Preston Red Thread

An electronic journal for all those on the Left in the greater Preston area.

#10 – January 2020

Edited by: Mick Mulcahy, Dave Savage & Michael McKrell

“The task of the media in a democracy is not to ease the path of those who govern, but to make life difficult for them by constant vigilance as to how they exercise the power they only hold in trust from the people.”

Editorial

Our tenth issue sees a clear-eyed and sober assessment of the General Election result from Alan Dent. Chris Lomax returns with more Radical Songs. We have a look back at the tumultuous events of 1649 and Michael McKrell reflects on the Cuban education system.

The editors hold a wide range of party political affiliations and all are or were trade unionists representing members in the greater Preston area.

The project is not overseen, directed or funded by any political party or trade union. All decisions are made collectively by the editors.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect those of the editors. If you want to get involved, by sending us an article or review, please let me know – [email protected]

Cuba 60 – Reflections on the Cuban Education System

‘People can only be free if they are truly educated’.

(José Martí)

‘Revolution and education are the same thing’.

(Fidel Castro)

Many on the Left understand that school and society are closely linked; that education helps reproduce the class structure of an economy and society from one generation to the next - complex and contradictory as this process may be - depending on an array of internal and external forces at work at any given moment in history. So it should come as no surprise that the system of education in Cuba differs markedly from that of the UK.

In December 2016 – a few weeks after the death of Fidel Castro - I was privileged to visit a secondary school in the Cuban province of Artemisia as part of a solidarity Brigade made up of trades unionists and activists from the UK and several Scandinavian countries. The day of the visit coincided with El Dia del Educador (or el Dia del Maestro - Teachers’ Day) which is celebrated annually on 22nd December. During our visit the students presented a concert of music, dance and drama for the teachers and their fellow students. At the end of performance there was a speech from the headteacher extolling the continuing importance of education for Cuba and its citizens. After the speeches the teachers who worked at the school – as well as those of us visitors who worked in education – were called up on to stage. As our names was called out each of us in turn was greeted by rhythmic applause and presented with flowers. It was a very moving occasion and one that prompted me to reflect on the achievements of the Cuban people in the field of education.

What was remarkable about that visit, aside from the joyousness of the festivities was that there was genuine warmth trust and affection between students and teachers. It was evident that teachers were held in high esteem and that students enjoyed a disciplined yet positive leaning environment to which they made a positive contribution, notwithstanding the limited resources available. Textbooks have to be shared and we were shown the book depository where students borrow text books and then return them after lessons. We were able speak to the students about what their experience of school was like and what they hoped to achieve. This turned out to be very revealing about some of the challenges facing Cuba at present; a theme I shall address later.

‘We Shall Read – We Shall Conquer’

The celebration of Teachers’ Day has its roots on the early stages of the Cuban Revolution and in particular the first Literacy campaign. Trained as teachers and equipped with a uniform, blanket, gas-lantern, hammock and two textbooks - Vamos a Leer (We Shall Read) and Vamos a Vencer (We Shall Conquer) - 251,000 young people were sent out to teach basic literacy to over a million illiterate peasant workers between1st January and 22nd December 1961. ‘You will teach and you will learn’ Fidel Castro told the volunteers, most of whom were from the urban centres and knew little of the realities of life on the land. By the end of the almost year-long campaign, 75% of those million or so rural workers had achieved rudimentary literacy skills, laying the foundation for an extensive programme of education focussing primarily on adults.

The literacy campaign was just one of a series of extensive social and economic policies – agrarian reform and health care provision being the other principle measures - which contributed to the dramatic improvement of the quality of life among the lowest strata of Cuban society. For decades the rural peasantry languished under quasi-feudal conditions of acute poverty, ignorance and underdevelopment whilst Cuba’s resources were plundered by the United States. When Fidel Castro said that revolution and education are the same thing, he was alluding to the objective of aligning education policy with the four objectives of the Cuban Revolution, namely economic growth, attainment of an egalitarian society, liberation from the economic, political and cultural hegemony of the United States and the transformation of work into the creative activity for a ‘new socialist man’.

However, the rapid expansion of education provision – particularly at primary level, was also a response to the economic crisis facing the country during the earliest phase of the Revolution. In the first three years following the overthrow of the Batista regime in 1959, and following the nationalisation of foreign firms, about 250.000 professional, managerial, technical and skilled workers and their families who made up the prosperous middle strata of Cuban society fled the country, taking their skills, expertise and experience with them. About one third of Cuba’s doctors left the country, as did about 15% of technical and professional personnel. Thus the allocation of a major part of Cuba’s productive resources to education was necessary in order to tackle this shortage of expertise and expand and develop the country’s forces of production.

Mass education –with an emphasis on mathematics, science and technical skills related to production, helped to increase the country’s productive capacity, despite the fact the devoting resources to the rapid expansion of school enrolments necessitated a slower growth in higher education. According to Samuel Bowles, the emphasis on education in the early years of the Revolution derived not so much from economic calculation and careful planning but from an ideological commitment to achieving greater social equality and to bringing all of the people into the cultural and political mainstream of the nation. Throughout the 1960s economic and educational planning became more systematic, with the annual allocation of graduates of each type of educational institution by government Ministries to fill work vacancies in the sector of the economy for which they were responsible. This period also saw the expansion of free higher education and the formation of scientific and technical research institutes in every major area of production, breaking Cuba’s pre-revolutionary dependency on foreign skilled workers.

Sustained investment in Education for All

For an objective evaluation of how Cuba’s education system works in practice, it’s worth noting the assessment contained in a report commissioned by the World Bank (Gasperini, L. 2000)

‘Cuba is a poor country and the past decade has been particularly difficult economically. Yet the success of its schools flaunts (sic) conventional wisdom. Education in Cuba is entirely public, centrally planned, and free in a global reform environment of privatization, downscaling of the state role and cost recovery’ [i.e. profit – ed.}

The report goers on to say that the Cuban education system is characterised by sustained and high levels of investment; consistent policy environment and political will in support of education for all; quality basic education, including early childhood and student health initiatives, literacy, adult and non-formal education programmes.

By way of comparison, in 2012 Cuba invested 12.6% of GDP in education, compared to 5.6% in the UK and 4.9% in the USA). Notwithstanding the pressures of the economic blockade, Cuba has consistently devoted 10 -13 % GDP to education – even during the ‘Special Period’ following the collapse of the Soviet Union - well over the UNESCO recommendation of 6%.

Education from ‘cradle to grave’

Cuba’s ‘cradle to grave’ education system is carefully structured along the following lines;

· Comprehensive early years, primary and secondary education.

· Complementary informal educational programmes outside school, including adult education.

