W.H.Coates on the ‘Major Conflicts in Seventeenth-Century England’

(This is an article written by Chris Thompson. I do not know much about Wilson H Coates but I would like to publish Chris's article here. The Storm over the Gentry is a complex debate and although it took place over half a century ago the debate is still relevant to today's historiography on the English revolution.)

The ferocious debates over the fortunes of the English aristocracy and gentry that dominated historical debates over the origins and course of the English Revolution in the 1940s and 1950s were played out by the mid-1960s. They are now distant memories, best known probably for the methodological issues they raised and polemical edge to the exchanges between R.H.Tawney and Lawrence Stone on one side and Hugh Trevor-Roper and J.P.Cooper on the other. Undergraduates and, perhaps, postgraduates are most likely to come across this disputed territory when reading J.H.Hexter’s discussion of the ‘storm over the gentry’ and R.C.Richardson’s comments in his work on the historiography of the  Revolution. Assessments by other scholars – by W.H.Coates, Christopher Hill and Perez Zagorin, for example, - are less familiar or even forgotten.

This neglect of their views lends them interest. The first of these figures, Willson H.Coates, contributed an essay on the ‘Analysis of Major Conflicts in Seventeenth-Century England’ to the festschrift published in Wallace Notestein’s honour in 1960. It had originally been given at the meeting of the American Historical Association in December, 1956 to which Hexter and Zagorin had also given papers. It would have been fascinating to have been present then as a fly on the wall. In its apparently revised version, Coates began by addressing the claims of an American historian, Alexander Thomson, on the significance of the crises through which England passed in the seventeenth-century before moving on to discuss the rival claims of English historians since then. I am not going to comment on his discussion  of Alexander Thomson’s views but rather to focus my attention on his analysis of the claims and counter-claims of Tawney, Trevor-Roper and others, which formed the bulk of his essay.

Coates’s analysis focused initially on the Whig interpretation of the English Revolution. Whigs, he argued, viewed it as “essentially a war of ideas concerning religion and politics which rent families and divided members of the ruling gentry class. The seventeenth century was the crucial period in the emergence of constitutional government and of religious and intellectual freedom in England. Whether or not such a result was the intent of the Puritans, the Parliamentarians, the Cromwellians or the Restoration Whigs, it was – partly because powerful opponents of their particular views survived – their main historical achievement.” There is little or nothing in this to which Whig historians from Hallam and Macaulay to G,M,Trevelyan might have objected.

The most formidable assault on the Whig version of the English Revolution had, however, been made by R.H.Tawney according to Coates. He had found the cause of this political upheaval in antecedent social change and had described the economic transformations in England after 1540 to which political institutions had had to be adjusted to meet the requirements of a new social structure. Coates was not, however, convinced by this argument. Tawney’s hypothesis was not adequately linked in his view to the events in the early-1640s it was meant to explain. Tawney himself had conceded as much in his introduction to Brunton and Pennington’s book on the members of the Long Parliament’s House of Commons when he admitted that, as far as the members of the lower House were concerned, divisions between Royalists and Parliamentarians had little to do with diversities of economic interest and social class: even so, Tawney evidently still hankered after an explanation based on economic divisions amongst the ruling elite in and after 1642. Coates’s conclusion was that Tawney’s pre-occupation with underlying causation prevented him from appreciating that there had been other possible outcomes to the events of 1637-1642 and that he had thus failed to account for the English Revolution.

Essentially, Coates stated or re-stated the standard objection of historical empiricists to all forms of economic and social determinism, namely, that the connection between events and their assumed causes had not been made. Lawrence Stone’s progress from a view of the Revolution as “inevitable” in 1948 to one in which the old regime was overthrown peacefully in 1640-1641 and subsequently on to one in which the political struggle could no longer be explained primarily in economic terms was discussed more summarily. Despite his remaining reservations about Stone’s approach to the Civil Wars of the 1640s, Coates was apparently sympathetic to this evolution in Stone’s thinking.

He was much more critical of Trevor-Roper’s hypothesis about the fortunes of the declining and mere gentry. The idea that the Country-house radicalism of the mere gentry might lead either to Catholic desperation or Puritan Independency struck him as implausible. Indeed, the historical irresponsibility of this kind of diagnosis deserved to be ‘anatomized’ itself in the Trevor-Roper manner. Moreover, neither the declining gentry nor the Puritan Independents could be held to have controlled events between 1637 and 1642. And those M.P.s recruited to the House of Commons after the start of the Civil Wars were scarcely more radical than those elected in the autumn of 1640. Changes in the composition of county committees in a more radical direction after 1642 were hardly enough to vindicate Trevor-Roper’s contentions. Once again, the substance of Coates’s objections appear to lie in the inability of such claims to sustain a secure political analysis.

Interestingly enough, Coates had relatively little, if anything, to say about the validity of manorial counts as guides to changing economic fortunes or on the relative rewards of Court office compared to those from landownership that had preoccupied his colleagues in England. He was not opposed in principle to deploying insights gained into the operation of economic and social forces but thought that the dialectical methods of Tawney and Trevor-Roper belonged to “a kind of scholastic world of twentieth-century economic history.” Coates preferred the complex analysis to be found in C.V.Wedgwood’s narrative works and seventeenth-century realities presented in those of William Haller. “Major historical changes can be analysed only on assumptions of multiple causation and the intricate interdependence of a succession of events.”

Coates did, however, have his own analytical framework to suggest. Three categories of conflict in seventeenth-century England might be distinguished. First of all, there was the “continuous social conflict” of interest to economic historians. A good deal was known about the price revolution of 1540-1640, about the expansion of banking, commerce and industry, the sale of Crown and former monastic lands and the shifting patterns of property ownership among the aristocracy and gentry, industrialists, merchants and yeomen. “Innumerable shifts in property divided members of a class, cut across the well-demarcated class lines and effected new combinations of interest” even if the social revolution was a silent one incapable of large-scale organization. Such vast social changes did not culminate in one single historical event but could be seen, for example, in the political legislation of the Long Parliament in 1641 and in the uncontested sway of mercantilist doctrines later in the century. This category of social conflict had strong economic roots and was “closely related to the emergence of modern Western capitalism.” Calvinism, as Weber and Tawney had argued, placed an emphasis of prudence, industry and frugality, which were the appropriate ideological tools for the accumulation of wealth, including land. It was, Coates claimed, “a moulding factor in economic conflict and change.”

The second distinct category identified by Coates concerned the issues contemporaries thought they were fighting about, i.e. over the roles of the royal prerogative, of Parliament and the judiciary as well as the character of the State Church. In essence, the nineteenth-century picture of the conflict was right although the part of the Tories in the post-1688 settlement needed to be recognised alongside that of the Whigs.

Finally, there was “the real class conflict that loomed up in the mid-seventeenth century” with rising demands from the lower classes articulated by the Levellers and the Diggers. Behind these radical movements lay social and economic discontent. But they were premature and hopeless: the threat of social revolution was easily crushed. Even so, these movements had drawn on intellectual and social circumstances that permitted free discussion and the democratic tendencies of English Puritanism. Religious ideas and concepts of natural law as well as a selective reading of history and law fashioned Levellers’ demands.

