One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This: Liberal moral revulsion and the political dead end of the intelligentsia.

 A book born of a historic crime

Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This emerges from one of the defining atrocities of the twenty-first century: the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. On October 25, 2023, three weeks into the bombardment, El Akkad published a brief social-media post predicting that, once accountability became impossible and dissent cost nothing, “everyone will claim to have always opposed the slaughter.” Viewed more than ten million times, the post captured a truth millions instinctively recognised: having justified and facilitated the mass killing, the political and media establishment would one day try to rewrite its own record. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, the book that grew from that sentence has resonated deeply with those horrified by Gaza’s destruction and repelled by the complicity of governments, universities, cultural institutions, and the press.

That response is itself politically significant. It expresses the profound alienation of broad sections of the population, especially young people, from the political establishment that has funded, armed, and defended the annihilation of an entire population. The disgust is real, deep, and justified. It reflects not only revulsion at images of children pulled from rubble, hospitals bombed, and entire neighbourhoods levelled, but also the recognition that institutions claiming to embody democratic values have revealed themselves as instruments of imperialist violence. Millions have watched the Trump administration, the European Union, and every major imperialist power provide diplomatic cover, military hardware, and political legitimacy to a campaign of extermination. Millions have watched the media parrot lies, suppress evidence, and smear protesters as antisemites. Millions have watched university administrators summon riot police against students demanding an end to genocide.

El Akkad’s book gives voice to this disgust. It catalogues the moral cowardice of editors who refused to use the word “genocide,” cultural figures who stayed silent to protect their careers, and a liberal intelligentsia that retreated into evasions and platitudes. Written in anger, the book’s anger is entirely justified. But disgust, however sincere, is not a political programme. Here, El Akkad’s book reveals the limitations of an entire social layer: the liberal intelligentsia, shaken by the abyss but unable to explain how it arrived there or how humanity can escape it. The book is framed as a “breakup letter with the West,” a lament for betrayed values. But the genocide in Gaza is not a betrayal of Western values; it expresses the real interests of the ruling classes of the United States and Europe. Imperialism did not lose its soul in Gaza. It revealed its essence.

El Akkad’s category of “the West” is therefore politically useless. It treats imperialism as a moral failure rather than a socio‑economic system rooted in the domination of finance capital and the struggle for global hegemony. It conflates rulers and ruled, obscuring the decisive fact that the same governments that bomb Gaza are waging war on the living standards and democratic rights of workers at home. The millions who marched in London, New York and Berlin; the dockworkers who refused to load arms shipments; the students beaten by police- these too are “the West.” The question is not whether the West has lied, but which class rules it, and which class can end that rule.

El Akkad’s book records the moment when a section of the liberal intelligentsia saw the abyss. But seeing the abyss is not the same as understanding it. And understanding it is not the same as developing the political perspective required to overcome it. The task is not to mourn the collapse of liberal illusions, but to arm the working class with a scientific understanding of imperialism and the revolutionary programme needed to end it.

The book’s strengths: A searing portrait of moral cowardice

El Akkad, born in Egypt, raised partly in Qatar and educated in Canada, spent years as a journalist covering Guantánamo, the war in Afghanistan and the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson. These experiences form the emotional and political substratum of his book. He writes not as a detached observer but as someone who has repeatedly witnessed the machinery of state violence and the moral evasions that accompany it. His anger toward the media, cultural institutions and the liberal intelligentsia is genuine and sharply expressed. He catalogues the editors who refused to use the word “genocide,” the university administrators who summoned riot police against peaceful encampments, and the literary figures who remained silent to protect their careers. As he puts it, these were the people who “would not use the word ‘genocide,’ the university administrators who sent riot police against encampments, the literary figures who stayed silent to protect their careers.”

His contempt for the bien-pensant press's “both sides” evasions is entirely justified. The media’s role in laundering the genocide through euphemisms, distortions, and the systematic erasure of Palestinian voices was not an incidental failure but a structural function. The press acted as an ideological arm of the state, manufacturing consent for mass murder while presenting itself as a neutral arbiter. El Akkad’s indictment of this cowardice is one of the book’s strongest elements. As a description of the moral rot of official society, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This has undeniable force. But a description is not an explanation. And moral revulsion is not a strategy.

This is the book's decisive limitation, and the social layer it represents. El Akkad’s outrage targets individuals and institutions that failed to live up to their professed values. But the failure is not personal; it is systemic. The media did not avoid the word “genocide” because of individual cowardice alone. They avoided it because acknowledging genocide would implicate the entire political and economic order of American imperialism. University administrators did not call riot police because they were personally timid; they did so because universities function as corporate entities integrated into the state apparatus. Literary figures did not remain silent merely out of fear for their reputations; they remained silent because the cultural establishment is structurally dependent on the same class interests that prosecute imperialist war.

El Akkad’s book captures the symptoms but not the disease. It records the moral collapse of liberal institutions but does not explain why that collapse was inevitable. The abyss shakes the liberal intelligentsia, but it cannot comprehend the historical and class forces that produced it. Its response is emotional rather than analytical, moral rather than political. It recoils from barbarism but cannot identify the social force that could end it.

The tragedy of Gaza cannot be understood through the lens of personal betrayal or institutional hypocrisy. It must be understood as the outcome of an imperialist global system driven by the interests of finance capital and enforced through military violence. To oppose genocide requires more than disgust; it requires a scientific understanding of this system and a strategy rooted in the independent mobilisation of the international working class.

The central flaw: “The West” as a moral category

El Akkad’s central analytic category is “the West,” understood as a set of professed values- freedom, human rights, the rule of law- now exposed as hypocrisy. This framework is profoundly inadequate. It treats imperialism as a moral failure rather than a socio‑economic system rooted in definite class interests. It assumes the ruling classes of the United States and Europe have betrayed their own ideals, when in fact those ideals have always served as ideological cover for pursuing global hegemony.

The genocide in Gaza is not a betrayal of the “values” of American and European capitalism. It expresses the ruling classes' real interests in those countries. For more than a century, imperialist policy in the Middle East has been determined by the drive to control the region’s resources, strategic routes and geopolitical chokepoints. From the Sykes–Picot Agreement to the CIA‑engineered coup against Mossadegh, from the arming of the Shah to the invasion of Iraq, the imperialist powers have treated the region as a battleground for the assertion of their economic and strategic dominance. Israel functions as the spearhead of US imperialism in the region, a heavily militarised outpost whose role is to enforce American interests through overwhelming violence.

The Biden administration’s unconditional support for the slaughter continued and escalated under Trump; it was not a moral lapse. It was policy. It flowed from the strategic calculations of the Pentagon, the State Department and the intelligence agencies, which view Israel as indispensable to maintaining US control over the Middle East. The bombs dropped on Gaza were not the result of moral confusion or political cowardice; they were the logical outcome of imperialist strategy.

To speak of “the West” as a single moral community obscures the decisive question: class. It collapses rulers and ruled into a single category, erasing the fundamental antagonism between the capitalist class that directs imperialist policy and the working class that suffers its consequences. The same governments that bomb Gaza are waging war on the jobs, wages and democratic rights of workers at home. They slash social programmes, attack trade unions, criminalise protest and funnel billions into the military‑industrial complex. The working class is not the beneficiary of imperialism; it is one of its victims.

The dockworkers who refused to load arms shipments, the students beaten by police, and the millions who marched in London, New York and Berlin are also “the West.” Their actions demonstrate that opposition to genocide is not geographically or culturally determined but socially determined. It arises not from “Western values” but from the objective interests of the working class, which has no stake in imperialist domination and every reason to oppose it.

The question is not whether the West has lied, but which class rules it, and which class can end that rule. The ruling class lies because its interests require it. It speaks of human rights while arming dictatorships, of democracy while supporting coups, of peace while preparing for war. These contradictions are not accidental; they are inherent in a system based on exploitation, competition and the global struggle for markets and resources.

El Akkad’s category of “the West” therefore functions as a political diversion. It directs attention away from the capitalist class and toward an amorphous cultural entity. It encourages despair over analysis, moral lamentation over political struggle. It suggests that the problem is hypocrisy rather than imperialism, values rather than class power.

Liberal disillusionment: Expecting better from those who never offered it

The emotional centre of El Akkad’s book is disappointment with liberalism, particularly the Democratic Party milieu in which much of the American literary world lives. He writes as a man who believed the West offered justice and discovered that much of what it promises is a lie. This sense of betrayal permeates the text. It is the disillusionment of someone who expected moral courage from institutions that have never demonstrated it. The shock is genuine, but it also reveals the political naïveté of a social layer that mistook liberal rhetoric for liberal reality.

Yet the book never draws the necessary political conclusion: the Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and the military‑intelligence apparatus. It is not a vehicle for reform, and appeals to its conscience are politically bankrupt. The same party that postures as defender of human rights has overseen drone assassinations, mass surveillance, wars of aggression and the arming of Israel to the teeth. Its role in Gaza is not an aberration but the continuation of a decades‑long imperialist trajectory. To imagine that such a party can be pressured into moral action is to misunderstand its class character entirely.

