"The term
political radicalism (or simply, in political science, radicalism) denotes
political principles focused on altering social structures through
revolutionary means and changing value systems in fundamental ways."[1]
To Be Radical is to
Grasp Things by the Root-
Karl Marx- The German Ideology
"It is a
commonplace that the past is at the mercy of the present and that in every
generation there are those who deliberately distort aspects of it to reflect a
vision of their own or another's making. Most historical writing about
radicalism and the English Revolution can be considered fabrication - in the
sense of both manufacture and invention. There have been several critical
studies documenting this process, including recent work by Mario Caricchio." Ariel Hessayon
This collection of
essays explore the terms 'radical' and 'radicalism' in the Early Modern English
context. The term radical or radicalism has like all things connected with the
English Revolution in the seventeenth century or political struggles in the
eighteenth century come under attack by a coterie of revisionist historians.
As Edward Vallance
points out in his essay Reborn John?: The Eighteenth-century The afterlife of John Lilburne:" this is a
persuasive presentation of the historical influence of the radicalism of the
civil war and one which reflects a broader scholarly unease with the conception
of a 'radical tradition'. The notion of a tradition of radical thought was
powerfully evoked in the classic works of British Marxist historians such as
Christopher Hill and Edward Thompson. It retained some importance in the
popular historical imagination.5 Academics have become increasingly critical,
however, both of the use of the term 'radical' to describe pre-modern politics
and of the idea of a continuum of radical ideas and movements. Scholars have
pointed out that the term 'radical' – not in common political use until the
early nineteenth century anyway – had a very different meaning in the
seventeenth century, indicating not ideas that would dramatically transform the
status quo but instead a return to fundamentals or the root. Using the term 'radical'
in its modern sense then risks distorting the political outlook of historic
individuals who did not necessarily view themselves as advocating anything new
or novel. The notion of a radical tradition is now seen as equally problematic,
as it implies both a similarity in radical thought over the ages and a degree
of influence from one radical group to the next which often cannot be supported
with empirical evidence.6 At best, the idea of a radical tradition is seen as a
poor way of thinking about intellectual influence. At worst, the concept is
seen as a historical fabrication, little more than an exercise in
wish-fulfilment on the part of modern left-wing academics and journalists.[2]
Varieties of Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century English
Radicalism in Context is an ambitious book that attempts to go beyond the
conceptual categories which permeate the study of The English Revolution. The
book is one of many recent studies that seek to clarify but ultimately fails
what is meant by many of the concepts used in the Revolution. The 12 essays in
this book are the product of the work presented at a conference held at
Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2006.
Understanding radicalism is not an easy task as it is clear the
term means many things to many people. Historically some early modern
historians have used the term radical or radicalism to describe the plethora of
groups that took part in the English Revolution. However, even conservative
historians such as Hugh Trevor-Roper had adopted the term. Radicals can also be
found on the royalist side as well according to one historian in this book.
The term radical is a relatively modern concept. According to Professor
Diego Lucci, "the historian Conal Condren has written that it was not
until the late 18th century that 'radical' became a political term associated
with extensive political and social reform, and it was not until 1819 that
Jeremy Bentham coined the word 'radicalism'.[3]
One problem with several essays written by historians who are largely
revisionists in nature is that they are more adept at telling us what they
reject rather than arguing for what they believe. Readers who are looking for
new historiography from this collection of essays will be brutally disappointed.
In the introduction, Ariel Hessayon and David Finnegan make it
clear that these articles do not identify with the "linguistic turn "school
of historiography or otherwise known as the nominalist approach.
These historians in order to remove "anachronism" from
historical study believe it is best to remove terms like radicalism from early
modern historiography. In its most extreme form nominalist historians would
also like to remove words such as 'puritan', 'royalist' 'antiquity', 'medieval',
and 'modern'. In other words, formalism went mad.
The second approach, identified in the introduction, is called 'substantive'
and is the polar opposite of nominalist. The functional approach is favoured by
two divergent schools of historiography Whig and Marxist. These two trends have
towered over the study of the English Revolution.
The authors in this collection of essays have rejected both Whig
and Marxist historiography and have adopted a semi functionalist approach to
the study of English radicalism.
Revisionists of one sort or another have sought over the last
three decades to eradicate the influence of both Whig and Marxist historiography.
As Hessayon and Finnegan observe correctly that even the use of the word radical
has come under attack from a coterie of revisionist historians. So much so it
has become increasingly difficult to keep track of the various strands of
thought as regards the English Revolution.