What remained to be explained was the relationship between the two main factors in these conflicts, the political and the religious. In 1641, men were concerned with both: by 1688, they were obviously more secularly minded.

The ground upon which Coates chose to stand was clearly demarcated. He saw the economic and social changes of the period up to the English Revolution as critical to its explanation and focused on the influence of Calvinism and the rise of Capitalism as fundamental. Broadly speaking, he accepted the Whig interpretation of political and religious conflicts in the course of the seventeenth-century and an explanation in terms of class conflict for the appearance of the Levellers and Diggers in the late-1640s. The idea of an abortive revolution from below would have appealed to Christopher Hill.

But the objections Coates had made against Tawney’s case for the ‘rise of the gentry’ could have been made with equal validity against his own analytical framework. The economic and social changes he postulated in the century before 1640 were not linked either to the key events of 1637-1642 or to the subsequent period. His approach was based on the old claims of Marx, Weber and Tawney for Calvinism and the rise of Calvinism. This was the Tawney thesis shorn of its untenable statistics and without its analytical failings.

Secondly, of course, Coates gave succour to the Whig interpretation that economic and social explanations were supposed to have rendered redundant. He himself shared the presuppositions of economic and social determinism at the same time as he protested against such preconceptions. Logically, he could not begin by making such a protest and then end by offering a synthesis of the two.

Finally, there is the matter of his use of the language of ‘class’ and of ‘class conflict’. Contemporaries did not use such terminology and the consensus of historical opinion is that attempts to apply these terms to seventeenth-century English society have failed, although some, if not very many, historians believe they can be deployed in this way. When Coates wrote that Royalists and Parliamentarians alike found “the rising demands from the lower classes were ominous” and that the Levellers and Diggers constituted a “social revolutionary movement”, he was using anachronistic language and testifying to his own antique intellectual equipment.

This is why this essay from a mature historian in his prime was so conservative. It is in part confused. It is in part confusing because it has nothing new to offer. The powerful stimulus that the ‘storm over the gentry’ had already given to studies of the origins and course of the English Revolution in economic and social history, in county and urban history was never recognised by Coates. That, perhaps, more than anything explains why his comments have languished in obscurity for so long. 

Comrade Jacob [Paperback] David Caute Panther Books; New edition (Dec 1973).

'The power of property was brought into creation by the sword',  Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1676)

"Thus," to quote Marx again, "thus were the agricultural people, firstly forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system."

 [Capital]Karl Marx

David Cautes 1961 novel Comrade Jacob is about the struggle undertaken by Gerard Winstanley to create a "common treasury for all" during the English revolution. Caute's book is one of the better novels based on the English revolution.

While  Paul Lay perceptively remarks about another very good historical novel The Daughter of Time by Josephine Yey "The historical novel when it is this good, this thoroughly researched, has become a means of legitimate historical inquiry." The same could be said of Caute's novel.

David Caute is not only a gifted novelist but playwright, historian, journalist and essay writer. He imbues his writing with a strong left-wing sentiment. As one writer states he "brings a broad knowledge of European (mainly French) intellectual traditions into English fiction. He is one of the most intellectually stimulating novelists of recent decades in England--a "public" rather than a "private "writer".

Caute's novel is set in the high point of the English revolution. A group of disaffected ex-New Model Army soldiers and others along with wives and children, led by Gerard Winstanley have become disillusioned by the course of the civil war under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell. The group decides to take over some land at St Georges Hill in Surrey. They plant crops and graze cattle to survive.

Their mission was to develop and practice a primitive form of communism. The settlement expressed in simple terms a growing disgust and protest by sections of both the lower middle class and sections of an early working class at the rapidly growing social inequality that existed during the civil war. Their commune was met with swift and violent punishment, and eventually, they were defeated.

Although written in 1965 the book and the subject matter still resonate today in that the same  that the issues that appear in the book such as the nature of democracy, social inequality and the rapacious nature of private property are still topics that provoke debate and civil unrest today.

How else would you explain that despite the passage of nearly four hundred years, people are still violently evicted from the land for protesting at social injustice?.In an article which could have described a scene 400 hundred years ago, the Guardian writer George Monbiot says this "Hounded by police and bailiffs, evicted wherever they stopped. 

They did not mean to settle here. They had walked out of London to occupy disused farmland on the Queen's estates surrounding Windsor Castle. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that didn't work out very well. But after several days of pursuit, they landed two fields away from the place where modern democracy is commonly supposed to have been born.[1]

David Caute recently pointed out that St George's Hill in Surrey is now home to some the most expensive real estate in England "Here opulent private properties sit untouchable behind security gates and surveillance cameras. It was not always so. In 1649, as the civil war drew to a close and Charles I stepped out on to a Whitehall balcony to face the executioner, the landowners of St George's Hill were confronted by an influx of nightmare neighbours, the so-called Diggers".[2]

The leader Gerrard Winstanley, advanced their claims in the name of social justice. He also called for the end to "Norman yoke" which he blamed for all of England's troubles.

The novel is mostly told through words and eyes of Winstanley, part academic book part novel. While the book, unfortunately, has been left a little on the shelf, the subject matter has seen a significant renaissance. It is only recently that a systematic study of Winstanley has started to emerge. The recent publication of his collected works is one indication of the trend to restore Winstanley to his place as one of the most prominent figures of the English revolution.

He was a figure that according to Christopher Hill, who turned the world upside down. His form of utopian communism went further than the Levellers in both actions and words. The egalitarian nature of his philosophy was captured in his pamphlet "The New Law of Righteousness," written in 1648. "Selfish imaginations," he said had lead one man to rule over another. "But everyone shall put their hands to till the earth and bring up cattle, and the blessing of the earth shall be common to all," "When a man hath need of any corn or cattle, take from the next store-house he meets with. There shall be no buying and selling, no fairs or markets, but the whole earth shall be the common Treasury for every man."

The Diggers and Levellers were part of a group of people that sought to understand the profound political and social changes that were taking place at the beginning of the 17th century. They were the true 'Ideologues of the revolution'. While the Diggers were sympathetic to the poor, which stemmed from their religion, they had no program to bring about social change, they never advocated a violent overturning of society. Their class outlook, that being of small producers, conditioned their ideology. At no stage did the Diggers or that matter did the larger group the Levellers constitute a mass movement.

The contradiction between their concern for the poor and their position of representatives of the small property owners caused some tension. They had no opposition to private property, and therefore they accepted that inequalities would always exist, they merely argued for a lot of the poor to be made more equitable.