Instead, El Akkad retreats into the language of individual moral choice- refusal, bearing witness, what one person can do as a citizen and father. These impulses are not ignoble. They reflect a sincere desire to resist barbarism. But they are politically impotent. Individual refusal does not stop bombs. Bearing witness does not halt the machinery of imperialist war. The moral courage of isolated individuals, however admirable, cannot substitute for a collective, organised, class‑based struggle against the system that produces genocide.

The book is permeated by helplessness, the direct product of its failure to identify any social force capable of transforming society. El Akkad sees the abyss but cannot locate the agency capable of overcoming it. His narrative is moral collapse without political resolution, outrage without strategy, and despair without direction. This is not a personal failing but the liberal intelligentsia's characteristic limitation: it recoils from the consequences of imperialism yet remains ideologically tethered to the very institutions that enforce it.

The tragedy of Gaza demands more than sorrow or revulsion. It demands a scientific understanding of imperialism and the recognition that only the international working class mobilised independently of all capitalist parties possesses the power to end the system responsible for such crimes.

The politics of moral witness: A dead end

This impasse mirrors the pseudo-left's broader crisis. In a March 2024 lecture at the University of Michigan, David North addressed Aaron Bushnell's self-immolation and journalist Chris Hedges's celebration of it, who hailed the act as “a potent political message.” North’s answer applies equally to El Akkad’s politics of moral witness. He insisted that the turn toward individual acts of desperation reflects not political clarity but political exhaustion. As North explained:

“The fundamental driving force of social revolution is not inchoate and desperate rage but an understanding of the objective contradictions of the world capitalist system and the mass social action that is guided by the comprehension of these contradictions.”

This is the essential point. Rage, grief, moral shock- these are powerful emotions, but they do not constitute a strategy. They do not identify the social forces that can halt imperialist barbarism. They do not explain the historical and economic processes that produce genocide. And they do not provide a path for the working class to intervene as an independent political force.

The problem confronting the movement against the genocide, North insisted, “has not been public indifference but the absence of a political perspective and strategy.” Millions have marched, occupied campuses, blocked ports, and defied police repression. The obstacle is not apathy but the political framework that has confined these actions. As North noted, the protests “have remained within the confines of the existing structures of bourgeois politics… directed not toward the independent political mobilisation of the working class against capitalist rule but to the application of pressure on bourgeois governments.”

This is precisely the dead end El Akkad’s book expresses. His narrative is one of moral collapse without political resolution. He documents institutional cowardice but cannot explain why those institutions behaved as they did. He condemns hypocrisy but does not identify the class interests that make hypocrisy inevitable. He recoils from genocide but cannot conceive of a social force capable of stopping it. The result is a politics of witness, not a politics of struggle.

El Akkad’s book is therefore a literary expression of the broader impasse of the pseudo‑left: a movement that responds to imperialist barbarism with moral anguish rather than scientific analysis, with individual gestures rather than collective strategy, with despair rather than revolutionary perspective. It is a politics that sees the abyss but cannot see beyond it.

Identity politics: A reactionary diversion

The promotional framing around El Akkad’s book speaks of a “deep fracture” for Black, brown and Indigenous Americans and for younger generations who had kept faith in Western ideals. This racial and generational framing- the stock-in-trade of identity politics- divides the working class precisely where unity is required. It interprets political disillusionment not as a universal response to imperialist barbarism but as the particular trauma of specific demographic groups. In doing so, it transforms what is fundamentally a class question into a mosaic of racial and generational grievances.

The opposition to the Gaza genocide has cut across every racial, ethnic and national line. Millions of workers and youth of every background have marched in London, New York, Berlin, Paris, Johannesburg, Sydney and São Paulo. Dockworkers of diverse origins refused to load shipments of arms. Students from every demographic category faced police repression. Healthcare workers, teachers, postal workers, artists and engineers joined demonstrations demanding an end to the slaughter. The movement’s strength lies in its universality: it expresses the shared interests of the international working class.

Identity politics serves the ruling class by fragmenting this unity. It encourages people to view political questions through the lens of personal identity rather than social position. It substitutes demographic categories for class analysis, obscuring the fact that imperialist violence is directed not at particular racial groups but at entire populations whose land, resources and strategic position are coveted by the major powers. It reduces the struggle against genocide to a matter of “representation,” “visibility,” or “betrayed ideals,” rather than confronting the capitalist system that produces such crimes.

Moreover, identity politics provides the ruling class with a convenient ideological shield. Governments and corporations promote diversity initiatives, symbolic gestures and rhetorical acknowledgements of historical injustice while continuing to wage war, suppress dissent and attack workers’ living standards. The same institutions that celebrate “inclusion” and “equity” have supported the bombardment of Gaza, armed Israel, censored pro‑Palestinian voices and deployed police against student encampments. Identity politics allows them to present themselves as progressive while pursuing reactionary policies.

By adopting this framework, El Akkad's book inadvertently reinforces these divisions. It interprets disillusionment as a crisis of particular groups rather than a crisis of the entire social order. In doing so, it obscures the only force capable of ending imperialist barbarism: the unified, international working class.

The embrace of the establishment: Outrage without threat

The book's reception carries a bitter irony. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This won the 2025 National Book Award for Nonfiction, alongside a stream of honours from the same cultural establishment whose silence El Akkad condemns. Institutions that spent two years averting their eyes now celebrate a book about averting one’s eyes. The very editors, prize committees and cultural gatekeepers who refused to speak plainly while Gaza burned now congratulate themselves for recognising a work that laments their cowardice. In this sense, the book’s success is not a contradiction but a confirmation of El Akkad’s own prediction: the official world is already preparing to have “always been against this.”

This embrace is possible because the book, for all its anger, poses no threat to anyone. It indicts complicity, not capitalism; hypocrisy, not the profit system that requires it. It condemns silence but does not expose the class interests that make silence inevitable. It mourns the collapse of liberal ideals but does not challenge the social order that weaponises those ideals in the service of imperialist violence. A literary establishment can absorb moral outrage. It cannot absorb a programme.

The cultural institutions that now celebrate El Akkad’s book are deeply integrated into the capitalist state's ideological apparatus. Their function is not to challenge imperialism but to manage dissent, convert political anger into safe moral sentiment, and ensure outrage never develops into revolutionary consciousness. They can reward a book that expresses sorrow, disappointment and disgust. They cannot reward a book that identifies the working class as the revolutionary force capable of ending imperialist war. They can honour a narrative of personal disillusionment. They cannot honour a call for the overthrow of the system responsible for genocide.

The establishment’s embrace of El Akkad’s book therefore reveals more about the establishment than about the book. It demonstrates bourgeois culture's capacity to metabolise criticism, turn even the documentation of its own failures into a commodity, and present moral anguish as a substitute for political clarity. The book’s success signals not institutional repentance but institutional self‑preservation. It allows the ruling class to acknowledge “mistakes” without confronting the system that produced them.

In the end, the book’s reception underscores this review's central argument: moral revulsion, however sincere, is not a strategy. Only a scientific, class‑based programme can confront the forces responsible for genocide, and that is precisely what the cultural establishment cannot tolerate.

What is to be done: From revulsion to revolutionary consciousness

None of this dismisses El Akkad’s sincerity or the genuine emotion the book has evoked. The disgust millions feel toward the political and media establishment is a healthy, progressive development. It marks a profound shift in consciousness: a recognition that the institutions long presented as guardians of democracy, human rights and liberal values have revealed themselves as instruments of imperialist violence. The revulsion is real, deep and justified. But disgust, however sincere, must become consciousness.

The lesson of Gaza is not that “the West” has lost its soul. It is that imperialism, in its death agony, is driving toward ever greater barbarism, including world war. The genocide in Gaza is not an aberration but a warning: a demonstration of what the ruling class is prepared to do as it confronts economic crisis, geopolitical rivalry and mounting social opposition at home. The same governments that levelled Gaza are preparing for confrontation with Russia and China, expanding military budgets, militarising society and attacking democratic rights. The logic of imperialism inexorably leads to catastrophe.

Only the international working class, mobilised independently of all capitalist parties on a socialist programme, can stop it. As the WSWS editorial board has stated, the genocidal war in Gaza “can only be stopped through the unified and revolutionary action of the international working class.” This is not a rhetorical flourish but a scientific assessment of social forces. The working class, bound together across borders by global production, possesses both the objective interest and the collective power to halt the machinery of war. Dockworkers refusing to load arms shipments, autoworkers striking against militarised austerity, students defying police repression- these actions point toward the real agency capable of ending imperialist barbarism.

El Akkad’s book records the moment when a section of the liberal intelligentsia saw the abyss. But seeing the abyss is not the same as understanding it. And understanding it is not the same as developing the political perspective required to overcome it. The liberal intelligentsia recoils from genocide but remains ideologically tethered to the Democratic Party, identity politics and the moral language of individual witness. It mourns the collapse of liberal ideals but cannot conceive of a world beyond capitalism. Its despair stems from its political limitations.

The task is to explain how humanity reached the edge of the abyss and how it can escape. That requires not moral revulsion but a scientific understanding of the state's class character, the nature of imperialism, and the historical role of the working class. It requires building a revolutionary leadership capable of turning outrage into strategy, protest into power, and moral clarity into political action. Only by consciously mobilising the international working class can we bring the profit system to its knees and finally end the barbarism it generates.

Bibliography

Primary Text

• El Akkad, Omar. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2025.

