Past Tense continue their commendable series of cheap pamphlets on British radical history. We review two of them below.
A glorious liberty: the ideas of the Ranters. A.L. Morton. Past Tense Publications. 48 pages. £1.00
The Ranters formed the extreme left of the sects which emerged during the English Revolution and Civil War. Most contemporary writing about them was hostile and often the worst sort of gutter journalism. However Morton is able to assume that their strength lay in poorer areas of London as well as throughout the rest of England and that they also had sympathy among former Levellers inside and outside the Army. He believes that this suggests a movement mainly of the towns, with support from the wage earners and artisans rather than the peasants. It was never a real threat to the rulers. Rather, he feels, it presents a movement of political defeat after the setback of the efforts of the Diggers and Levellers. Their beliefs entailed waiting for God the Great Leveller who would come upon the rich like a thief in the night, with the practical outcome that the poor might as well enjoy themselves as much as possible in the waiting period by eating, drinking and being merry.
As such, this was a welcome reaction to the grim Calvinism of the Puritans and Cromwell, but could lead nowhere. In some of the writings of the Ranters who produced pamphlets can sometimes be found as Morton says, a “ deep concern for the poor, a denunciation of the rich and a primitive biblical communism that is more menacing and urban than that of Winstanley and the Diggers’.
A few footnotes by Past Tense criticize the official Communist Party line that Morton had. However it would perhaps have been better if Past Tense had offered fuller criticisms of Morton’s outlook in an introduction of their own.
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Symond Newell and Kett’s Rebellion: Norfolk’s great revolt against enclosures, 1549. Peter E. Newell. Past Tense Publications. 24 pages. £1.50
This reviewer remembers Peter from the days of the Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists and the Anarchist Workers Association in the 1970s. Whilst he returned to the Socialist Party of Great Britain years ago, Peter still maintains, in my opinion, the libertarian outlook he has always had. Here he traces the history of his ancestor Symond Newell. Kett’s Rebellion in 1549 in Norfolk involved thousands of yeomen and labourers revolting against the landlords and demanded an end to the enclosure of commons land that was beginning. The uprising, after some initial victories, ended in a slaughter of 3,000 peasants at Dussindale. In the murderous aftermath, 360 more were hanged, including Robert and William Kett. It is unclear whether Newell met the same fate, or escaped retribution.
Despite this, and because of the fear of future risings, the rate of the progress of enclosures slowed down considerably in Norfolk. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries marked the change from feudalism to capitalism and the periodic revolts that broke out showed the enduring resistance to rulers and their evolving methods of exploitation.