The other gunpowder plot

An historical  anniversary today gives me an opportunity to follow up from my last post: If Cromwell was not the miserable tyrant that he is so often painted - he was no democrat either. He and the other grandees of the New Model Army may well have  represented the forces of progress in overturning the old social and political order of the Divine Right of Kings - but they replaced it only with a meritocracy based on the emerging  middle classes. 

Levellers like Miles Sindercombe felt that they had not fought through three civil wars in order to hand political power back to these men of property. And so today is the anniversary of a plot in 1657 to assassinate Cromwell and replace the office of Lord Protector with the rule of parliament.  It is the 'other' gunpowder plot and much more worthy of celebration than that of 1605 and the attempted military coup by the 17th Century Catholic jihad-ists of Fawkes and Catesby

Sindercombe had served throughout the civil wars and taken part in the Leveller mutinies of 1649 which Cromwell had brutally suppressed. He then went on to organise another mutiny in the army of General Monck in Scotland - the same man who would later go on to organize the military coup that led to the restoration of the monarchy. Escaping the authorities he went to the Netherlands where he met up with other Levellers, including the more famous Edmund Sexby,  and planned a bomb plot to kill the Lord Protector. His bomb in Whitehall was discovered and he was arrested - avoiding the horror of being hung - drawn and quartered by taking poison.

It was Sexby who called him a martyr to 'The Good Old Cause' -  the vision of a truly democratic and  egalitarian England that we are still waiting for ...

Re-interpretting Cromwell and Christmas

It frequently  bugs me that the one thing that school textbooks and schemes of work always seem to include is an obligatory 'Cromwell - the man who banned Christmas' lesson. I refuse to be a part of this nonsense.

Whether you take the view that Cromwell was the man who made modern Britain, or the villain who participated in ethnic cleansing in Ireland, or, like me, believe he was a flawed man of his own class and time of huge morale courage who played a vital role in England's democratic revolution -  there are better and more important stories to be told about Cromwell.

It is of course quite true that from 1650 until the restoration of 1660 there were a number of restrictions placed on pubic festivities at Christmas time. Undoubtedly these were often unpopular with many people for whom Christmas was not just a religious festival, but part of a folk-tradition that saw a suspension of the the social order for a few days. But the restrictions on Christmas festivities did not just spring out of a despotic whim of Cromwell's kill-joy personality. 

For starters, there was also popular support for these measures from those layers of society who had been radicalised by the years of civil war. Inconvenient though it may be to our 21st Century liberal minds, we cannot really  separate the proto democratic socialism of the Levelers from the Puritan context that it sprang from. In fact long  before the civil war, in many parishes there had been a shift away from the medieval style celebration of Christmas with all its echoes of pre-Reformation England. This reflected a broad Puritan consensus in the country that Charles and his high-Church archbishop were increasing at odds with.

After the parliamentary victory in the first civil war,  there were also very practical political grounds for suppressing certain  public celebrations. Horse races, fairs and festivals were  becoming a frequent focus for protests and riots. Fear of an 'enemy within' attempting to usurp the new 'godly nation' was not simply paranoia,  there were frequent royalist plots and uprisings throughout the years of the Republic and Protectorate.

Finally Cromwell himself was far from a grim faced kill-joy. He enjoyed drinking, parties, music, dancing and had a particular taste for practical jokes and slapstick humour. The various proclamations against Christmas actually came not from the Lord Protector, but from the Council of State and parliament, and reflected much wider values and concerns than simply Cromwell's own particular hang-ups.

There are many genuine controversies about Cromwell. I would much rather teach a lesson about the Burford Mutiny to get across his  ambiguities and complexities - but painting him as a seventeenth century version of the Grinch doesn't do justice either to him or this important piece of history.

Death of a radical action hero.

Ironically just a few days after the anniversary of the Putney Debates in 1647, comes the anniversary of the assassination in 1648 of one of its most prominent radical protagonists - Colonel Thomas Rainsborough.


His life was that of a  swash-buckling hero and a political visionary. Every movement needs its heroes and Rainsborough more than fits the bill:

Born into a naval family from Wapping, Ranisborough was a ship's master in the heavily puritan-influenced navy. With the outbreak of civil war the 'Royal' Navy came out solidly in support of the parliamentary cause and Rainsborough commanded the frigate Swallow in a number of actions against Royalist privateers. He was also involved in raiding parties on land and played a part in the lifting of the seige at Hull. By 1645 he had transferred to the army and commanded a regiment of infantry in the New Model Army, which he led at Naesby, Langport, Worcester and Bristol. 