Statements, Lectures, and Editorials

• North, David. “The Political Meaning of the Self‑Immolation of Aaron Bushnell.” Lecture delivered at the University of Michigan, March 2024.
• World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board. “Mobilise the Working Class to Stop the Gaza Genocide.” World Socialist Web Site, 2023.
• North, David. The Crisis of American Democracy: The Political and Social Foundations of the January 6 Coup Attempt. Mehring Books, 2022.
• North, David. The Heritage We Defend: A Contribution to the History of the Fourth International. Mehring Books, 1988.

WSWS Coverage of Gaza and Imperialism

• Grey, Andre Damon, et al. “The US‑Backed Israeli Genocide in Gaza.” World Socialist Web Site, 2023–2025.
• Kishore, Joseph. “The Role of the Working Class in the Fight Against Imperialist War.” World Socialist Web Site, 2024.
• Van Auken, Bill. “US Imperialism and the Middle East: A Century of Intervention.” World Socialist Web Site, 2023.

Historical and Theoretical Works on Imperialism

• Lenin, V. I. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. 1916.
• Luxemburg, Rosa. The Accumulation of Capital. 1913.
• Trotsky, Leon. The War and the International. 1914.
• Trotsky, Leon. The Permanent Revolution. 1930.
• Trotsky, Leon. The Transitional Program. 1938.

Works on Liberalism, Identity Politics, and the Crisis of the Intelligentsia

• Reed, Adolph. Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene. New Press, 2000.
• Michaels, Walter Benn. The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality. Metropolitan Books, 2006.
• Lasch, Christopher. The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. W. W. Norton, 1995.

Journalistic and Political Context

• Human Rights Watch. Israel/Palestine: Events of 2023–2025. HRW Annual Reports.
• United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Gaza Situation Reports, 2023–2025.
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Alan Thornett, 1937–2026: The Rise and Eclipse of a Militant Worker in the Epoch of Pabloism

Alan Thornett’s death at 89 closes the book on one of the most politically instructive lives in the post‑war British workers’ movement. His trajectory — from militant shop steward, to Trotskyist cadre, to Pabloite functionary, to advocate of “broad parties” and ecosocialism — is not simply personal. It is emblematic of the pressures working-class militants faced in an era when the trade-union and Labour apparatus still exerted enormous gravitational pull. Thornett’s life shows with unusual clarity that militancy, however courageous, does not substitute for Marxist theory or the defence of the working class's political independence.

Born in 1937 near Oxford, Thornett joined the Morris Motors plant at Cowley in 1959 and quickly became part of one of Britain's most militant concentrations of workers. His rise to TGWU deputy convenor reflected genuine authority earned through struggle. Cowley’s strikes against In Place of Strife, Heath’s Industrial Relations Act, and its solidarity action with the miners in 1972 were defining moments of working‑class resistance. Thornett was not a paper militant; he was a trusted leader in real battles.

His turn to the Socialist Labour League in 1964 placed him within the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), then leading the struggle against Pabloite revisionism. Thornett’s recruitment was part of a broader influx of militant workers into the Trotskyist movement, vindicating the ICFI’s insistence that the working class remained the decisive revolutionary force. But the strengths that made Thornett effective on the shopfloor—tenacity, courage, organisational skill—were not matched by the theoretical grounding needed to resist the bureaucracy's pressures.

The decisive turning point came in 1974. By then the Workers Revolutionary Party under Gerry Healy was degenerating, but Thornett’s opposition did not challenge this degeneration from the left. It challenged it from the right. As David North documents, Thornett secretly collaborated with Robin Blick and Mark Jenkins, who attacked the WRP from the right and drafted his programme. Thornett’s line was an orientation toward left Labour MPs and the trade‑union apparatus, presented as “transitional” but, in practice, subordinating the working class to reformist leaders. This was the embryonic form of the Pabloism he would later embrace openly.

The Workers Socialist League, founded in 1975, became a vehicle for unprincipled manoeuvres: fusion with Sean Matgamna’s International‑Communist League, the Socialist Organiser lash‑up, and finally the International Socialist Group, which entered the Pabloite United Secretariat in 1987. The tendency Thornett had once opposed as liquidationist became his political home. His evolution mirrored the broader disintegration of post‑war Trotskyism under the pressure of the trade‑union and Labour apparatus.

Meanwhile, in Cowley, pressuring the bureaucracy produced predictable defeat. Thornett’s sacking in 1982, nominally over a lapsed heavy goods licence, culminated a campaign by the TGWU leadership and British Leyland. His later books documented the collaboration between union officials and management. Still, he never drew the necessary conclusion: the unions had become instruments of corporate and state policy, and new organisations of struggle were required.

Thornett’s later embrace of “broad parties” — the Socialist Alliance, Respect, Left Unity — and finally ecosocialism represented the final stage of his political adaptation. Ecosocialism, as promoted by the United Secretariat, replaces the working class with NGOs, protest movements and Green parties, and substitutes appeals to capitalist governments for the struggle for state power.

Thornett’s life is a warning. Militancy is not enough. Without Marxist theory, without a revolutionary party, even the most courageous fighters can be drawn into the orbit of the bureaucracy and ultimately into the swamp of centrism. His experience underscores the essential lesson for a new generation: only the independent mobilisation of the working class, guided by a Marxist programme, can provide a way forward.

The Making of a Militant: Cowley and the SLL

Thornett’s early years place him squarely within the generation of workers radicalised by the post‑war boom and the first visible fractures in Stalinism’s authority. Cowley was not merely a workplace; it was a crucible of class struggle. The Morris Motors plant, later part of British Leyland, was one of Britain's most militant sites, and Thornett’s rise to TGWU deputy convenor was not the product of factional manoeuvring or rhetorical skill but of authority earned through real battles. He was a worker‑leader forged in the heat of mass struggle, not a theoretician who later sought influence among workers. This distinction is essential to understanding both his strengths and his vulnerabilities.

His turn to the Socialist Labour League in 1964 was politically significant. The SLL, then the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), was the only organisation waging a principled fight against Pabloite liquidationism — the revisionist current that sought to dissolve Trotskyism into Stalinist, social‑democratic, and bourgeois‑nationalist movements. Thornett’s recruitment was part of a broader influx of militant workers into the ICFI, vindicating its insistence that the working class remained the decisive revolutionary force. The SLL’s orientation toward the working class, its defence of the proletariat's political independence, and its refusal to adapt to the Labour and trade-union bureaucracy resonated with workers like Thornett, who confronted those bureaucracies daily.

Cowley’s strikes against Harold Wilson’s In Place of Strife, Edward Heath’s Industrial Relations Act, and the 1972 solidarity action with the miners were high points of working‑class resistance in Britain. Thornett was at the centre of these battles. His authority was real, his courage unquestioned, and his commitment to the workers he represented was never in doubt. He was not a figure imposed on the shopfloor by a political organisation; he was a leader whose legitimacy came from the workers themselves. This made him an invaluable asset to the Trotskyist movement—but it also meant the pressures of the workplace, the union apparatus, and the Labour Party weighed heavily on him.

For all his strengths, Thornett’s political development contained a decisive weakness: authority and commitment are not the same as political clarity. His militancy was genuine, but militancy alone does not provide a compass in the complex terrain of political struggle. The very qualities that made him effective—his deep roots in the plant, his sense of responsibility to the workers, his instinctive hostility to bureaucratic abuses—also made him susceptible to pressure from the trade‑union and Labour apparatus. Without a firm grounding in Marxist theory, a clear understanding of the bureaucracy's historical role, and confidence in the working class's revolutionary capacity independent of its existing organisations, Thornett was vulnerable.

This vulnerability became decisive in the early 1970s. The WRP's degeneration under Gerry Healy created a crisis that required a principled, theoretically grounded response. Thornett, however, approached the crisis not from a Trotskyist standpoint but as a militant worker seeking relief from bureaucratic excesses. His 1974 opposition to Healy did not challenge the WRP’s degeneration from the left; it challenged it from the right. The secret collaboration with Robin Blick and Mark Jenkins — who attacked the WRP from a right‑wing, anti‑ICFI perspective — was not an aberration but an expression of Thornett’s political trajectory. He was moving toward the very forces the ICFI had fought for decades.

The tragedy of Thornett’s evolution is that it was not inevitable. With deeper theoretical grounding, a clearer understanding of Pabloism's historical role, and greater confidence in the necessity of the working class's political independence, he might have resisted the pressures that ultimately pulled him away from Trotskyism. But his experience demonstrates a fundamental lesson: militancy, however courageous, is not enough. Without Marxist theory, a revolutionary party, and a clear understanding of the class nature of the trade-union and Labour apparatus, even the most dedicated fighters can be drawn into centrism and ultimately into political disorientation.

Thornett’s early years thus illuminate both the potential and the dangers facing militant workers. They show how the working class can produce leaders of extraordinary courage and integrity — and how, without political clarity, those leaders can be disarmed by the very forces they seek to oppose. His life remains a warning to a new generation turning toward socialism: only the conscious defence of Marxist principles can prevent the repetition of such tragedies.

