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From Irish Marxist Review, Vol. 11 No. 34, November 2022, pp. 92–93.
Copyright © Irish Marxist Review.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Michael Sturza
The London Revolution: Class Struggles in 17th Century England
In the Weeds Provocations, New York, 2022
From the 1950s through to the 1970s English history writing was dominated by a brilliant cohort of Marxist historians. Their roots lay in the Communist Party Historians Group founded in 1946 which included in its ranks the likes of Christopher Hill, E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, John Saville, Dona Torr, Rodney Hilton, A.L Morton, Dorothy Thompson, Raphael Samuel and Victor Kiernan. Their main project was to produce between them a Marxist account of English history from the Middle Ages onwards and the crucial period of the English Civil War or English Revolution of 1642–49 was taken on primarily by Christopher Hill in a series of outstanding works such as Puritanism and Revolution (1958), The Century of Revolution 1603–1714 (1961) and The World Turned Upside Down (1972}. Later the baton for this period passed to Hill’s pupil, Brian Manning in works such as The English People and the English Revolution (1976) and The Far Left in the English Revolution (1999). [Interestingly Brian Manning joined the Irish Socialist Workers Party when he moved to Ulster University in the 1980s.]
From the mid-1970s a reaction started to set in within English historiography, much as it did in the wider society with the rise of Margaret Thatcher. A series of conservative and anti-Marxist historians came to the fore who rejected all history based on historical materialism and concepts of class struggle. It was a development which paralleled, from a different angle, the rise of post-modernism with its ‘scepticism towards all grand narratives’. For these conservatives the Marxist account of the English Revolution as a bourgeois revolution was a major target. A number of ‘revisionist’ historians emerged, such as Conrad Russell and Geoffrey Elton, who challenged not only the idea that the Civil War could be understood in class terms (they much preferred to see it as primarily a religious conflict) but even the idea that there was a revolution at all. Similar operations were conducted in relation to the French Revolution and also in defence of the British empire and against the idea that the First World War was an imperialist war.
Michael Sturza’s book is an intervention in this debate and a very welcome one, a blow against the conservative revisionists. He builds on the pioneering work of Christopher Hill and Brian Manning, quoting copiously from their books, but adds to this a focus on the mass revolution from below in London in the years 1640–43. Sturza argues that this crucial element was insufficiently studied by Hill, Manning and others and that as a consequence the key agency, the driving force of the English Revolution, was neglected. He maintains that it was this revolution in the streets which led to the Civil War not the Civil War to the revolution. This an overtly Marxist work, replete with quotes from Marx, Engels and Trotsky, which makes few concessions to academic niceties and conventions – a fact which may limit its reception but is far from being a bad thing in my view.
The truth is I lack the detailed historical knowledge confidently to evaluate all or most of Sturza’s specific claims. Nevertheless he makes an impressive and convincing case. There are a number of features of the book that I enjoyed. First, the way he locates the events of the 17th century in a longer view of English history highlighting specific events such as the signing of Magna Carta in 1215, the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and Reformation under Henry VIII, which combined to hinder the emergence of monarchical absolutism in England on a scale that matched that in France and which facilitated the development of capitalist relations of production. ‘Thus,’ says Sturza, ‘before the end of the 16th century England was an economically capitalist country, despite the large majority of the population still engaged in agriculture’ [p. 17].
Second, his sophisticated (and Marxist) handling of social classes and class relations: see for example his account of the contradictory role of the gentry. ‘The dual role of the gentry came from having a foot in each of two incompatible social systems, feudalism and capitalism, which could not indefinitely coexist’ [p. 43]. Moreover this goes hand in hand with his nuanced analysis of the role of religion, especially Puritanism, which understands its class roots and how it articulated class interests without reducing it to a simple cipher or mask of immediate economic interests. Sturza doesn’t lose cite of the fact that these people really believed in the interpretations of God and the bible they were willing to fight and die for.
Third, there is the centre piece of the book, his account of the mass mobilizations on the streets of London. These are not (and couldn’t be, working class mobilizations. They are predominantly demonstrations by what were known as ‘the middling sort’ led by the Atlantic Merchants whom he describes as ‘the bourgeois vanguard of the English Revolution’ [p. 65]. Nevertheless, the scenes he narrates remind one vividly of scenes from much later revolutions such as the French Revolution or even the Paris Commune. Here are a few excepts relating to crucial events in January 1642.
On 3 January 1642 the king charged five reform leaders of the House of Commons with treason ... on 4 January, Charles personally led a retinue of 100 royal officers to arrest John Pym and four other leading MPs on the floor of the Commons. Warned in advance, the intended prisoners hid in a radical district of London. The king was forced to retreat empty-handed.
The streets were filled with armed citizens. The same day. the London Common Council set up its own Committee of Safety by order of the House of Commons. The Common Council were now in a position to fight for Parliament against the king, led by its most radical and dedicated men who did not shrink from armed struggle.
On 5 January, with the shopkeepers still on strike, and the armed people “standing in the their doors” the king appeared in front of the Common Council. As the king left, a large group of “ruder” people unanimously chanted “Privileges of Parliament”. Thousands besieged [the king] in the house of the City Sheriff where he had gone for dinner, and followed his carriage with the same cry. After escorting the king safely home, the Lord Mayor and some aldermen were knocked off their horses, women called him traitor and pulled his chain of office of his neck. The officials had to walk home being taunted all the way.
The following night, 6 January, a rumour quickly spread that soldiers on foot and horse were approaching the city. The citizens again went on the alert, Tens of thousands of thousands of armed men went into the streets while women built barricades and prepared pots of boiling water to use against the enemy. [pp. 114–15]
The combination of clear Marxist analysis and such exciting narrative makes this book both a very useful and enjoyable read.
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