Rainsborough had been heavily influenced by the radical ideas  of the Levellers and in addition to his military duties he also became the MP for Droitwich. Whilst he was at Westminister away from his regiment, it mutinied at the threat that it would be disbanded by parliament - dominated at the time by Presbyterian faction who were looking to negotiate a compromise settlement with the king and so wanted to weaken the radicalised army. 

In what was a pivotal moment Rainsborough returned to his regiment to support his troops. He led a number of regiments to march on London to prevent the prospect of a Presbyerian counter-revolution which in the troops eyes threatened to throw away the gains they had made  - and in parliament  he proposed the 'Vote Of No Address' which pledged no more negotiations with the king. 

However in doing so Rainsborough not only drew a line in the sand between himself and the Prebyterians he also made an enemy of Cromwell and the army grandees of the Independent faction. Although more resolute than the Presbyterians in their opposition to the king, they still were far from the democratic position of the army rank and file. At the Putney debates, Rainsborough emerged as the highest-ranking and most influential Leveller spokesman - arguing for a position of republican government and universal male suffrage.

This probably sealed his fate, and from then it was clear that Cromwell wanted him out of the way. Rainsborough returned to the navy - whic by then were dominated by the Presbyterians - and he was ignominiously put ashore by his crew who refused to serve under him.  Returning to the army he successfully commanded a new regiment in the Second Civil War, defeating the Royalists at Colchetser, but he was then sent to take command of the armies in the North, as far away from the centre of events in London as possible.

Whilst on his way, he was assassinated by Royalist agents who managed to smuggle themselves into his lodgings in Donacaster. Conspiracy theories abound and it is widely believed that Cromwell  connived in his killing - it was certainly a most convenient death  - and in many ways marked the high water mark of the Leveller movement.

And as an epilogue: He was given a Leveller funeral and  the streets of London  were lined with mourners wearing green - the colour of English radicalism until it was replaced by the symbol of red imported by European socialist exiles.  This may be the origin - rather than the Irish nationalist connection - of the English folk-song 'all around my hat I will wear the green ribbon'. 

• Picture of Rainsborough from the BBC's costume drama 'The Devils Whore' which appropriately mixed a bit of bodice-ripping romance with a bit of history and a sprinkling of radicalism.

Soldiers and radicals.

The anniversary this week  (28th Oct to 9th Nov) of one of the most extraordinary and significant episodes in English history - the Putney debates of 1647. 

With the First Civil War effectively over, Charles Stuart in prison, and the ranks of the New Model Army in radical ferment, the leaders of the parliamentary armies - the Grandees -  under pressure of their own troops on the verge of mutiny, convened a week of meetings with the rank-and-file, essentially to discuss  'what kind of victory' ?

The debates have been much recorded and analysed - with on one hand  the position of the Grandees, favouring some sort of constitutional compromise with a monarchy controlled by 'godly' men of property,  summed up by Ireton:  'no man hath a right to an interest or share in the disposing of the affairs of the kingdom... that hath not a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom.' 

 And on the other, that of the Leveller-influenced  'Agitators' - famously articulated by Rainsborough: 'the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he ... 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 at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under'.

A few days later the debates ended when the king escaped from captivity - and in the end,  following the regicide,  a brief  republican interlude, the repression of the Levellers, and two more subsequent civil wars, it could be said that it was a version of Ireton's vision that triumphed. 

But perhaps what was most extraordinary was that the debates happened at all:  The army leaders would have been happy to have had a loyal army defeat the royalists militarily, then be paid-off  and go home - thereby permitting  a negotiated constitutional settlement.  But in five years of civil war they had come to rely on forces they couldn't control and so - in an early example of proto-Permanent Revolution - the masses had entered on to the stage to push the process of change far beyond the realms of what was initially envisaged. 

As a footnote -  it is impossible to avoid drawing a parallel with the 'Soldiers' Parlaiment' convened in 1944 in Cairo by the British Eighth Army: Some of these troops had been posted overseas for three or four years and they had been radicalised by their involvement with liberation movements in Greece, Italy and the Balkans. 