· Mechanisms to foster community participation in the management of schools. Every school has a ‘school council’ (sapndido) made up of teachers, parents, social and health professionals who offer support services to families and students. · Low cost learning materials of high quality

· Extensive pre and in-service teacher training fostering high status and morale, a transparent system of accountability, strategies for developing a culture of professionalism and incentives for innovation. Teachers undergo two days of in-service training per month and weekly on-site activities. The evaluation process is peer-review oriented and emphasised development rather than documentation. Dismissal for poor performance is rare (dismissal only happens in the event of fraudulent or criminal activity) – poor teacher performance is seen as a failure of the system.

· Teaching and student involvement in adapting the national curriculum and developing learning materials locally. C

· Carefully structured competition that enhances the collective rather than the individual.

A notable feature of Cuba’s system it its strategy for special educational needs (SEN) and for students in remote rural regions. Santiago Borges, director of the Latin American Reference Centre for Special Education has stated,

“We have withstood more than 50 years of economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States, and we have been able to introduce and establish new information and communication technologies for ensuring access by children and adolescents to different types of learning…At this time we have 372 special schools with a teaching staff in excess of 15,700. Having one teacher for every three students is evidence of the State's concern in this sense, and it places us at the same level as developed countries” (Rodriguez Guererro, 2018)

Higher education is free and available to all, with admission by interview and examination. Over 600,000 students attend University in Cuba, roughly 15% of the adult population. Demand for graduates is high in all sectors of the economy and whilst the vast majority of graduates go on to work in the state sector, a growing number are attracted to the burgeoning private sector, with some starting their own businesses.

Renewal and Reform

It is in recognition of the ever-changing economic and social conditions that there have been three major reforms of the Cuban education system since the Revolution. It was the first Reform Programme in the 1970s that established a genuinely national education system accordance with the Economic and Social Policy Guidelines of Party and Revolution. A second programme of reforms in the 1980s involved the revising and updating of study plans, course curricula, text-books and other learning materials. Reforms to the education system are ‘piloted’ on an experimental basis in a small number of provinces before being extended across the country. These proposals involve a level of consultation with teachers and pedagogic specialists unheard of in the UK.

The most recent reforms in 2017 are a case in point. Setting out the rationale for the reforms, Dr. Alberto Valle Lima, director of Pedagogical Sciences Centre at the Central Institute of Pedagogical Sciences stated that the education system had to ‘diversify its offerings and contribute to strengthening the political-ideological education of our youth’ in response to the economic and social changes in Cuba. The reforms process also identified the need to enhance teacher training. An innovative feature of this third round of efforts was the implementation of a general and institutional curriculum for all schools nationwide, which drawn up by each facility itself. The ‘institutional curriculum’ applied to all pre-school facuilities, schoola, adult learning centres and polytechnic institutes, and involved collaboration between staff, students, parents and the local community facilitated the municipal and provincial arms of government. One feature of the ‘institutional plan’ was the expansion of the range of school activities. Cuban schools have long facilitated career guidance groups, scientific societies, and study groups linked to local historical sites and monuments. These were expanded to include complementary courses, technical and social projects. The stated purpose of this reform was to recognise the diverse breadth of students’ interests and strike a balance between them and the needs and the capacities of the institution and the community in order to make school a more enjoyable place for students.

Another component of the reform process was the elaboration of new study programmes for four grade levels, including for children one, two, and four years of age in early childhood education; first and fourth grade at a primary level; seventh and tenth grades (secondary level). This meant designing new methodological tools, pedagogical guidance, textbooks and work-books - a process that involved extensive drafting and redrafting of materials during the pilot stage. Before they are used in all schools, the new programmes and materials were submitted to the Institute of Pedagogical Sciences’ sub-committee of experts for Plans and Programmes, and approved by the Ministry of Education.

Threats and challenges

The introduction of a closely regulated private sector and the enormous expansion of the tourism sector was a response to the economic and social crisis of the ‘special period in time of peace’, which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. The loss of economic and technical support and a ready market for Cuba’s raw materials – especially sugar for which the USSR paid above world market prices – and with the resulting levels of poverty threatening social unrest for the first time since the Revolution.

The expansion of tourism has seen a proliferation of privately owned accommodation (casas particulares) restaurants (paladares) and nightclubs. Many highly educated young people train to be doctors, engineers, agriculturalists and bio-technologists. However, the rewards of the burgeoning tourism industry are attractive – working as tour guides, restaurant workers and so on means earning tips in US dollar-equivalent Convertible Pesos (CUCs) rather than the local currency (CUPs) – so that the government has to devise incentives to encourage young people to work in agriculture, medicine or the new biotech industries. The lure of tourism is also having an effect on teacher recruitment, which a recently announced pay rise is aimed at addressing. At the same time, the careful introduction of market mechanisms threatens to undermine the ideological underpinning Cuban education- that of emulation rather than competition, altruism over self-interest.

These tensions were evident during the visit referred to earlier. Many of the school students we spoke to were, unsurprisingly, articulate and well informed. But when asked what they were hoping to do, many of them said they wanted to work tourism. It is clear that Cuba is grappling with a complex and contradictory problem due in no small part to the exigencies imposed on this small country by the decades long (and increasingly harsh) economic blockade imposed by the US contrary to international law. What is important to remember, however, is that Cuba is facing up to and working though these challenges on its own terms. So far at least, Cuba’s education system has not been captured by the global ‘edu-businesses’ such as Pearson who have been busy making inroads into (and huge profits from) education systems around the world.

‘Yo, si puedo’ – antidote to the GERM

As many of us who work in education are acutely aware, education in much of the economically developed world is suffering from the neo-liberal disease that is the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). The symptoms of this malaise are unmistakeable. Democratically accountable public education is undermined or blatantly dismantled to be replaced by ‘autonomous’ academies, ‘specialist’ and selective schools. Management techniques modelled on corporate structures (with ‘CEO’s drawn from the corporate rather the educational milieu) are imported into academic institutions. Collaboration is replaced by competition with schools jostling for positon in league tables. Moreover, there is the de-professionalisation of teachers and attacks on their unions, erosion of pay, pensions, terms and conditions; and the enormous growth in the power and influence of global edu-businesses hovering over crisis-riven education systems, eager for rich pickings.

Thus far, Cuba has been able to resist these forces, whilst facing head on the challenges of building socialism in a globalized, financialised capitalism and the potentially corrosive effects of its neo-liberal ideology. These considerable challenges notwithstanding, Cuba’s steadfast commitment to education remains undiminished. Given the struggles of the past sixty years and the continuing economic strictures of the US embargo, its remarkable accomplishments are all the more impressive, reflecting decades of devoted work, sacrifice and commitment to the transformative power of mass education, work that continues to empower millions across the developing world.

This article began with a brief account of the literacy programme in 1961. One significant but barely recognised legacy of that movement is the programme developed by the Latin American and Caribbean Pedagogical Institute of Cuba, which is spreading adult education in more than 30 countries. The programme —known as “Yo, sí puedo” (“Yes, I can”)— has been used by Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement to educate 7000 adults in the state of Maranhão. It has been used to educate indigenous communities in rural areas in Uruguay and has perhaps been most successful in Venezuela. Two years after it was adopted in 2003, UNESCO declared the country illiteracy free.

