24th May 2002

Last Saturday a large crowd of people gathered in Burford, to remember three Leveller Soldiers: Cornet Thompson, Corporal Perkins and Private Church who refused to serve in Ireland and were shot in the churchyard on the orders of Oliver Cromwell.

For the last twenty seven years the Oxford WEA has been organizing these events and inviting speakers down, parading with bands and banners through the town, followed by the laying of a wreath in the churchyard with their names inscribed on it, the whole event enlivened by Morris Dancers and men and women dressed up as Cromwellian soldiers, wearing the Green that was the colour they adopted.

This year it was raining but the people who had come were content to ignore the weather and listen to the speakers including Lindis Percy, a woman twelve times imprisoned for her courageous and imaginative campaign against Star Wars, who argued with knowledge and passion, followed by two other women and Bruce Kent.

Listening to them was most inspiring and outside were stands put up by Amnesty, OXFAM, Greenpeace and a host of other progressive organizations that keep the flame of hope alive at a time when it is so easy to get depressed and feel that there is nothing we can do to reverse the trend to disaster which so often seems to overwhelm us.

During the English Revolution some important debates about democracy took place in Putney Church and next Tuesday, on BBC Radio 4, these are being re-enacted together with a discussion about their relevance today, for the issues raised, which were hotly argued over at the time sound very contemporary to this generation, since both King Charles 1st, and Cromwell, in his
role as Lord Protector, both believed that they had a divine right to rule and would not tolerate dissent.

The older I get the more persuaded I have become that no-one in power ever wants to share it and that even progressive regimes that have got control, whether by revolution or election, soon succeed in persuading themselves that all criticism is disruptive or disloyal, caused by extremists or wreckers who must - in the public interest - be restrained or removed.

Kings, Queens and Dictators have always taken that view and so did the Bishops in the days when the churches had real power being quite happy to burn heretics who undermined their authority, and unhappily, Stalin's Russia did the same in the name of defending the working class from their class enemies, suppressing dissent which denied them the base in public support for Socialism that it needed to survive.

The archives of the Labour Movement, which chronicle the work and faith of a succession of progressive people in this country who fought for human rights, trade unionism, democracy and peace are to be found in the Public Record Office in Kew and occasionally they put them on display so that we can appreciate how much effort and sacrifice went into the task of winning us such rights as we now have.

But if you ask where and how such a supreme collection came to be assembled they will tell you that they all came from the Home Office - i.e. the Police Records meticulously collected so that 'subversive activities' could be carefully monitored, and they include leaflets, posters, pamphlets and notes of speeches made to the crowd by 'agitators'.

On a recent visit there, speaking at the annual meeting of the PCS, I was shown the Court Judgment of the Kings Bench Division in the case of Joseph Wilkinson, a textile worker, who, in 1724, was imprisoned for taking part in a strike which was then an offence because it was in restraint of trade and the evidence which was the basis of his conviction was that he was a member of a friendly society which was the forerunner of the modern trade union.

Today that process of surveillance goes on but even more intensely using the most modern technology that allows the security services to use CCTV, bug anyone they wish to bug and intercept emails letters and all communication for the purpose of controlling us in the interests of those in power, justifying it all in the interests of 'national security'.

All this makes it so necessary for us to study our history so that we come to understand the reasons why, over the centuries, rich and powerful people want to control us and keep us in our place so that we cannot challenge their privileges by demanding representation and democracy and the knowledge that we are not the first generation to have experienced this pressure from above should give us the confidence to carry on.

The Levellers declared that 'the Earth is a Common Treasury and it is a crime to buy and sell the Earth for private gain' which was the forerunner of the modern environmental movement and they were punished for for saying that, just as Joseph Wilkinson was sent to gaol for going on strike and Lindis Percy, also imprisoned for campaigning against Star Wars.

But just as the authorities have more sophisticated ways of watching us we have the experience of centuries of work behind us and the internet allows us to internationalize the struggles so that we do not feel isolated any more.

History is a real and powerful resource, available for us today and we must make the effort to learn it and use it to get our case across to a people who are waiting to hear from us how they can best make use of their own own experience to meet their own needs and realize their dreams by working with others to safeguard their democratic rights that global capital would like to take away.

24/5/02