Caute was a man of the left and the novel reflects Caute's academic upbringing as a student of Christopher Hill, as Caute says "I became acquainted with the Diggers in Oxford University tutorials with the great historian of our 17th-century upheavals, Christopher Hill, who at that juncture was severing his links with the Communist party in the wake of the Hungarian Revolution. Out of this came a novel, Comrade Jacob, published in the spring of 1961. But how to climb into the heads of Fifth Monarchists, Quakers, Ranters and the other mushrooming sects? We find it easier, surely, to understand the strictly secular doctrines of Jacobins and Bolsheviks. I divided the storytelling between Winstanley's own self-righteous narrative and scenes in which his actions and personality are viewed through a more skeptical authorial lens. Much of it was mere conjecture - the evidence is hazy. But this haze, which became the oxygen of the novel, was later lost in the film version".[3]

After writing the book, Caute says he was approached by some people offering to make the book into film, But Caute stated that "The recurrent problem in these adaptations during the 1960s and 70s was the erosion of two central themes of the novel by the partisan passions of the New Left. Winstanley's mystical religious fervour went out of the window – he was always found on his feet rather than his knees. Also defenestrated was the rising personal power this opinionated prophet exercised among his poor followers, and how his "moral parsonage" may have entered his soul. In the stage and screen adaptations he was to be found striding out of a socialist realist manual, a clear-headed tribune of the people, a steadfast hero unburdened by the shadow of Esau. The lessons of Orwell's Animal Farm did not surface".

Perhaps the most famous "use "of Caute's book is the film Winstanley by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo. Caute is heavily critical of some shortcomings in the movie. Having seen the film and read the book, I am in agreement with Caute. I like the film it has great merit and is stunningly photographed but as Caute said the religious/political aspects of Winstanley are heavily downplayed.

When asked by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo, to use the book Caute said yes but only if he could write the film script myself. Caute bitterly regretted it and "discovered that screenwriters do not count for much. Not until I was shown the final product did I realize what had been going on. I duly withdrew my screenwriting credit".

Caute criticism was that Winstanley while being a "vivid commentary on the physical condition of 17th century rural England", it was "reluctant to penetrate the strong religious motivations of the time. Winstanley believed that to know the secrets of nature is to know the works of God within the creation. This extends to the characters. I make no great claims for my novel in this regard, but it did attempt to convey individuals' sometimes perverse changes of mood and motivation. This is indeed retained in the person of the army commander, Lord General Fairfax, but Winstanley, the eponymous hero of the film, remains from start to finish a decent, upstanding, strangely well-spoken Left Book Club idealist. The rough edges of a Lancastrian, the spiritual torment, the mood swings between pride and humility, Winstanley's mounting confusions about God and Reason, have utterly gone".

The book also has its weaknesses. It should not be seen as a verbatim account of the role of the Diggers in the English Revolution. Caute only touches upon some significant events that could have been expanded without ruining the book. More could have been made of the Putney debates which are very briefly mentioned in the book. A detailed look at these discussions would have given a far broader and objective assessment of Winstanley's role in the debate over the franchise.

Caute could have also developed more the religious and more importantly, the political divide between the Presbyterian and Independents.  It should not be lost that the people that sought the Diggers eviction were mostly Presbyterians; Lord Fairfax was after all heavily on the side of the Independents. To conclude, despite its shortcomings, the book is a must-read for anyone interested in the radicals groups of the English revolution. It is one of the better historical novels to examine the revolution

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[1] The Promised Land July 16, 2012 This is the fate of young people today: excluded, but forbidden to opt out. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 17th July 2012

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/oct/17/david-caute-winstanley-comrade-jacob

[3] Looking back in regret at Winstanley David Caute guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 October 2008

55 Days by Howard Brenton – Nick Hern Books 2012

"We are not just trying a tyrant, we are inventing a country."    

  

Howard Brenton's short play deals with the 55-day military coup in the mid-1600s when Oliver Cromwell's army took control of Parliament and moved to put King Charles Ist on trial for treason. The book works on many levels. While just shy of one hundred pages, it nonetheless is a substantial historical work.

Brenton is correct to centre the play on the relationship between Charles I and Cromwell. Brenton's heavy emphasis on the struggle of Cromwell to reach an agreement with the King is, to a certain extent accurate but Brenton takes a few liberties with the historical record.

Some reviews have correctly picked up on the point that Brenton uses the past to analyse the present.  Like a Bertolt Brecht play, it does shows the conflict between theory and action, as individuals and parties debate the future of the sovereignty of Parliament. As Michael Billington says "the real pleasure lies in seeing a pivotal moment in English history presented with such fervent dramatic power."[1]

The book like the play itself is demanding, and it is advisable to have at least a working knowledge of the English revolution in order not only to understand but enjoy the play. As one critic put it "if you do a bit of homework first, this is an evening that grips."

The play is historically accurate and correctly portrays the differences that existed over the judicial murder of a king. Brenton is clear on the point that the killing of the King was a necessary step by the bourgeoisie to clear the way for its rule and establish a parliamentary democracy.

It is clear from the reviews of the play that the historical controversy surrounding the English revolution still generates heat even today. One reviewer described Cromwell as a "thundering hypocrite who claims to be an instrument of God's will, while craftily packing the commissioners who will pass sentence on the King with yes-men. Charles I, in contrast, is at least consistent in his belief that he is divinely appointed."

The play has certain objectivity in that Brenton makes us see two sides of the war. Brenton's inclusion of the Levellers in the form of their leader John Lillburne is a bit of a surprise until you have a look at Brenton's radical sympathies. Brenton is not averse to collaborating with modern radicals such as Tariq Ali. Brenton's collaboration with a political scoundrel of the calibre of Ali was not one of his best decisions. Not surprisingly Brenton was heavily attacked by right-wing sections of the media as Janelle Reinelt relates that "in the late 1990s, Brenton endured a drubbing in the British press from which he is only now emerging.

It seems that taking on the new Labour government early in its first term was considered to be in bad taste, and satire, an ancient genre of dramatic writing that Brenton had earlier successfully mixed in with more "serious" dramas, was now considered terrible writing. Brenton formed a group called Stigma with longtime friends and collaborators Tariq Ali and Andy de la Tour to shake up the British electorate by making them laugh at the expense of the newly triumphant New Labourites. Ugly Rumors (1998), the first of three plays over three years attempted by Stigma, drew savage criticism from the press. Even Michael Billington, the Guardian critic whose left-leaning views and intelligent theatrical judgment usually serve as a reliable bell-weather wrote, "you feel it is still too early to accuse the Government of some kind of grand betrayal".[2]

The inclusion of the Levellers is a brave move given current historical revisionism's hostility to the Levellers being included in the historical drama that was the English revolution. One minor criticism of the play is that Brenton could have developed Lilburnes opposition to the regicide.

The play at the Hampstead Theatre has come into criticism for the use of modern dress. Charles is suited with a Vandyke collar and cane, yet others like Cromwell are dressed like something out of the 1940s. Some critics have said this is to emphasise the middle-class nature of the revolt. I am sure that if current historians had reviewed the book and play. I feel a different interpretation would be forthcoming.

Perhaps the most important and historically significant part of the play is the meeting of the two main protagonists Cromwell and the King.  The scene is invented as the two did not meet during the trial. Although they did meet once, before the Civil War.  Cromwell was in a Parliamentary group that went to Charles with a petition.