The programme is effective because it uses local teaching materials that are delivered by a local facilitators whose social characteristics mirroring those of the target groups of learners. As well as basic literacy, the programme covers subjects such as health and hygiene, caring for the elderly, and environmental conservation. In some countries, the programme has been adapted for use prisons, psychiatric hospitals and in the armed forces. Across Latin America and Africa, over 10 million adults who did not have the opportunity to attend school as children have now learned to read and write through the programme. Cuba continues to hold out the possibility that ‘another education is possible’. The spirit of the literacy brigadistas of 1961 lives on!

References

Bowles, Samuel, Cuban Education and the Revolutionary Ideology, Harvard Educational Review, Vol.41, no.4 November 1971

Gasperini, Lavinia, The Cuban Education System: Lessons and Dilemmas, Education Reform and Management Series, Vol 1 no.3, July 2000, World Bank. Washington DC

Little, Gawain (ed.), Global Education Reform. Building resistance and solidarity, Manifesto Press 2015

Piper, Susan, Cuba’s Literacy Revolution, Morning Star, 24th January 2017 available at: https://cuba-solidarity.org.uk/news/article/3313/cubas-literacy-revolution. Rodriguez Guerrero, Lizzi; Special Education in Cuba: Teaching Everyone, Everywhere Periodico26, 3rd January 2018, available at: http://www.periodico26.cu/index.php/en/feature/we-recomend/item/7546-special- education-in-cuba-teaching-everyone-everywhere.

Michael McKrell is an activist with the UCU and Vice-President of Preston & South Ribble TUC

A Loan Of 300,000

According to the media, Labour was “swept from its heartlands” on 12th December. In fact, the electoral map shows that most of its heartlands are red: Manchester, Liverpool, , Bristol, Nottingham, Hull, much of the North East, much of Wales, significant parts of the Midlands and even the red wall is still standing. What happened is that in 59 constituencies Labour voters lent their votes to the Tories. Not all Labour voters. The number of votes which made the difference per constituency was 5,000 at most. Thus, some 300,000 votes maximum was the difference between a Tory majority and a hung parliament. The arithmetic is interesting: had Labour kept those 300,000 votes and thus the 59 seats it would have 262 seats, the SNP 48, Plaid Cymru 4, Greens I, SDLP 2. Those 317 combined against the Tory’s 306 would have made a Labour minority administration possible. 300,000 votes made the difference. Less than 1 per cent of the votes cast. It was much closer than the media imply.

The vital question for Labour is why did those 300,000 pull away, given that in the rest of Labour’s heartlands the vote, though damaged, held up? The answer lies in the arithmetic. Across those 59 seats, the Brexit Party polled well. Almost all its vote will have come from Labour. Take Rother Valley for example. The Brexit Party polled c 6,000, Labour c 15,000 and the Tory c 22,000. That’s nearly 30,000 votes for the two parties whose main offer was withdrawal from the EU. That leaves no doubt that the desire to leave the EU was uppermost in the minds of those voters. The picture is replicated across all 59, more or less. However, the matter of leaving the EU was combined with a deep grievance over the failure of democracy: these people voted Leave in 2016 and were let down. Democracy let them down and for them democracy was their Labour MP and therefore the Labour Party and therefore Jeremy Corbyn. Not all places that voted Leave showed the same pattern: Preston re-elected its Labour MP, as did Wigan. What’s the explanation?

The 59 constituencies involved are small, left-behind towns, places which don’t attract investment, the young, the educated, the creative. There aren’t many stockbrokers in Grimsby, novelists in Barrow, professional footballers in Leigh, professors of neuroscience in Wakefield. There is poverty, many people on benefits, food banks, community shops, below average levels of university entrance and not many heading for Balliol to read Greats, and growing hopelessness tilting to despair. Manchester is a Labour city. Visit on a fine Saturday afternoon and you’ll find crowds, busy cafes and pubs, people who have come for a wide variety of purposes, interesting restaurants and a sense of vitality. This is a city which attracts. There are cranes all around, high rises under construction. There is money, movement, opportunity, variety, cosmopolitanism. Make the short trip to Leigh and you’ll find the opposite: a small town trying to keep going, a place which attracts few visitors, a sense of inwardness. You’ll probably find yourself heading back quickly to the Northern Quarter.

These small, left-behind towns are depressed and depressing. They were left behind by Tony Blair who embraced a doctrine of sharp-elbowed shape-shifting. The world is moving fast, changing in ways you can’t imagine. Keep up, or get left behind. The result was the cities surged and the little towns withered. The little towns in the north, that is. In the south, there’s more money and London’s force of gravity.

In 2016 these places got a chance to make people notice them. It’s a long way from Grimsby to Westminster, but Brussels might as well be on another planet. To people from these places, the EU was distant, bureaucratic, incomprehensible, slick, fast, and had, as far as they could see, done nothing to make their lives better. Voting to leave was a way to make a mark. The political Establishment thought the result was in the bag. Common folk from Dewsbury and Colne Valley were able to give public schoolboys Cameron and Osborne a kick in the shins. They had been forgotten, but now the world knew they existed.

The Leave vote put Labour in a quandary. Corbyn’s response was right: the result would be respected; but as May failed to draw in the other parties and find a deal which could pass, as she stumbled from gaffe to gaffe, Labour was drawn into a political struggle over leaving the EU which simply made the voters in the 59 feel more alienated and despairing. Corbyn was never a keen Remainer. Given his way, he would probably have nailed Labour’s colours to the Leave mast; but he was beset by Remainers who pushed for the Party to become unequivocally Remain. Watson declared Labour “a Remain and reform Party.” He thought he was clever. Almost everyone on the right of the Party did something similar. Blair, Campbell, they treated Leavers as worthy of contempt. They forgot there were enough of them to keep Labour from power.

All those who trapped Corbyn, who campaigned for Labour to be unequivocally Remain, bear a major responsibility for the defeat. The voices have already been raised to claim Corbyn and the manifesto were to blame. The old argument is dusted off: people will not vote for left-of-centre policies. Really? What has just happened in Scotland? The SNP want nuclear weapons off Scottish soil. Their programme is distinctively left-of-centre, and what about the 10,295,607 voters who endorsed Corbyn and his programme? That’s more than Milliband, than Brown and than Blair in 2005. Taking the increase in population into account, Corbyn still outstrips those three results. Those who claim Corbyn and the manifesto alone lost the election are ignoring the evidence and pushing an ideological position. The election was lost principally by 300,000 votes in 59 constituencies and all those votes were cast in favour of leaving the EU. It was Labour’s failure to respect the result of the 2016 vote which cost them the election, and most of the people responsible for that are on the right of the Party.

