaign to the role of the Leveller movement in organising its ‘large petition’ of 11^th September, 1648, which inspired in part, at least, some of the subsequent petitions and forced the army’s commanders into action at Pride’s Purge and the trial of the King that followed. He also has observations on essays by David Como and Clive Holmes which bear on the issues then under discussion. Rees ends with a condemnation of the revisionist school which, he believed, had set the agenda for discussion of the events of the 1640s as accidental products of conflicts within the elite and which considered the radicals of this period as irrelevant. The popular voice had been restored by Norah Carlin to its central place in the making of the English Revolution.

There are elements of confusion in this assessment. First of all, the radicals in the New Model Army and amongst the civilian population were not, by any definition, representative of the ordinary people of England and Wales. Nor, indeed, did they articulate “the popular voice”. They were a small, committed minority with influence in the army and in some urban centres, principally London. Then as now, it was easy enough to promote petitions to Parliament articulating their demands. But the majority of M.P.s and peers sitting at Westminster wanted a negotiated settlement with the King and a return to peace throughout the land. The trial and subsequent execution of Charles I rendered a lasting constitutional and religious settlement impossible. It is quite wrong to offer a hagiographical account of the Levellers, of other civilian radicals and of military figures whose desire for vengeance could not be satiated in any other way. As it was, within little more than a decade, the ‘good old cause’ collapsed and the Crown, the Church of England and a Parliament chosen on the old basis were back.

                                                                                                                                     5^th December, 2020