Society and Morals. Part VI. Feudalism in Europe. (1918)

From the January 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part V.

After having treated in a general way of the social process which consisted of the breaking down of communistic and patriarchal organisation, and resulting in the subjection and exploitation of the one-time free and equal tribesmen, it behoves us now to investigate more closely that concrete example of this process which was passed through by all European peoples with a resultant organisation which persisted up to a more or less recent period, for it was out of the elements of this “feudalism” that modern or “capitalist” society evolved.

These “feudal States” were for the most part formed among the peoples who over-ran, and finally assisted in the break-up of, the great empire of Rome ; but even in countries where the grip of Rome had not been felt the form of society evolved by the “relatives” of these peoples was inevitably the same.

The drying up of the great plains of Central Asia impelled the barbarian nomads, to whom, hitherto, they had afforded sustenance, to migrate towards the more moist and favourable lands of the West, and they swept in recurring waves over the face of Europe for many centuries. Their military institutions were given a decided impetus, first, by the conflicts necessitated by their own invasions of already inhabited regions, and secondly, by the inroads upon them of fresh barbarians, after they had settled in Europe.

Gradually military States were formed all over Europe. Once independent tribes were consolidated by conquest into larger and larger aggregations, the first rude outlines of the modern nations were formed, whilst simultane­ously the Christian faith became “accepted” by the subdued peoples throughout Europe largely through wholesale conversions made practically compulsory by zealous plunderers like Charlemagne.

Thus, for example, the several small kingdoms in Saxon England were, after hard fighting, at last united in a somewhat precarious unity under Egbert. To quote Green in his “Short History of the English People,” the union “had removed the king, as his dominions extended, further and further from his people, and clothed him with a mysterious dignity,” he was “the ‘Lord’s anointed,’ treason against him being “punished with death.” His leading warriors or thegns “advanced with the advance of the king . . . whilst the common ground of the mark (the Teutonic village) now became folk-land in the hands of the king and was carved out into estates for his dependents. With the advance of the thegn fell the freedom of the peasant. The principle of personal allegiance embodied in the new nobility widened into a theory of general dependence. By Alfred’s day it was assumed that no man could exist without a lord. . . . Gradually the ‘lordless man’ became a sort of outlaw in the realm.” The Norman conquest only intensified this development.

All over Europe a similar process was going on. The one-time free villages were modified so that the inhabitants stood in various degrees of subjection to a lord who himself was subject to a king. Most of the people of the village, or manor as it came to be called in England, were serfs who were compelled to render service to the lord of the manor by cultivating for him the land he was allotted by the king, and also by yielding to him a portion of the products they raised upon their own allotments. In addition, every excuse was made by the baron for the extraction from the serfs of further tolls upon their produce ; normally the serf was prohibited from leaving the village of his birth, but he could obtain permission to live away by paying an annual fine or tax ; again, before his daughter was allowed to marry he had to obtain the lord’s sanction and pay to him a fine.

Among the serfs themselves existed many traces of the old communal spirit and institutions. Their land, for instance, was still divided very much according to the old principies, the portions being approximately equal both in area and quality. Furthermore, the serfs still retained their right to the common pasture lands, and to the forests for fuel. The times of and methods adopted in the labours of the field were largely regulated by the ancient customs, and even the village council or folk-moot maintained a certain amount of influence. “There were no strangers in the manor. It was an offence punishable with fine to harbour one,” says Thorold Rogers, thus showing the persistence of the old exclusive spirit.

But the whole history of feudalism shows the growing hatred of the nobility for the commu­nal rights of the peasants, and records successive attempts on their part to abolish them, and to seize upon the common lands. The Jacqueries in France (14th century), the Peasants’ War in Germany (16th century) were risings of the peasants against these encroachments of the baronage.

The Feudal Church.

As feudalism passed through its early formative period, the political utility of Christianity manifested itself with increasing clearness. “Throughout all Christendom,” says Jenks in his “History of Politics,” “bishops and priests were the most intimate counsellors and most enthusiastic supporters of the Crown, and the rich gifts of the kings were amply repaid by the halo of sanctity which the grateful Church thus threw around the person and office of the king.” (P. 84.) Every social relation of feudalism became sanctified by religion. The serf in his hut, the lord in his castle, were ordained for such stations by God—a view of class distinctions which is by no means extinct to-day. Thus the proper conduct for a serf, taught the priests, was that of humility before his superiors and contentment with his lot. He was enjoined to dutifully render to those placed over him, the services and respect they were entitled to. And, although the nobility were requested to respect the feudal rights of the peasantry, considerable latitude was allowed in their case. It was, however, the profound and religious duty of the nobility to uphold the Church of God and to preserve the integrity and prestige of their own class.

The Catholic Church became itself a great feudal power—the Pope corresponded to a monarch, his bishops and abbots to earls and barons. The Church itself owned one third of the land of Christendom and possessed serfs whom it exploited just as did its secular counterpart ; and its local dignitaries claimed a portion or “tithe” of the agricultural produce of the manors. As its wealth grew its greed demanded more and ever more, its devices to this end being numerous and ingenious. The clergy traded on the credulity and gross superstition of the “true-believers” by the sale of spurious “sacred relics”—the bones of saints, chips off the “original cross,” even the sale of “bottles of the virgin’s milk from the holy land” can be read of. The sale of “indulgences,” which were practically permits to commit crime, was practiced widely, and the clergy solemnly promised eternal bliss in paradise to those who left their wealth to the Church, later threatening hell-fire to those who did not, and making such legacies practically compulsory.

With the growing riches of the Church the clergy, especially the higher officials, had in it a vital interest to defend. Organised internationally, and with its millions of superstitious and mentally servile adherents, the Church wielded an enormous social power. Its leaders, recognising that its strength lay in the ignorant beliefs of the masses, set the entire power of the organisation against any swerving from its accepted articles of faith. Whilst it damned all actions contrary to the social virtues of feudalism, it declared heresy the greatest sin of all. Whosoever was suspected of the slightest trace of unorthodoxy in religious opinion was the legitimate prey of this “vulture of the ages.” Every cunning means, every agent, the spy, the informer, were used for its bloody ends. Imprisonment, fiendish torture, and the slow fire at the stake, were its means of enforcing Christian belief and “charity.” Jews and Moors, because of their wholesale heresies and, of course incidentally (!) their not inconsiderable “wealth (which was always confiscated) were among the most acceptable victims.

Every avenue of culture of the age was open to the clergy, and, in the early mediaeval period, to them alone. Therefore, however crude their intellectual achievements judged by modern standards, there existed a real chasm between the mental condition of the more important ecclesiastics and that of the great masses whose minds they dominated. But this very domination, and consequently their prosperity, rested, as we have seen, upon the maintenance of the ignorant superstitions of the multitude, and the upholding of crude and barbarously irrational dogmas. Intellectual hypocrisy was, as a consequence,a widespread feature among the clergy, and along with this sapping of their theoretical basis naturally went a disregard in practice, of the ethical “virtues” they professed and so “(hypocritically preached. In theory lovers of poverty and self-denial, the higher ecclesiastics revelled in luxury and pompous display. Nominally celibates, renouncers of the lusts of the flesh, many of them were rotten with voluptuous debauchery. Towards the end of the Middle Ages “it was openly asserted that there were one hundred thousand women in England made dissolute by the clergy. It was well known that brothels were kept in London for their use.” (Professor Draper, “Intellectual Development of Europe,” vol. 2, p. 234.) The history of the popes is a long record of trickery, robbery, and murder.

The Barons, their Estates and Morality.

We have seen that the feudal barons, while from the king’s point of view merely local agents distributed throughout his kingdom and responsible to him for their position and power, were in the beginning enabled to occupy these positions with the minimum of friction owing to the fact that they were regarded by the people over whom they held sway as the successors of the patriarchal chieftains they had supplanted and whose attributes they skilfully succeeded in taking over. But patriarchalism, with its reverence for blood connections and ancestral lineage, had succeeded in making every occupation every station—even the chiefship—a hereditary one. This idea was appropriated by the early kings and lords, who thus easily made their posts hereditary, and usually in the male line, as patriarchal custom and military exigences also, demanded. It was, of course, this fact which made kingship and lordship social institutions instead of merely the temporary result of conquest.

Furthermore, though the lord from the first acquired rights over the inhabitants of his district, i.e., power over men, yet the right he was most concerned about—the tribute—was so obviously extracted from the soil (agriculture being almost the only method of production) that, after a few generations, the lords came, quite naturally, to look upon the land of their district as the security for their exactions and as the real subject of their rights. The land persisted unchanged for generations, the inhabitants were a fluctuating and unreliable quantity.

Thus it came about that under feudalism “lordship of the land” was the recognised basis of social power. When an estate was transferred from one lord to another, everything living and erected thereon went with it. ; and when a lord lost his estate he lost his title and his privileges. The land did not belong to the lord, he merely had definite rights over it during his lifetime. He could not sell his estate, for upon his death these rights passed to his heir. Lordship of the land was the inalienable attribute of his family line, the foundation of its prestige and power.

To these several circumstances was due two of the best known features of feudal society—knightly “chivalry” and the “law of primogeniture”—and also to a certain extent a third—the condemnation of usury.