Needless to say, Corbyn has never been given a fair press, nor a fair crack of the whip by his own Party. He has been slandered as an anti-Semite, a vile invention motivated by those who can’t accept the Palestinian people have rights. Given what he has faced, the result is remarkable. All the same, what we are going to hear from the right is that Labour must return to the “centre-ground,” in spite of the popularity of the manifesto. The policies are middle-of-the road. What is going to be suggested is that warmed-over Blairism will do the trick. That would be a dangerous, reactionary fantasy. The core of the manifesto must not be ditched. That core is this: a transformation of the economy so that wealth and power move from the few to the many. The only agency we have with the power to do this is the State. The commitment to State intervention to lift the left-behind, individuals and communities, from distress and despair, must not be watered down.

Two things were entwined in the minds of the 300,000: leaving the EU and democratic betrayal. The latter is crucial. Democracy is founded on equality: one person, one vote. Yet money buys influence. If Branson picks up his mobile and calls Johnson tomorrow, he will speak to him. The richest 1,000 people in the UK are worth in excess of £500bn. That buys them more influence than 20 million votes. If it wasn’t obvious, there is a body of research which upholds this thesis. Huge discrepancies of wealth are an affront to democracy. They threaten its very existence. That’s why the core of the manifesto is right. Len McCluskey’s point is, of course, a good one: the manifesto needs to be honed to sharpness; but that process must not be a cover for giving up on the intent to transform the economy and society.

What has happened over the past four years shows the response when the power of the rich is threatened. The influx of hundreds of thousands of members to the Labour Party, the huge enthusiasm and hope Corbyn generated among his supporters, were met by viciousness. Democracy must embrace the possibility of radical ideas, or what is it? If we are not permitted to argue and organise for an alternative to the existing economy, then where is democracy? There are those in the Labour Party who embrace the narrow view that democracy is no more than the right to change the people in charge now and again, but any real challenge to the status quo is off limits. Even more serious, there are some who think no criticism of Israel or Zionism is permissible. Corbyn has built a bridgehead. The Party must keep its nerve, stick with the agenda for real change and elect a leader who is committed to it. To lose the energy generated would be tragic. To make Labour once more, as it was under Blair, a pale version of the Tories will condemn the 300,000 and those in similar circumstances to further poverty, lack of opportunity, alienation and despair. Johnson came close to missing a majority. He is a chancer. His luck will run out. He has a conundrum: how he is going to meet the high expectations the 300,000 have of him? They are looking for the transformation of their towns and their lives. That’s what they believe leaving the EU and voting for Johnson will bring. To lift these 59 left-behind places will cost big money. If what Lord Shaughnessy said on the radio is a measure of what Johnson intends, the 300,000 will be bitterly disappointed: improved transport and a few technical colleges. Scraps from the rich man’s table. Johnson has vowed not to raise taxes and he has committed himself to increased public spending. When we leave the EU our GDP will fall, all the economic experts say. How will Johnson square the circle? The chances of the kind of public spending needed to turn the 59 round are very slim. Johnson may gamble that a few morsels will be enough. He likes to gamble.

The nature of the defeat is being exaggerated by the media and by some in the Labour Party. It is, of course, bad; but it is nowhere near terminal, as some have suggested. It was a matter of 300,000 votes. Johnson will not conclude the trade deals he has promised. There may be serious economic turbulence. He will not solve the crisis in the NHS. Next time, the matter of leaving the EU will be behind us but the issues on which Labour is strong will remain. It will be a tragedy and stupid if we lose the core of the manifesto. We need to look soberly at just what happened, understand why on the basis of evidence rather than speculation and resist those voices calling for the dilution of radicalism. Labour exists to transform society, not to provide a parliamentary greasy pole for careerists. It must retain that commitment to transformation at its core.

Those 300,000 votes were lent. They will return, some more quickly than others, but once we are out of the EU, the bitterness in those minds will recede and they will start to think about other things. They are not Tories by tradition, inclination or property. They are Labour people who hit out when they were let down. Labour’s message to those 300,000 on the EU was wrong. Many of us thought that tilting to the Remainers was the best strategy but that was to treat the votes of 300,000 with contempt. The Tories outmanoeuvred Labour. Johnson used the issue to fulfil his ambition. Labour was caught between the gears of its Remain and Leave wings; but the drive to dismiss the past four years, to eviscerate Corbyn, to talk of expelling Momentum from the Party, to fly into a panic and ditch the good heart of the manifesto, will ensure those 300,000 and millions more have no one to offer them true transformation, real improvement of their lives, rather than the cynical, fly-by-night promises of a millionaire chancer.

Johnson showed the power of a simple slogan often repeated. Our motto must be KEEP LABOUR LEFT.

Alan Dent was a long-standing branch and regional officer with the former NUT and remains a Labour and Trade Union activist in Preston.

Review

A Few More Protest Songs *

The only introduction I will give is: No Pasaran - They Shall Not Pass.

1) "Ghosts of Cable Street" by the The Men They Couldn't Hang. Forming in Camden, London, in the mid-1980s The Men They Couldn't Hang broke up in 1991 only to reform five years later. Their latest studio album, "Cock a Hoop," was released in 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv9iZ6Aj8oM

2) "These Hands" by The Wakes. The Wakes formed in 2006 in Glasgow, Scotland. Their last studio album, Venceremos, came out in 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA7FeSykAw4&list=PLUbD_gb6eGbO2sX0SU6RS to6mOkOSsE0t&index=6

3) "Viva la Quinta Brigada" by Christy Moore (live at Barrowland, Glasgow). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQbXO828Vio

Chris Lomax is a Labour Councillor in South Ribble (Walton-le-dale East) and President of Preston & South Ribble TUC

Killing the King – the Trial & Execution of the Man of Blood

“Let no man live uncurbed by law nor curbed by tyranny.”

Aeschylus (523 BC to 456 BC) “So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.” Numbers 35:33

It was the in August 1648 that sealed the fate of Charles Stuart, the man who had been King of England (and Scotland) since 1626. The long-running dispute between King and Parliament had exploded into violence just six years before. Many who had fought against the Crown nevertheless remained willing to accept that a grand compromise was desirable, perhaps even inevitable. Parliament had offered a power- sharing agreement as early as June 1642. But the King’s political stupidity and ideological extremism meant he would never compromise. And neither would he ever admit defeat. This bovine stubbornness elongated the agony of the British Civil Wars way beyond the point where Parliament had clearly won the decisive military victory. Which meant large- scale and unnecessary death and suffering. It also convinced many in the Army and Parliament that Charles Stuart must be held personally accountable for the blood shed in his name. When his army was crushed at Preston the clamour grew for justice to be done and seen to be done; the King had to be punished for the crimes he had committed against the people. Indeed, for those radicals who had long fought to rid the country of despotism, the King’s intransigence provided an opportunity for the hateful lie of the divine right of kings to be nailed once and for all. But Charles was not to be quietly murdered at night in some damp dungeon, or ‘killed while trying to escape.’ No, Charles Stuart would be tried in public according to the practices of English justice. It had never been done before in England and England would never be the same once it had been accomplished. The First Civil War had effectively ended at the in May 1645. There, near a Northamptonshire village, the King’s military forces had been destroyed so comprehensively that Charles was unable to rebuild another English field army of any size or quality. So, as Parliament’s generals set about the reduction of the last cities, towns and castles held by the Crown, the contents of the King’s secret correspondence – captured at Naseby – were published by the government. The details of the King’s letters were damning. They revealed the alliances he had arranged whereby a fresh royalist army would be raised in Ireland for service in England. In return for various political and administrative concessions to the Irish Confederation, then in control of large parts of Ireland, Charles might finally have been able to outnumber and overwhelm the Army of Parliament.