I am not against a counterfactual argument or the use of an artistic license. Friedrich Schiller, used it to tremendous effect when he invented a meeting between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, Brenton adds a fictional scene in which Cromwell desperately tries to persuade Charles Ist to save his life.[3]

The problem I have is that Brenton portrays his characters too much as individuals and not really in the context of the time. While it is true that Cromwell may have wanted a compromise with the King at an earlier time, there were larger objective forces that were moving Cromwell at this time. Cromwell was enough of a politician to know that at that moment to move against the army, which was the most radical force in the country would have been suicidal. The army was far to the left of the Levellers who at that stage were the revolutions left wing.

To conclude, there is no doubt that Brenton is a gifted writer and director. His 55 days is well worth going to see. Brenton has a significant grasp of history. His play as one writer puts it "provides an insight into the pivotal, tumultuous historical background to the drama, and the men who embodied it.

Brenton said "recently I met a Frenchman in London and we fell to talking about the high drama of the climax of the French Revolution: the struggle between Danton and Robespierre. 'In this country, you don't remember you also had a revolution,' he said, adding, rather waspishly, 'and you don't realise you still live with the consequences'.[4]

It is true, the modern-day English bourgeoisie does not like to be reminded of its revolutionary history. The same goes for some historians who go as far as to deny a revolution took place. It is good that people like Brenton reminds them and us of this revolutionary past.

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[1] https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/oct/25/55-days-review

[2] The "Rehabilitation" of Howard Brenton- Janelle Reinelt Source: TDR (1988-), Vol. 51, No. 3 (Fall, 2007), pp. 167-174

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Stuart_(play)

[4] Howard Brenton: A forgotten revolution – the historical context to 55 Dayshttp://nickhernbooksblog.com/2012/10/25/howard-brenton-a-forgotten-revolution-the-historical-context-to-55-days/

The Impact of the English Civil Wars (A History Today Book) [Paperback] J.S. Morrill (Editor) 1991

Like many other aspects of the history of the English Civil War, its impact on society, politics and the economy has caused serious disagreements among historians. While a substantial minority (albeit in the past) have said it is impossible to ignore or deny that the civil war did have some impact and that changes did occur in the social, economic and political superstructure, others have played down appreciably the consequences and some have even tried to deny that social changes were crucial partly determining the outcome of the war.

Certainly, over the last quarter of a century, it has been highly fashionable to question the social context of the civil war. In the book, The Causes of the English Civil War p117 Ann Hughes says this changing traditional fashion can be illustrated from the titles of two collections of sources covering early modern social history. In 1965 Lawrence Stone published Social Change and Revolution in England 1540-1640, whereas Barry Coward produced Social Change and Continuity in Early Modern England1550-1750. The coupling of continuity rather than revolution with social changes in the latter work reveals a more qualified assessment of the extent of transformation at the beginning of modern England.

The New Social History of Historiography appeared in the early 1970s. According to some historians it was perhaps the last major historiography of the 20th century to try and explain the complex historical phenomenon known as the English Civil War. Before the 1970s, Social History had mostly been limited to a study of everyday life. During the last thirty odd years, the subject has come to prominence because some aspects of it have become the bête noir of some revisionist historians. The most positive side of the new history is that it brought into the public domain the lives of working people or the poor who had largely been ignored by historians. On the downside this, new history became divorced from any form of economic or materialist explanation of the civil war.

This collection of essays comes predominantly from historians who in one way or another question the impact of the war with the sole exception of John Walters. This revisionist historiography has taken on many forms, but its primary component is hostility to any kind of Marxist historiography. Given John Morrill’s editorial role in preparing this collection of the essay, it is important to understand his take on these events. He was clearly influenced by the New Social History historiography in an interview he describes his attitude towards those historians who were in the forefront of the group “So there came along the new social history which opened up a whole range of types of evidence, and so one of the most important things to happen for my period was the work which is most naturally associated with Keith Wrightson (who trained in Cambridge, spent many years in St Andrews, returned to Cambridge and then moved to Yale). And the Wrightson revolution indeed, in the way in which social history is made, had an enormous impact on those of us who were more interested in high politics. I mean modern politics, constructed high politics. Wrightson’s importance for my work is again something that people might be a bit surprised to hear about, but I personally, in my mid-career, saw it as absolutely fundamental.

In his introduction, John Morrill is correct to point out while there is general agreement amongst historians of what to call the events in France around 1789 or 1917 in Russia there is little agreement as to what to call the revolutionary events in 1640s England. A reader coming to these events for the first time will find out that this problem is down to many factors.  A major one being the political bias of the historian.  Another is the sheer complexity of the historical crisis that gripped the English state. The book is recommended in the sense that it does give the reader a broad range of differing views albeit absent is a Marxist explanation but more on that later.

The book is simple in design but has a generous supply of fantastic illustrations which in themselves are worth further exploration. Chapter one is by Charles Charlton and called The Impact of the fighting. Charlton begins by assessing the numbers of dead and wounded during the conflict. Another ground for disagreement. Charlton highlights one of the biggest problems is that when dealing with primary sources regarding causalities these are open to bias depending on which side they came from?.

In a striking passage in his memoirs Richard Baxter “said he watched the battle of Langport as a young chaplain in the army of the Parliament.  Baxter witnessed fierce fighting. Facing defeat, the Royalists panicked. Standing next to Baxter was Major Thomas Harrison. As the Parliamentary army charged the Royalists fled, Baxter heard him ‘with a loud voice break forth into the praises of God with fluent expressions, as if he had been in a rapture.' 

According to D H Pennington, “it was bloodiest conflict in relative terms in English history” crops and land were seized; cattle and horses were taken. Pennington makes the point that the Royalists were often more brutal than the Parliamentarians.Another useful source on the impact of the civil war can be found in Steven Porter’s book while careful not to exaggerate the destruction he has some relevant statistical data on the scale of the impact of the civil war. 150 towns and 50 villages suffered destruction of property. According to the House of Lords Record Office, Main Papers,23 Sept. 1648 “…miserable it is to see the multitudes of inhabitants and their children flocking in the streets of the bordering towns and villages and have not a house to putt their heads therein, whereby to exercise their calling.”

Taunton was according to Clarendon a third of the town was destroyed by fire, but according to Sprigge a flourishing city was all but destroyed. Some books have come out recently, which contain important sources of eyewitness accounts of the civil war. One such is J Adair By The Sword Divided highlighted one particular aspect which was the development of social advancement inside the Army and service in the armies of Parliament certainly provided opportunities for social advancement. At first, the rival armies were officered by men of much the same social status, but gradually new people from the middle, lower middle and artisan classed moved into positions of responsibility, both on committees that ran the war and in the wider army. John Hampden’s Shepherd, Thomas Shelbourne, rose to be colonel of Cromwell regiment of Ironsides and there were similar stories. The more conservative Puritan Gentry objected to their newcomers as much as on social grounds as on account of their often unorthodox or radical religious views.