The first, when divested of the romantic trappings with which it has been endowed, is seen to have been an attitude adopted by the nobility with the fundamental object of ensuring the chastity of the women of the aristocracy, so that they should give birth only to legitimate heirs. These, by inheriting the feudal estates and privileges, carried on and preserved the continuity of the baronage, of the ruling class, of the feudal system. With this end in view the marriage union was made strictly monogamous and practically indissolable. It became with the males of the nobility a point of honour not to violate but to protect the chastity of the women who were the means of perpetuating the power of their class.

As for the women, it was their supreme function and virtuous duty to bear a legitimate son and heir to their lord. Moreover, that the estates should not be periodically dissipated and split up by being divided among a numerous progeny, thus weakening the family power, it was provided that only one, the eldest male child, should inherit. Pride of family, and in the blood “purity” of its line of descent, were thus typical features in the mentality of the feudal baronage, together with the physical courage, might, and prowess necessary to a military class forming the ideal of character among the nobility of the period.

But the lord, ever courteous and respectful toward the “ladies” of his own class, had no such feelings, as a rule, toward the women of the workers, whom he frequently made the miserable and powerless victims of his sensual lust. In many instances he was allowed the right to lie for the “first night” with any girl bride of the peasantry upon his estate.

Besides “land rights” the feudal nobles recognised only two other legitimate sources of social power—”divine” ordinance and the sword. But with the development of industry there arose another source of social power, which the lords did not and could not possess in any quantity so long as feudal relations persisted in their purity. This new power was money. Money is, of course, primarily a convenience for the rapid and fluid exchange of commodities. Those who possess it in quantity have access to every form of wealth, and it is therefore eagerly sought. But its possessors lend it only at interest and with sufficient security.

History records abundantly that usury and the mortgage are virulent agents in the destruction of personal relations and in the ruin of debtor land-owners large and small—of everything, in fact, which feudalism on its economic side stood for. Therefore the barons hated and envied the monied merchants and craftsmen of the rising towns and declared money-lending an abomination—though, of course, they were keen enough over obtaining money by seizure or otherwise whenever opportunity offered. The Church, as the faithful reflection of secular feudalism, took up the same position, and branded usury as an invention of the devils, nevertheless, with characteristic hypocrisy practising usury itself, either in secret or disguised, as it, with the lapse of time, accumulated in its own coffers money in abundance.

The City and The Guild.

The towns of mediaeval Europe were, for the most part, a development from such villages as offered special facilities for trade and outside intercouse, such as a site at the junction of highways or navigable rivers, or, perhaps, adjacent to a good harbour. To such a favourable spot there tended to gravitate the artisans who were not, or who had ceased to be, attached to a particular village as its official craftsmen, and who now produced goods for sale in the market about which the new town was rising. The market was, from the first, a neutral place where buyers and sellers could freely meet and which later came under the special protection of the king or the Church.

But as feudalism developed, the lords began to eye with rapacious greed the growing wealth of the townsmen under their lordship, and, fearful of the lords’ continual encroachments, the inhabitants made their towns fortified centres of resistance against the baronial power. The fortified towns now became a refuge for fugitive serfs, for they offered them protection from their erstwhile lords ; and usually after residence in the town for a certain period they were regarded as freemen. Thus the town population grew. Then the desire of the barons or of the king for ready money enabled them to purchase various trade-rights and privileges, and eventually to shake off all feudal dues and obtain a charter of independence from the lord or the king direct.

The “free city” was governed by a municipal council, the descendant of the “folk-moot” of the village. It consisted of the descendants of the original holders of the village lands, who, as the immigrant population had increased, had become a sort of exclusive aristocracy, and either became merchants themselves or manipulated the trade facilities of the town in their own interests. To them, therefore, fell most of the material benefits derived from the city’s acquired privileges. Obviously this monopoly of political power by the merchant or semi-merchant oligarchy ran counter to the interests of the actual producers—the artisans and craftsmen. To protect their own interests the artificers had to organise.

Already the followers of each craft possessed as a rule associations for social and religious intercourse, which probably dated from the patriarchal period. But we find these, with the growing antagonism toward the city aristocracy, gradually becoming adapted for, and taking part in, political activities on the one hand, and, on the other, taking on the character of economic organisations for the regulation of industry. After struggles more or less prolonged, these craft “guilds,” as they were called, became strong enough to seize control of the city councils, while on the economic side each craft in time obtained control over the supply and purchase of raw material and the sale of its products, both of which had been largely interfered with and manipulated by the city oligarchs.

To accomplish this economic victory the craftsman had to sink his purely individual interests for the interests of his craft as a whole and its guild organisation, but this offered no difficulties to men in whom patriarchal and communal ideas were even yet far from extinct. The artisan produced, as it were, for his guild. The association frequently purchased the raw materials in the bulk, distributing them equally amongst its members ; and it undertook the sale of the collective products. In individual sales by the craftsmen it regulated the prices at which goods were to be sold, prohibited competition among its members, forestalling in the market, and other means of obtaining exceptional prices. The guild also held itself responsible for the quality of the goods produced by its members, any case of inferiority being considered as reflecting disgrace upon the entire craft. Therefore the shop of the artificer had always to be open to inspection by the guild officials. In production each craft had its own strictly limited domain such as boot making or wood-carving, outside of which its members were not permitted to go, for to do so would be trespassing within the sphere of another craft. When a craftsman had so thrived as to require assistant workers in his extending business, the guild determined the number he might employ. Being the son of a full guildsman was the best title to the right of entry into the guild (a patriarchal characteristic), but usually a long term of apprenticeship had to precede such an entry, for each guildsman had to be “master of his craft.” The guild held itself responsible for the debts of any of its members, and, finally, it possessed its own courts of justice and, what was of considerable political significance, had its own armed militia.

These organisations of the mediaeval workers, to protect their common interests were, in their vigorous prime (and we cannot go here into their decadency, during which they developed aristocratic tendencies, excluding the poorer artisans, who could no longer become master craftsmen and were therefore employed permanently by the guild masters as wage-workers), impressed their principles strongly upon the moral views of their membership. Any infringement of the guild regulations was considered highly criminal and traitorous, rendering the offender liable to expulsion and therefore preventing him from working at his craft, making him, in fact, an industrial outlaw.

* * *

Summing up the morality of feudal society we again see that the class interests of the ruling lords—lay and clerical—and also of the semi-independent craftsmen of the townships, determined their conception of “right and wrong,” just and unjust, exactly as we saw to be the case with the Greek and Roman slaveholders. But, under a system of chattel-slavery, sheer physical force was almost the sole means of holding the slaves in subjection. It was not necessary for a community of interests between master and slave to be hypocritically assumed and inculcated. What the slaves thought was of little or no consequence to their owners : morality was considered no concern of slaves ; it was held to be an attribute of and an obligation upon “free-men” alone.

On the contrary with serfdom, the greater cohesion manifested by the workers made it very necessary to use mental as well as physical means to secure their complete subjection. A pseudo moral code was required for the workers in order to guide their activities along lines consistent with the welfare of their exploiters. But a serf who was compelled to part with both labour and produce to a non-productive lord could never be taught to believe that he was not exploited, that he was a free man, as it has been possible to teach the wage-worker of today. This awkward problem was ingeniously solved by the Catholic clergy, the intellectual and moral guardians of feudalism. They zealously inculcated into the peasantry the idea that the categories king, lord, and serf were of divine ordinance and unalterable, and further, that the present life, with its poverty and riches, is only a preparation for the coming “kingdom of God,” where those who had been meek and humble while toiling and suffering “here below,” would dwell in happiness “amongst the blest.” Such beliefs could, of course, only have been of real social significance and force in an age of “simplicity” such as the medieval period undoubtedly was. Culturally it was, in fact, nothing but a developed barbarism modified by the achievements of Greek and Roman civilisation.

The above outline reveals, then, a function of morality which we have not hitherto touched upon—that of deluding a subject class, of serving as a bulwark of exploitation and oppression. The full development of this, however, yet remains to be considered.

R.W. Housley

(To be Continued.)

The White Rose and the Red (2026)

From the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The sun is shining, again, although there is a breeze with rather a honed edge to it. I’m sitting under a tree in a West Yorkshire park next to my duo partner with his tenor banjo fully loaded. Around us are food and ice cream stalls, sideshows and charity tombola. Carried on that sharp breeze faint sounds of a fairground organ, however not so loud as to clash with us when we begin to play. People are beginning to stream in, children looking slightly bemused at two old guys sporting instruments.

It’s the first of August, Yorkshire Day. It may seem to be an event dating back to time immemorial. Actually, it’s just over 50 years old, founded in 1975, not by some ancient aristocratic family, but by the Yorkshire Ridings Society as a protest against local government reforms of 1974.

Still, a summer’s day out is welcome, especially when it’s free in these straitened times (are there ever any other such times?). At the invitation of the local civic society, who organise the event, this is our fourth year of being the in-house (in-park) musicians. This is why I’m sitting under a tree tuning my guitar with our extensive set list on the grass between us. I have a silken white rose tucked into the hatband of my panama, another pinned to my waistcoat. This may appear to be an incongruous situation for a socialist.

