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Not Dark Yet #345: Lessons from the Levellers

24/5/2022

5 Comments

 
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On the 17th of May 1649, three leading Levellers - Private John Church, Corporal Perkins, and Cornet James Thompson - were executed by firing squad in the churchyard at Burford. This event, which achieved its objective of diminishing and almost eliminating Leveller influence within the New Model Army, is commemorated each year in the town

This year, for the first time since the pandemic, it reverted to a live demonstration in defence of democracy and the right to protest. Speakers included the Reverend Canon Professor Mark Chapman, Ann Hughes - whose study of the Civil War in my county of Warwickshire is seminal, John Rees author of the definitive The Leveller Revolution, Richard Burgon MP and, loudest of all, Attila the Stockbroker.

The attendance - a few hundred - did not match some previous, pre-pandemic, years but it was representative of almost every strand of socialist thought - from communists and clerics to academics and activists, from Greens to Labour, from trades unionists and the International Brigades Trust to a plethora of maverick radicals like me.

This demographic and political diversity is appropriate. The Levellers were equally diverse. Those who wore the sea-green colours came from many social classes and espoused many political aspirations. The Diggers originally called themselves The True Levellers. And Henry Denne, in 1649, wrote that “We were an heterogeneal body, consisting of parts very diverse from one another, settled upon principles inconsistent with one another.”

But they united in the common cause.

Today, few of us can argue with any of the demands outlined in the Agreement of the People. And nor did those who organised around it in The Saracen’s Head.

They may have had different emphases, disagreements over detail, more ambitious objectives for the long-term. But in their debates, no-one accused another of factionalism. Such accusations were the tactics of those who would be prominent in the counter-revolution, the Grandees, and the most prominent of their actions is surely the Cromwell’s order and the executions at Burford.

Which is why Levellers’ Day is important. At Burford, on the Saturday nearest to the 17th of May, the broad left can put aside differences and show solidarity not merely with the three martyrs but the commitment of hundreds of thousands of people of all persuasions to the greater good.

We can learn from them.

And if I have one key take-away from the day, it is this from Richard Burgon MP:

“The Tories know what they are doing” he said. “We must be as class conscious as they are.”

Today from the everysmith vaults: I used to love Jacques Loussier’s transcriptions of Bach but seldom play them any more. But I have recently discovered that he has given Erik Satie the same treatment. Playing now are the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. Exquisite.
5 Comments
Allan
26/5/2022 11:58:08

Excellent, Max. You don't state the parallels to be drawn as you did last time, but the lessons are clear. We could also look to the state of parliament today and draw even more lessons. Good line from Burgon!

Reply
chris
26/5/2022 12:19:05

good post. and appropriately on JC’s birthday!

Reply
Doctor Dark
30/5/2022 11:36:51

The Satie disc is indeed wonderful, but even better is the companion Debussy CD, recorded around the same time. Sadly, the third effort in the series, Ravel, is a complete bust...

Reply
Martin Skinner
2/6/2022 11:02:29

Maybe it’s because Ravel had already listened to and been influenced by Jazz in the US, and there was little that JL could add?

Reply
max smith
9/6/2022 09:32:34

Thanks Chris and Martin - good to hear from you both. As a result, Debussy is on order. Ravel not so much.




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     Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father. and grandfather. Resident in Warwick, England.

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