Charles I painted in a flattering manner, in armour and astride a horse like some conquering Caesar. In reality, he was the worst king of England since the Middle Ages.

To most contemporary English minds the importation of a Catholic army from Ireland was deeply unsettling. Anti-Irish and anti-Catholic propaganda had been rife in England for decades and was regularly exploited to blacken the reputation of the King (by associating violent events in Ireland with the alleged machinations of Catholics at the royal court). English identity was defined, in part, by an active antipathy to Catholicism in general (as an anti–Protestant international political organisation) and English Catholics in particular (as incurably disloyal). Catholic monarchs dominated Europe and the New World. The split with Rome under Henry VIII, the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Thomas Cromwell, the commercial rivalries and regular warfare with Catholic Spain, the aggressive denunciations of Elizabeth I by several popes, the fear of the geo-political power of Catholic France – all these factors had fed into the shaping of a popular view of England as an embattled Protestant island. I say English here because though after 1603 the King of England was also King of Scotland, the two nations were otherwise separate distinct nations and had been for centuries. Strategically, Scots had traditionally favoured an alliance with France against England. Scottish identity had in part been shaped by the centuries-long struggle to prevent English kings from extending their influence north of the border, of curtailing English influence on Scottish high politics and preventing any interference in the regular feuds that occurred over succession to the Scottish throne. Religiously, the Scots had had their own particular version of the Protestant reformation. It didn’t help that the King’s consort was of French royal birth and therefore Catholic. English Protestant zealots – and they were plenty in Parliament as well as in the wider country – condemned the presence of Mass-saying priests in the Queen’s entourage and the threat such open displays of ‘popery’ might pose to the future of Anglicanism as the national religion. Might not, it was asked, a husband or son of a Catholic queen convert to Catholicism and drag his kingdom with him? Scots’ adherence to their more Calvinist settlement had irked Charles, to the point where he had raised an army to try and impose on the Scots his new Anglican Prayer Book. But armies are expensive and war even more so. It was the English Parliament’s control of the nation’s purse-strings, and its willingness to exploit this fact, that led an assertive parliamentary leadership to frustrate, defy and eventually make war on the King.

A pikeman. It was ordinary soldiers such as these that Thomas Rainsborough insisted should have the vote during the Putney Debates of 1647.

Four years later, defeated in battle and with his last redoubts taken or besieged, the King had been closely detained while Parliament deliberated on a political and constitutional settlement. But a constitutional monarchy, akin to that arrived at following the usurpation of his son (James II) in 1688, was consistently and irreconcilably denounced by Charles Stuart. Despite the long history of Scottish and English kings being usurped, deposed and or murdered by their subjects, Charles still believed that he was appointed by God and that he could and should rule, without let or hindrance, until his natural death allowed his heir to succeed him. In 1646 the Army was the great power in England and the Independent faction in Parliament was sympathetic to its demands; both were deeply suspicious of the King. But the Presbyterians and Royalists were largely in favour of some face-saving settlement, one that would establish independence for Parliament but at the same time restore the King to his throne. If this were to be achieved, it was widely anticipated that the new consensus in Parliament would then neuter the Army, by sending it overseas, starving it of pay and supplies, or both. The Army knew that as well as Parliament overseeing its pay, recruitment and victualling, a grand alliance of its factions might even employ Scottish or Irish armies to overwhelm it and impose their favoured political settlement on England by force. Indeed, even as Royalists, Independents and Presbyterians in Parliament debated the merits of a settlement that might preserve the monarchy, Charles was plotting the raising of a Scottish royalist army in return for the imposition of Presbyterianism in England. That Charles would abolish the order of bishops, alter the Anglican liturgy beyond recognition and redefine the official theology of the very Church of England he had sworn to protect during his coronation, demonstrates just how far he was prepared to go to regain power. No stratagem, no deceit, no betrayal, no broken promise was beyond the pale, if it helped Charles keep his crown and or restore his tyrannical rule in England.

General Sir , English nobleman, politician, general, and Parliamentary commander-in-chief during the British Civil Wars.

By the spring of 1648 the King, despite being held captive, was ready to unleash another war of invasion and insurrection in England and Wales. The King still offered to sacrifice the Anglican Church (on the face of it, anyway – perhaps he never intended to go through with it?) and impose Presbyterianism in England. Royalist plotters incited the mutiny of troops in garrison towns in the North of England and Wales and stoked insurrection in Kent and Essex. Elements of the Navy were suborned, too. But these events were not closely co-ordinated with the essential and main element of the plan: the invasion of England by a Scottish army. The Army acted swiftly and its chief generals were quickly in the field with their men. Thomas Fairfax secured London and besieged the pockets of insurrectionary royalists holed-up in Kent and Essex. marched on Wales and John Lambert was sent north to contend with the Scots invasion. The mutinous warships were defeated by the Parliamentary Navy and the survivors fled to the Netherlands with their new commander, the Prince of Wales. Cromwell defeated the ad hoc royalist field army in Wales in May and by July his soldiers had retaken the centre of royalist resistance: Pembroke. His work in Wales done Cromwell marched north to join Lambert. The two forces combined in time to meet the Scottish army commanded by the Duke of Hamilton at Preston. In a three day battle the Scots were utterly defeated at the ancient village of Walton-le-dale, where the royalist line of retreat across a narrow bridge over the River Ribble had allowed Cromwell to defeat the Scots in detail. Outfought, the fleeing remnants of the royalist army were vigorously pursued by Lambert’s cavalry and the King’s plans lay in ruins.

It was the well-disciplined and well-trained troopers of Cromwell’s cavalry that won the decisive Battle of Naseby in 1645.