Their 'mock' parliament again debated 'what kind of victory?' - and in answer elected a  Socialist/Communist coalition 'governement' and passed 'legislation' nationalising the heights of the economy - actually going beyond Labour's platform  in the landslide 1945 election.

Henry Vane The Younger

Continuing the occasional series of anniversaries of  slightly more obscure characters and events from the English Civil Wars:

Today is the anniversary of the execution in 1662 of Sir Henry Vane the Younger. To be honest it's not so much his life as his death that  I find most admirable:

He certainly doesn't really belong in the radical-pantheon of proto-democrats and socialists. In the Leveller disputes  he definitely took  the side of the men of property. He should be categorized as a patrician-republican in a similar vein to Arthur Hesilredge. Characterized by his belief in religious tolerance and the supremacy of parliament over the army, he belonged to  neither the Presbyterian  nor Army factions.  Consequently he followed a precariously independent path during the Republic and Protectorate.

With the restoration of the monarchy he was not initially targeted for retribution like so many leading parliamentarians. Essentially a 'moderate', Vane had actually refused to take part in the king's trial and  sentencing, but even so, the 'not-so merry monarch'  Charles II simply  deemed him 'too dangerous a man to be allowed to live'. 

At his execution he was noted for his calmness in delivering a long speech justifying his actions and those of the Republic. He also warned the axe-man to take care not to inflame the pain he was experiencing from a particularly large boil on his neck.

Vane is also thought to have probably had the distinction of coining the phrase 'The Good Old Cause' -  the rallying call for generations of radicals evoking the memory of the heady days of the English Republic.

The Levellers & corrupt MP's

The MP’s expenses scandal takes a new turn as it focuses on the difficultly of removing the Speaker Of The House of Commons. It seems we now have something of a mini-constitutional crisis along with a general loss of confidence in parliament. In such circumstances I always find that the 17th Century is a good starting point for guidance.

Curiously despite being usually painted as a tyrant and villain, Oliver Cromwell has recently been rehabilitated in the media. Although the context has largely been forgotten, his words on forcibly dissolving the Rump Parliament have lately been much quoted; “You are no longer a parliament …you have sat too long for any good you have done lately … In the name of God - Go !”

By 1653 the moderates who dominated the Rump parliament were badly out of touch with the country as a whole and especially the radicalized New Model Army. Some of the members had even been there since before the civil war when Charles 1st had summoned the ‘Long Parliament’ in 1640. Since then the world had been turned upside down. Supporters of the Presbyterian party had been expelled in Pride’s Purge of 1648 as potential (and indeed actual) royalist sympathizers. The MP's left to form the Rump Parliament were largely those who had been willing to countenance the execution of the king and the establishment of a republic but were also being overtaken by the radicalised sections of the army and the lower classes . Significantly it was these people that Cromwell and the army leaders lent on for their power-base, although ultimately they would abandon them.

Interestingly what made the MPs of The Rump most unpopular was that fact that many of them had not taken an active taken part in the fighting but were now getting rich on the confiscated assets of royalists. Also a great many MP's were also lawyers and their self-interest propelled them to resist legal reforms that would have given common people access to the system. It was this general disaffection with the parliament that gave a popular basis for Cromwell’s forcible dissolution – the now famous dismissal of the mace of office as “a fool’s bauble” and the resonant spectacle of Colonel Harrison dragging the speaker from his chair.

But with regard to the present crisis of confidence in the parliamentary system – we would do better to draw inspiration not from Cromwell but from the Levellers:

Just two of the demands from their ‘Agreement Of The People’ – annual parliaments and the right to recall members for re-election – would go quite a long way to restoring credibility. Add on a thorough-going modernization of the legislature, including an end to late night sittings and the ridiculously long summer recess, along of course with MP’s being paid only the national average wage – and we might get something like a representative parliament.

Just a footnote to all this; I see that in yesterday’s Mail On Sunday it is reported that the queen is appalled at the greedy behavior of MPs. From someone who has lived all their lives at the public expense along with her extended family and hangers on, is exempt from most forms of taxation, and has immunity from public scrutiny or criminal prosecution, that’s pretty ironic.

John Lambert & The Instrument Of Government

Another significant anniversary – on this day in 1653 the monarchy was formally abolished.

This lead to the adoption of the world’s first (and England’s only) written constitution – The Instrument Of Government. This was essentially a patrician republican, not a democratic constitution, but it did establish:

• A president for life – under the title of Lord Protector – as an elected rather than a hereditary position.