A distorted defence of Marxist historiography was carried out by
historians in and around the Communist Party of Great Britain. They
sought with varying degrees of success to apply a historical materialist method
when writing and studying the various radical groups. Historians which included
the likes of Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, A. L. Morton and E. P. Thompson
developed the 'history from below' genre,
One of the essential features of their approach was to establish
the importance of radical groups in the English Revolution. The Communist Party
historians rescued them from obscurity. However, they could not escape the
influence of the Stalinist controlled party of the USSR. They were following a historical and political line that
came from the Stalin led Russian Communist International during the mid1930s.
As was said before, Hessayon and Finnegan do not support the
linguistic but are hostile to a Marxist interpretation. They
treat the matter of radicalism from a purely academic standpoint. However, such
a topic as the level of radicalism in the English Revolution requires a
political understanding. That is why Hessayon is hostile to "dangerous
extremists" hijacking groups such as the Levellers for their modern-day
political agenda.
Hessayon levelled this very same charge at the historian Edward
Vallance in a review of Vallance's A Radical History of Britain for the
Institute of Historical Research website. The review crossed a line in that it
was a nasty and inaccurate attack.
In Vallance's book, he said "there is another purpose to
Vallance's book: a political agenda. Located somewhere to the left of New
Labour in Guardian, New Statesman and John Pilger reading territory (pp. 11,
38, 40–2, 430–1, 531, 551), displaying an evident if understandable distaste
for Thatcherism (pp. 52, 228, 260), A Radical History of Britain is intended as
a celebration of the British people's capacity for dissent and, when necessary,
recourse to direct action in defending their liberties and securing new rights
(pp. 11, 13, 18, 38–9, 119–21, 181, 201, 526–7). Nor to Vallance's mind is his
narrative a record of heroic failure, but rather a testament to the
achievements of British radicals and revolutionary movements".
He continues "As historians, we have a collective
responsibility to maintain the highest standards of scholarly rigour,
especially when undertaking the challenging yet rewarding business of educating
non-specialists. Furthermore, shaping aspects of the past to advance
present-day political goals is a practice almost as old as the discipline
itself. Anyone engaged in this enterprise, however, must take the greatest care
not to legitimise the indefensible or give ammunition to dangerous extremist".
Vallance correctly sought to defend the integrity of his work.
"It is rather difficult for me to respond to Dr Hessayon's review, not
least because he appears to be offering a critique of quite a different book
from the one that I have written. In particular, I am baffled by his repeated
references to the British National Party (eight in all) within his review,
where he refers to the BNP twice as many times as I do within the whole 600 +
pages of my A Radical History of Britain. To put this in perspective, there are
almost as many references to him within my book as there are to that far-right
party.
" So it is with some puzzlement that I met Dr Hessayon's
suggestions that my book may provide 'ammunition to dangerous extremists'. I
realise that many readers of Reviews in History will not have looked at my
work, so I provide here a key passage from p. 549: This yoking together of
freedom and Britishness has continued, through the writing of George Orwell in
The Lion and the Unicorn, to the present day, with Gordon Brown's calls for a
new sense of national identity constructed around British values of 'liberty,
tolerance and fair play. The BNP would certainly struggle to live up to the
second of those values. It is hard to see how British radical movements such as
the Chartists, which included prominent black members and supported the
abolition of the slave trade, or the suffragettes, who included leading
anti-colonialists such as Sylvia Pankhurst, can fit into the BNP's bleached-white
vision of Britain. Yet, in the radical tradition's appropriation by the
far-right, we can nonetheless see some of the dangers in claiming universal
values such as tolerance, fairness and liberty as peculiarly British. More
recently another right-wing group has claimed allegiance to the radicals
throughout history. During the recent by-election victory of the UKIP at
Rochester the newly elected MP Mark Reckless believed that his party stood in
the "radical tradition," one that historically "took power away
from the elites and spread it to the people. It is the tradition of Levellers,
Chartists, and Suffragettes."
Vallance continues "Overall, this seems an eccentric reading
of my book, especially given my left-leaning politics which will be evident to
anyone who has read my New Statesman articles or heard my talks at Demos or
Republic: The Campaign for an Elected Head of State. His points concerning Dr
Dunn and Dr Harvey's works aside, Dr Hessayon's review offers little serious
engagement with my work and, in my view, breaches the IHR's standards for
scholarly debate".
If Hessayon wanted to attack Vallance
properly, he could have pointed out that while Britain did have a radical
tradition, this was not somehow unbroken. The theory of an unbroken radical
tradition largely stems from the Communist Party Historians Group.