1974: The Crucial Break — and Its Class Content

The 1974 split is the decisive turning point in Alan Thornett’s political evolution. By that year, the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) under Gerry Healy was already undergoing a profound degeneration—organisationally, politically, and theoretically—a process David North analyses in detail in How the WRP Betrayed Trotskyism. But the nature of Thornett’s opposition is critical. It did not represent a left‑wing, principled challenge to Healy’s bureaucratism or to the abandonment of the International Committee’s historic struggle against Pabloism. It represented a right‑wing adaptation to precisely those forces — the trade‑union apparatus and the Labour left — that Trotskyism had fought for decades.

North’s documentation of the period is damning. Thornett secretly collaborated with Robin Blick and Mark Jenkins, former members who had broken not only with the WRP but also with the International Committee’s entire political tradition. Their critique of the WRP was not rooted in Trotskyism but in rejecting the ICFI’s struggle against Pabloite liquidationism. They drafted Thornett’s programme, and the clandestine nature of this collaboration was itself a political act: it bypassed the party, concealed the real authorship of the opposition’s line, and aligned Thornett with forces hostile to the ICFI.

This was not a principled struggle for Marxism. It was a covert alliance with deserters who rejected the ICFI’s historic fight against Pabloism and sought to pull the WRP toward the Labour and trade‑union bureaucracy.

The political substance of Thornett’s opposition was unmistakable: an orientation towards left Labour MPs, treating figures like Michael Foot or Tony Benn as potential vehicles for socialist advance rather than as representatives of a bourgeois workers’ party committed to preserving capitalism; pressure on the trade-union bureaucracy, presenting union leaders as a lever for socialist transformation rather than as a caste whose material interests were tied to defending capitalism; and demands on reformist leaders framed as “transitional”—a distortion of the Transitional Programme, which is based on mobilising the working class independently of the bureaucracy, not appealing to the bureaucracy to act on its behalf.

This was Pabloism in embryonic form: abandoning independent working-class mobilisation in favour of pressuring existing bureaucratic structures. It replaced the proletariat's revolutionary role with the supposed progressive potential of Labour MPs and union officials. It replaced struggle with adaptation, and political independence with pressure.

Healy’s response to the opposition — bureaucratic expulsions, suppression of discussion, and organisational manoeuvres — was politically indefensible. But Healy's bureaucratic expulsion of Thornett does not alter the class content of Thornett’s line. The opposition was not crushed because it was too revolutionary; it was expelled because it represented a right‑wing challenge to the party’s formal positions at a moment when Healy himself was drifting rightward. The tragedy is that Thornett’s opposition did not expose Healy’s degeneration from a Trotskyist standpoint. It accelerated the WRP’s collapse by introducing Pabloite politics into the organisation's heart.

The Workers Socialist League (WSL), founded in 1975 by Thornett and the expelled opposition, was built on this right‑wing orientation. Its subsequent history — fusion with Sean Matgamna’s International‑Communist League, the Socialist Organiser lash‑up, and later the International Socialist Group — was a series of unprincipled manoeuvres reflecting the same political method: adaptation to the Labour left, rejection of the political independence of the working class, and hostility to the ICFI’s defence of Marxism.

The 1974 split thus marks the moment when Thornett ceased to be a militant worker drawn toward Trotskyism and instead became a conduit for Pabloite pressures within the workers’ movement. His evolution was not an accident. It resulted from the unresolved contradiction between his genuine militancy and his lack of theoretical grounding. Without a firm grasp of Marxist theory, confidence in the revolutionary role of the working class, or a clear understanding of the class nature of the Labour and trade-union bureaucracy, Thornett was vulnerable to the very forces Trotskyism was created to oppose.

The 1974 lesson is stark: militancy is not enough. Without political clarity, even the most courageous fighters can be drawn into the bureaucracy's orbit and ultimately into the swamp of centrism. Thornett’s break with the ICFI was not a step toward revolutionary renewal but the start of a long political retreat that would culminate in full Pabloism, “broad party” projects, and finally ecosocialism—each stage further from the Marxism he once embraced.

The Long March into Pabloism

The subsequent history of Thornett’s organisations — the Workers Socialist League, Socialist Organiser, the Socialist Group, and finally the International Socialist Group — forms a continuous arc of political drift, fragmentation, and unprincipled manoeuvres. What began in 1974 as a right‑wing adaptation to the trade‑union and Labour apparatus matured, step by step, into full‑blown Pabloism. The endpoint was not accidental. It was the logical culmination of a political trajectory that abandoned independent working-class mobilisation in favour of alliances with bureaucratic and centrist forces.

The Workers Socialist League (WSL), founded in 1975 by Thornett and the expelled opposition, was built on the political premises of the 1974 split: pressure on left Labour MPs, appeals to the trade‑union bureaucracy, and a rejection of the International Committee’s insistence on the political independence of the working class. The WSL never developed a coherent Marxist programme. Instead, it became a vehicle for organisational manoeuvres to find a niche within the Labour left. Its 1981 fusion with Sean Matgamna’s International-Communist League to form Socialist Organiser was based on expediency rather than principled agreement. The alliance collapsed in 1984 over the Falklands/Malvinas war, revealing a lack of shared theoretical foundation.

Thornett’s Socialist Group then merged with the International Group in 1987 to form the International Socialist Group (ISG). This merger was the final step in a long political retreat. The ISG promptly entered the Pabloite United Secretariat, the very tendency Thornett had once opposed as liquidationist. The man who had joined the Socialist Labour League in 1964 to fight Pabloism now embraced it as his political home. He rose to leadership of the British section and became a member of the Fourth International’s International Committee — a tragic inversion of his earlier role within the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

This evolution was not simply organisational. It reflected a deepening political adaptation. Thornett increasingly rejected the Leninist conception of the revolutionary party, arguing instead for “broad parties” without a defined programme. He became a leading advocate of dissolving Trotskyist organisations into amorphous left formations such as the Socialist Alliance and Respect. His role in George Galloway’s Respect Renewal — including attacks on democratic centralism and claims that the left’s problems stemmed from “Stalinist organisational methods” — marked a complete break with the Marxist tradition he had once defended.

Meanwhile, in Cowley, pressuring the bureaucracy produced disaster. Thornett’s sacking in November 1982, nominally over a lapsed heavy goods licence, culminated a years‑long campaign by the TGWU leadership and British Leyland management. His books Inside Cowley (1998) and Militant Years (2010) document in detail how union officials collaborated with management to break shop‑floor organisation, isolate militants, and impose corporate discipline. These works are invaluable records of the bureaucratic sabotage that destroyed one of Britain's most militant plants.

But they also reveal the limits of Thornett’s political perspective. He never drew the necessary conclusion: that the trade unions had ceased to be workers’ organisations in any meaningful sense and had become instruments of corporate and state policy. His strategy assumed the bureaucracy could be pressured, reformed, or compelled to act in workers' interests. The experience at Cowley proved the opposite. The bureaucracy acted as an extension of management, and its hostility to rank‑and‑file militancy was structural, not accidental.

Thornett fought courageously — no one disputes that. He defended workers against victimisation, resisted the erosion of shop‑floor power, and exposed union officials' treachery. But he fought within a framework that guaranteed defeat. His political method subordinated the working class to the Labour and trade‑union apparatus, and his organisational manoeuvres reflected the same adaptation. The fusion with Pabloite currents, the embrace of “broad parties,” and later the turn to ecosocialism all flowed from the belief that the working class could advance through alliances with existing bureaucratic structures rather than through the construction of an independent revolutionary party.

Thornett’s life thus stands as a stark lesson. Courage, integrity, and militancy are not enough. Without Marxist theory, without a clear understanding of the bureaucracy's class nature, and without the working class's political independence, even the most dedicated fighters can be drawn into the orbit of centrism and ultimately into political disorientation. His experience remains a warning to a new generation turning toward socialism: only a revolutionary party grounded in Marxism can provide a way forward.

Respect, Galloway, and the “Broad Party” Illusion

The United Secretariat’s post‑Soviet perspective was liquidationist to the core: dissolve Trotskyist sections into amorphous “broad left” formations with no defined programme, no theoretical continuity, and no organisational discipline. What had begun in the 1950s as an adaptation to Stalinism and bourgeois nationalism now reappeared as an adaptation to NGOs, protest movements, and the decaying remnants of social democracy. Alan Thornett became one of its most enthusiastic British advocates, completing the political trajectory that had begun with his right‑wing opposition inside the WRP in 1974.

Thornett played a central role in pushing the International Socialist Group (ISG) into the Socialist Alliance at the turn of the millennium. The Alliance was conceived not as a revolutionary regroupment but as a lowest‑common‑denominator electoral bloc, united by little more than hostility to Blairism. It had no programme, no theoretical coherence, and no perspective beyond pressuring the Labour left. For Thornett, however, this amorphousness was a virtue. He had long rejected the Leninist conception of the revolutionary party, and the Socialist Alliance seemed to offer a way out of what he and his co‑thinkers called “sectarianism”—that is, the defence of Marxist principles.

The next step was Respect. Thornett and the ISG threw themselves into George Galloway’s project with extraordinary enthusiasm. Respect was the United Secretariat's purest expression of its liquidationist perspective: a “broad party” built around a charismatic parliamentarian, local notables, fragments of the far left, and community networks. After the split with the SWP, Thornett became a leading adviser to Galloway, and his group published statements attacking democratic centralism and claiming the left’s problems stemmed from “Stalinist organisational methods.” This was a standard Pabloite trope, used for decades to justify abandoning the Leninist party in favour of loose coalitions and electoral blocs.