Even more so considering that by birth I’m a Lancastrian. Or perhaps not. This is an annual community event that happens due to the freely given time of those in the local Civic Society. A demonstration that people will work without financial inducement, even in a society driven by the profit motive.

We are able to contribute our music, without recompense, due to many hours of work in practice. We don’t need to do any of this as neither of us are, or have been, professional musicians. What makes those hours worthwhile is the appreciation we receive from those who enjoy what we play.

This is to attribute a meaning to value that transcends its economic definition related to the production and sale of commodities.

As to what we play; it’s an eclectic mix of what is usually referred to, somewhat vaguely, as traditional music. I often introduce a performance by announcing we are going to play popular dance tunes of the ‘70s and ‘80s, the 1870s and ‘80s. Actually, the time span is very much broader than that, with some tunes certainly dating back to before the 17th century to other very venerable-sounding ones written in the 2020s. They are drawn from all over the UK and Ireland, some via America and Europe. Experience has shown they are popular with virtually all ages from pensioners to those bouncing along to the rhythms in their pushchairs. Somewhat unexpectedly we get a very positive response from teenagers who might be expected to be somewhat dismissive of such ancient stuff.

This is a demonstration that there is far more that unites people than divides them. Ask, ‘do you like folk music’ and the answer is very often, no! When heard though as performed music, without a defining label, it is enjoyed. Which leads me to wonder if a political analogy might be drawn. Mention ‘socialism’ and all sorts of unfortunate associations, mostly inaccurate or downright wrong, are made. However, the prospect of a worldwide cooperative society that meets people’s needs and isn’t driven by profit becomes more widely acceptable and appealing.

This is not to argue for not using the word ‘socialism’, just as we don’t shy away from ‘traditional’ or ‘folk’ when referring to what we play. However, it is worth being aware that words can have negative associations, even if undeservedly so.

Which brings me to another question. Should a socialist be celebrating what might be seen as a mildly semi-xenophobic ‘Yorkshire Day’? As mentioned, by sheer chance and not of my choosing, I’m a Lancastrian by birth. In terms of where I’ve lived though, the Lancastrian bit was just the first eighteen years. I then migrated to the North East where I then lived for over 40 years, to which my son’s Geordie-ish accent bears witness.

For fourteen years and counting I’ve been domiciled in South Yorkshire. The Lancashire element only involves three generations. My great granddad on my father’s side moved into the county from what is now North Yorkshire. As ever, economic circumstance was the driver, the need to go where the work was. The same motivation brought my mother’s family from Devon via Wales to Lancashire. The other half of our musical duo was born and bred in what before 1974 was the West Riding and then became South Yorkshire. He has lived here almost continuously, so a true Yorkshireman then. Except both his paternal and maternal antecedents were drawn here, again by economic necessity, from elsewhere. It might not have been in small boats, but economic migration makes a mockery of claims to national, regional or local exclusivity.

So, celebrating the artificial confection that is ‘Yorkshire Day’ does not cause this socialist any difficulties. Rather it seems to me to have been a casual opportunity that I missed, its possibilities only occurring to me after the event. The persistent difficulty for socialists is meaningfully engaging with people to open a discussion about socialism and its possibilities. Public meetings have their place, but they tend to attract mainly those who are, or close to becoming, fellow travellers already.

Those discussions are very important as being the likely source of active supporters or members. However, that leaves the much broader public of whom many, perhaps most, are disengaged from politics apart from the lottery of the ballot box. Perhaps something as simple as a T-shirt with a slogan might have sparked a conversation between tunes. Then, should the oft-asked question have arisen, ‘Will people work unpaid?’ I had the living example of how that happens even under the present strictures of capitalism.

I am not suggesting this is a sure-fire way of bringing people to socialism, but as a – if somewhat fleeting – initial engagement it at least would be part of widening awareness. How many other such casual opportunities are there?

Even someone being insistently ‘proudly Yorkshire’ on the day might respond to being challenged by the reminder that the Wars of the Roses were actually quarrels between ruling-class cousins, not counties. There is more that unites Yorkshire and Lancashire than a difference in the colour of roses:

An old slogan proclaimed, ‘The personal is political’. The reverse, ‘the political is personal’, perhaps is suggestive of looking for ways to talk to people personally, people who perhaps rarely if ever happen upon propaganda, and casually disregard it if they do. How many have recently voted Reform UK because they are disgruntled, but don’t really know why? Undoubtedly some who heard us playing at the Yorkshire Day event in the park. They can be dismissed as small-minded racists, which is the standard left-wing, even liberal, response.

As socialists it is our responsibility to engage with those who are disgruntled and try to persuade them that while their ire is understandable, even justified, their present response does not, and cannot, serve their best interests. Music may not change anyone’s mind, but it might be a starting point in the huge task of bringing people to an understanding of the causes of their predicament and what needs to be done by them, and so many others, to finally resolve it.

D. A.

The Levellers 1640-1649 (1962)

From the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

(continued from December issue)

Now Firmly in the saddle, Cromwell set out to crush the Levellers. Laws were passed to suppress democratic expression. The inoffensive Diggers were ill-treated, heavily fined, and gradually driven away. In the main Parliament’s programme ignored the worsening condition of the poor, abolishing only laws adverse to the rich. Rents, enclosures, and many other oppressions weighed as heavily as ever on those who laboured. One soldier wrote, “. . . it were as good to suffer under the king as under the keepers of the liberties of England; both maintaining the same thing . . . the corrupt administration of law; treble damage for tithes; persecution for matters of conscience.” Richard Rumbold put it more pithily when he said, ” he did not believe that God had made the greater part of mankind with saddles on their backs and bridles in their mouths and some few booted and spurred to ride the rest.”

In April, 1649, Lilburne, Overton and Walwyn in the Tower overheard Cromwell say “. . . if you do not break them, they will break you.” More soldiers were court-martialled and one faced the firing squad; a report of the times said thousands followed the body to Westminster. At a review in Hyde Park Cromwell resolved to reason with the men and lull them into acquiescence, promising the Agreement would be accepted, a new Parliament formed and arrears of money paid up. All this he agreed to—until the active elements were finally out of the way across the Irish Sea.

A little later, another rising fifteen hundred strong occurred in Burford. The Protector ordered his best troops out, arrived in the Cotswolds at midnight, attacked and captured all but two hundred of the sleeping men. These rode away and took Northampton, but were pursued and surrounded; three were shot outside Burford church. Those shots were the death knell of the Leveller movement. Without Parliament’s demand for the overthrow of feudal rule they could not have functioned. They were of their time and yet before their time; they were far in advance in their shrewd enquiry into the structure of society.

Earlier revolts had looked for equality; John Ball had asked in 1381 “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”; in 1450 Jack Cade’s men sang “The rich make merry but in tears the commons drown”; and Robert Kett of Norfolk had written in 1549, “we will rather take arms, and mix heaven and earth together than endure so great cruelty.” All these risings had lacked understanding; now men were analysing and looking deeper. They had learned that justice lay not in a king’s smile or a Protector’s promises; it could not be begged but must be won by the people themselves demanding a voice in political affairs. Unfortunately, the voice in affairs was reserved in the seventeenth century for the new merchant class.

While the Levellers were remarkably advanced in their views, their ideas did not drop from the sky ready made. For a hundred years the English people had been oppressed by low wages and harsh laws. Unable to pay the fearful taxes, peasants were evicted and turned into beggars, who when caught were hung in batches of twenty! Europe was stirring; new continents and islands had been mapped; tribes found who did not possess money or “own” land, yet were happy and virile, living in complete equality. Some of these strange beings lived on England’s own doorstep. According to James Connolly up till 1649 the basis of society in Ireland was tribal ownership of land. The Irish chieftain was no hereditary king but a leader chosen by the clan.

The accounts related by explorers gradually led to new thinking about social relations. Thomas More’s Utopia for example draws a picture of England in the early sixteenth century as she was and as she might have been. It was not quite so imaginary as some historians choose to see it.

Behind the Levellers lay a hundred years of discovery revealing other men living successfully in other social patterns; a hundred years of influence flowing from such works as Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1629); and a hundred years of rapine and savagery practised on helpless peasants—to show that a new society based on knowledge and equality was possible, and not merely a dream.

M. Brown

Kings & Queens (2025)

Book Review from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unruly: A History of England’s Kings and Queens. By David Mitchell, Penguin, 2024

1066 And All That, published in book form in 1930, was a parody on how English history was taught in schools. One of the targets was a history of England as a record of kings and queens, their years of reign and their battles and wars. After the Second World War there was a concerted criticism of this approach from historians — EP Thompson in particular — who argued for a ‘history from below’. One consequence of this criticism was the creation of the GCSE history syllabus in the 1980s. This changed the emphasis from memorising the dates of kings and queens to ‘key skills’ such as empathy. Empathy was an attempt to encourage schoolchildren to imaginatively experience what it was like to live as others lived, such as being a child worker in the cotton factories of mid-nineteenth century Britain. It was controversial, didn’t last long, and the emphasis has shifted back in the other direction.