As Philip Bounds pointed out in his
outstanding essay Orwell and Englishness: in the section titled The Dialogue
with British Marxism "British Communism and the "English Radical
Tradition" he states "The idea
of Englishness became an obsession for British communists after the Seventh
Congress of the Communist International in 1935. (The Communist International
or "Comintern" had been established in Moscow in 1919. Its function
was to determine the policies of the various pro-Soviet Communist Parties which
came into existence in the wake of the October Revolution.) Meeting at a time
when Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy posed an increasingly evident
threat to international order, the Seventh Congress was primarily important for
determining communist strategy towards the growth of fascism. The most famous
speech was delivered by the Bulgarian communist Georgi Dimitrov, newly
appointed President of the Comintern, who had become a hero throughout the
world movement after being acquitted by a Nazi court on charges of burning down
the Reichstag (Germany's parliament) in 1933. After defining fascism as
"the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most
chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital," 5 Dimitrov
insisted that communists should now give priority to defending established
democratic institutions against the fascist attempt to overthrow them. This
could best be done by uniting all anti-fascists, including those whom the
communists had previously dismissed as "bourgeois" (e.g. liberals and
even progressive conservatives), into nationally based "People's
Fronts."
This political line was catastrophic
and paved the way for numerous defeats of the working class. It did, however,
provide the historians of the Communist Party the possibility of examining
subjects such as the English Revolution and the in particular radicals without
coming into conflict with the leadership in Moscow.
As Bounds continues from 1935 onwards, in a flurry of intellectual
activity, many of the CPGB's leading writers made a sustained effort to
excavate the history of what was usually called the "English radical
tradition." The body of work that they produced can broadly be divided
into two categories. On the one hand, there was a series of writings that
traced the history of the plebeian revolt in Britain since the Peasants' Rising of
1381. These were supplemented by a more extensive (though perhaps not so
influential) group of works which explored the influence of radical ideas on a
selection of Britain's most famous writers — Shakespeare, Milton and Dickens
among them.”
The Beauty of Holiness
The book opens with the chapter The Beauty of Holiness and the
Poetics of Antinomianism Richard Crashaw, John Saltmarsh and the Language of
Religious Radicalism in the 1640s. Nicholas McDowell essay examines the
language of religious radicalism in the 1640s, with a special focus on the
poems of Richard Crashaw and John Saltmarsh.
McDowell adopts a reformist rather than a revolutionary position
as regards the radical groups as seen in this quote. "The most sensible
discussion of radicalism in the English Revolution is the third of G. E.
Aylmer's four presidential addresses to the Royal Historical Society on
'Collective Mentalities in Mid-Seventeenth-Century England'. In his paper on
'Varieties of Radicalism', delivered in 1987, Aylmer quickly dispenses with the
nominalist wrangling that continues to obsess historians. I quote his opening
two sentences: 'Since the terms radical and radicalism were not in use before
the nineteenth century, it may reasonably be asked what they signify when
applied to the mid-seventeenth century. The answer is a pragmatic one: by
radical I mean anyone advocating changes in state, church and society which
would have gone beyond the official programme of the mainstream
Puritan-Parliamentarians in the Long Parliament and the Assembly of
Divines.'[1] Aylmer immediately and with a minimum of fuss defines the context
for discussing radicalism in the English Revolution. Having dispensed with the
circular debate over naming, Aylmer proceeds to get on with trying to
characterise the distinguishing features of mid-seventeenth-century radicalism.[4]
McDowell follows Hessayon lead in opposing historians who have
adopted the linguistic turn. He writes If we are not to call 'radical' the
writers I discuss at length in the book - the 'Ranter' Coppe, the Levellers
Walwyn and Richard Overton, the Quaker Samuel Fisher, the Fifth Monarchist John
Rogers - then what exactly are we to call them? 'Sectarian' will hardly do".
Jason Peacey's chapter Radicalism Relocated: Royalist Politics and
Pamphleting of the Late 1640s is an indicator of the growing interest in
Royalist politics and their use of pamphlets. Peacey is open to the idea that
radical politics permeated every aspect of everyday life.
According to Diego Lucci, "Peacey stresses that radical
ideas, especially in matters of religious, social and political reform,
penetrated various areas of English politics and, therefore, were shared by
different, and sometimes clashing, milieus. Therefore, Peacey argues that
radicalism was a phenomenon largely independent from the distinctions between
Royalists and Parliamentarians, and influenced both sides of the political
spectrum."