Forced requisitioning took place but a lot of goods were paid for at market prices. Adair says while there was “decay of life” there was also opposite to this massive growth of profits for many people. Also, things such as the legal system remained relatively healthy and survived unscathed. In the London, the impact of the civil war is hard to assess in many respects everyday life carried on as normal. London also avoided sack or siege, however, emergency wartime powers were resented by large sections of the population. Its economy was vital for the New Model Army and this state of affairs led one Royalist to lament “if posterity shall ask who pulled the crown from the king's head said it was proud unthankful schismatically, rebellious, blood City of London.”

Charlton who came from a military background is particularly keen on military matters but when it comes to a more in-depth understanding of why people fought and how the war came about the chapter is very light. People on both sides of the war “chose deliberately which side they fought on.

Chapter Two the Impact on Government by David L Smith.  Smith seems to argue that the civil war was largely a defensive maneuver by parliament against a corrupt and inept monarchy. Smith believes that no appreciable changes occurred during the civil war and protectorate and we quickly move onto a united monarchy after Cromwell’s death.

Chapter 3 The Impact of Puritanism is by John Morrill. The chapter is well written, and Morrill argues his point well, but a lot more could have been said on this subject. The Puritan religion did have a material basis. For the understanding of some of the great problems of human history, the study of religion is a necessity. Cliff Slaughter posed this question “What is the relationship between the social divisions among men and their beliefs about the nature of things? How do ruling classes ensure extended periods of acceptance of their rule by those they oppress? Why was the ‘Utopians’ wrong in thinking that it was sufficient only to work out a reasonable arrangement of social relations to proceed to its construction? It was out of the examination of questions like this in the German school of criticism of religion that Marx emerged to present for the first time a scientific view of society. ‘The criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism.’

Suffice to say this is not Morrill’s position. Therefore I find his analysis on Puritanism a little one sided.  Also, there appears to be an absence of struggle in Morrill’s chapter. Next, to nothing is made of the differing radical Puritan groups that were outside mainstream Puritan politics.

This is the history of the victors as Christopher Hill would have said. Little is mentioned of radical sects such as the Ranters, who flourished in England at the time of the Puritan Revolution. While it is generally accepted that there was not a massive amount of unrest and protest during the civil war.  John Morrill has made the point that changes in social and economic policy were mostly controlled by the middling sort and large-scale outbreaks were prevented by this class.

However there was a tangible fear amongst sections of the middle class who feared the little people As Lucy Hutchinson writes with disdain, “almost all the Parliament garrisons were infested and disturbed with like factious little people, in so much that many worthy gentlemen were wearied out of their command, some oppressed by a particular sort of individuals in the House whom, to distinguish from the most honourable gentlemen, they called worsted stocking men”. Hutchinson is probably referring to the people that were increasingly being influenced by the Levellers who expressed an awareness, particularly amongst the lower sections that to have a say in these changes they must organize through some kind of political organization.

The ideas of these sects represented the views of the lower strata of society. Their ideas of wider democracy and equality were an anathema to the victorious upper-middle classes. It was as necessary for Cromwell to crush the Ranters as to liquidate Lilburne’s Levellers and Winstanley’s Diggers. A few selections from their tracts will show their lack of appeal to class so enamored of compromise as the British bourgeoisie. Coppe, their finest spokesman, addresses the propertied classes thus:  ‘Mighty men! ... Those that have admired, adored, idolized, magnified, set you up, fought for you, ventured goods, and good name, limb and life for you, shall cease from you.’ ‘For this Honour, Nobility, Gentility, Propriety, Superfluity. &c. hath (without contradiction) been the Father of hellish horrid pride, arrogance, haughtiness, loftinesse, murder, malice, of all manner of wickednesse and impiety; yea the cause of all the blood that ever hath been shed. from the blood of the righteous Abell, to the blood of the last Levellers that were shot to death.’ 

Chapter IV The Impact on Political Thought by Glen Burgess. For a substantial part of the 20th-century civil war, historiography was dominated by Marxist historians who were clear that social and economic changes did bring about changes in people's thinking. Burgess in this chapter does not agree that there is a connection what Marxists have called base and superstructure. As Karl Marx explained in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859): he believed that: “In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, who are independent of their will, namely [the] relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. 

Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead, sooner or later, to the transformation of the whole, immense, superstructure. In studying such transformations, it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic, or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production”.

Burgess goes on to explain that previous approaches to ideological struggles in the Revolution were expressed through an examination of pamphlets of the 1640s. While recognition that the literature was partisan they were taken “at face value, as part of a philosophical debate.” This approach, says Burgess, may be "inherently distorting." Burgess believes that politics were fluid and that no one really stuck to their principles but ideas were mere "rhetoric." His examination of the different groups including radical groups guides his approach. He believes that the various political groups were largely acting empirically. Taking advantage of changes in the political situation with some rhetorical statements.

This, in my opinion, does not explain the complex philosophical problems that were being tackled by people like Thomas Hobbes and Harrington to name just two. In Anti Duhring Engels said if Englishmen nowadays do not exactly relish the compliment they paid their ancestors, more’s the pity. It is none the less undeniable that Bacon, Hobbes and Locke are the fathers of that brilliant school of French materialists which made the eighteenth century in spite of all battles of land and sea won over Frenchmen by Germans and Englishmen, a primarily French Century, even before that crowning French revolution, the results of which we outsiders, in England as well as in Germany are still trying to acclimatise.

Chapter V the Impact of the New Model Army. Ian Gentles develops an excellent introduction to the New Model Army. Chapter VI John Walters is a bit of a strange choice in this selection essays in so much as you would not classify him as the revisionist historian. In fact, he would be much closer to the Marxist historians. His work is always interesting and thought to provoke and this essay carries on in the same vein. Walters actually believes that the world was turned upside down.

Walters examines large swathes of primary sources but like a good historian does not take them at face value. He recognizes that these are not impartial documents but were weapons of war.  Significantly it is in this chapter that we get a real feel of the social turmoil that existed during the civil war. Walter’s believes that large segments of the population were becoming radicalized and became involved in all number of political and military activity.Riots broke out all over the place, and many of these reflected the level of poverty that existed. Walters believes that these disorders threatened the social order. Walters is the only chapter that women get a look in. While not examined in any depth Walters recognizes that large sections of the female population were being radicalized alongside their menfolk.

Notes

1.    Going to the Wars: The Experience of the British Civil Wars 1638-1651 [Paperback] Charles Carlton

2.    Ann Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War p117

3.    G E Aylmer Rebellion or Revolution

4.    Mark Kishlanksy Ideology and politics in the parliamentary Armies 1645-49

5.    S Porter The Destruction in the Civil War

6.    G M Trevelyan Social History of Britain

7.    C Hill In the Century of Revolution

8.    Cliff Slaughter From Labour Review, Vol.3 No.3, May-June 1958, pp.77-82. Transcribed & marked up byEinde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).