David Mitchell is a comedian, writer and actor. He has no use for empathy in the study of history. He claims that ‘it’s impossible for a child … to get their head round how different the lives of the people they’re trying to empathise with actually were’. No evidence is offered for ‘impossible’, not even an amusing anecdote of the sort which peppers this book. ‘I’m better with dates, to be honest’, he admits. Mitchell went to a private school, so he might not have done GCSE history. In a book with plenty of autobiographical detail, it’s curious that he doesn’t mention it. So what you do get are a lot of monarchs with a lot of dates and absolutely no history from below. ‘It’s like a soap opera,’ writes Mitchell, ‘It never fucking ends’. He doesn’t refer to Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, but Bennett has a student complaining that history is ‘one fucking thing after another’. This is what can happen when the subject matter lacks context.

If you are after the historical facts, there’s nothing here you can’t get from Wikipedia or Google. Apart from the jokes and one-liners such as his summary of Henry VIII — ‘He was a cunt’, there are some interesting factoids. For instance, according to the Domesday Book of 1086, ten percent of the population of England were slaves. By around 1200, after the Norman invasion, there weren’t any.

Lew Higgins

Pathfinders: There will be riots (2024)

The Pathfinders Column from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The sun is out, the sky is blue, I’m rioting today, how about you? Politicians in the UK have good reason to look with trepidation on the period of their summer recess. It’s not only when the small boat crossings reach their peak. It’s also when riots are most likely to happen. There’s an underlying pressure of discontent that exists year-round and year-on-year, generally simmering through the cold winter months, but ready to explode periodically when reaching a critical mass, if weather permits, and if touched off by some suitable trigger event. This year the pretext was the dreadful stabbing to death of young children in Southport, which certain vicious individuals wasted no time in exploiting with invented claims that the alleged perpetrator was a Muslim illegal immigrant, when he was actually born in Cardiff and had a Christian father.

Comparisons were inevitably drawn in the UK media with the last lot of major riots in England in 2011. There too the trigger event – the fatal shooting of a North London alleged gangster – was obscured by confusion and misinformation, with the police and eyewitnesses providing contradictory accounts. In the ensuing orgy of arson and looting, the original trigger was largely forgotten, having served its purpose.

Echoes of similar misinformation events reverberate back through history. In a particularly notorious instance in 1255, ‘Little Saint’ Hugh of Lincoln, a 9-year-old boy, was alleged to have been ritually murdered in a ‘blood libel’ sacrifice by Jews. The chronicler and Benedictine monk Matthew Paris offered a fantastically ghoulish account in which the boy was tortured, whipped, run through with pikes, crucified and disembowelled before being thrown down a well. The atrocity seems to have been fabricated to incite popular hatred against Jews, and served its purpose admirably. In no time at all, a Jew was found and tortured into confessing, after which he was executed, followed by 18 more Jews who bravely refused to recognise the validity of the kangaroo ‘show trials’. The ritual murder accusation was not the first to be made against Jews, but it was the first to be officially endorsed by the ruling monarch, Henry III. What was not widely advertised at the time was that the king had previously sold his right to tax Jews to his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, thereafter decreeing that the property of any Jew committing a crime would be forfeit to the Crown. This gave the perpetually hard-up king a transparent motive for endorsing such stitch-ups. A further 71 Jews were subsequently condemned to death, but by then the fraud had become so farcically obvious that even the Church, and Richard of Cornwall, felt honour bound to intervene, and the victims were released. But the bogus story continued to have legs. It later popped up in works by Chaucer and Marlowe, and was still doing the rounds in 20th century America. In 1955 the Church of England shamefacedly mounted a plaque at Hugh’s former shrine in Lincoln Cathedral, relating how ‘trumped up stories of ritual murders of Christian boys by Jewish communities were common throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and even much later. These fictions cost many innocent Jews their lives… Such stories do not redound to the credit of Christendom, and so we pray: Lord, forgive what we have been…’ (tinyurl.com/4zuc47ae).

Probably the most die-hard English Defence League sympathiser would dismiss the obvious historical parallel. Just because blaming ‘foreigners’ is a tactic as old as history, doesn’t mean today’s far-right are wrong. But they should still pause and ask themselves the cui bono question—who gains from this claim? With hindsight it’s clear that the king and the landowners had a clear financial incentive to discredit and persecute people they owed money to, which led to executions, pogroms, expulsions, and the forced wearing of yellow badges, decreed by the Vatican 700 years before the Nazis. The Church too is thought to have had an incentive in creating little ‘saints’ whose shrines would be lucrative draws for pilgrims. Who gains today? Ambitious populists looking to ride to power on a wave of anti-immigrant votes. Capitalist élites who delight in watching workers fight each other. Desperate individuals eager to blame their failings on those weaker than themselves.

Back in the Middle Ages, most people were illiterate, with no education and no ability to fact-check. People today have no such excuse. If they still choose to believe fake tales, it’s not because they can’t help it, it’s because they don’t care about the truth. They have sunk into sociopathy, and are no help to socialists.

According to the Torah, the Jewish people used to ritually burden a goat with their sins and send it off to get lost in the wilderness. Jesus performed the same function for Christians by getting himself crucified. But the biggest scapegoaters of all are states and their ruling élites, particularly when it comes to violent crimes like the one in Southport. ‘The many causes of and potential solutions to knife crime are well documented in extensive research…. Social issues including poverty and deprivation, serious mental health issues and online radicalisation are all part of the prevalence of knife crime. The lack of a proper home, violence in the home, lack of resources and money, parental neglect, adverse childhood experiences, supply of drugs … are also sometimes part of the picture’ (tinyurl.com/5ey3aam2). What capitalist state could do anything about any of these, even if it wanted to? To abolish poverty, the wellspring of so many social ills, you would have to abolish private wealth ownership, which is the foundation of capitalism. That’s exactly what socialists propose. Capitalist officials will simply lock up the perpetrators as deviants, and look the other way.

Nobody can predict when or where the next riots will happen. But as long as capitalism lasts we can be sure that there will be riots, and usually it will be innocents who get the blame.

Paddy Shannon

The Levellers 1640-1649 (1961)

From the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The word “Leveller” was first heard in 1606 when a band of men roamed the Warwickshire countryside, uprooting or levelling fences and hedges enclosing the once-common lands. These detested barriers had been going up all over England for eighty years.

Enclosing the “waste-land” that from time immemorial had been common property brought increasing misery to the poor and greater .wealth to the rich. Large areas were turned into sheep walks to satisfy the growing demand abroad for superior English wool. In Thomas More’s Utopia we read, “ The sheep that were wont to be so meek and tame and so small eaters now as I heare say be become so great devourers and so wild, that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves.” Fresh ideas on farming and improved methods of stock-breeding made squires land-greedy. Enclosing was the polite name for stealing; people were driven from their homes to give pasture to sheep. Their only hope of survival lay in the towns, where they were fleeced even more closely than their woolly competitors.

Inventions and the necessity for larger ships meant bigger outlay and brought a demand for more money in the form of capital. A rich, powerful merchant class came into being. The first bank—the Bank of England, 1694—came with it.

The land lost much of its aristocratic value; the traditional obligations to tenant and labourer tended to disappear. The old tyrant with titles was often superseded by a new tyrant with money. Farmworkers were tricked out of rights of tenure. Though freed from the old bondage they were enslaved in a new and often terrifying system.

Throughout these tremendous changes Charles I remained obstinately feudal in outlook. Something was bound to happen. By 1628 the House of Commons was three times richer than the House of Lords. This gave its members confidence to resist the king's demands for money. So in 1629 he closed Parliament for eleven years, hoping to show his recalcitrant M.Ps. that he alone held power. But in 1639 a rebellion broke out in Scotland, and by 1640 he had been forced to recall Parliament to vote the necessary money to quell the rising. Here was the opportunity the Members had dreamed of. They knew that archaic notions of kingship must give way to a governmental system favourable to the merchants.

As a warm-up for their startling policy they executed the king’s chief minister, the Earl of Strafford, who had been raising an army in Ireland to crush Parliament. At the same time John Lilburne, leader of a “left-wing” group—the Levellers—was released from prison, where he had resided two years for issuing anti-State Church pamphlets. Now free, he got an Army command.

With this widespread opposition came a taste for democratic expression. The popularity of Cromwell's rising faction gave the Levellers a chance to speak out. How and where did they fit into the political ferment?

Parliament was divided. On the right were the Anglican Royalists, conservative and pro-Charles. On the left were the Independents, radical but not united. They were divided into a right-wing called Gentlemen Independents headed by Cromwell, Ireton, and Fairfax, and a left-wing known as the Levellers. The latter reflected the aspirations of small farmers, humbler-tradtsmen, work people and soldiers. They advocated greater political equality than the Independents and had a widespread popular support. 

In addition to political demands the civilian arm of the movement (the Diggers) urged greater economic equality; and in recognising that all political organisations and freedoms spring from or are crushed by the particular mode of land-ownership, they earned for themselves the undying hatred of Cromwell.

At this stage the Levellers were welcomed by the Radicals. All through the struggle the Levellers did best in the army, perhaps because there they were better organised than the Diggers. Both issued a considerable mass of literature, the Levellers maintaining that economic freedom followed from political freedom, and the Diggers seeing it rather the other way.