The Independents in Parliament and the Army were enraged at the King’s outrageously deceitful behaviour. Though defeated and held under ‘house arrest’ by Parliamentary forces he had conspired to bring about another war and bring still more bloodshed, destruction and suffering to the English people. To radicals in London such as the it merely reinforced their view of him as a perfidious tyrant. To Cromwell it was a turning point: no longer would he entertain any hope of negotiating with Charles. Cromwell, himself an Independent, deeply resented the King’s repeated duplicity but he also deplored his use of a foreign – Scottish – army to impose tyranny on the people of England. A 1980s study suggested that nearly 4% of the population were killed in the Civil Wars, whether directly or by the famine, crime and disease brought in their wake. Roving armies routinely stripped the land of eatables, ill-disciplined soldiery harassed local communities and committed crimes ranging in seriousness from drunkenness and petty theft to rape and murder. Civil wars are always more vicious and brutal than those between nations, not least because the participants often have so much more to lose. Many defeated Royalists had their property confiscated, were arrested, imprisoned, executed or forced into exile. But then so were many Parliamentarians after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Yet despite all the mayhem he had caused, the Presbyterians joined the Royalists in Parliament in demanding further negotiations with the King. This was firmly rejected by the Army’s rank and file as well as its generals, Cromwell, Lambert and Fairfax included. The Army controlled the person of the King and it controlled London. It had doughtily defended Parliament, destroying every foreign and royalist army sent into England and defeating every rebellion raised against it. It now resolved to deal with the cause of all of it: the King himself. The Levellers (strong in London and certain regiments of the Army) and the Independents could be relied upon not to object. But there were those in the Royalist and Presbyterian factions in Parliament who would doubtless seek to veto any action against the King.

General John Lambert was one of the era’s finest generals.

Orders were issued at the highest level and Colonel Pride (hence the name Pride’s Purge) paraded a force of his infantrymen at the entrance to Parliament. To increase the sense of menace a force of cavalry was also drawn up nearby. The message was unmistakable. As an MP Cromwell was well-placed to identify those who would never agree to a reckoning with the King. If Parliament was to do what was necessary then certain members could no longer be allowed to sit in the House of Commons. As the MPs approached individually and in groups Colonel Pride eyed them suspiciously and consulted the list he had been provided with. He ordered the arrest of 45 of the MPs with a further 146 refused entry. The Army’s Council of Officers then voted for the King to be moved to Windsor Castle and then London in preparation for a trial. The trial of King Charles was to be held in public and according to the standard practices of justice then prevalent in England. It’s important to recall that not every power-broker in London desired Charles’s death. What many wanted was for him to accept the reality of his parlous situation and agree a constitutional compromise with Parliament. A trial was a radical way of applying pressure on him to submit. For Levellers such as John Lilburne and Thomas Rainsborough it was also an opportunity to finally establish in law that legitimate authority in England derived from the people and not from a monarch. That no ruler could claim absolute powers and that even if a monarch were tolerated, his or her powers were limited by a ‘social contract’ that, if broken, voided the legitimacy of the monarch’s rule. As recently as 1647 elected representatives of the Army had met in Putney to discuss the future of the kingdom. The Putney Debates were held through October and November that year. Colonel Rainsborough explained his views with a direct simplicity. In words that we know now to be far-sighted he said: “For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under…” This was not a view shared by most senior officers, for whom a property-qualification for electors was an essential bulwark against what they might have condemned as mob-rule. There were Levellers in the Army as well as in the major cities but Cromwell was no Leveller. Cromwell wanted the King to accept the kind of compromise first put forward in the summer of 1642. In reality, there was nothing to stop Cromwell simply ordering the King’s murder. It had been done before. The ruinously incompetent Edward II had been deposed and then murdered in 1327 (it was rumoured he died from a hot poker being inserted into his abdomen through his anus, supposedly so as to leave the corpse free of external injuries). Richard II, a murderous tyrant, was also deposed and then murdered in secret in 1400.

Oliver Cromwell: MP, General, . One historian lauded him as England’s ‘Chief of Men.’

On both occasions Parliament had requested or approved the monarch’s abdication, with the executions ordered by the new king. During the civil wars of the fifteenth century Henry VI (reigned 1422-1461 and 1470-1471) had been effectively deposed by the magnates with the appointment of a regent and a council of nobles. But even here Parliament claimed to be acting in the king’s name. The deposed Henry VI was then murdered in secret on the orders of the new King. The boy king, Edward V was murdered by his uncle, Richard III, who himself was the last king to be killed during or after battle – the others were Harold II and Richard I. . Another example is the fate of Lady Jane Grey, whose proclamation as Queen following Edward VI’s death (1553) was withdrawn by Parliament. She was later tried and executed for treason. If medieval nobles could dispose of bad kings then why not Parliament? The obvious legal barrier was that because the administration of justice in England began with the King, how could a king be tried by his subjects? There was also the fact that in 1648 most Europeans (including the English) saw monarchy as the apex of a necessary and intrinsically good social order mandated by God. From the royal summit flowed the patriarchal system, lord and tenant, slave and master, father and child, husband and wife. Kill a king, many feared, and where does it end? Indeed, the fate of Richard II dogged Henry IV and his successors, in part because his legitimacy was questioned by his having killed an anointed king, God’s appointee to rule England (or so many in the Church argued at the time).

Vice-Admiral Thomas Rainsborough, sailor, soldier, Leveller and Fifth Monarchist, he died in controversial circumstances in 1648 and his funeral in London was attended by several thousand people.

Seventeenth century education placed great emphasis on the classics. So many of the dramatis personae in London in the winter of 1648-49 would have been familiar with the fate of republican government in Rome, the short-lived democracy of Athens, as well as tyrant-emperors such as Nero and Caligula. From this historical perspective Parliament’s supporters believed that political structures, prone to manipulation and exploitation as they were, required renovation and upgrading via a robust system of constitutional checks and balances. Above all, in the England of the 1640s it was not unorthodox to assert that if such structures were to remain ‘fit for purpose’ they must be regularly tested by the people through Parliament. English commoners were not just MPs, of course, they were also jurors, constables, electors and justices. They were, in a real sense, already heavily involved in the administration of the country. In England kings came and went but in its towns and shires the business of government and the administration of justice went on much the same. In refusing even to entertain the notion of power-sharing the King had alienated many of the moderate-minded decision-makers. We don’t know, of course, but even if most Englishmen in the 1640s were royalists they were not royalists at any price. Parliament’s success in the ‘war of ideas’ was due, in part, to its ability to offer a more ‘English’ vision of kingship (as opposed to the absolutism of Catholic France, for example). This is why the historical examples of English kings constrained by Parliament were invoked again and again. As an office of state, the monarchy was to be accountable to the people through Parliament, with monarchs working in co-operation with, not lording it over, the existing political and administrative structures. Even mild-mannered merchants in provincial towns felt irked by Charles’s abrasive arrogance, his presumption of absolutism. In May 1642 Charles had demanded ‘his’ town of Hull open its gate to his army. He was refused. Parliament did not accept that he had “the same right and title to his towns…that every particular man hath to his house, lands and goods, for his Majesty’s towns are no more his own than his kingdom is his own, and his kingdom is no more his own than his people are his own…they are only entrusted with their kingdoms.” Frustratingly, Charles would not do the obvious thing a defeated and friendless king could and should do: abdicate. Instead he latched onto one fanciful rumour after another, including one that the Prince of Wales was raising a French army (carried by a Dutch fleet) to come and restore him to his throne. It might have been better if Charles had had his throat slit and the corpse slipped quietly into the River Thames. His abdication could have been forced on him before death or even fabricated after it. Some suitably malleable aristocratic personage could have been appointed as regent while Parliament continued to rule the country.