Mario Caricchio's News from the New Jerusalem; Giles Calvert and
the Radical experience Mario Caricchio's section concentrates on how bookselling
and pamphleteering influenced political and religious debates of the English
Revolution. Caricchio focuses on Giles Calvert, one of the main publishers and
booksellers in England between 1641 and 1660. Caricchio maintains that Calvert's
bookshop was part of a broader network of social networks.
As Caricchio said, in a 2006 essay "Radicalism and English
revolution are not on a high road but at a crossroads. Historians seem to place
them where a number of contexts intersect. This could be an answer to the
question of the "nature of the English revolution", which, as John
Morrill put it by citing Hill, required attention to be paid more to "environment"
than to "heredity".[36] This is a two-sided issue. On the one hand,
there is the radicalisation of conflict that shattered the unity of the "political
nation" at the beginning of the 1640s and precipitated England into the
civil war. On the other hand, there is the problem of late 1640s radicalism,
which Morrill, envisaging a comparison between the Levellers and the Clubmen,
raised in a stimulating question: how "Leveller pamphlets and petitions
combined deeply regressive economic and social ideas with a core commitment to
religious liberty and a political doctrine born of the experience of Independent
churches, all bound together in an innovative natural rights framework"?
In this question and its possible answer, popular participation and radical
ideas still stand at the heart of the matter. The varieties of the English
religious experience together with the widening or thickening publicity of
discourses seem to be the decisive turning on the map: where the last war of
religion becomes a revolution".[5]
Gerrard Winstanley: Radical Reformerby Ariel Hessayon is a continuation of Hessayon's
attack on left-wing historians. In an essay in 2006, he attacks Christopher Hills
evaluation of the Digger leader Winstanley."In 1973 Hill's edition of
Winstanley's selected writings was published by Penguin. His introduction
portrayed Winstanley in modern dress as an advocate of 'human progress',
'reason' and 'international brotherhood'; an author whose insights 'may be of
interest to those in the Third World today who face the transition from an
agrarian to an industrial society'. Here again was a radical, mostly secular
Winstanley whose biblical language and 'high-flown metaphorical style' was
worth penetrating in the same way that readers had to get through the 'Hegelian
jargon' to understand the early Marx. [76] In a subsequent essay 'From Lollards
to Levellers' (1978) Hill attempted to provide both genealogy and ecology for
'lower-class' radicalism by exploring the continuity of radical ideas within an
orally transmitted 'underground tradition'. His focus was on doctrinal and geographical
continuities, particularly in pastoral, forest, moorland and fen areas where
ecclesiastical control was less tight. But if in retrospect the 1970s
represented a pinnacle in Hill's writing on radicalism, it was also during this
decade that his work was most severely attacked. Indeed, Hill's preoccupation
with twentieth-century ideological struggles and his moralising tone made his
work vulnerable to charges of being obsessively present-centred, of putting
theory above facts. And it must be said that he used evidence inaccurately and
selectively, depending almost entirely on printed sources. Ultimately Hill's
vision of the past is largely unconvincing, revealing much about his agenda
while misleading readers unfamiliar with the evidence. To quote Montaigne:
People are prone to apply the meaning of other men's writings to suit opinions
that they have previously determined in their minds."
Hill, as far as I can make out, did not reply directly to any of
these attacks. But I will. Attacking a historian for his politics is one thing,
but accusing a historian of fabricating history is another and has no place in
any historians debate. The attack on Hill and the CPHG is reminiscent of J .C.
Davis in the 1980s. Davis's great theory was that most of the radical groups
that existed during the English Revolution were figments of the imagination of
left-wing historians such as Hill. A similar line of attack was taken by
historian Alastair MacLachlan in his extraordinarily provocative book The Rise
and Fall of Revolutionary England: Essay on the Fabrication of Seventeenth-Century
History.
MacLachlan should be made to retract his accusations and issue an
apology.
To conclude, this collection of essays continues a revisionist trend
to downplay the radicals in the English Revolution. There are some worthwhile
essays, but overall the book disappoints.
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_radicalism
[2] Reborn John?:
The Eighteenth-century Afterlife of John Lilburne
Edward
Vallance- https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/74/1/1/825488
[3] https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/1157
[4] N. McDowell ,
"Writing the Literary and Cultural History of Radicalism in the English
Revolution", www.cromohs.unifi.it/seminari/mcdowell.html>
[5] M. Caricchio, "Radicalism and the English
Revolution", in M. Caricchio, G. Tarantino, eds., Cromohs Virtual
Seminars. Recent historiographical trends of the British Studies (17th-18th
Centuries), 2006-2007