• The executive (the Lord Protector) answerable to an elected Council Of State

• Parliament to be the supreme legislature, with the Lord Protector having the right to delay but not veto legislation

• Joint control of the armed forces by parliament and the Lord Protector

• A parliament consisting of a single elected house

• A guaranteed term for parliaments of three years with sessions of a minimum of five months

• Electoral boundaries that reflected the shifting population and the growth of urban areas

• Freedom of worship and assembly for all except Roman Catholics

It wasn’t the system envisioned by the Levellers or the other radicals and it wasn’t even the system that lasted for any period of time – the instability of continuing civil wars led to the proto-military rule of the Major Generals, the inherited Protectorate of Richard Cromwell and ultimately to the restoration of the monarchy.

The Instrument was the work of General John Lambert – one of the ‘army grandees’ who represented the narrow but powerful social base of the radicalised upper middle classes – prepared to break with the old order but wanting strong and stable government and above all reluctant to allow the masses onto the political stage. Tellingly the reforms to the electoral boundaries were geared to enfranchise the growing urban middle class and end the domination of the gentry. But with the property qualification set at £200 it certainly did not include the ‘honest freeborn artisans’ that the radicals drew on for their support.

Nonetheless it does represent a milestone in the struggle for democracy and like so many of the achievements of the English Revolution, is still in some respects to be equaled.

Lambert is an ambiguous character: Having been the architect of Cromwell’s Protectorate he later fell out with him. He plotted at various times in a confusing succession of twists and turns with just about all the parliamentary factions. To some extent this reflected the narrow base on which his power rested. However he did lead the opposition that ended the Protectorate of Richard Cromwell and helped replace it with a short-lived revival of the Republic. And he did try to prevent the Restoration of the monarchy at the very last minute by staging a military uprising , symbolically raising his standard at Edgehill, the site of the first battle of the civil war.

Isolated from many of his former allies, he was easily defeated and arrested. Under the restored monarchy he escaped execution, partly because he had been campaigning in the North at the time of the king’s trial, and partly because many of the parliamentarian turncoats who stage-managed the Restoration had been implicated themselves at some point in Lambert’s various machinations.

He spent the remaining twenty four years of his life in various prisons and in the process went insane. A sad footnote to a largely forgotten episode in the history of our struggle for democracy.

Henry Marten: Republican. Freethinker. Libertine.

And now for something utterly unseasonal: Thought I’d share a newly discovered hero – Henry Marten, a sixteenth century revolutionary … and general good ‘ole boy.

I only became aware of him through reading Geoffrey Robertson’s The Tyrannicide Brief, and have just done a quick bit of personal research.

A lawyer from Oxford, Marten was probably the first on the parliament side to come out as an open republican. Whilst those who would later be seen as radicals were talking about wooing the king away from his ‘evil councillors’, Marten made it clear that he thought the institution of monarchy should go altogether. For thinking the then unthinkable he was expelled from parliament in 1643 by Pym and the Presbyterian Party. He returned to the parliament following the ascendancy of Cromwell and the Independents, having in the meantime raised a regiment of horse that was absorbed in to the New Model Army.

Marten’s aligned himself with the Levellers and the army, and signed the Agreement Of The People – which called for the king to be held to account. It was no surprise then that he was one of the most prominent judges at the king’s trial, and a signatory to his death warrant. He opposed Cromwell’s dissolution of the Rump Parliament in 1653 and disappeared from public life (largely because he was in prison for debt) until the parliament was recalled in 1659.

When the monarchy was restored in 1660 Marten made no attempt to escape but surrendered to the authorities and fearlessly defended his actions when tried as a regicide. He was imprisoned for life and died twenty years later in Carisbroke Castle.

All stirring stuff but so far typical of many seventeenth century radicals.

But Marten was far from typical. A self-proclaimed sceptic in matters of religion he spoke out for complete freedom of conscience at a time when almost every political idea, even radical ones, were expressed in terms of religion. To an extent unheard for the times, this toleration even included Catholics and led him to oppose Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland.

Described as ‘a puritan but a man of lose morals’ Marten’s personal life was a far cry from the usual image of the godly radicals. He first offended the king, long before the civil war, when he had Marten removed from the horse races for his offensive and licentious behaviour. Drinking and gambling kept him in debt throughout his life, and he was a notorious womaniser. Following the death of his wife he lived openly with his mistress Mary Ward with whom he had three children, leading Cromwell to denounce him as a’ whoremaster’.

