The Levellers: A portrait

The Paul Richards column

At the weekend my new book Labour’s Revival is published, just in time for Labour Party conference. It contains an analysis of Labour’s final years in office, the election campaign and result, and then a discussion of the values and approaches that should guide the new leader of the Labour Party as we begin the steep, rocky road back to power.

In the middle of the book – an intermezzo if you will – is a collection of short portraits of six figures (and two groups) who I believe can offer us some illumination in these dark times.

My choice is of course entirely subjective, and no means exhaustive. I came up with The Levellers, the Rochdale Pioneers, William Morris, Keir Hardie, RH Tawney, GDH Cole, George Orwell and Michael Young.

In coming weeks, this column will look at each in turn, and what they can tell us about our own politics.

First – The Levellers.

At St Mary’s church in Putney in 1647 a group of soldiers and officers, fresh from the front line of a bloody civil war, came together to debate issues which resonate in our own times, and in every society around the world. The Putney Debates, conducted within the Parliamentary forces of Oliver Cromwell, pre-figure the great social and political struggles of the next 350 years. Within Cromwell’s forces were the Levellers: democrats, egalitarians and civil libertarians who wanted England to be a democracy within a framework of civil rights and fair laws. Opposing any suggestion of a deal with King Charles, Thomas Rainsborough MP, speaking for the Levellers, made the famous demand for democracy:

“For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he.”

They were Christians, believing from their study of the Bible that human rights were innate and granted by God. Therefore no man, be it a king, priest or landowner, should have the power to exercise dominion over anyone else. The Leveller demands included: the power to recall members of parliament at any time; a parliament of 400 MPs, with constituencies of equal size; annual elections for MPs, with MPs receiving salaries; free courts, and restriction of the death penalty to cases of murder and treason; trial by jury; reform of the tax system to introduce progressive income taxes; and freedom of the press.

The basis of a civil rights agenda is here, with a separate judiciary, a right to be tried by your peers, and freedom of religion. The democratic reforms – extension of the vote, payment for MPs, an end to rotten boroughs and annual elections – were taken up by the Chartists 200 years later. The power to recall MPs was discussed by the Labour government in 2008 and ruled out. It then appeared in the manifestos of both Labour and Tory parties, and is now the Tory-led government’s policy. A group of men, during a time of huge upheaval and a war in which more people as a percentage of the population died than even the First World War, constructed a political platform way ahead of its time.

A breakaway faction of the Levellers was called the True Levellers, or Diggers (immortalised in a song by Dick Gaughan and later Billy Bragg). The Diggers believed in an end to private property, and equal shares of the produce of the earth. In 1649, they occupied land at St George’s Hill in Surrey for five months and ran a commune. Today St George’s Hill is covered with a private housing estate, a golf club and a tennis club, and is home to footballers, television stars and stockbrokers. In 2007, the average house price was £3 million. It has been home to Theo Paphitis, Shilpa Shetty, Bobby Davro and Elton John, which is not what the Diggers had in mind.

Cromwell found the Levellers and the Diggers to be too much trouble. He sent the army into the Diggers’ encampment, who, being non-violent, offered no opposition. The Levellers were rounded up and imprisoned or executed. At Burford in Oxfordshire in May 1649, a mutiny by Levellers in the army was crushed. Three Levellers were shot dead. As a footnote to the story, in 1975 the local branch of the Workers’ Education Association (WEA) organised a Levellers’ Day in Burford, and asked the Labour secretary of state for energy to speak. Tony Benn has been attending Levellers’ Days ever since. The local Tory MP, Douglas Hurd, complained that a church had been used to celebrate the lives of three ‘mutineers’, and one year the local Conservative Association booked the church hall for a fictitious jumble sale to sabotage the event.

The Levellers are part of the radical story seldom taught in schools. Their foresightedness is astonishing, their dedication an inspiration. They prove the value of courage in politics, and willingness to stand up for beliefs.

Labour’s Revival The Modernisers’ Manifesto by Paul Richards is on sale from Saturday. You can order it here.