John Lilburne – Freeborn John – is one of the outstanding figures of English history. His articulation of human rights – “freeborn rights” – as inalienable and irremovable remains a landmark in English and world history.

But this was not what the radicals in the Army or Parliament wanted. They wanted a republic based on the rule of law, a republic where the people were sovereign, where tyrants were not to be tolerated and where the consent of the people for their ruler was formalised in a new constitution. And what better demonstration of their bona fides than a public trial of a tyrannous king? One that would also be a trial of monarchy itself. The fact that such a wide range of options were under discussion at this time was due, in part, to the terrible suffering of war: a huge death toll; destitution; famine; disease. War, especially when it is on the scale of that endured in the 1640s, brings a demand for change in its wake. There grows a groundswell of feeling that some cathartic transformation must be brought about to make the awful sacrifice meaningful. What was the point of all that bloodshed, it was said, if England is just going to return to the status quo ante-bellum? A return to 1642 as an outcome was anathema to a radicalised Army. The Levellers in its ranks had long decided that the King would have to die if the sovereignty of Parliament was going to be firmly established and an English Republic proclaimed. Citizens in arms, the soldiers had built their own elected representative institutions through which, via regular and open debate, they had developed their own distinct political programme. In June 1647 the Army had declared: “[We are] not a mere mercenary army, hired to serve any arbitrary power of a state, but called forth and conjured, by the several Declarations of Parliament, to the defence of our own and the people’s just rights, and liberties.” In May 1648 a declaration noted that God had “led and prospered us in all our undertakings this year.” And that it was their duty to “… call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account, for that blood he had shed, and mischief he had done, to his utmost, against the Lord’s cause and people in these poor nations.” Religious justification for the trial and execution of a king was enthusiastically promoted, too. The republican Edmund Ludlow insisted that just as the King had: “sinned openly, so he should be tried, sentenced and executed in the face of the world, and not secretly made away by poisonings and other private deaths.” Protestants were often very well-versed with the Old Testament, where numerous lessons could be learnt as to the inequity of kings. But the religious critique was more than just citing biblical examples of impious monarchs. The notion of atonement for sins committed was a common one and it was used to frame Charles’s trial and execution. “So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.” Numbers 35:33 By putting his weight behind the trial of the King Cromwell was taking a risk, politically and personally. Tough and determined a soldier though he was he was also a politician and he must have paused when he considered the electric effect news of such a trial would have in capital cities across Europe. To have the temerity to try an anointed king in a court of law would and did in itself cause consternation. But the chief implication of such a trial was, of course, that the accused could be found guilty and a sentence delivered. Most of the worldly-wise would understand that Charles would almost certainly be offered various ways to survive with his life. But however unlikely it might be that it would come to pass, the possibility definitely now existed that King Charles could face execution. Cromwell might have come to this view reluctantly. But once he had decided on a course of action he pursued it with relentless vigour. Understandably, various individuals were wary of being included in the list of commissioners making up the High Court of Justice that would try Charles. Cromwell’s powers of persuasion were put to good use. The implacable general was reputed to have declared to one waverer, horrified that an anointed king might be found guilty of treason and executed: “England is not the King and the King is not England.” There was no manual on how to try a king. The prosecutors had to think on their feet and be willing to change tack when necessary and exploit opportunities if they arose. Yet, Charles’s only defence – sovereign immunity – was quickly debunked by the court. In response to the King’s repeated insistence on his immunity from prosecution the court insisted that “the King of England was not a person, but an office whose every occupant was entrusted with a limited power to govern ‘by and according to the laws of the land and not otherwise.'” Charles was tried for transgressing the laws of England and for crimes against the English people. As King he had been: “trusted with a limited power to govern by and according to the laws of the land, and … for the good and benefit of his people.” Yet, he had demonstrated a “wicked design” to establish “an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will.” And instigated “unnatural, cruel and bloody wars.” The King refused to acknowledge the authority of the court and he would not make a plea (whether guilty or not guilty). The court was perfectly entitled to move to sentencing at this point because the standard legal practice was to treat an accused who refused to plead as if he had pleaded guilty. But for “the further and clearer satisfaction of their own judgement and consciences” the court decided to call witnesses, thirty of them. Heard over two days their evidence was damning. Witnesses testified to the brutal massacre of civilians who had sought sanctuary from marauding royalist soldiers in St. Berteline’s church in Barthomley, Cheshire in December 1643. The royalist commander (Lord Byron) promised them their lives if they emerged from the church. Immediately that they did so the men were separated from the women and children by Byron and “…when he had them in his power, he caused them all to be stripped stark Naked; And most barbarouslie & contr[ar]y to the Lawes of Armes, murthered, stabbed and cutt the Throates of xii of them;…& wounded all the reste, leavinge many of theim for Dead….” Twelve of the men were killed and the rest (seven) were so badly wounded they were left for dead. This was an atrocity openly sanctioned and approved of by the senior Royalist commander in the region and thus by the King, who had personally appointed the commander and who made no subsequent effort to remove him from his command or censure him for his immoral and illegal massacre of civilians. Another documented war crime occurred at a siege in 1644 at Hopton Castle, Shropshire. Hopton was one of the few parliamentary strongholds in what was largely a royalist county. Samuel Moore led thirty men in a gallant defence of the castle for some weeks, successfully keeping out a royalist force 500 strong. The royalist commander, Sir Michael Woodhouse, eventually offered honourable terms to Moore and he agreed to surrender. When Moore’s men marched out expecting to be taken into custody, Woodhouse ordered Moore and his men seized and immediately executed. Some were clubbed to death where they stood, while others were tied up in pairs to prevent their escape before their throats were slit and the still-warm corpses thrown into the castle’s moat. Again, no action was taken against Woodhouse. As an officer of the King he considered that rebels were undeserving of being treated as ‘normal’ prisoners. But this was contrary to the clear understanding that had been arrived at between the two sides, whereby the custom and practice of the ‘normal’ rules of war had been adopted as the most humane option. It was evidence such as this – from thirty witnesses – that proved the King was guilty. That the trial had progressed as it had was, in part, down to the skill and courage of John Cooke (Solicitor-General). “His Puritan conscience, political vision, and love of civil liberties gave him the courage to bring the King’s trial to its dramatic conclusion: the creation of the English Republic.” The King was declared guilty on Saturday 27th January 1649 and he was sentenced to death: “That the court being satisfied that he, Charles Stuart, was guilty of the crimes of which he had been accused, did judge him tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of the nation, to be put to death by the severing of his head from his body.”