Fantastic stuff – why isn’t there a statue to him somewhere ?

King Oliver ?

Oh dear. Just as I was singing the praises of 'The Devil's Whore' for putting the Civil War back in the limelight it deserves and for rehabilitating the cause of parliament, it all went horribly wrong last night.

I was happy to overlook the bodice-ripping and swash-bucking, even the usual over simplification of Cromwell's campaigns in Ireland. But the climax last night saw Edward Sexby attempting to assassinate Cromwell on his way to be crowned king. The tolling of the church bells at the end was a dramatic sign that Sexby had failed and Cromwell had finally betrayed the cause.

NOOOOO !!!! Lest there are any viewers out there who might actually believe this, here are the facts:

Cromwell was proclaimed Lord Protector for life on 16th December 1653. There was no 'coronation' - only a simple swearing-in ceremony. And for the rest of his life he turned down any suggestions that he should style himself as monarch. Ultimately his powers as head of state, although far exceeding those that Lilburne or Rainsborough ever dreamed of, were still subject to the vote of the Council Of State.

On the otherhand Edward Sexby, who in real life was a Leveller and did oppose Cromwell's assumption of presidential-like power, also turned to the Spanish and the Cavalier party in-exile for support in overthrowing Cromwell. His involvement with a conspiracy to assassinate Cromwell was discovered in 1657 - four years after Cromwell's proclamation as Lord Protector. Despite his treason he was not executed but sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower Of London.

Does anybody care ? They should because yet again the truth about the struggle for democracy in this country is being misrepresented, and the vital role of the all too short lived Commonwealth is being denied.

Cromwell certainly had his faults - ultimately he did betray the aspirations of the Levellers and other proto-democrats and radicals. But he was a reluctant dictator, and never a king.

The Devil's Whore

The English Civil War and 17th Century radicalism are something of an obsession for me. So I had to watch Channel 4’s new mini-series The Devil’s Whore.

Historical Dramas tend to be the stuff of Sunday evening viewing – a bit of Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy with performing costumes filled by familiar faces from soaps providing non-threatening comfort viewing for Middle England. Of course of late there have been a few honourable exceptions:

The Devil’s Whore is certainly not comfort viewing. It has just the amount of bodice-ripping and sword play not to be overly-worthy. But it also goes beyond the familiar image of romantic Cavaliers and kill-joy Roundheads that we are usually fed. It engages with the Big Ideas of the time – and of today - democracy, freedom of expression and the struggle between rich and poor.

And it gets the period details pretty much correct too – visually you can’t really tell the two sides apart – maybe slightly lacier collars for the Royalists and less curls for the Parliament men. No puritan primness either. Both sides are a lot lustier and earthier than the Victorians historians who gave us most of those misconceptions of the era – and probably more so than the usual costume drama audience today.

But most importantly it reclaims this – the most important period in English history – and places it centre stage.

In the US there is a strong tradition of the Western – it has developed from the ‘white hat goodies’ v ‘black hat badies’ of the Gary Cooper era to the gritty revisionism of HBO’s Deadwood. But there is never any question that the mythology of The Western, despite the violence and genocide of the real thing, is a central part of the American story.

On the other hand in this country the equivalent formative part of our history has been airbrushed out. Hearing the ideas of Rainsborough, Lillburne and Saxby in The Devil’s Whore and you can see why – they are still revolutionary today.

It also manages to make Charles 1st look like a bit of a twat. And a complete bastard too. Enjoy.

Gordon Brown & The Levellers

Election or no election? In a sense it’s a storm in a teacup:

Brown never said there would be an autumn election and I can’t really imagine that anyone thought he would call one – so when Cameron challenged him to come off the fence – it was always going to be a non-event. Tactically you could say that Brown blundered by even appearing to contemplate it.

But media circus and parliamentary chicanery aside, there is a fundamental issue of democracy at stake, and it shouldn’t need take the Lib Dems to point it out. Under our archaic ‘non-constitution’ a government can manipulate the timing of an election for their own political advantage.

