'The power of property was brought into creation by the
sword', Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1676)
"Thus," to quote Marx again, "thus were the agricultural
people, firstly forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes,
turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely
terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system."
[Capital]Karl
Marx
David Cautes 1961 novel Comrade Jacob is about the struggle
undertaken by Gerard Winstanley to create a "common treasury for all"
during the English revolution. Caute's book is one of the better novels based
on the English revolution.
While Paul Lay
perceptively remarks about another very good historical novel The Daughter of
Time by Josephine Yey "The historical novel when it is this good, this
thoroughly researched, has become a means of legitimate historical inquiry."
The same could be said of Caute's novel.
David Caute is not only a gifted novelist but playwright,
historian, journalist and essay writer. He imbues his writing with a strong
left-wing sentiment. As one writer states he "brings a broad knowledge of
European (mainly French) intellectual traditions into English fiction. He is
one of the most intellectually stimulating novelists of recent decades in
England--a "public" rather than a "private "writer".
Caute's novel is set in the high point of the English revolution.
A group of disaffected ex-New Model Army soldiers and others along with wives
and children, led by Gerard Winstanley have become disillusioned by the course
of the civil war under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell. The group decides to
take over some land at St Georges Hill in Surrey. They plant crops and graze
cattle to survive.
Their mission was to develop and practice a primitive form
of communism. The settlement expressed in simple terms a growing disgust and
protest by sections of both the lower middle class and sections of an early
working class at the rapidly growing social inequality that existed during the
civil war. Their commune was met with swift and violent punishment, and
eventually, they were defeated.
Although written in 1965 the book and the subject matter
still resonate today in that the same that the issues that appear in the book such
as the nature of democracy, social inequality and the rapacious nature of
private property are still topics that provoke debate and civil unrest today.
How else would you explain that despite the passage of
nearly four hundred years, people are still violently evicted from the land for
protesting at social injustice?.In an article which could have described a scene 400 hundred
years ago, the Guardian writer George Monbiot says this "Hounded by police
and bailiffs, evicted wherever they stopped.
They did not mean to settle here.
They had walked out of London to occupy disused farmland on the Queen's estates
surrounding Windsor Castle. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that didn't work out very
well. But after several days of pursuit, they landed two fields away from the
place where modern democracy is commonly supposed to have been born.[1]
David Caute recently
pointed out that St George's Hill in Surrey is now home to some the most
expensive real estate in England "Here opulent private properties sit
untouchable behind security gates and surveillance cameras. It was not always
so. In 1649, as the civil war drew to a close and Charles I stepped out on to a
Whitehall balcony to face the executioner, the landowners of St George's Hill
were confronted by an influx of nightmare neighbours, the so-called Diggers".[2]
The leader Gerrard Winstanley, advanced their claims in the
name of social justice. He also called for the end to "Norman yoke"
which he blamed for all of England's troubles.
The novel is mostly told through words and eyes of
Winstanley, part academic book part novel. While the book, unfortunately, has
been left a little on the shelf, the subject matter has seen a significant
renaissance. It is only recently that a systematic study of Winstanley has
started to emerge. The recent publication of his collected works is one
indication of the trend to restore Winstanley to his place as one of the most
prominent figures of the English revolution.
He was a figure that according to Christopher Hill, who
turned the world upside down. His form of utopian communism went further than
the Levellers in both actions and words. The egalitarian nature of his
philosophy was captured in his pamphlet "The New Law of Righteousness,"
written in 1648. "Selfish imaginations," he said had lead one man to
rule over another. "But everyone shall put their hands to till the earth
and bring up cattle, and the blessing of the earth shall be common to all,"
"When a man hath need of any corn or cattle, take from the next
store-house he meets with. There shall be no buying and selling, no fairs or
markets, but the whole earth shall be the common Treasury for every man."
The Diggers and Levellers were part of a group of people
that sought to understand the profound political and social changes that were
taking place at the beginning of the 17th century. They were the true 'Ideologues
of the revolution'. While the Diggers were sympathetic to the poor, which
stemmed from their religion, they had no program to bring about social change,
they never advocated a violent overturning of society. Their class outlook,
that being of small producers, conditioned their ideology. At no stage did the
Diggers or that matter did the larger group the Levellers constitute a mass
movement.
