On Cromwell and the Levellers

(Letters)

6 April 2015

To Workers Vanguard,

I read with great interest the admirable series on “The Rise of British Imperialism” [WVs Nos. 1062 and 1063, 20 February and 6 March 2015], 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.