Marx had a name for this – he called it Bonapartism based on Napoleon III’s use of plebiscites to get a popular mandate for essentially anti-democratic purposes. A more recent example would be Thatcher’s timing with the ‘Falklands election’ – massively unpopular at home but using a heady wave of popular nationalism to get an endorsement.

The only solution to this is fixed term parliaments and a written constitution.

Of course this idea is nothing new. The idea was first forward as early as 1647 in the Levellers “Agreement of the People’. Some, but not much, of it would need updating from the seventeenth century – so keeping within the spirit of it I have added my own twenty first century comments in italics:

• Power to be vested in the people: We still need to abolish the monarchy and the use of crown prerogative.

• One year Parliaments, elected by equal numbers of voters per seat. The right to vote for all men who worked independently for their living and all those who had fought for the Parliamentary cause: OK we have universal suffrage now – but the one year parliament would really shake things up.

• Recall of any or all of their MPs by their electors at any time: Not as outrageous as it sounds – think of all those sleaze inquiries …

• Abolition of the House of Lords: Overdue and we don’t need a nominated second chamber of Blair’s mates either.

• Democratic election of army officers: So we aren’t in the middle of a civil war and maybe this one isn’t so high on the agenda – but how about trade union rights for the armed forces ?

• Complete religious toleration and the abolition of tithes and tolls: We don’t have tithes but we do still have an official Church Of England, religious education in schools and blasphemy laws – all long passed their sell by date.

• Justices to be elected; law courts to be local and proceedings to be in English: Trials might be in English but they’re still hardly accessible to ordinary people with silly wigs and archaic proceedings. The judiciary are still a self-perpetuating old boys club. And amazingly we now find ourselves defending the right to trail by jury and habeas corpus – things that weren’t in the Leveller’s Agreement because they thought they had already secured them by winning the first civil war.

• Redistribution of seized land to the common people: Dare we say re-nationalization of privatised companies ?

Depressing that it's all still radical stuff 350 years on.

Cromwell Anniversary

Every year I get a kick out of watching the ridiculous fancy dress parade that is the state opening of parliament pass by in the shadow of Cromwell's statue.

He is there as a silent reminder of still unfinished business when it comes to democracy in this country. And this is despite his corpse being dug up by the monarchists, re-'executed' and publicly displayed.

Maybe a flawed hero - he was after all a man of his times - a time when political ideas were expressed in the language of religion - and of his class - his democracy extended only to free-men and that was defined by some sort of property. But a hero nonetheless.

In an age when the divine right of kings was a cornerstone of political consensus he dared to fight and bring to trial a king. He rejected the idea of monarchy in favour of representative government, even when he was in a position to take that power to himself. And in an age when the Church claimed the ultimate moral authority, he championed the rights of individual conscience.

In other words, he had the balls to 'turn the world upside down'.

All of which is why we should commemorate Sept 3rd, the anniversary of his death, as Cromwell Day.

And amazingly 350 years on, as I write this I can already feel the backlash from those gnashing their teeth at this eulogy.

Bollocks to 'em - I know what side they would have been on at Naesby - crypto-royalists the lot of them.

Blair & The Church

Having flirted with Catholicism for much of his life, Blair is now going to start the formal process of conversion.

I spent the first 18years of my own life being raised as a Catholic, and the next eight years in the pre-Blair-ite Labour Party before it was ruined. So I am inclined to simply say that the two parties thoroughly deserve each other. But then on reflection; Blair’s late conversion is symptomatic of his spineless careerism.

There can only be one possible explanation of why he didn’t take the step sooner; being a Catholic in this country is simply not a great career move. The 1701 Act Of Settlement prevents a Catholic from taking the position of monarch and also prevents a monarch from marrying a Catholic. But even Blair’s ambitions probably don’t go that far. Instead I am sure that he is aware that, although it is not constitutionally prohibited, Britain has never has a Catholic prime minister. Why is this ?

One reason is xenophobia and anti-immigrant prejudice. With the exception of a few Brideshead-type aristos, and some quirky pockets such as part of Lancashire, Catholicism in England did not really survive the Reformation. There is therefore something distinctly ‘foreign’ about it. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century with mass immigration from Ireland, and to a lesser extent other parts of Europe, that there was a Catholic revival. (A phenomenon that we see again now with the arrival of Polish immigrants).