NB{ This essay replaces the previous Impact of the English Civil War on Society in the 1640s}

Men and Women in the English Revolution

By Gaby Mahlberg 

Over the summer I agreed to review two books on the English civil wars. One Blair Worden’s God’s Instruments (2012), the other Ann Hughes’s Gender and the English Revolution (2012). The first, aside from a few fleeting references to Lucy Hutchinson, deals almost exclusively with Oliver Cromwell and other men who fought in the Civil War and determined the politics of the country in its aftermath. The second focuses mainly on women, though never studying them separately from the men they supported and challenged.

What I conclude from this is, that nearly half a century after the emergence of women’s history, it is still possible to write history books that largely ignore women, while it is virtually impossible to write anything at all that ignores men. I.e. as far as high political history is concerned, gender is only a ‘relational concept’ with regards to women.

I do not blame Blair Worden. In fact, I admire his work and frequently cite it in my own. Besides, I am no less guilty of having written entire book chapters or journal articles without mentioning a single woman. Political correctness and indeed the contribution of women to politics and political decision making easily slip our mind when the evidence is so much focused on a male political sphere – especially for students of the early modern period. But I still think we should try and change our practice and ask ourselves every time we look at a political issue: and what was the contribution of women?

As Hughes shows in her recent book, aside from Lucy Hutchinson (the author, translator and biographer of her husband, the republican Colonel John Hutchinson), there were thousands of other ‘Women at war’ (35). There was ‘Elizabeth Alkin, also known as “Parliament Joan”’, who ‘spied for the armies of the Earl of Essex, Sir William Waller and Sir Thomas Fairfax’, or the ‘royalist … conspirator … Katherine Stuart, Lady Aubigny’, who came to London ‘to raise supporters in the city’ and prompted ‘an abortive plot’ (36).

Women frequently ‘played a full part in organising the defences of besieged towns’ (36), while soldiers’ wives ‘helped with civil war administration’ (37). Queen Henrietta Maria herself was one of Charles I’s most trusted advisors; Elizabeth Cromwell presumably kept the household up and running while husband Oliver was out killing royalists; and Elizabeth Ludlow remained the faithful companion and co-conspirator of her regicide husband Edmund, who had to flee England for continental exile in 1660. There were also many others without whose contribution history might have developed differently.

I know the case has been made many times before, but the gender segregation in works on political history shows that it’s worth repeating.

Andrew Barclay. Electing Cromwell: The Making of a Politician. Political and Popular Culture in the Early Modern Period, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011. pp. xi + 288.

The last few decades have seen an extraordinary growth of popular interest in Oliver Cromwell. It is unfortunate that most of the books, articles have not increased our understanding of this complex historical figure. The same cannot be said about Barclay's book.

Based on meticulous research using a huge range of newly discovered primary sources, this book has increased our understanding of the life and career of Oliver Cromwell.

Barclay's task was not an easy one. Very little is known of how Cromwell became an MP as Jonathan Fitzgibbons of Christ's College, Cambridge points out "among the many mysteries that shroud the career of Oliver Cromwell, his election as MP for Cambridge in 1640 remains one of the most baffling. 

Cromwell was hardly the town's typical choice for MP; he was not a member of the civic ruling élite, nor did he have any useful ties to the court. Yet this outsider, from a relatively humble background, was elected as MP for Cambridge in 1640 not once but twice: it was no fluke. For almost two decades the default explanation for this anomaly has been John Morrill's claim that Cambridge saw Cromwell as a man with connections worth cultivating—specifically, his links to a godly network centred upon the earl of Warwick. Andrew Barclay's book seeks to demolish this interpretation of aristocratic patronage—which the author politely dismisses as nothing more than a 'suggestive possibility".[1]

It is clear from the preface that Barclay would like to present a "warts and all" picture of Cromwell. His book is very much a product of his work Barclay' with the History of Parliament Trust House of Commons project. Barclay's work for the trust covers the period 1640-1660. The book is a comprehensive examination of Cromwell's early political life in Cambridge borough politics and is as Sabrina Alcorn Baron writes "a model for interrogating the silences in the historical record."[2]

Barclay rejects placing Cromwell within the context of the times. According to him"If Cromwell has loomed large in the histories of Civil War Cambridge, he has also done so, more debatably, in more general histories of the Civil War. While few have ever seen him as being wholly typical, his career has conventionally been used to exemplify many of the war's major themes. He is the most famous soldier in a political conflict that was ultimately won on the battlefield. He remains by far the most obvious example of a man for whom the war was the making of him. He is the archetypal Puritan.

This temptation to place him in the foreground of these events has, naturally enough, been least resisted by his many biographers. Linking Cromwell's career to the wider social drama, so that one becomes an implicit microcosm for the other, has proved itself to be one of the more perennial ways in which historians have tried to make sense of his remarkable story. Furthermore, just because so much that is new has now been discovered from the years before he became famous does not lessen that temptation." [3]

Not all historians agree with Barclay's method. Christopher Hill while appreciating Barclay's hard work would have been slightly critical as regards solely concentrating on one aspect of Cromwell's early political career. In his essay The Pre-Revolutionary Decade he wrote "not all historians, unfortunately, read literary criticism (and I fear some do not even read English literature), if they did, they would realise that there was a revolution in English literature as well as in science, even if they cannot persuade themselves that there were revolutions in politics, economics, and society. Those historians, who concentrate on Parliamentary debates, state papers and the correspondence of the gentry, fail to notice what is going on elsewhere. It is one of the disastrous consequences of specialisation".[4]

Having said that Barclay does put his knack of specialisation to good use to provide a tremendously detailed look at a massive range of original sources. In his bibliography section, he has examined forty-six archival collections. The book provides an incredibly original piece of research into Cromwell's election as Member of Parliament for Cambridge borough in both April and November 1640. The book complements John Morrill's work on a New Critical Edition of all the Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell.

One aspect of this re-evaluation is an extensive look at James Heath's Flagellum. A word of warning if you are unfamiliar with this book, a word of caution as John Morrill said in his History Today review "If the Daily Sport had existed in the 1660s Heath would have been its editor". Heath's book has for a very long time been held by historians to be unreliable, and in many places, his book has outright falsifications. Barclay has sought to resurrect Heath as a semi-reliable source of Cromwell's early political career. According to Barclay, Heath's words are the most"accurate account of the election that exists." It is not possible in the space of this article to agree or refute Barclay's claim.