But Thornett’s argument did not correct Healy’s abuses. It repudiated Leninism itself. The problem with Healy was not that he defended democratic centralism too vigorously, but that he violated it — substituting personal authority and organisational coercion for political clarity. Thornett responded by rejecting the very concept of a disciplined revolutionary party, replacing it with a model in which political differences dissolved into broad alliances with reformists, nationalists, and local activists. This was the political logic of Pabloism: the belief that the working class could advance through alliances with existing bureaucratic or populist forces rather than by building an independent Marxist party.

Each subsequent formation — Socialist Resistance, Left Unity, Anticapitalist Resistance — was smaller, more amorphous, and more politically diffuse than the last. Socialist Resistance was essentially the ISG under a new name, a vehicle for promoting the United Secretariat’s “broad party” strategy. Left Unity, launched in 2013, was another attempt to build a party without a programme, a coalition of fragments united only by opposition to austerity. Thornett played a prominent role, but the project collapsed under the weight of its own incoherence. Anticapitalist Resistance, his final organisational home, was even smaller and more diffuse—a loose network rather than a party, defined more by its rejection of “sectarianism” than by any positive political perspective.

Thornett’s trajectory mirrored the Pabloite movement's disintegration. As the United Secretariat abandoned any pretence of building revolutionary parties, its sections dissolved into ever‑smaller formations, each more politically amorphous than the last. The movement that had once claimed to represent Trotskyism became a current defined by its hostility to Marxist theory, its rejection of the revolutionary party, and its adaptation to whatever “broad” initiative appeared on the horizon.

Thornett embraced this perspective not out of opportunism but out of conviction. His political evolution reflected the unresolved contradiction between his genuine militancy and his lack of theoretical grounding. He fought courageously for workers at Cowley, but he never grasped the necessity of a revolutionary party or the class nature of the Labour and trade‑union bureaucracy. The liquidationist projects he championed were the political expression of that weakness.

Ecosocialism: The Final Adaptation

Thornett’s late‑life embrace of “ecosocialism” was not an incidental turn but the logical endpoint of his political evolution. Facing the Apocalypse (2019) expressed genuine concern about the climate crisis—a concern shared by millions and rooted in real scientific urgency—but it did so within a Pabloite framework that, by this point, had fully displaced the Marxist conception of the working class as the decisive revolutionary force. Thornett’s ecosocialism replaced the proletariat with NGOs, protest movements, and Green parties, and replaced appeals to capitalist governments with a struggle to overthrow them. It was the final stage of the adaptation that began in 1974.

The United Secretariat’s ecosocialist turn emerged from its broader liquidationist perspective after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Convinced that neoliberalism had “fragmented” or “transformed” the working class, the Pabloites argued that new social movements—environmental campaigns, identity‑based activism, and NGO networks—had become the primary agents of change. This was not a theoretical innovation but a retreat from Marxism. It abandoned the analysis of capitalism as a system rooted in class exploitation and replaced it with a moral critique of ecological destruction. Thornett adopted this perspective wholeheartedly.

In Facing the Apocalypse, Thornett insisted that “nothing can be built on a dead planet.” The statement is unobjectionable on its face, but its political implications were profound. For Thornett, the climate crisis became the central axis of socialist politics, displacing the class struggle. In his analysis, the working class appeared not as the revolutionary subject but as one constituency among many in a broad coalition of environmental activists, NGOs, and progressive politicians. The ecosocialist programme he advocated aimed not at the working class's conquest of state power but at pressuring governments to adopt “transitional” ecological policies.

This was entirely consistent with the United Secretariat’s post‑Soviet orientation. Ecosocialism, as the USec promoted it, is not Marxism. It is a politics of moral exhortation directed at capitalist governments, urging them to adopt green reforms, regulate emissions, and transition to renewable energy. It treats the state as a neutral instrument that can be persuaded or pressured into acting in the general interest. It rejects the Leninist view that the capitalist state is an organ of class rule that must be overthrown rather than lobbied.

Thornett’s ecosocialism thus reproduced the core features of Pabloism: substitutionism, which replaced the working class with other social forces; adaptation, which oriented toward existing political structures rather than building an independent revolutionary movement; liquidationism, which dissolved Marxist politics into broad, undefined coalitions; and reformism, which appealed to capitalist governments rather than fighting to abolish them.

In Thornett’s hands, the climate crisis became a justification for abandoning the revolutionary party. He argued that the scale of ecological catastrophe required a “broad movement” capable of uniting diverse social forces. But this argument merely restated the Pabloite position that the working class was no longer the central agent of historical change. The ecosocialist movement he championed was structurally incapable of challenging capitalist property relations because it was built around organisations—NGOs, Green parties, protest networks—that accepted those relations as given.

Each organisational step Thornett took in his final decades — Socialist Resistance, Left Unity, Anticapitalist Resistance — reflected this trajectory. These formations were increasingly amorphous, increasingly detached from the working class, and increasingly defined by moralistic appeals rather than Marxist analysis. They were political expressions of disintegration: the fragmentation of the Pabloite movement, the collapse of its theoretical foundations, and the exhaustion of its strategy of “broad parties.”

Thornett’s ecosocialism was therefore not a renewal but a culmination. It marked the final stage of a political evolution that began with his 1974 adaptation to the trade-union and Labour bureaucracy. His concern for the planet was sincere, but sincerity does not replace Marxism. The climate crisis demands revolutionary leadership, not moral appeals to capitalist governments. Thornett’s late‑life politics, like his earlier trajectory, warn that without the working class's political independence and the construction of a revolutionary party, even the most urgent struggles can be diverted into the dead ends of centrism and reformism.

What Remains?

Thornett’s strengths were real and deserve acknowledgement. He was a capable organiser with deep working-class roots. Many workers at Cowley trusted him because he fought alongside them, not above them. His books, Inside Cowley and Militant Years, remain valuable records of the union bureaucracy’s role in the defeats of the 1970s and 1980s, documenting with clarity how the TGWU leadership collaborated with management to break shop‑floor organisation. His papers at the Modern Records Centre will be an important resource for future historians seeking to understand the lived experience of rank‑and‑file militancy in Britain’s car industry. These contributions should not be dismissed. They reflect genuine commitment, courage, and integrity.

But Thornett’s political evolution warns a new generation. His life shows that militancy, however sincere, is no substitute for Marxist theory or the defence of the working class's political independence. The pressures that pulled him away from the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) were not unique to him. They were the pressures of the trade‑union and Labour apparatus — institutions whose social function is to mediate between labour and capital, restrain independent working‑class struggle, and preserve the stability of the capitalist system. From its inception, Pabloism acted as a transmission belt for these pressures, encouraging Trotskyists to adapt to existing bureaucratic structures rather than build new organs of revolutionary leadership.

Thornett’s trajectory illustrates what happens when militants lose confidence in the working class's revolutionary role. His orientation toward left Labour MPs, his belief that the trade-union bureaucracy could be pressured into leading a socialist transformation, and his later embrace of “broad parties” and ecosocialism all flowed from a single political error: abandoning the Leninist conception of the revolutionary party. Once that conception was surrendered, the rest followed with tragic inevitability. The WSL, Socialist Organiser, the Socialist Group, the ISG, Socialist Resistance, Left Unity, Anticapitalist Resistance — each formation was smaller, more amorphous, and more politically diffuse than the last. Each step represented further retreat from Marxism and deeper accommodation to the very bureaucratic forces that had sabotaged the struggles at Cowley.

Thornett’s late‑life ecosocialism was the final stage of this evolution. It replaced the working class with NGOs, protest movements, and Green parties, and substituted moral appeals to capitalist governments for the struggle to overthrow them. It was not a renewal but a culmination — the endpoint of a political trajectory that began in 1974 with the rejection of the ICFI’s fight against Pabloism.

The essential lesson remains: without a revolutionary party, militancy is not enough. Without a Marxist programme, even the best fighters can be disarmed. Without the working class's political independence, defeat is inevitable. Thornett’s life shows that courage and integrity, while indispensable, cannot replace theoretical clarity. The working class needs leadership rooted in Marxism, able to resist bureaucratic pressure and chart an independent revolutionary course.

For a new generation turning toward socialism amid deepening capitalist crisis, Thornett’s experience stands as both a warning and a call to action. The path forward lies not in broad parties, alliances with reformists, or moral appeals to the state, but in building a revolutionary party grounded in the Trotskyist programme.

Articles and Bibliography

Primary Works by Alan Thornett

• Inside Cowley: A Trade Unionist’s Story (London: Left Books, 1998). Thornett’s first major autobiographical account, documenting the internal life of the Cowley plant, the TGWU bureaucracy, and the political pressures exerted on militant shop‑floor organisation. Essential for understanding the mechanics of bureaucratic suppression in the 1970s–80s.
• Militant Years: Car Workers’ Struggles in the 60s and 70s (London: Resistance Books, 2010). A retrospective narrative of Cowley’s militancy at its high-water mark. Valuable for its detailed descriptions of strikes, steward organisation, and the interplay between workplace struggle and national politics.
• Facing the Apocalypse: Arguments for Ecosocialism (London: Resistance Books, 2019). Thornett’s late‑life ecosocialist manifesto. Politically revealing for abandoning Marxist class analysis in favour of broad‑movement environmentalism.