Common-ownership of the land was the bed-rock of their philosophy. Stripped of its Biblical overtones it stated a view that is still a staggering novelty to millions today. “. . . the time will be when all men shall willingly come in and give up their lands and estates and submit to the community.” They added, “and of that for money there was no need of it” (if men led communal lives). In the letter to Lord Halifax, Winstanley asked, “I demand whether all wars, bloodshed and misery came not upon creation when one man endeavoured to be a lord over another.”

In an article in the Leveller paper, The Moderate in 1649, after some men were executed for cattle-stealing, a writer suggested private property was the cause of a great deal of crime committed by the poor, “ We find,” he wrote, “some of these felons to be very civil men, and say, that if. they could have had any reasonable subsistence by friends, or otherwise they should never have taken such necessitous courses for the support of their wives and families.” The paper was suppressed after September, 1649, by “democratic” Cromwell.

The Levellers just as clearly saw that religion with its mirage of a happy future life was the carrot that encouraged the poor donkey of a labourer to stagger on. Winstanley wrote, ". . . to know God beyond the creation or to know what he will do to a man after the man is dead, in any other wise than to scatter him into his essences of fire, water, earth and air of which he is compounded (a belief handed down by the ancient Greeks) is a knowledge beyond the line or capacity of man to attain to while he lives in his compounded body.” Richard Overton, too, wrote in Man's Mortality that the idea of the soul was ridiculous.

The New Model Army (Roundheads) was Parliament’s striking force, its job to overthrow the king. But because its ranks were filled with many pro-Leveller men the Levellers saw in it a means of getting better conditions for the poor. On May 20th, 1647, “a great petition” was sent to the Commons demanding political reforms and the re-organisation of the Constitution. When the re-imprisoned Lilburne (he was in and out of gaol between 1646-1648 for various attacks on authority) heard that the common hangman had been instructed to burn it, he looked to the army for support. He declared the power of the land vested in the army, and at this point Cromwell agreed. Next, a manifesto, The Case of the Army Truly Stated, was presented to General Fairfax on October 15th, 1647, and later An Agreement of the People, which dealt more with civil matters.

Fearing the support gained by the Levellers, the Presbyterians compromised with Charles. Enraged, the Independents with the Levellers marched to London, entered the House and passed a measure to thwart any attempt to corrupt the army; the Presbyterians were crushed. Though Cromwell had been aided by the Levellers, he refused to free Lilburne. When we see what the Levellers were after, we can understand why! The Case of the Army Truly Stated listed thirteen points:

1. New election for new parliament.
2. House of Commons to be cleared of royalist sympathisers.
3. Army’s supremacy to be made known officially.
4. Excise tax to be lifted from the poor, Better tax-laws.
5. Trials to be speeded up and improved conditions for prisoners.
6. Greater religious tolerance.
7. Abolition of tithes.
8. Oath of Supremacy to be abolished.
9. No oaths from those with conscience scruples.
10. Law reform to enable laymen to understand legal matters.
11. Removal of privileges. All to be subject to same laws.
12. Enclosed land to be returned to common use.
13. Pensions for disabled soldiers, widows and children.

The stir that these programmes made, forced Fairfax, Cromwell and the others Grandees (as they were somewhat derisively called) to allow their discussion in a series of debates held in Putney. Cromwell reasoned that if these fiery demands could be proved too extreme or impractical. Leveller influence would diminish and the threat to his supremacy would disappear. The main point was that the vote was the birthright of all men, and to this Ireton replied, “. . . voting was a property right. Only those who owned a house worth 40s a year in rent or who had a freehold interest in land should vote. The protection of private property was of the utmost importance, now that freedom had been won. Everyone was free to make money, and to own property, and the law was there to protect them while they did it.” Rainborough for the Levellers retorted that what was required in voting was reason not property. And Sexby added, “. . . as things are today unless a man has fixed property, he has no rights in England at all.”

Cromwell had the Case of the Army condemned in Parliament. Next, he set out to quell his army and persuade the least influenced to sign a pledge of loyalty at Corkbush Field, Ware, in Hertfordshire. There the Agreement of the People was presented to Fairfax. He accepted it, but told the men to go on signing and they did. But then up rode two dissenting regiments singing and wearing the Leveller colours. Immediately Cromwell drew his sword and rode angrily among them, tearing away their colours. His sudden action quietened them. The ringleaders were arrested; three were found guilty and one of these was shot.

It was a serious defeat for the Levellers. They tried resistance again, but were imprisoned and Lilburne remained in the Tower. At Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight, Charles in 1648 launched another attack (the Second Civil War). All the contesting elements of Parliament sank their differences again in preparation for the fray. The artful Presbyterians released Lilburne, hoping he would stir the army to mutiny. But he supported Cromwell, presumably regarding him as the lesser of two evils.

After the royalist defeat more discussion on the Agreement of the People followed and it actually reached Parliament, but lay in abeyance while the king’s fate was decided. On January 30th, 1649, Charles, king by the grace of God, died by the grace of the merchants.

M. Brown.

(to be concluded)

Voices from the Past: Gerrard Winstanley 1608 ? - 1660 ? (1960)

From the October 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

War

“Wheretofore is it that there is such wars and rumours of wars in the nations of the earth? And wherefore are men so mad to destroy one another? but only to uphold civil property of honour, dominion and riches one over another.  .  .  . But when once the earth becomes a common treasury again, as it must . . . then this emnity of all lands will cease, and none shall dare to seek dominion over others, neither shall any dare to kill another, nor desire more of the earth than other.”

The True Levellers Standard Advanced (1649).

Labour

"No man can be rich but he must be rich either by his own labours or by the labours of other men helping him. If a man has no help from his neighbour be shall never gather an estate of hundreds and thousands a year. If other men help him to work, then are those riches his neighbour's as well as his; for they be the fruit of other men's labours as well as his own.  . . . Rich men receive all they have from the labourer's hand, and what they give, they give away other men’s labours, not their own.”

The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1652).

Law

“Shall we have no lawyers?

There is no need of them, for there is to be no buying and selling; neither any need to expound laws; for the bare letter of the law shall be both judge and lawyer, trying every man's actions. And seeing we shall have successive Parliaments every year, there will be rules made for every action a man can do.”

The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1652).

Religion

“ [Priests] lay claim to heaven after they are dead, and yet they require their heaven in this world, too, and grumble mightily against the people that will not give them a large temporal maintenance. And yet they tell the poor people that they must be content with their poverty, and they shall have their heaven hereafter. But why may not we have our heaven here (that is, a comfortable livelihood in the earth) and heaven hereafter too, as well as you? "

An Appeal to all Englishmen (1650).

These extracts from the writings of Gerrard Winstanley are taken from The Good Old Cause (Lawrence & Wishart). edited by Christopher Hill and Edmund Dell.

New Elizabethan Age (1952)

From the September 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the accession of the new Queen, it was inevitable that comparisons should be made with the other period when the English sovereign was named Elizabeth. Following the period of mourning for the late King, the Press has played heavily on the theme of the possibility of a second "golden age" under the second Elizabeth. Popular illustrated periodicals have shown, alongside pictures of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Drake, Cecil and Bacon, photographs of the writers, politicians, film actors and racing motorists who are the leading figures at the outset of the new Elizabethan era. Particular emphasis has been laid on literature because, in the last two decades of the sixteenth century, there were more outstanding figures in this field than probably at any other time in its history.

The views of an eminent historian on this matter are obviously of special interest and Mr. A. L Rowse is one of the foremost of present-day historians. In his Presidential address to the English Association, given at the Association's luncheon in May and now published by the Oxford University Press, Mr. Rowse’s topic was: "A Second Elizabethan Age?" The address was widely reported, and the Prime Minister requested a copy of it; Conservatives in particular were pleased by its emphasis on individual enterprise as a feature of the earlier Elizabethan age.

Certainly the picture is an appealing one. A young queen with a long reign before her; hopes, stimulated by the 1951 Festival, for a revival of the arts in Britain; an age in which the development of science offers seemingly unlimited possibilities; all these have given many people reason for hope that the second "age of Elizabeth" will be an age of prosperity and happiness. We should like to examine this possibility, and propose doing so with reference to Mr. Rowse’s arguments on the subject.

Mr. Rowse looks upon the earlier Elizabethan age with unqualified approval. He sees it as an era full of vitality and opportunity. "What it must have been to be alive—and sentient—in those years: of that we can have no conception," he says. Ability was valued and fostered; there was none who did not feel the spur of ambition, and achievement did not go unrewarded: “society was alive and bursting with energy," the age was "the greatest glory of our state and tongue." He points to the opportunities for advancement: "And there was freedom in that society to move up—or down; careers were open to talents and hard work. Look at the starting-point of so many of the figures of that age: Shakespeare, the son of a small townsman, butcher and dealer in wool and skins; Ben Jonson, stepson' of a bricklayer; Marlowe, a cobbler’s son; Spenser, a poor scholar maintained by the Merchant Taylors; Drayton, a page-boy in a country house; Hooker, another poor scholar maintained by a bishop; and look at the fantastic fortune of Drake, a needy vicar’s son who was not even schooled—he carved his way for himself.”