Even in that nation of immigrants, the USA, Catholicism was considered to be the faith of undesirable newcomers. White Anglo Saxon Protestants defined themselves as an elite to resist swamping by the later arrival of the Catholic hordes from Ireland, Italy, Poland and the Hispanic countries. Kennedy, the first and only Catholic president, had to defend himself against the accusation that Catholicism was un-American.

But there is also a totally justifiable suspicion of Catholics in public office.

Whilst it may seem reasonable to say that religious faith is a personal matter and need not influence the political process, no good Catholic would ever accept this . Because Catholicism is not a faith based simply on the individual's own supposed relationship with God.

Alone of the major world religions, Catholicism extends acknowledgement of the authority of the Church to a doctrinal point. It is what separates Catholicism from Protestantism: God’s will is supposedly not just revealed to the individual by the study of scripture, but by the active role of the Church that acts as God’s agent on earth. This point also separates Catholicism from Judaism and Islam, who both have no priests but only teachers to help the faithful interpret the scriptures. It may come as a shock but not even the most extreme fundamentalist imam claims the same divine authority as a humble Catholic parish priest.

Which is why Catholics in public office are always going to be problematic; their ultimate loyalties are always going to lie with the Church and not with the electorate.

In English history it is the same phenomenon expressed in both the homicidal fanatic Guy Fawkes and the noble refusnik Thomas More. On the otherhand, I’ve always believed Oliver Cromwell to be much mis-understood on this matter. He certainly was pretty intense when it came to his own personal religion belief, but he was quite happy to extend this to others, even, and unusually for the times, to the Jews. But not to the Catholics.

They could not be trusted to put loyalty to the sovereign body of parliament before that of loyalty to Church. Which is why the Catholics were the most die-hard adherents to the King’s cause and encouraged him to seek alliances with the Irish, the French or the Spanish, just about anyone other than their own countrymen. And to be fair Cromwell had the same objection to Presbyterians who were willing to assist a Scottish invasion to further their Church’s cause.

Cromwell’s view of the Church was that of a congregation of like-minded individuals who were free to join, leave or set up their own congregations. If we must have any religion at all (I’d much rather we didn’t) his is the only version that is compatible with a democracy.

And if all this sounds like an obscure historical rant, ask yourself could you trust a Catholic politician to set aside the Church’s view on abortion rights, homosexuality or sex education, if it ran contrary to the mandate of his party or the electorate as a whole ? And why not form a party to honestly express Catholic views ? This is what the Christian Democrats did in Europe, and such a party has always been Blair's spiritual (!) home.

30th January - Democracy Day ?

Yesterday was the anniversary of the execution of Charles I in 1649. The first and only legal public execution of an English monarch as opposed to the mafia-style whacking of a rival that was commonplace in the middle ages.

As usual it passed by largely un-noticed. In France and the USA there are public holidays to mark the turning points in their political history. But in this country our Civil War is massively under-played, as if there was something embarrassing and un-English about it.

History of course is written by the victors. And the victors of the Civil War ultimately were the compromisers - moderate royalists and moderate parliamentarians. The royalists outraged at the king's preference for secret deals with Presbyterian Scots, Irish Catholics and even the French, just about anyone other than his own people, and the parliamentarian gentry and middle class scarred at the threat of actual democracy from below posed by the radical republicans and levellers.

The compromise was a protracted one that took about thirty years to work out. It spanned the restoration of the monarchy with Charles II, and ultimately the invitation of William II to come over from Holland and take the job as king when James II showed too many signs of following in Charles I's footsteps. This coup in 1689 is celebrated as the 'glorious revolution when of course it was actually neither of these things. But it does mark the settlement of a 'constitutional monarchy' with which we have been stuck ever since.

And of course the compromisers had a natural desire to play down the idea that there was any kind of conflict. As if the present day arrangements that pass for a constitution were the outcome of a gentlemens' agreement rather than centuries of struggle and conflict. In particular the Civil War(s) were almost fifty years of bloody and traumatic battles that touched every part of the country and every aspect of daily life.

As you might have guessed by now, the civil war has always been something of a passion of mine. It is the most significant period in English history, when for the first time we saw the ideas of democracy raised, and even implemented in the short-lived English Republic and Commonwealth.

So, let's start the campaign for the 30th January to be a public holiday in this country - Democracy Day. A celebration of the birth of democratic ideas ,and of the concept that no authority is above the law and the elected representatives of the people.

Amazing isn't it that to float such an idea is still controversial some 350 years after the event ?