Key Works on the WRP, the ICFI, and Pabloism

• David North, How the WRP Betrayed Trotskyism, 1973–1985 (Detroit: Labour Publications, 1986). The definitive analysis of the WRP’s degeneration. Essential for contextualising Thornett’s 1974 opposition and its right‑wing political content.
• David North, The Heritage We Defend (Detroit: Labour Publications, 1988). A comprehensive history of the Fourth International’s struggle against Pabloite revisionism. Provides the theoretical framework necessary to understand Thornett’s later political evolution.
• Gerry Healy, Problems of the Fourth International (London: SLL, 1966). A key document of the SLL’s anti‑Pabloite period, illustrating the political environment into which Thornett was recruited.

Articles and Analyses on Thornett and the British Trotskyist Movement

• World Socialist Web Site (WSWS)
• “Alan Thornett and the 1974 Split in the WRP”
• “The Political Lessons of the Cowley Struggles”
• “Respect Renewal and the Collapse of the British Pseudo‑Left”. These analyses provide the most consistent Marxist evaluation of Thornett’s political trajectory, especially his role in Respect and his embrace of broad‑party politics.
• Anticapitalist Resistance Obituaries and tributes published in 2026, reflecting the Pabloite interpretation of Thornett’s legacy. Useful for understanding how the liquidationist tendency frames its own history.
• Socialist Resistance Articles from the 2000s–2010s documenting Thornett’s involvement in the Socialist Alliance, Respect, and Left Unity. These pieces illustrate the political logic of the broad‑party strategy.

Historical Context and Trade‑Union Studies

• John McIlroy and Alan Campbell (eds.), Trade Unions in Britain Today (Manchester University Press, 1999). Provides structural analysis of the trade‑union bureaucracy’s transformation in the late 20th century — essential background for understanding Thornett’s defeats at Cowley.
• Huw Beynon, Working for Ford (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973). A classic study of car‑industry labour relations. While not about Cowley, it offers parallel insights into the pressures facing militant shop‑floor organisation.
• Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick: Thornett’s deposited papers, including correspondence, shop‑floor documents, and organisational materials from the WSL and ISG. A vital archive for future scholarly work.

Works on Ecosocialism and the Post‑Soviet Left

• Michael Löwy, Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe (Haymarket Books, 2015). The theoretical foundation of the United Secretariat’s ecosocialist turn. Illustrates the shift from class politics to broad‑movement environmentalism.
• Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene (Monthly Review Press, 2016). A representative example of the moral‑ecological framework adopted by the Pabloite current.

 

The Class Politics of Puritan Godliness in the English Revolution

The mid-seventeenth-century English Revolution remains a decisive turning point in world history. It ushered in the first great bourgeois revolution, shattered the feudal-absolutist state, executed a monarch, abolished the House of Lords, and briefly established a republic. In little more than a decade, the old order's foundations were violently uprooted and replaced by the first structures of a new one. The political upheavals of the 1640s and 1650s went hand in hand with a profound ideological and religious transformation that reached every parish, pew, and village. As Friedrich Engels observed, the rising bourgeoisie fought its battles in the language of the Old Testament. The Bible became the vocabulary of revolution—the medium through which they expressed and justified class antagonisms.

This fusion of political and religious change is essential to understanding the English Revolution. The overthrow of Charles I and the abolition of episcopacy were more than constitutional adjustments: they directly challenged the ideological and property foundations of the feudal state. The Church of England was not merely a religious institution; it was a central pillar of the old social order, a major landowner, an instrument of social discipline, and a guardian of inherited privilege. Its destruction and reorganisation were therefore integral to the revolutionary process.

In this context, Fiona McCall’s edited volume, *Church and People in Interregnum Britain*, positions itself. The book explores how religious transformation unfolded at the local level in the 1640s and 1650s. Drawing on parish records, church surveys, quarter sessions documents, and clerical correspondence, it reconstructs the lived experience of the “second Reformation”—the sweeping changes Parliament imposed in 1645, when it abolished the Church hierarchy, banned the Book of Common Prayer, and put ecclesiastical lands up for sale.

The book belongs to the Royal Historical Society’s New Historical Perspectives series, which encourages early-career scholars to write tightly focused studies based on archival research. In this respect, *Church and People in Interregnum Britain* reflects both the strengths and limitations of contemporary academic historiography. It is rich in detail, often meticulous in its use of sources, and offers valuable insights into how revolutionary policies were implemented—or resisted—in particular localities. At the same time, it is shaped by the methodological narrowness that has dominated British early-modern scholarship since the “revisionist” assault on Marxist interpretations in the 1970s and 1980s.

The revisionists, led by figures such as Conrad Russell and John Morrill, argued that no English Revolution existed, only a series of local accidents, personal quarrels, and constitutional misunderstandings. Their successors have moved away from the most extreme forms of this argument but retained its methodological core: breaking the revolution into micro-studies, emphasising local variation, and avoiding analysis of the social forces driving events. The result is a historiography that excels at reconstructing parish disputes and clerical careers but struggles—or refuses—to explain why a revolution occurred at all.

This outlook shapes McCall’s volume. Its contributors examine how national initiatives interacted with “local spaces, traditions and personal agendas.” They trace the persistence of traditional practices, the survival of loyalist clergy, the uneven enforcement of godly discipline, and the administrative challenges of reorganising church livings. Yet they say almost nothing about the class dynamics that propelled the revolution: the interests of the merchants, yeomen, and lesser gentry who supported Parliament, or the radical demands of the Levellers, Diggers, and sectaries who pushed religious reform toward social equality.

Yet read critically—and placed within a Marxist framework—the archival material in the volume takes on a sharper meaning. The church surveys reveal a revolutionary state attempting to rationalise medieval property relations. The transfer of moral discipline from church courts to secular magistrates exposes the class content of Puritan “godliness,” which fell disproportionately on labourers and servants. Cromwell’s ecclesiastical patronage reflects the tension between revolutionary energy from below and the need to stabilise a new propertied order.

Church and People in Interregnum Britain is best understood not as an interpretation of the English Revolution, but as a repository of evidence. It shows, from the ground up, how the revolution reshaped everyday religious life and imposed new forms of social discipline—even if its contributors stop short of naming the revolution for what it was.

A “second Reformation” born of revolution

The book’s premise is stated plainly: in 1645, as the First Civil War drew to a close, a “second Reformation” swept through England. Parliament abolished the Church of England’s hierarchy, banned the Book of Common Prayer, and put ecclesiastical lands up for sale. No stable state or cautious government imposed this reform for administrative tidiness. A revolutionary regime fighting for survival amid civil war carried it out, determined to uproot the institutional foundations of the old order. The destruction of episcopacy and seizure of church property were part of a broader assault on feudal authority that accompanied the king’s military defeat.

Expropriating bishops and cathedral chapters directly challenged the ancien régime's ideological and property foundations. The Church was more than a religious institution: it was one of England’s largest landowners, a central pillar of the feudal state, and a means of reproducing social hierarchy. Its lands, rents, and tithes supported a powerful clerical elite whose interests aligned with the monarchy and aristocracy. Abolishing the hierarchy and selling its estates struck at the economic base of the old ruling class. The sale of church lands was part of a vast property transfer that also accompanied the confiscation of royalist estates. In both cases, the beneficiaries were the rising bourgeois and gentry layers, whose political expression was Parliament.

The “second Reformation” was therefore more than a religious programme: it was a political and social revolution expressed in religious terms. The language of godliness, purity and reformation gave the revolutionary bourgeoisie the ideological vocabulary to justify its assault on feudal property relations. As Engels observed, the English bourgeoisie fought its battles in biblical terms not because it was especially pious, but because religious discourse was the age's dominant ideological medium. The destruction of the Church’s institutional power went hand in hand with the creation of a new social order based on private property, contractual relations and the authority of Parliament.

This revolutionary transformation extended far beyond the Church’s upper levels, reshaping parish life, abolishing the Book of Common Prayer, and imposing a preaching ministry aimed at changing everyday religious practice. Reorganising livings, merging or dividing parishes, and redirecting tithe income were intended to rationalise a medieval ecclesiastical structure and adapt it to a modernising state. These initiatives achieved only partial success, and the Restoration swept many away. Yet their ambition reveals the scale of the revolutionary project.

Equally significant was the transfer of moral discipline from church courts to secular magistrates. After ecclesiastical jurisdiction was abolished, justices of the peace, overwhelmingly drawn from the local gentry, prosecuted offences such as swearing, Sabbath-breaking, and pew disputes. This shift revealed the class character of Puritan “godliness.” What seemed like a religious campaign for moral reform was, in practice, a way to discipline labourers, servants, and low-income people. Fines and punishments fell disproportionately on those at the bottom of society. The emerging bourgeois order required a sober, orderly and industrious population, and the machinery of godly discipline helped create one.

Seen in this light, the “second Reformation” was not merely an episode of cultural change but a central part of the English bourgeois revolution. It was the ideological and administrative counterpart to the king’s military defeat and Parliament’s political ascendancy. It reshaped property relations, redefined authority, and imposed new forms of social regulation. Understanding it requires examining the class forces that drove the religious upheaval of the 1640s and 1650s.