This vigorous and exciting condition of society is compared with that of the present time. The arts to-day are in an unhedthy state—there is much criticism, but little creation; "the standardized products of a mass-civilization, a herd society" cannot be compared with the proud craftsmanship of those Elizabethans; our age "has no standards’’; political criticism —“particularly from the Left intellectuals"—has done almost irreparable damage; in "a more or less one-class society, levelled down to the standards of the trivial insignificant average," it is well-nigh impossible for ability to flower.

These are the premises on which Mr. Rowse builds his conclusions; let us examine them first. Was the age of Elizabeth the First really so golden?

It was an era of social change. The Reformation had broken the power of the Catholic Church. The enclosure of land was driving the workers into the towns. The nation-state was coming into its own as the dominant type of political organisation. Underlying these developments were great economic changes. The rule of the old feudal aristocracy had been successfully challenged by the new merchant class, and the steadily expanding demand for goods could only be satisfied by capitalist methods of manufacture. Great metal works were springing up; the first deep coal mines being sunk; cloth manufacture was becoming highly organized; government shipyards and armament plants were established. The competition between nations for trading routes had led to the world's suddenly becoming larger, and great hordes of precious metals were discovered in the New World. Science, stimulated by the need to solve technical problems, developed and influenced men's minds powerfully. And the Renaissance, the “rebirth” of learning, had opened the storehouse of the knowledge and artistic achievements of the ancient world.

Mr. Rowse is, of course, aware of all this. Indeed, he says: “The situation of the country and the nature of our society predisposed to the flowering of mind and energy that made the age what it was." It is therefore surprising that he should so strongly blame the people and institutions of the present-age for failing to “flower” as did their ancestors. The first Elizabethan age was at the beginning of capitalism, and the rising capitalist class was a young, virile, and, in fact, a revolutionary class whose historic mission was the development of economic, technical and intellectual resources. To-day, when capitalism has outlived its usefulness to society, it is hardly to be expected t\ t it should be “alive and bursting with energy."

That is not the whole story, however. The impression given by Mr. Rowse is that Elizabethan society was a paradise for all, rich and poor alike. The incorrectness of this is amply demonstrated by the famous Act 43 of Elizabeth—the 1601 Poor Law. Thorold Rogers says: “In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the labourer secured increased wages in the midst of decreasing prices. In the sixteenth, the reverse which he suffered was far more considerable than the advantage which his forefathers had gained . . . 1 cannot but think that a growing disaffection, which Elizabeth and her counsellors were not slow to discern, the remedy for which seemed to be the continuance of expedients adopted in the three previous reigns, was the cause which induced them and parliament to acquiesce in the Act of 1601.” In fact, the age of Elizabeth was also the age of vagrancy and pauperism. The disbanding of the little feudal armies, the loss of the monastic charities, and—most of all—the enclosure of land, filled England with vagrants and robbers whose homelessness and desperation made them a danger. The 1601 Poor Law made pauperism a recognised institution; that the Act was the outcome of fear rather than sympathy is shown by its provision that “lusty and valiant beggars" were to be “grievously whipped and burned, through the gristle of the right ear." Holinshed, too, gives a vivid picture of the brutal severity with which this menace to social order was kept in check.

Further light on the real condition of society in Elizabeth's England may be obtained from the literature of the time. There are several writers, eminent in their day, who are not mentioned by Mr. Rowse: Robert Greene, for example, Thomas Harman, John Awdely, and many others: Greene was a dramatist and prose-writer, but he was also the first writer of “spiv” literature. He and the others mentioned thrived from the sale of voluminous pamphlets exposing the tricks and malpractices of London's numerous “coney-catchers,” the members of the vast workless horde who lived by their wits. We find, therefore, that the “spiv,” the figure who perhaps more than any other symptomises the working-class's disillusionment, was proportionately as numerous in Elizabethan London as in the 1940's.

It can be said, therefore, that the goldenness of this “golden age” was felt by only a minority of the people who lived in it. Mr. Rowse claims that there was freedom for talented and hard-working people to rise from the ranks of the poor, and quotes several examples. It could be suggested that not all of these examples are what they seem—that Shakespeare's father, for instance, was quite a well-to-do man. The important point, however, is that throughout the centuries when capitalism was developing, it was always possible for a small number of people to become wealthy in spite of humble beginnings. Further examples can be found in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That it is not possible to-day is due to the fact that capitalism has exhausted virtually all its potentialities for creative achievement; Mr. E. M. Forster recently, in a radio talk, remarked that it is no longer possible for a man to become very wealthy by honest means.

Mr. Rowse laments that our age has no standards. Had the Elizabethan age better ones? The careers of Drake (for whom Mr. Rowse expresses great admiration) and his fellow “sea-dogs” were ones of robbery with violence, justified and made romantic by the Elizabethan rulers' lust for gold, silver and trade routes. Elizabethan politics was a succession of Machiavellian intrigues and plots. The poor were treated with open cruelty. How much evidence is there in these things of the existence of superior standards? The truth is that moral standards and Christian virtues are not practicable under the system which causes them to be preached. Just as the ideal of brotherhood is meaningless in the present-day slaughter-house world, in Elizabethan England there could be no standards when—to quote Mr. Rowse—“everybody scrambled and jostled and climbed and pushed their way to the front.”

In view of all this, one cannot help but ask: “Who wants another Elizabethan age, anyway?” The answer is nobody except members of the capitalist class, with whose interests Mr. Rowse, we now see, is wholly preoccupied. The period 1558 to 1603 was one of poverty for the many and prosperity for only the few, of ruthless oppression and barbaric practices.

But what of the arts? Is it not true that this was an age in which they flourished as never before or since? Certainly the list of names is imposing: Shakespeare, Lyly, Sidney, Marlowe, Jonson, Spenser, Nash, Greene, Lodge, Webster, and ever so many more. Mr. Rowse's case is that these men were essentially creative, and the Elizabethan age gave them scope for their creativeness. To-day, the emphasis is wrongly on criticism, the antithesis of creation. “ Was there ever,” he asks, “ a more apposite instance than Shakespeare, the “ child of nature,” as against the academics and the intellectuals? "

Certainly, it is true that the Elizabethan age had plenty to stimulate artists in general and dramatists and poets in particular. It was a period full of new, different and exciting things. The language had left behind all its teething troubles. The invention and development of printing had brought a reading public into being. The growth of towns and release from the former ties with Church and craft guilds enabled the theatre to become, for the first time in English history, a settled institution. There were wealthy men ready to become patrons. And there were the histories, the learning and style given by the Renaissance.

Concerning Mr. Rowse’s remarks about creativeness and criticism, however, there are two or three things to be said. The first is that even the most gifted “child of nature” is ineffective unless society has a place for his gifts. One cannot imagine Virgil making his mark as a poet in the age of Beowulf or Ezra Pound receiving acclamation in the days of Dr. Johnson. The creative talents of Shakespeare, Marlowe and the rest were of a nature that was acceptable to their contemporaries. To lament the lack of creativeness in the present age is, therefore, to put the cart before the horse; rather should Mr. Rowse lament that society does not to-day find a very prominent place for the type of ability which he admires. Second, one must call into question the assumption that the works of these poets and dramatists were the product of a concern with creation only. Catherine Ing, in her recent book “Elizabethan Lyrics,” calls this into question and gives good reason for the counter-belief that they were, in fact, very conscious of the same questions of form and style that preoccupy the present-day writer. There is ample evidence in Shakespeare’s own work that he was well aware of the circumstances which favoured his genius; Mr. Edwin Muir, in “The Politics of 'King Lear' "; sees “Lear” as nothing less than a dramatic representation of the struggle between the aged and dying forces of feudalism and the ruthless, inevitably victorious ones of the new order.

Mr. Rowse’s conclusion is that, while there may not be much reason, there is hope for improvement in society in the reign of the second Elizabeth. He sees hope in the fact that “the degeneration attendant upon mass-civilisation has gone less far here than elsewhere ”; in the quality of British scientists; and in the possibility that, as the younger English-speaking nations become of increasing importance in the world, the prestige of England will increase. Finally, he finds hope in the thought that: “. . . human genius is unquenchable—there is no knowing what it will do next; civilization is itself a tough plant—it springs up anywhere, like stinging-nettles among the ruins, or willow-herb flowering inextinguishably on the bomb-sites of London.”

In short, Mr. Rowse considers that society has come to a bad pass. There could be nothing better than a return to the conditions and spirit of the Elizabethan era, and, though the circumstances of the present day do not seem propitious, there is ground for hoping that this may come to pass. The situation at the beginning of the first Elizabeth’s reign appeared black, but with good fortune and good statesmanship Elizabeth and her advisers “nursed the country out of its sickness ”; the same may yet happen again.