Contemporary illustration of the execution of the ‘Man of Blood.’

Subsequently, the House of Commons established the English Republic when it declared: “That the people, are, under God, the original of all just power…That the Commons of England…representing the people have the supreme power in this nation…whatever is enacted, or declared for law, by the Commons…hath the force of law…although the consent and concurrence of King, or House of Peers, be not had thereunto.” The president of the court, , cited examples from English history as precedent both for the King’s trial and execution and the abolition of the monarchy. For example, the rights enshrined in Magna Carta, he contended, had been extracted from King John by force of arms and so England was returning to its: “just and ancient right, of being governed by its own representatives or national meetings in council.” Kings were no longer to be tolerated in England. “It is and hath been found by experience, that the office of a king in this nation and Ireland, and to have the power thereof in any single person, is unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of the people, and that for the most part, use hath been made of the regal power and prerogative to oppress and impoverish and enslave the people.” A republic was proclaimed “[t]o the end that no chief officer or magistrate may hereafter presume traitorously or maliciously to imagine or contrive the enslaving or destroying of the English nation, and expect impunity for so doing.” A Third Civil War was fought to preserve the republic and defeat royalist insurgencies and invading armies in England, Scotland and Ireland. General John Lambert featured prominently in this series of victories alongside Oliver Cromwell. Politically, however, there was precious little consensus to, as the Levellers had demanded, broaden the electoral franchise to reinvigorate Parliament. Many called for a King Oliver but Cromwell would not accept the Crown. Without an extended electoral franchise Parliament would continue to be formed of men of whom a majority would be natural sympathisers with monarchical rule. Indeed, such was his pre-eminence that within a few years Cromwell was offered the role of Lord Protector, governing with a Council of State and according to the , the first sovereign codified and written constitution in the world (it had been written by John Lambert). As Lord Protector, Cromwell ruled largely capably but not always happily until his death in 1659. Various forms of government had been experimented with in the ten years of the republic but none had stuck. In the end government had become overly-dependent on the personal qualities of Cromwell and reliant on the strength of the Army. The Commonwealth might have survived, there were those who were prepared to defend and remake the republic, including John Lambert. But there was no unity of purpose in the Army on Cromwell’s death in 1659. Moreover, in the wider population, the failures of republican government had encouraged a misguided fondness for the days of royal rule. There is a propensity for misplaced sympathy towards the monarchy nowadays. If Charles Stuart had done what he did in a modern republic in Africa or South America there would be deafening calls for him to be tried at The Hague. The man was a war criminal, a tyrant and one of the most politically inept, ideologically inflexible and morally bankrupt individuals to have ever governed England. The divisions of 1659 were cunningly exploited to engineer the restoration of the monarchy in the person of Charles II. Generals were bought off, literally in some cases, and various grand pledges were made to leading parliamentarians, City merchants and landowners – including a mass pardon and the acceptance of the facts of land ownership (much had changed since 1642). Crucially, the Army’s rank and file was promised payment of arrears of pay and offered continued service under the Crown. Also a deciding factor for many who might have wavered was the promise of religious toleration to non-Anglicans (though not Catholics). As a popular and successful general John Lambert had appealed to the Army to confront and defeat the royalist resurgence. He knew that no royalist parliament would fully honour the promises made so freely by Charles II. In the end, though, he was undermined by Thomas Fairfax who had reached an accommodation with the new King (Fairfax was granted a seat in Parliament and a comfortable retirement in return for calling on Lambert’s troops to desert). Lambert’s crumbling forces were defeated, the Crown was restored and the hunt for the began. Those who took part in the trial and execution of the King and the establishment of a republic were marked men, of course, and specifically excluded from Charles II’s lavish concessions. The late King’s prosecutor, John Cooke, was one of those destined for a horrible death. Yet, as Geoffrey Robertson records: “[he] sacrificed his own life to make tyranny a crime. His trial of Charles I, the first trial of a head of state for waging war on his own people, became a forerunner of the trials of Augusto Pinochet, Slobodan Milosevic, and Saddam Hussein.” Indeed, men such as Thomas Harrison (Major-General) and John Carew (Member of Parliament) were entirely unrepentant at having signed Charles’s death warrant and remained defiant as they were dragged away to be hanged, drawn and quartered. None of the regicides received fair trials, as is ably demonstrated in Robertson’s book. John Lambert was spared a death sentence as he was not in London during the trial. He died in the freezing winter of 1683-84, still considered so dangerous that he was held in custody on a small island off the Hampshire coast. John Bradshaw, Oliver Cromwell, and Thomas Pride were all dead by 1660. But that did not prevent vengeance being meted out by Charles II and his acolytes: their graves were all dug up and their corpses mutilated and put on display.

But the ideas of what came to be called the never really died. They were passed on, rediscovered and or reinterpreted by future generations. Thomas Paine and the American revolutionaries, the Luddites and the Chartists all owed a debt to the generation who were willing to confront despotism, even to the point of killing a king. It was the trial and execution of the King that helped spur radicals like Gerrard Winstanley to action in 1649. Leader of the Diggers (or True Levellers), Winstanley led a group of like- minded people into their historic experiment, establishing a communal farm on common land at St. George’s Hill, Weybridge, in Surrey. Winstanley recalled that “my mind was not at rest, because nothing was acted, and thoughts run in me, that words and writings were all nothing, and must die, for action is the life of all, and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing.” At the end of a life dedicated to radical political change and social justice Winstanley wrote in his last essay: “And here I end, having put my Arm as far as my strength will go to advance Righteousness: I have Writ, I have Acted, I have Peace: and now I must wait to see the Spirit do his own work in the hearts of others, and whether England shall be the first Land, or some other, wherein Truth shall sit down in triumph.” It was this ideal – a righteous, just and prosperous republic – that the English radicals had fought for. In the trial and execution of Charles Stuart, the Man of Blood, the English had seen a glimpse of the awesome power they themselves held. Never again would a tyrannical government be tolerated. The English had shocked all of Europe by killing a king. Charles’s successors did all they could to rid the collective memory of the English of this revolutionary period in their history. They failed, of course. And we can be sure that one day, perhaps sooner than we think, the modern inheritors of the Good Old Cause will finally see the monarchy abolished and a republic proclaimed.

Dave Savage was a Trade Unionist and Labour Party activist in Preston and South Ribble for many years. He now lives and works in London and is President of Kingston TUC.

Further Reading The Tyrannicide Brief, The Story of the Man who sent Charles I to the Scaffold, Geoffrey Roberston, London, 2005. Gerrard Winstanley: The Digger’s Life and Legacy, London, 2012. A Radical History of Britain, Edward Vallance, London, 2012.

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#10 – January 2020

Preston & South Ribble Trades Union Council President: Chris Lomax Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/163828543631969/ Email: [email protected]

Lancashire Area Trades Union Council Secretary: Pete Billington Email: [email protected]