Suffice to say the reader should be aware that Barclay's work is not just a piece of pure research. Historians do not function in a vacuum, and Barclay has a definite agenda regarding the use of Heath's work. Barclay rejects past historiography regarding Cromwell's election. The resurrection of Heath fits with Barclay's and other historians such as John Adamson view that the civil war was primarily a conspiratorial affair. Adamson's book has a theoretical premise that the Civil War as basically a coup de état by a group of nobles or aristocrats who no longer supported the King. According to Diane Purkiss, these nobles were "driven by their code of honor; they acted to protect themselves and the nation. Names such as Saye, Bedford, Essex, and Warwick move from the sidelines to occupy centre stage, as do their counterparts among Scottish peers. It was they and not the ignorant masses who plucked a king from his throne. Oliver Cromwell, for Adamson, was merely one of their lesser lackeys".[5]

Sabrina Alcorn Baron supports Heath's usefulness with some reservation saying "the disreputable Heath correctly described the machinations of a group of like-minded godly who had encountered Cromwell in Fenland conventicles and believed him to be a man of action who would successfully plead their case at the national level. They then manoeuvre the mayor, who had no acquaintance with or prior knowledge of him, into appointing Cromwell a freeman of the borough, and from there Cromwell made his way into the parliamentary election for the district, a process that historically had been fractious. Indeed, in the Long Parliament election, he ignored a double return and took his seat anyway. And the rest, as they say, is history. Barclay ends with crediting the institution of Parliament as the great catalyst that set Cromwell in place to become a national hero and head of state".[6]

Barclay's work has been defended in some revisionist circles. John Morrill says "Barclay's account 'challenges and overturns' my own earlier work with its highly tentative suggestions as to why Cromwell was elected for Cambridge. Excellent! Barclay has burrowed deep into archives in Cambridge, Ely and parts of the National Archives (such as 'Petty Bag') which few have dared to enter. Many of his sources can be described as terra incognita. Even more remarkably, there are citations of manuscripts in no less than 45 depositories. This is an unintended rebuke to much current academic laziness, the world of quick-fix scholarship, in which books and articles are compiled through word-searches in Early English Books Online and British History Online".

To conclude, this is a very specialised piece of revisionist writing and is not aimed at the wider reading public. However, it is a goldmine for researchers.

---

[1] The English Historical Review, Volume 127, Issue 529, December 2012, Pages 1524–1526, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ces244

[2] Sabrina Alcorn Baron, www.academia.edu

[3] Andrew Barclay. Electing Cromwell: The Making of a Politician. Political and Popular Culture in the Early Modern Period, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011. pp. xi + 288

[4] see Christopher Hill, “The Pre-Revolutionary Decades,” in Writing and Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England.

[5] https://www.ft.com/content/617713ea-0e56-11dc-8219-000b5df10621

[6] Sabrina Alcorn Baron, www.academia.edu

Eric Hobsbawm-1917-2012

The death of Eric Hobsbawm at aged 95 marks the end of an era when a group of Communist historians dominated their respective fields of study. The purpose of this obituary is to place the historian in the context of his politics and his role as a dominant force inside and out of the Communist Party Historians Group.

The influence of this group of 'Marxist historians' has since waned mainly due to the 'Marxism is Dead' campaign which found support amongst an aggressive collection of revisionist historians who sought to counter Marxist historiography and to replace it with a hodge-podge of theories that in one way or another denied that class or economic issues had anything to do with the revolutionary upheavals of the last four hundred years.

Hobsbawm, who was born in Egypt in 1917 just a few months before the Bolshevik revolution. His father worked as a colonial officer, and his mother was Austrian. 

Hobsbawm spent his childhood mainly in Berlin. He saw the early dangers of the rise of Fascism, and the Nazi's hatred of Jews. Hobsbawm said later on in his life "Anybody who saw Hitler's rise happen first hand could not have helped but be shaped by it, politically. That boy is still somewhere inside, always will be".[1]

Hobsbawm left Berlin in 1933 and came to London. His life spanned all the significant events of the 20th century. It is safe to say his politics, personality and history writing were shaped by these developments. He became a communist in 1931. It was unfortunate that the party he joined had broken decisively with orthodox Marxism and the German Communist party would later commit the stupendous betrayal in allowing Hitler to come to power without a shot being fired. The refusal of CPSU to acknowledge any fault for this calamitous defeat of the German working class led to the Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky forming a new Fourth International.

In many ways, Hobsbawm perception of the events in Germany would be important in shaping his future political and historical career. Even at an early period in his political career, Hobsbawm was on the right of his newly adopted party, how else do you explain the following extraordinary statement about the developments in Germany, "Liberalism was failing. If I had been German and not a Jew, I could see I might have become a Nazi, a German nationalist. I could see how they would become passionate about saving the nation. It was a time when you did not believe there was a future unless the world was fundamentally transformed". In Germany, there was not any alternative left".[2]

It was untrue. There was a Left Opposition to the rise of Fascism which sought to oppose both the fascists and the betrayal of the party that Hobsbawm had just joined. From an early part of his life, it is clear that Hobsbawm rejected the Trotskyist view of events in Germany.

Hobsbawm's acquiescence to the Stalinist programme and perspective would be a problem for him in later life and for that matter other members of the CPHG. Hobsbawm wrote more than 30 books; his most famous works were the trilogy, The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital and The Age of Empire. He characterised the period he wrote about as the "the long 19th century" from the start of the French revolution in 1789 to the outbreak of war in 1914, but he wrote very little in the 20th century and most of this when it was relatively safe to do so.

One striking aspect of the CPHG was that none of them specialised in twentieth-century history. More specifically, the experiences of the Russian revolution were never to be explored by the group apart from one book by Christopher Hill, which in reality was an apology for Stalinism.

According to A Talbot "In more recent areas of history, as in politics, the control of the Stalinist bureaucracy was too high to allow the free development of Marxist thought and whether deliberately or not they all avoided venturing into the modern arena". [3]

As Matt Perry correctly points out, the group had particular academic freedom on the subject of English history pre 20th century because the CP had no official line on that period of history.

Hobsbawm was acutely aware that broaching the subject was largely taboo according to him "it raised some notoriously tricky problems". According to one essay on the CPHG a study of the journal Our History between 1956 and 1992 showed there was not a single article dealing with any part of Soviet history.

Eric Hobsbawm was the de facto leader of the historian's group. It would be fair to say that for good or bad Hobsbawm writings have shaped the world-historical view of a generation of students, academics and laypeople. Hobsbawm was part of an extraordinary group of historians that took on many of the characteristics of a political party. It had membership subscriptions, a secretary and a chairman.

Despite his politics, Hobsbawm did write some very good stuff. His essay "The General Crisis of the European Economy in the Seventeenth Century" and "The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, II" were particularly important.

It is a very useful guide to deepen our understanding of the 17th century, which contained a large number of revolutions. It is important to bear in mind one piece of advice on this subject according to Spinoza "the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things".[4] While the revolutions in Europe had many differences, they also had significant similarities.

Hobsbawm's The "general crisis" thesis-like many ground-breaking essays provoked significant controversy from historians who opposed the emphasis on the social and economic origins of the revolutions that were carried out throughout Europe. Also, several historians refused to believe that there was any "general crisis" at all such as the Dutch historian Ivo Schöffer, or the Danish historian Niels Steengsgaard.

Eric J. Hobsbawm's essay, which was printed in two parts in 1954, as "The General Crisis of the European Economy in the Seventeenth Century" and "The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, II" sought to present a Marxist analysis of the transformation from a feudal society to a capitalist one in the 17th century. This change was held responsible for the revolutions, wars and social unrest that took place. Hobsbawm put forward that most of the social and economic structures associated with capitalism had grown and developed during "long sixteenth century." He believed that feudal "elements fatally obstructed growth" of capitalism. He believed that a revolution was needed to clear away the feudal rubbish for a new capitalist system to develop.