What the archives reveal

The strongest chapters in Church and People in Interregnum Britain are those that allow the archival material to speak with minimal theoretical interference. Read critically, they reveal the revolutionary pressures acting on the parish, the pulpit, and the machinery of local governance.

Rationalising the medieval church

Alex Craven’s study of parliamentary surveys of church livings exposes the revolutionary state’s attempt to rationalise a chaotic medieval system of benefices. The surveys, preserved in Lambeth Palace Library and the Chancery papers, aimed to unite tiny parishes, divide unwieldy ones, and redirect tithe income to support a preaching ministry. This was not administrative tinkering. It was an embryonic effort to replace feudal endowments with a modern, centralised plan for religious provision.

The inherited ecclesiastical structure was a patchwork of medieval foundations, private patronage rights and uneven tithe arrangements. Parliament’s surveys sought to impose coherence on this jumble, aligning religious organisation with the needs of a revolutionary state that required ideological unity and reliable preaching. The failure of these reforms — swept away at the Restoration — underscores the incomplete character of the English Revolution. But failure does not diminish the scale of what was attempted. The very ambition of the surveys reveals a government determined to remake the religious landscape in accordance with new social and political priorities.

Cromwell’s balancing act

Rebecca Warren’s chapter on Oliver Cromwell’s ecclesiastical patronage between 1654 and 1660 is equally revealing. As Lord Protector, Cromwell controlled many ministerial appointments. His choices illuminate the Protectorate's political contradictions. On one side stood the revolutionary sects—Independents, Baptists, Fifth Monarchists—whose energy had propelled the New Model Army and whose demands threatened to push the revolution beyond limits acceptable to property owners. On the other stood the Presbyterian and moderate Independent interests, representing the propertied layers determined to halt further upheaval.

Cromwell’s patronage record reflects this tension. He appointed godly, reliable ministers but avoided empowering those whose radicalism might destabilise the new order. Leon Trotsky described Cromwell as a figure who combined revolutionary daring with the determination to build a bourgeois state. Warren’s evidence reflects that dual character. Cromwell sought to preserve the revolution's gains while preventing its extension into social equality or democratic control. His ecclesiastical appointments were instruments of political management, designed to stabilise a new ruling class while containing the forces that had made its victory possible.

The secularisation of moral discipline

McCall’s own chapter is the most politically significant. With the abolition of church courts, the policing of religious offences — pew disputes, swearing, Sabbath breaking — passed to the justices of the peace. Moral discipline did not disappear; it was transferred to the secular magistracy, dominated by the local gentry. This shift exposes the class content of Puritan “godliness.”

The church courts had been instruments of ecclesiastical authority, often cumbersome and uneven in their enforcement. By contrast, justices of the peace represented the propertied class. Their courts became the arena in which the godly reformation of manners was carried out. Fines for swearing, drunkenness and disorder fell disproportionately on labourers, servants and people with low incomes. The emerging bourgeois order required a disciplined, sober and industrious population. The machinery of secular moral regulation helped produce it.

In this context, Puritanism was not simply a religious movement. It imposed the habits of regular labour demanded by an emerging capitalist economy. The transfer of moral discipline from ecclesiastical to secular authority reveals how deeply the revolution penetrated everyday life. It reshaped not only institutions but behaviours, expectations and the rhythms of work and leisure.

The limits of the “localist” method

The volume’s methodological approach is also its weakness. Each chapter focuses on a specific parish, county or institutional case study, often reconstructed with admirable archival care but framed within a narrow interpretive horizon. The stated aim is to show how national initiatives interacted with “local spaces, traditions and personal agendas.” This formulation has become a mantra in early‑modern British historiography, signalling a commitment to micro‑history and a suspicion of overarching explanations. But it also reflects the intellectual retreat that has dominated the field for nearly half a century.

Since the 1970s, the study of the English Revolution has been shaped by the “revisionist” assault on Marxist interpretations. Conrad Russell, John Morrill and their followers insisted that no English Revolution existed — only a series of local accidents, personal quarrels, administrative breakdowns and religious misunderstandings. They rejected the idea that the conflict had structural causes or expressed the interests of identifiable social classes. In their hands, the revolution dissolved into a mosaic of county studies, parish disputes and elite political manoeuvring.

The post‑revisionist generation has retreated from the crudest versions of this argument. Few now deny that the 1640s witnessed a profound political crisis. But they have retained the revisionist method: fragment the revolution into micro‑studies, emphasise local variation, and avoid analysing the social forces driving events. The result is a historiography that excels at reconstructing the texture of everyday life but struggles — or refuses — to explain why the upheaval occurred at all.

This outlook shapes McCall’s volume. Its contributors examine how national religious policies were implemented, resisted or adapted in particular localities. They trace the persistence of traditional practices, the survival of loyalist clergy, the uneven enforcement of godly discipline and the administrative challenges of reorganising church livings. But they say almost nothing about the deeper forces that propelled the “second Reformation”: the interests of the merchants, yeomen and lesser gentry who supported Parliament; the economic pressures that made ecclesiastical expropriation attractive; or the ideological needs of a rising bourgeois class seeking to legitimise its assault on feudal authority.

The words “revolution,” “class” and “property” scarcely appear. The social groups whose interests the parliamentary cause expressed — the middling sort in towns, the commercially oriented gentry in the countryside, the London merchants whose wealth underpinned Parliament’s war effort — are largely absent. So too are the Levellers, Diggers, and radical sectaries, whose demands for social equality terrified the grandees and revealed the revolution's deeper logic. The religious radicalism of the 1640s and 1650s cannot be understood apart from these movements, yet they barely register in a volume ostensibly devoted to “church and people.”

Even sympathetic reviewers have noted the book's narrowness. The “people” in the title are mostly clergy, and “Britain” is overwhelmingly southern England. Two chapters focus on Sussex, one on Dorset, and another on the region from Bristol to the Isle of Wight — a geographical skew that reflects the Portsmouth conference from which the volume emerged. A book on church and people in the revolution that says little about London, the army or the radical congregations is necessarily lopsided. London was the epicentre of revolutionary politics, the New Model Army the decisive instrument of revolutionary power, and the sectarian congregations the crucible of ideological innovation. Their absence is not accidental; it reflects a historiographical approach that avoids the revolution's most politically charged aspects.

The emphasis on “local spaces” and “continuity” serves a political function. It downplays the period's revolutionary character, presenting upheaval as a series of administrative adjustments filtered through local traditions. Continuity becomes a way to deny rupture; local variation becomes a way to deny structural change. The revolution appears not as a decisive break in English history but as a set of regional peculiarities, each shaped by personal agendas and parish politics.

This methodological narrowing is not simply an academic choice. It reflects the ideological climate of the late twentieth and early twenty‑first centuries, in which grand narratives, class analysis and structural explanations have been marginalised. The English Revolution, once understood as a foundational moment in the emergence of modern capitalism, is now often treated as a constitutional crisis with religious overtones. McCall’s volume, despite its archival strengths, is shaped by this intellectual retreat.

Continuity and rupture

A recurring theme in Church and People in Interregnum Britain is “continuity.” Bernard Capp’s introduction is pointedly titled “Stability and flux,” and several chapters emphasise the persistence of traditional practices. Historians rightly show that many parishes carried on much as before, that Puritan ministers often remained in place, and that private traditionalism survived beneath the surface of official godliness. No serious scholar denies that elements of the old religious culture endured. The English Revolution, like all bourgeois revolutions, did not sweep away every vestige of the past.

But treating continuity as the main finding downplays the revolution itself. It shifts attention from the structural transformation of English society to the survival of familiar rituals and habits. The persistence of old forms is taken not as evidence of the revolution’s contradictions but as proof that the revolution was limited, superficial, or even illusory. This interpretive move characterises the revisionist and post‑revisionist schools, which have long sought to minimise the revolutionary character of the 1640s and 1650s.

A Marxist analysis sees continuity differently. The survival of old practices reflects the incomplete and contradictory character of a bourgeois revolution that halted halfway, made its peace with the landed interest, and restored the monarchy and episcopacy in 1660. The English Revolution did not abolish the gentry; it strengthened them. It did not destroy the social foundations of landlordism; it reconfigured them. It did not produce a democratic republic; it produced a brief experiment in republican government followed by a conservative settlement. Continuity is therefore not evidence against revolution but evidence of the revolution’s limits.

The emphasis on continuity also obscures the profound ruptures that did occur. The abolition of episcopacy, the king's execution, the sale of church lands, the transfer of moral discipline to secular courts, the rise of sectarian congregations, and the politicisation of the army were unprecedented developments. They represented a decisive break with the feudal‑absolutist order. The persistence of some parish customs does not negate the revolutionary nature of these transformations. It merely shows that revolutions unfold unevenly, with different tempos in different social spheres.

Moreover, continuity often masks bigger change. A Puritan minister who remained in his parish might preach in familiar tones, but he did so under a radically altered ecclesiastical structure. Parishioners might continue to attend services, but the authority overseeing those services had been uprooted. Traditional practices might survive in private, but the abolition of the Book of Common Prayer and the imposition of a preaching ministry reshaped public religious life. Outward forms can remain continuous even as social relations, property structures, and ideological authority shift profoundly.

