On Cromwell and the English Revolution

A Correction and a Letter

Last year, Spartacist Canada published “The Rise of British Imperialism” in Nos. 182 and 183 (Fall 2014 and Winter 2014/2015). The article was later reprinted in Workers Vanguard Nos. 1062 and 1063 (20 February and 6 March). The correction and letter which follow first appeared in WV No. 1064 (20 March) and WV No. 1068 (15 May).

In its discussion of the 1642-51 English Civil War, Part One of the article “The Rise of British Imperialism” (WV No. 1062, 20 February 2015) blundered by referring to Oliver Cromwell as “the great Calvinist leader.” A thoroughly religious man, Cromwell’s sympathies lay with the Independents (today known as Congregationalists), which arose during the Puritan reformation of the Church of England. Although heavily influenced by the theology of John Calvin, the Independents were not the dominant Calvinist denomination, a position held by the Presbyterian church on the British Isles.

Most members of Parliament were Presbyterians when that body commissioned the New Model Army in 1645 to combat Royalist forces. Three years later, after Parliament moved to disband its army, whose ranks had been filled by Puritans under the leadership of Cromwell, the Presbyterians seeking to conciliate the monarchy were expelled from Parliament by force of arms in what became known as Pride’s Purge. The Scottish Presbyterians, who switched sides in the course of the war, also drew the wrath of Cromwell’s Puritan army. In 1650, Cromwell famously wrote in a letter to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken.”

Cromwell did not direct fire only at the Presbyterian compromisers. After the defeat of the Royalists in England, he crushed the radical egalitarian sects popular within the most plebeian layers of his army, such as the Levellers, who mutinied in 1649 over the planned invasion of Ireland. More than matters of religious doctrine were at play in the events of the English Revolution. As Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V. I. Lenin of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, observed:

“The adherents of the Episcopalian, or Anglican (half-Catholic) Church, were the party of the court, the nobility, and of course the higher clergy. The Presbyterians were the party of the bourgeoisie, the party of wealth and education. The Independents and the Puritans in general were the party of the petty bourgeoisie, and the petty independent landowners. The Levellers were the incipient party of the left wing of the petty bourgeoisie, the plebs. Under the integument of ecclesiastical disputes, under the form of a struggle for the religious structure of the Church, there proceeded a social self-determination of classes, a regrouping of classes on new, bourgeois foundations. In politics, the Presbyterian party stood for a limited monarchy, the Independents, also sometimes called ‘root and branch men,’ or—in the language of our day—‘radicals,’ were for a republic. The lukewarm nature of the Presbyterians was fully in accord with the contradictory interests of the bourgeoisie, vacillating between the nobility and the plebs. The party of the Independents, which had dared to carry its ideas and slogans to their logical conclusion, naturally supplanted the Presbyterians in the towns and villages which were the centers of the awakened petty-bourgeois masses, who had become the most important force of the revolution.”

— “Where Is Britain Going?” (1925)

6 April 2015

To Workers Vanguard,

I read with great interest the admirable series on “The Rise of British Imperialism”, and the important correction published in WV #1064. I would like to add a further clarification about the Levellers.

The correction refers to the Levellers as one of the radical egalitarian sects. I suggest this understates their importance. Far from being a small religious sect, like the Ranters or Quakers, the Levellers were an organized secular party with, uniquely, mass support in the late 1640s, particularly in London and the New Model Army. As the quote from Trotsky indicates, “The Levellers were the incipient party of the left wing of the petty bourgeoisie...who had become the most important force of the revolution.”

The Levellers’ bourgeois democratic program addressed such issues as voting rights, electoral reform, regular Parliaments, religious tolerance, military impressment, equality before the law, abolition of debtors prison, tithes, the abolition of monarchy, sovereignty of the people, and more. They had groups in many parts of the country, and, for a time, a weekly newspaper. Women were encouraged to be, and were, active members. Leveller propaganda endorsed the elected representatives of the soldiers (called Agitators or Agents) against disbandment by the Presbyterian-dominated Parliament in the spring of 1647 and sparked petitions from civilians and regiments for justice against Charles I in the autumn of 1648, leading up to his execution. As the correction noted, Levellers inspired soldiers to struggle against the re-conquest of Ireland. The Levellers’ principled moral stance was that the Irish had as much right to be free in their own country as the English did in theirs. At a time when Irish “papists” had long been derided as little more than savages the Levellers’ advocacy of such an advanced view was very much to their credit.

At the same time the party was not nearly as egalitarian as the communist Diggers, who called themselves the True Levellers. But it was the Levellers who changed the argument within the Independent movement from one about religion to one based on politics. That they evoked the considerable response which they did represented the maturing consciousness of the revolutionary forces of the time, and in the process pushed Cromwell further than he wanted to go.

Comradely,
Mike S.