Thus the possibility, in Mr. Rowse’s view, is envisaged in terms of hope rather than of any reasonable expectation. We are unable to see any hope at all while the capitalist system remains with us—and Mr. Rowse’s wish, of course, is that it shall do so. The loss of vitality and creative energy in this age is the result, not of the carpings of “Left intellectuals” or the lowering of any hypothetical standards, but of the stage which capitalism has reached; a stage in which it has nothing further to offer to the development of society. The hindrance to man’s free development, in the arts and in every other sphere, is not any trend within capitalism but is capitalism itself. Thus we cannot see the second Elizabethan age offering anything but what was offered under previous sovereignties, except that the same things will probably be somewhat worse.

There is, however, a social era to come that has everything to offer to every man, woman and child: the socialist age, which does not have any parallel in past history. The time of its coming does not depend upon any individuals, politicians or sovereigns, but on the mass of the people; they will bring it into being when they realise that, under capitalism, there is no prospect of a “golden age” or of any age other than a continuous one of war and want. There will be free seats for all to participate in its coming.

Robert Barltrop

Proper Gander: Exploring Englishness (2023)

The Proper Gander TV column from the March 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Artist Grayson Perry’s latest side-job as a documentary presenter treads similar ground to his previous investigations into what makes up people’s identities. His focus this time is how and how much people feel ‘English’. He asks if there is ‘a shared identity that binds the English together? Or is Englishness just a fantasy that’s keeping us stuck in the past?’ and to find out, he gets in a van and goes on a road trip around the country. Over one episode each for the South, the Midlands and the North, Perry meets and chats with various people, his amiable and direct style drawing out how they define themselves as English. Grayson Perry’s Full English (Channel 4) has enough flavour, but doesn’t satisfy an appetite for explaining everything about what a national identity is. He mentions the context of the UK having left the EU alongside calls for Scotland to secede, and points out that English culture has been shaped by a history of empire and immigration, but the programme’s remit doesn’t stretch to covering the political and economic structures behind a sense of ‘Englishness’.

‘Englishness’ is bound up with nationalism: having allegiance to a state in the mistaken belief that it runs in our interests. In recent decades, nationalism has acquired more negative connotations when associated with England than with other parts of the UK. Perry says that for many people, English pride comes with the caveat ‘I’m not racist, but…’, because ‘Englishness’ has a baggage of knuckle-dragging bigotry. The programme doesn’t feature the stereotypical racist skinhead; although shaven-headed interviewee Ian has St George’s flag tattoos, he emphasises his view that Englishness can be for anyone. However, another person featured, long-haired Jeremy, spends his spare time reminiscing about the Second World War and patrolling the sea in his boat looking for unofficial crossings, to defend what he sees as his country. Other people Perry meets in the South, like Jeremy, tend to have ‘Englishness’ embedded in their character more so than those elsewhere, and they show this in a more theatrical way, whether taking part in a Druid ritual in the woods or styling their life around previous decades. In comparison, those in the Midlands and the North tend to be more down to earth. The people he meets in the Midlands demonstrate that associating ‘Englishness’ with ‘whiteness’ is increasingly out of date. Younger people in particular, such as Birmingham-based rapper Jayekae, have grown up in diversely populated communities, and so have a wider understanding of who can be English. Those Perry meets in the North relate more to their local area than to England as a whole. His driver Kirk and musician Paul Heaton both say that growing up in hardship means you identify with people around you in the same situation, bringing a sense of belonging.

A shared struggle through adversity is one way that living in capitalism distorts the basic human need to feel part of a community. Nationalism is another, which for many people has turned to patriotism, which emphasises identifying with a nation’s culture rather than with a nation in itself. As the programme demonstrates, patriotism is often towards a mythical vision of England, whether seen through Druidism’s reinvented folk traditions or an impression of the 1940s, 50s or 60s either with the rough edges smoothed away or as ‘nostalgia for the bad times’. This aspect of ‘Englishness’ looks backwards and therefore doesn’t point towards creating a different future. Perry sees the emotional appeal of this, but he’s more excited by how ‘Englishness’ has been changing through the impact of people whose families came from overseas. When cultures dialectically rub up against each other, something from both is created: the Northern Soul scene, Desi pubs, the only halal tea room in the Peak District, Grime music, or the domino club at the West Bromwich African Caribbean Resource Centre. This fluid, diverse notion of ‘Englishness’ promoted by the programme doesn’t have any room for the racist, flag-waving connotations of the term.

The mixing of people and cultures has tended to dilute nationalism, apart from during football or cricket World Cup tournaments. Nationalism has shifted to patriotism for those who reinvent traditions or yearn for the past. ‘Englishness’ as shown on Grayson Perry’s Full English often means something more personal yet. Perry asks those he meets to each lend him an object which represents what England means to them, to be part of a tie-in exhibition. Most of the items donated tell part of their owner’s story rather than being attempted symbols of England itself: a refugee’s ticket into the country, a body-building competition medal, a fur coat and knickers. If the people Perry meets are representative (and they tend to be on the eccentric side), then this suggests that ‘Englishness’ is changing its meaning to something more subjective than it may have been defined as in the past. And many of those featured in the programme understandably relate closer to their immediate community than to an abstract idea of ‘Englishness’. While this isn’t the same as rejecting nationalism because it’s part of a wider system which works against us, the programme optimistically suggests that nationalism is becoming less important as society evolves.

Mike Foster

What has the monarchy done for us? (2022)

From the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

How does a technologically and industrially advanced 21st century nation come to have an unelected head of state that is at the centre of extravagant and expensive medieval-inspired rituals such as coronations and jubilees? Many countries have adopted, in various forms, a constitutional monarchy but none go to such lengths to celebrate monarchical decadence as do the English. It is all the more surprising since it was the English bourgeoisie who were historically the first to cut off a king’s head during their quest for power in the 17th century. Far from being a symbol of Englishness the present queen comes from an ancient line of German princes who, in many of their inbred incarnations, actively opposed English imperialism. We can answer some of these questions historically but how are we to explain the admiration of so many of the working class for this symbol of their slavery?

The Tudor dynasty had adopted (rather half-heartedly) the Reformation and developed a centralised state that made the evolution of the modern nation state possible in the following centuries. When the last of them (Elizabeth I) died the Scottish Stuart dynasty took over with an inbuilt autocratic tendency that was to prove ill-suited to deal with the rise of the ‘middle class’ and their rising hegemony within parliament (House of Commons). The resulting revolution convulsed the country with some quarter of a million casualties (making the French revolution look like a bar brawl) and a republic whose leaders executed the king (Charles I) for treason. This regime was soon to degenerate into a military dictatorship that was thoroughly disliked by the people and a deal was done with Charles II for his return on the understanding he would respect parliamentary power. This again soon degenerated into an attempt at counter revolution led by James II, which proved once and for all to the English bourgeoisie that they could not trust the Stuarts and that their only hope for a truly constitutional monarchy was to call on William of Orange who had proven his credentials in this respect within the Dutch Republic. This proved to be successful in giving the illusion of both historical/royal continuity and also liberating capitalist trade from the threat of monopolistic autocracy.

Subsequent ‘Whig’ historians dedicated themselves to creating a history where the English revolution was relegated to a religious civil war followed quickly by a ‘restoration’ that hardly troubled the calm national continuity of the English class system. This myth became very convenient when the international power of the English ruling class was threatened by the French Revolution and the subsequent rise of the European Napoleonic Empire. The political convulsions of continental Europe were contrasted to the stability of the British system and it is indeed true that the first of the French revolutionaries wanted to create a constitutional monarchy on the English model but the duplicity of their king (just as with Charles I) made this impossible giving the militant Jacobins their chance to create a republic. Another difference between the two revolutions was the relatively quick integration of the bourgeois and aristocratic classes in England. The ruling class was now economically entirely capitalistic but the old families of aristocratic origin retained an air of cultural superiority and the nouveau rich could not help but admire this ancient elitism – when it didn’t conflict with profit making. The other element of aristocratic culture that the English bourgeoisie absolutely adored was the warrior tradition and pageantry. No coal magnate, however rich, could compare with the mythology of Henry V and his victory at Agincourt!

To this day the glamour attached to the aristocracy and the royal family in particular, is used to sell the illusion that the English are a united country which all have a common interest to preserve. As with all hierarchical social structures there is a need to condition those without wealth and power to believe that those who possess it are somehow different and special. Along with the myth of the ‘self-made man’ capitalism needs a symbol of nationalism/militarism and what better symbol than those descended from murderers (warriors) to stand on balconies wearing pantomime military uniforms. For socialists the queen stands for: nationalist tribalism, class privilege, massive unearned wealth, Christian superstition and unelected power. They cannot even preserve the image of an ideal bourgeois family that serves as a model for us all given the continual scandals emanating from what must be one of the most dysfunctional families in existence. Such criticisms are commonplace and feel like an exercise in the proverbial ‘shooting ducks in a barrel’ but somehow these people continue to be admired by many within the working class.

Given the history above and the usefulness of the royal family as propaganda we can see how they are placed at the centre of UK capitalism’s greatest shibboleth – ‘patriotism’. No mainstream politician dares question this tribal loyalty in public just as they would not criticise its royal incarnation. Perhaps to the younger people the royals are merely celebrities but for those of an older generation they represent a perverse feeling of community and continuity despite the reality that it is their existence and the class they represent that continually destroys communities by fuelling the relentless class struggle.