The contradiction between their concern for the poor and
their position of representatives of the small property owners caused some
tension. They had no opposition to private property, and therefore they
accepted that inequalities would always exist, they merely argued for a lot of
the poor to be made more equitable.
Caute was a man of the left and the novel reflects Caute's
academic upbringing as a student of Christopher Hill, as Caute says "I
became acquainted with the Diggers in Oxford University tutorials with the
great historian of our 17th-century upheavals, Christopher Hill, who at that
juncture was severing his links with the Communist party in the wake of the
Hungarian Revolution. Out of this came a novel, Comrade Jacob, published in the
spring of 1961. But how to climb into the heads of Fifth Monarchists, Quakers,
Ranters and the other mushrooming sects? We find it easier, surely, to
understand the strictly secular doctrines of Jacobins and Bolsheviks. I divided
the storytelling between Winstanley's own self-righteous narrative and scenes
in which his actions and personality are viewed through a more skeptical
authorial lens. Much of it was mere conjecture - the evidence is hazy. But this
haze, which became the oxygen of the novel, was later lost in the film version".[3]
After writing the book, Caute says he was approached by some
people offering to make the book into film, But Caute stated that "The
recurrent problem in these adaptations during the 1960s and 70s was the erosion
of two central themes of the novel by the partisan passions of the New Left.
Winstanley's mystical religious fervour went out of the window – he was always
found on his feet rather than his knees. Also defenestrated was the rising
personal power this opinionated prophet exercised among his poor followers, and
how his "moral parsonage" may have entered his soul. In the stage and
screen adaptations he was to be found striding out of a socialist realist
manual, a clear-headed tribune of the people, a steadfast hero unburdened by
the shadow of Esau. The lessons of Orwell's Animal Farm did not surface".
Perhaps the most famous "use "of Caute's book is
the film Winstanley by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo. Caute is heavily
critical of some shortcomings in the movie. Having seen the film and read the book, I am in agreement with
Caute. I like the film it has great merit and is stunningly photographed but as
Caute said the religious/political aspects of Winstanley are heavily
downplayed.
When asked by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo, to use the
book Caute said yes but only if he could write the film script myself. Caute
bitterly regretted it and "discovered that screenwriters do not count for
much. Not until I was shown the final product did I realize what had been going
on. I duly withdrew my screenwriting credit".
Caute criticism was that Winstanley while being a "vivid
commentary on the physical condition of 17th century rural England", it
was "reluctant to penetrate the strong religious motivations of the time.
Winstanley believed that to know the secrets of nature is to know the works of
God within the creation. This extends to the characters. I make no great claims
for my novel in this regard, but it did attempt to convey individuals'
sometimes perverse changes of mood and motivation. This is indeed retained in
the person of the army commander, Lord General Fairfax, but Winstanley, the
eponymous hero of the film, remains from start to finish a decent, upstanding,
strangely well-spoken Left Book Club idealist. The rough edges of a
Lancastrian, the spiritual torment, the mood swings between pride and humility,
Winstanley's mounting confusions about God and Reason, have utterly gone".
The book also has its weaknesses. It should not be seen as a
verbatim account of the role of the Diggers in the English Revolution. Caute
only touches upon some significant events that could have been expanded without
ruining the book. More could have been made of the Putney debates which are
very briefly mentioned in the book. A detailed look at these discussions would
have given a far broader and objective assessment of Winstanley's role in the
debate over the franchise.
Caute could have also developed more the religious and more
importantly, the political divide between the Presbyterian and
Independents. It should not be lost that
the people that sought the Diggers eviction were mostly Presbyterians; Lord
Fairfax was after all heavily on the side of the Independents. To conclude, despite its shortcomings, the book is a must-read
for anyone interested in the radicals groups of the English revolution. It is
one of the better historical novels to examine the revolution
[1]
The Promised Land July 16, 2012 This is the fate of young people today:
excluded, but forbidden to opt out. By George Monbiot, published in the
Guardian 17th July 2012
[2]
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/oct/17/david-caute-winstanley-comrade-jacob
[3]
Looking back in regret at Winstanley David Caute guardian.co.uk, Friday 17
October 2008