The revisionist fixation on continuity serves an ideological purpose. It lets historians present the revolution as a series of administrative adjustments filtered through local traditions rather than a decisive break in English history. It reduces structural transformation to parish‑level variation. It replaces class analysis with micro‑history. It treats the revolution not as a struggle between contending social forces but as a mosaic of local peculiarities. In this framework, the survival of old customs becomes a way of denying the existence of revolution itself.

This approach also reflects the broader intellectual climate of the late twentieth and early twenty‑first centuries, in which grand narratives, class analysis and structural explanations have been marginalised. The English Revolution, once understood as a foundational moment in the emergence of modern capitalism, is now often treated as a constitutional crisis with religious overtones. The emphasis on continuity fits neatly within this depoliticised historiography.

But a Marxist reading restores the revolution to its proper place. Continuity does not negate rupture; it reveals the contradictions of a bourgeois revolution carried out by a coalition of classes with divergent interests. The persistence of old forms shows the revolution was incomplete—not that it did not occur. Historical analysis should understand these contradictions, not use them to deny the revolutionary character of the period.

Why the book still matters

Despite its limitations, Church and People in Interregnum Britain contains valuable archival research. Its open‑access publication is a welcome break from the paywall‑dominated academic industry, which routinely restricts access to scholarship and places historical inquiry behind commercial barriers. The contributors have worked carefully with underused sources, and their findings illuminate aspects of parish life, clerical careers and local governance that are often overlooked. For that reason alone, the volume deserves attention.

But its value lies not in the interpretive framework it offers — which is narrow, localist and shaped by the intellectual retreat of post‑revisionist historiography — but in the evidence it assembles. For readers seeking to understand the English Revolution, the book works best as raw material rather than a guide to interpretation. Read alongside Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down or Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England, the archival fragments here acquire sharper meaning. The church surveys, the secular prosecutions of swearers and Sabbath‑breakers, the stubborn loyalist clergy, the uneasy balancing act in Cromwell’s patronage — all become evidence of a society being forcibly remade.

The English Revolution was not a constitutional quarrel or a series of local accidents. It was a bourgeois revolution that shattered the feudal‑absolutist state and reconfigured English society's ideological and property structures. The “second Reformation” of 1645 was a central moment. Parliament’s abolition of episcopacy, its ban on the Book of Common Prayer, and its sale of ecclesiastical lands were not administrative reforms. They were revolutionary acts that aimed to destroy the institutional foundations of the old order. The transfer of moral discipline from church courts to secular magistrates was not a procedural adjustment. It imposed a new social discipline aligned with the needs of an emerging capitalist economy.

These transformations cannot be understood through parish‑level micro‑studies alone. They require a framework that explains why the revolution occurred, what social forces drove it, and how its contradictions shaped its outcome. The merchants, yeomen and lesser gentry who supported Parliament; the radical sectaries who pushed the revolution toward social equality; the grandees who halted it; the army that embodied its most advanced democratic impulses — these actors are largely absent from McCall’s volume. Their absence is not accidental. It reflects a historiographical method that avoids structural analysis and treats the revolution as a mosaic of local peculiarities rather than as a decisive break in English history.

Yet the evidence the book assembles points beyond its interpretation. The church surveys reveal a revolutionary state attempting to rationalise medieval property relations. The quarter sessions records show the gentry enforcing godly discipline on labourers and servants. Cromwell's patronage decisions expose the tension between revolutionary energy from below and the need to stabilise a new propertied order. The persistence of traditional practices reveals the revolution's incomplete character, not its absence—old forms survived alongside profound ruptures in authority, property, and ideology.

A rising bourgeois class led the English Revolution, using the language of God to break the old order — and then to discipline the people who helped win it. Puritan ideology provided the vocabulary for expressing class struggle. The religious upheaval of the 1640s and 1650s was not a separate sphere of experience but the form through which political and social transformation unfolded. The “second Reformation” was the religious superstructure of the bourgeois revolution.

Despite its methodological constraints, McCall’s volume offers a ground‑level view of that process. It shows how revolutionary policies were implemented, resisted and adapted in the parish, the pew and the village. It reveals the tensions between national initiatives and local realities, between ideological ambition and administrative capacity, between revolutionary rupture and conservative persistence. It deserves attention for what it documents, not for what it concludes.

To understand what it truly reveals, however, requires a Marxist framework — one capable of situating parish‑level evidence within the broader dynamics of class struggle, property transformation and ideological change. Without that framework, the revolution dissolves into continuity, localism and personal agendas. With it, the archival fragments assembled in Church and People in Interregnum Britain become part of a larger story: the birth of modern England through the contradictory, incomplete and world‑historical process of bourgeois revolution.

Articles and Bibliography

Further Reading and Key Articles

The following works provide essential context for understanding the English Revolution, the “second Reformation,” and the broader social and ideological transformations of mid‑seventeenth‑century Britain. They complement the archival material in Church and People in Interregnum Britain and provide the interpretive framework the volume lacks.

• Christopher Hill, “The English Revolution 1640”: A foundational Marxist analysis of the revolution’s class dynamics, property transformations and ideological forms.
• Christopher Hill, “The World Turned Upside Down”: The classic study of radical sectaries, Levellers, Diggers and the democratic impulses suppressed by the revolutionary grandees.
• Christopher Hill, “Society and Puritanism in Pre‑Revolutionary England”: Essential for understanding the ideological and social roots of Puritanism and its role in reshaping everyday life.
• Brian Manning, “The English People and the English Revolution”: A powerful account of popular participation, class struggle and the revolutionary movement from below.
• Brian Manning, “Revolution and Counter‑Revolution in England, 1640–1660”: A detailed Marxist analysis of the revolution’s phases, contradictions and ultimate containment.
• David Underdown, “Revel, Riot and Rebellion”: A study of popular politics and local conflict that complements the parish‑level material in McCall’s volume.
• Michael Braddick, “God’s Fury, England’s Fire”: A modern narrative history that, while not Marxist, provides a comprehensive overview of the political and military crisis.
• Leopold von Ranke, “History of England” (selected chapters):
•  Useful for contrasting nineteenth‑century conservative interpretations with modern social history.
• Friedrich Engels, “The Peasant War in Germany”: Not about England, but indispensable for understanding how religious language expresses class struggle in early bourgeois revolutions.

Bibliography

Primary Sources and Archival Collections

• Lambeth Palace Library, Parliamentary Surveys of Church Livings (MS collections).
• The National Archives (Kew), Chancery Papers relating to ecclesiastical surveys and sequestrations.
• Quarter Sessions Records for Hampshire, Sussex, Dorset and Somerset (various county archives).
• Cromwellian State Papers, 1653–1658 (British Library, Thomason Tracts).
• Parish Registers and Vestry Minutes, 1640–1660 (regional archives).

Secondary Works

• Braddick, Michael. God’s Fury, England’s Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars. London: Allen Lane, 2008.
• Capp, Bernard. England’s Culture Wars: Puritan Reformation and Its Enemies in the Interregnum. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Hill, Christopher. The English Revolution 1640. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1940.
• Hill, Christopher. Society and Puritanism in Pre‑Revolutionary England. London: Secker & Warburg, 1964.
• Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1972.
• Manning, Brian. The English People and the English Revolution, 1640–1660. London: Heinemann, 1976.
• Manning, Brian. Revolution and Counter‑Revolution in England, 1640–1660. London: Pluto Press, 1994.
• McCall, Fiona, ed. Church and People in Interregnum Britain. London: University of London Press / Royal Historical Society, 2021.
• Morrill, John. Revolt of the Provinces: Conservatives and Radicals in the English Civil War, 1630–1650. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1976.
• Russell, Conrad. The Causes of the English Civil War. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
• Underdown, David. Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
• Woolrych, Austin. Britain in Revolution, 1625–1660. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Marxist and Theoretical Works

• Engels, Friedrich. The Peasant War in Germany.
• Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
• Trotsky, Leon. History of the Russian Revolution (for comparative revolutionary analysis).
• Perry Anderson. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: Verso, 1974.

 Fiona McCall’s Books (Confirmed Publications)

1. Baal’s Priests: The Loyalist Clergy and the English Revolution (Ashgate, 2013)

This is McCall’s major monograph, based on her doctoral research. It examines the experiences of loyalist (royalist) clergy and their families during the English Civil War and Interregnum. The judges of the 2013 Samuel Pepys Prize commended the book.

2. Church and People in Interregnum Britain (University of London Press / Royal Historical Society, 2021)

An edited collection bringing together early‑career scholars working on religion and society in the 1640s–1650s. McCall is the editor and also contributes a chapter based on her research into quarter sessions records and religious discipline.

Forthcoming / In‑Progress Scholarly Projects

These are not yet published as books but are confirmed ongoing projects:

3. Archbishop Matthew Parker’s 1561 Survey of the Elizabethan Clergy (forthcoming)

McCall is a collaborator on a Leverhulme‑funded project producing a modern edition of the Parker Certificates for the Church of England Record Society.

4. The Irresistible Authority of a Troop of Horse: The New Model Army and Parish Life (Article, 2026)

Not a book, but a significant scholarly article relevant to her research trajectory.