The most pronounced expression of this process of was to be found in England. Hobsbawm writes, "It will be generally agreed that the I7th century was one of social revolt both in Western and Eastern Europe. This clustering of revolutions has led some historians to see something like a general social-revolutionary crisis in the middle of the century. France had its Frondes, which were significant social movements; Catalan, Neapolitan and Portuguese revolutions marked the crisis of the Spanish Empire in the I64os; the Swiss peasant war of I653 expressed both the post-war crisis and the increasing exploitation of peasant by town, while in England revolution triumphed with portentous results. Though peasant unrest did not cease in the West - the "stamped paper " rising which combined middle class, maritime and peasant unrest in Bordeaux and Brittany occurred in 1675, the Camisard wars even later- those of Eastern Europe were more significant. In the i6th century, there had been few revolts against the growing enserfment of peasants. The Ukrainian revolution of I648-54 may be regarded as a major servile upheaval.

So must the various " Kurucz " movements in Hungary, their very name harking back to Dozsa's peasant rebels of I5I4, their memory enshrined in folksongs about Rakoczy as that of the Russian revolt of I672 is in the song about Stenka Razin. A major Bohemian peasant rising in i68o opened a period of endemic serf unrest there. It would be easy to lengthen this catalogue of the large social upheavals - for instance by including the revolts of the Irish in 164I and 1689".[5]

Hobsbawm has gone on the record to say that he "was not a Stalinist. I criticised Stalin, and I cannot conceive how what I've written can be regarded as a defence of Stalin. But as someone who was a loyal Party member for two decades before 1956 and therefore silent about a number of things about which it's reasonable not to be silent - things I knew or suspected in the USSR. Why I stayed [in the Communist Party] is not a political question about communism, it's a one-off biographical question. It wasn't out of idealisation of the October Revolution. I'm not an idealiser. One should not delude oneself about the people or things one cares most about in one's life. Communism is one of these things and I've done my best not to delude myself about it even though I was loyal to it and to its memory. The phenomenon of communism and the passion it aroused is particular to the twentieth century. It was a combination of the high hopes which were brought with progress and the belief in human improvement during the nineteenth century along with the discovery that the bourgeois society in which we live (however great and fruitful) did not work and at certain stages looked as though it was on the verge of collapse. And it did collapse and generated awful nightmares ".[6]

According to the Marxist writer and expert on Leon Trotsky David North Hobsbawm's writing on the Russian Revolution mostly portrays the revolution as being "doomed to failure" and a "fatal enterprise." This leads to the assumption that the breakdown of the Soviet Union was the "Shipwreck of Socialism."

North admits Hobsbawm has produced some excellent work but," the subject of the Russian Revolution is dangerous territory for Professor Hobsbawm, for in this field his scholarship is compromised by his politics. Hobsbawm once confessed that as a member of the CPGB he had avoided writing about the Russian Revolution and the 20th century, because the political line of his party would have prevented him from being entirely truthful. Why he chose to remain a member of a party that would have compelled him to tell lies is a question to which he has never given a convincing answer. At any rate, it would have been best for him and no loss to the writing of history, had he continued to limit himself to events before 1900"?[7]

As North points out Hobsbawm did not in later life limit himself to write on events pre 1900. Hobsbawm was very active writing about politics. It is in this regard I would like to examine his political career. While I believe that the plaudits Hobsbawm got recently for his history writing are thoroughly deserved. Given the level of press coverage and favourable obituaries from establishment figures highlight the importance Hobsbawm was for the ruling elite in Britain and internationally.

He was, after all, made– a Companion of Honour. A rarity for a historian especially of his political persuasion. Hobsbawm was lauded from both sides of bourgeois democracy in Britain. Labour leader Ed Miliband said Prof Hobsbawm was "an extraordinary historian, a man passionate about his politics and a great friend of his family". His historical works brought hundreds of years of British history to hundreds of thousands of people. He brought history out of the ivory tower and into people's lives. But he was not simply academic; he cared deeply about the political direction of the country. Indeed, he was one of the first people to recognise the challenges to Labour in the late 1970s and 1980s from the changing nature of our society."

In this respect, Milliband says more than he intended. Hobsbawm was a major theoretical architect of the right-wing shift of New Labour. During his membership of the "Eurocommunist" wing of the CPGB and his time with the Marxism Today theoretical journal, he wrote many articles urging Labour to adopt a more right-wing trajectory. In 1978 he wrote the essay "The Forward March of Labour Halted". Which in many ways, laid the basis for Labours future development? "If anything, I was an extremely right-wing Communist and generally attacked by the leftists, including the leftists in the Labour Party".

Hobsbawm relationship with the origins of New Labour is explored in an article by Chris Marsden, which reveals Stalinism's role in spawning new Labour. Marsden said the Communist Party of Great Britain "Euro-Communist" tendency acted as the midwife of New Labour."

Marsden continues with the observation that Marxism Today laid the "ideological framework for what was to become New Labour was first established in the editorial offices of Marxism Today. And it was mostly made possible to implement the project so defined due above all to the liquidation of the Soviet Union".

Hobsbawm had no real faith in the revolutionary capacity of the working class as can be seen in his Marx Memorial Lecture in 1978 and as Marsden concluded "Hobsbawm too began by asserting that the crisis of the labour movement could be attributed to the decline of the working class itself. His evidence for this mainly consisted of a presentation of the fall in the number of workers employed in heavy industry and the supposedly concomitant fall in support for the Labour and Communist parties. He then argued that industrial militancy had failed to provide an answer to the failures of the Labour government of the time. Hobsbawm's lecture was not just unconvincing. It was an attempt to provide an apologia for the betrayal of the working class by Labour and the TUC. He was writing after the election of a Labour government in 1974 as a result of a mass militant movement that culminated in the downfall of the previous Conservative government of Edward Heath. After making sure minimal concessions to the miners, who had led that campaign, Labour had proceeded to implement austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund and, when this produced a major decline in its support amongst workers, had formed a coalition with the Liberal Party in order to continue with its attacks. Hobsbawm responded to this by blaming the working class—and identifying a supposed decline in its numerical strength—for Labour's loss of support".

Hobsbawm was not an orthodox Marxist. Politically speaking Hobsbawm was closer to social democracy and the right-wing side of the Labour Party than to Marxism. The harsh tone of this obituary should not take anything away from Hobsbawm's historical writing, especially pre the 20th century, but you cannot separate his historical writing with his politics. This should be borne in mind when reading him.

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[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19786929

[2] Interview with Maya Jaggi published in The Guardian newspaper in 2002

[3] . "These the times ... this the man": an appraisal of historian Christopher Hill By Ann Talbot 25 March 2003

[4] http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/4h.htm

[5] https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/5/1/33/1452973?redirectedFrom=PDF

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/sep/22/history.politicalbooks

[7] Leon Trotsky and the Fate of Socialism in the 20th Century A Reply to Professor Eric Hobsbawm By David North 3 January 1998.