Wez.

Shakespeare and Elizabethan society (1964)

From the June 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

In this article it is aimed to outline briefly Elizabethan Society and its effect on the work of Shakespeare. It is necessary to look into the social background in order to see how conditions gave rise to new ideas of society and how they were reflected by Shakespeare.

The feudal system was in a dying state towards the end of the 16th century. The first upheaval and the greatest was due to the change in the methods of production. The most important development was in the growth of the wool industry with its expanding export markets. This led to the enclosure system —the forcible seizure of the lands from the peasants by the rich landlords. Here we had the development of early capitalist industry, and the exploitation of the former peasants.

The feudal system was crumbling and power began to move from the feudal aristocrat to the new landed bourgeoisie.

Now for the political aspects of the time which followed from the change in economic conditions. The intensive reorganisation of sections of the landed nobility and their unification with the bourgeoisie (the new merchant class) which in its early period (almost to the end of the 16th century), brought about the desire for an absolute monarch to. combat rebellious feudal lords.

The victory of the House of York in the Wars of the Roses, brought Edward IV (1461-1483) to the throne. He was the friend of the merchants and during his reign the mercantile system and absolutism in the political arena first made their appearance. Edward IV ruled almost without Parliament. Absolutism reached its climax during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Everybody was affected by the revolutionary changes in the social conditions.

Shakespeare (born 1564, died 1616) was a champion of the new forces. He recognised the barriers of the old feudal order and was in favour of absolutism to crush feudal rebellion. The history plays show this very clearly. The essential theme is the affirmation of absolute power. His fore-runner, Marlowe (1564-1593), likewise reflected in his work the aspirations of the bourgeoisie.

His plays expressed all the passion of an exultant class, eager to rush into the fray for the conquest of the world. Marlowe develops the heroic tragedy. “To know everything” is the motto of Marlowe's heroes. Shakespeare has his roots in Marlowe, but picked up the pen of Marlowe and developed his style considerably.

Above all Shakespeare recognized the necessity of a strong central power, to put down rebellion. The English bourgeoisie favoured not only monarchism, but even absolutism for a time, which still served their ends. This is a problem that occupied Shakespeare.

This also explains the peculiar omissions in his works. In “King John”, for instance, there is no mention of the Magna Carta, one of the most important events of that epoch; this would have lowered the stature of the ruler, and defeated Shakespeare’s purpose.

The bourgeoisie, the squirearchy and the absolutists were united in their common struggle against the feudal nobles who stood for the old order. The history plays leave little doubt as to where Shakespeare’s sympathies lay. The powerful feudal nobles depicted by him—the Percies, Glendowers, Mortimers—are arrogant and refractory. To him they were the scourge of the land. He saw Henry IV’s reign as an uninterrupted series of tragic events due to the feudal uprisings which resulted from the King's usurpation.

A strong King, according to Shakespeare, is the greatest political blessing a nation can enjoy. Title alone does not make a King—he must justify his rank. Henry VI and Richard II perish because they are not such Kings. In the play Henry V we have the only sovereign who has completely crushed feudalism. He embodies all Shakespeare’s hopes which were to be realised by absolutism. In Richard III the King represents a strong ruler who firmly holds the reins of power and puts an end to the intrigues and quarrels of the Court cliques.

The history plays are permeated with the idea of the inevitability of the historical process: “evil inevitability”, Richard II calls it. There are many references to the “times” and the “spirit of the times”.

The Earl of Westmoreland (Henry IV, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 1) replies to the accusation of the rebellious feudal nobles with:

O, my good Lord Mowbray,

Construe the times to their necessities,

And you shall say indeed, it is the time 

And not the King, that doth you injuries.

Then we have the speech by Warwick (Henry IV, Part 2, Act III, Scene I)—

There is a history in all men’s lives,

Figuring the nature of the times deceased;

The which observed, a man may prophesy,

With a near aim, of the main chance of things 

As yet not come to life.

Shakespeare not only states the casual conditioning of events but demonstrates it through all the means at his command. One of the chief means is to relate events to the social background. In Henry IV, the scenes in which Falstaff appears; in Henry V, the scenes in the camp; and in Richard III, the scenes of proclamation depict the life which is the foundation from which spring the major political events.

Shakespeare was a powerful poetical dramatist opposed to the feudal system and in the history plays he used the history of the previous times to help further the object of crushing feudalism. It was a tradition in those days, handed down from medieval times, that drama was to entertain and to teach.

During the first period of Shakespeare’s work until around 1601, there occurred the coalescence of all the foremost forces of the country: upper middle-class, the monarchy, the gentry, and even part of the old landed nobility. This process is reflected by the joyous optimism of Shakespeare’s early work which was filled with a bold and happy affirmation of life, with obviously aristocratic elements. He has two main themes:

1. The assertion of the absolutist national state; and 
2. The joy of living now available to society, at last emancipated from feudal bondage.

To the first theme he dedicated the history plays: to the second the series of enchanting, gay comedies like “Two Gentlemen of Verona”, “Love’s Labour’s Lost”, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, and “The Taming of the Shrew”. But the effects of the disintegration of the class alignment are already apparent in the plays written towards the end of the 16th century, plays like “Much Ado About Nothing” (1598) and ‘Twelfth Night” (1599) with their bitter sweet atmosphere which is never very far from tragedy. The decomposition of the Court had set in, the Puritans were becoming more and more aggressive, the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the nobility had already begun. Hence the tragic treatment of power in “Julius Caesar” (1599) with its confused conclusions and its pessimism.

Shakespeare lived in the period which saw the rise of the bourgeoisie, later to become the capitalist class. Here is an extract from the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels which sums up the situation:—

“The bourgeoisie . . . has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors' and has left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest and callous ‘cash payment'. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. . . . The bourgeoisie has stripped off its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. . . . The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil and has reduced the family relation to a money relation.”

During the second period to 1609—years which marked the decline of Elizabeth's reign and the advent, under James I, of feudal reaction—the process of disintegration was completed. Corruption was rife and the nobility, with the support of the monarchy, was preparing to defend its position against the bourgeoisie and the gentry. The literature of the time was teeming with pessimism.

These events, plus the execution of the Earl of Essex and the Earl of Southampton, who was a friend of Shakespeare, had a profound influence on the poet. He did not write any more gay comedies but created the powerful tragedies “Hamlet” and “Troilus and Cressida”. In both these plays Shakespeare gives us a picture of the social background as being ripe unto rottenness.

In “Measure for Measure” (1604) there can be seen the internal problems of absolute monarchy. The characters comment on the ruler and on current political events. We have portrayed the dregs of humanity; young profligates of the Court; procurers; corrupt constables and swindlers.

Then came the later tragedies like “Macbeth” and “King Lear", again dealing with the question of Kingship and the troubles of society. “Macbeth” may be seen to be another “Richard III”, but the play is much more profound. It is the portrayal of the mental troubles of Macbeth after he has usurped the throne. “King Lear” can be seen as a powerful representation of Shakespeare's familiar theme showing spurious feudal ideas as opposed to ideas of genuine powerful love. The play also contains doubts about the money grabbing bourgeoisie. Edmund is like the bourgeoisie, a ruthless machiavellian, crafty and ambitious for personal gain.

In “Coriolanus" (1607) we have one of the gloomiest tragedies. It reflects disillusionment in the rulers. There can be seen a criticism and condemnation of the feudal aristocrat trying to rule under the new conditions but wishing to retain his feudal privileges. An interesting feature, also in this play, is the language of the lowly plebians. There is no indication of hypocrisy, greed or baseness and they are presented in a sympathetic manner.

Shakespeare was a powerful poetical dramatist and the language and dramatic intensity of the plays develops beautifully. In the early plays blank verse intrudes on the drama, but later he developed his art and reached a fusion in the heights of poetic drama. His achievement, however, is not only in the form of poetry and drama, but also in his presentation of the social background, and it is only by recognising this that we can fully appreciate his work.

In “A Companion to Shakespearian Studies", G. B. Harrison makes the following remarks:—

A serious student of Shakespeare's plays cannot neglect the national background, for in an age that was in many ways cribbed and confined, the problems of the individual were inseparable from the problems of the state. The picture of a Shakespeare magnificently aloof from life may be pleasing to romantic critics, but it does not square either with the facts, or with Shakespeare’s own comment upon his art. “Players”, said Hamlet to Polonius, “are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time”. Besides the purpose and end of playing “both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature”; “to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”.

Shakespeare was at first a supporter of the bourgeoisie, the exponent of the program advanced by them when, in the name of humanity, they first challenged the feudal order, but which later they disavowed.

Towards the end of Shakespeare's life the bourgeoisie were already strong enough to throw off their cloak of being in the interests of humanity, to reveal their money grabbing and narrow-minded puritanism. Then he subjected the bourgeoisie to a keen and profound criticism. The rapacity, greed, cruelty, egoism and philistinism so typical of the growing bourgeoisie are scathingly portrayed and attacked. He placed on stage the social types of his day and through them reflected more clearly and profoundly than anyone else, the predominant social ideas of the times.

W. Waters

[Reprinted from the Socialist Standard, June 1951.]