'Cromwell was about 50% saint and about 50% serpent.'
Ronald Hutton,
Cromwell's task consisted of inflicting as shattering a blow
as possible upon the absolutist monarchy, the court nobility and the
semi-Catholic Church, which had been adjusted to the needs of the monarchy and
the nobility. For such a blow, Cromwell, the true representative of the new
class, needed the forces and passions of the masses of people.'
Leon Trotsky
'In dispersing parliament after parliament, Cromwell
displayed as little reverence towards the fetish of "national"
representation as in the execution of Charles I he had displayed insufficient
respect for a monarchy by the grace of God. Nonetheless, it was this same
Cromwell who paved the way for the parliamentarism and democracy of the two
subsequent centuries. In revenge for Cromwell's execution of Charles I, Charles
II swung Cromwell's corpse upon the gallows. But pre-Cromwellian society could
not be re-established by any restoration. The works of Cromwell could not be
liquidated by the thievish legislation of the restoration because what has been
written with the sword cannot be wiped out by the pen.'
Leon Trotsky
If the historian Thomas Carlyle were alive today, he would
have sent a strongly worded email to the Bristol University Professor Ronald
Hutton asking why he had heaped a further dead dog on top of the great leader
of the English bourgeois revolution Oliver Cromwell.
In a recent BBC History magazine article called The dark
truth about Oliver Cromwell, Hutton claims that "The victor of the Civil
Wars described himself as pious, honest and selfless. But, as all too many
victims of his lies and malice would have attested, the reality was often more
sinister".[1]
The purpose of his BBC article was not to make an objective assessment
of Cromwell but has more to do with the fact that Hutton has a book on Cromwell
coming out in August.[2]
The last few decades have seen a veritable production line
of studies examining every facet of the main leader of the English bourgeois revolution.
In the past three decades alone, he has been the subject of five full-length
biographies, three studies of his career as a soldier, and a further three
major collections of essays.
Hutton is a capable historian, so why would he adopt the
attitude of a Sun Newspaper journalist when assessing Cromwell. One reason is that
he can get away with it. It is a rare event today when a historian challenges the
work of a fellow historian. History has become far too polite. Long gone are
the great debates of the past. Today's historians are far too comfortable and
passive.
Hutton's essay has all the hallmarks of a provocation which he
knows will go unanswered. A second reason and Hutton is correct to say that so
little is known about Cromwell that it is easy to make outlandish comments on
his character without too much come back.
Hutton's new book on Cromwell does not appear until August
of this year, but it is clear from his previous work on Cromwell that he is unlikely
to produce an objective biography of Cromwell based on the previous historiography.
Hutton rejects the notion that Cromwell can be best understood from this objective
standpoint.
While it is hoped that Hutton's new book does place Cromwell
within the complex events that are known as the English Revolution, given that
his BBC History Magazine does not, I will not hold my breath.
Hutton knows he cannot just trash the memory of Cromwell. In
his essay, he pays lip service to Cromwell's many attributes but adds, "all
this is quite familiar to scholars of the period, but my research also revealed
less attractive – and less often noticed – aspects of Cromwell's personality.
One is his relentless pursuit of self-promotion. He grabbed the attention of
the Long Parliament, almost as soon as it was elected, by speaking on behalf of
the famous radical Puritan John Lilburne, who had been imprisoned by the royal
government. Cromwell had never met the man, but that did not prevent him from
using his misfortune as an opportunity to further his career".[3]
The rest of Hutton's article continues trashing Cromwell's
reputation. He rehashes previous vitriolic attacks on Cromwell, saying that "Cromwell
prepared his soldiers to inflict violence and retribution before the assault by
quoting a biblical text which called for the cleansing of the land of
idolators, declaring of Catholic images that "they that make them are like
unto them" and so should be destroyed with them. His notorious massacre at
the Irish town of Drogheda, later in his career, was long presaged".
Buzzing Of The Bees
Despite it going out of fashion, I still find it important
to establish what the great English historian E. H Carr said was going on
inside a historians head. What if any bees are buzzing around Hutton's head?
The first thing that strikes you about Hutton's work is his
underestimation of the damage revisionist historians have done in their Marxist
and Whig historiography attacks. In his book Debates in Stuart History, according
to Mark Stoyle, "Hutton argues that the 'revisionist' wave of the late
1970 s was the product of specific developments within the culture of academic
life over the previous fifteen years: citing, in particular, the expansion of
higher education, which prompted a novel disposition among academics 'to
establish new work by questioning received views'; the sudden availability of
fresh sources; and 'the general distrust of established values which developed during
the 1960s."
Stoyle says that "Hutton's
argument that revisionism was not so much a specifically right-wing attack on
the left, as is sometimes claimed, but was rather a rebellion by young
historians of widely differing political views against those senior academics —
almost all from comfortable backgrounds, but of far-left inclinations — who
represented the historical establishment. The fact that the young Turks —
mostly political liberals, who 'included no Marxists or radical socialists' —
were so quickly labelled as 'revisionists' by their opponents was indicative of
how some senior left-wing academics saw the battle, for, as Hutton notes, the
term 'revisionist' had 'commonly been employed during the … 1970 s by Marxists
across the world to describe those who adulterated and betrayed true doctrine'.
What the revisionists eventually succeeded in doing was to
demolish the 'socialist modernisation of the Victorian historiographical
achievement' which had been crafted by historians such as Christopher Hill over
the previous 30 years. But, partly because of their differences in emphasis,
partly because of the sheer complexity of the picture which they had uncovered,
the revisionists failed to establish a new consensus of their own".[4]
It is no accident that Stoyles praises Hutton's latest book
as both seem to adopt a lot of the right-wing wing revisionists hostility to
Marxist historiography. While Hutton
does note somewhat perceptively that those right-wing revisionist historians who
sought to demolish Marxist historiography had nothing but hot air in which to
replace it. Hutton's complacent attitude towards these historians further legitimises
their anti-Marxism.
To conclude, I will review Hutton's new book at a later
date. Those who want a more objective assessment of Oliver |Cromwell would do
well to examine t the work of the great Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who
said of Cromwell," In this way, Cromwell built not merely an army but also
a party -- his army was to some extent an armed party and herein precisely lay
its strength. In 1644 Cromwell's "holy" squadrons won a brilliant
victory over the King's horsemen and won the nickname of "Ironsides."
It is always useful for a revolution to have iron sides. On this score British
workers can learn much from Cromwell".[5]
[1] BBC History Magazine-8 Jul
2021-Ronald Hutton.
[2] The Making of Oliver
Cromwell-Ronald Hutton.
[3] BBC History Magazine-8 Jul
2021-Ronald Hutton.
[4] Debates in Stuart History
by Ronald Hutton
[5] Leon Trotsky's Writings On
Britain-Two traditions: the seventeenth-century revolution and Chartism- https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/britain/ch06.htm
