 So, as Marx said famously a long time ago, revolutions are the locomotive of history. And what he meant by this is that it's actually revolutions, social revolutions, that drive history forward. When the structures of a society, when the ruling class of a particular era and all the structures that come with it, when they become a barrier to further human development, to improving living standards, and fundamentally when they become a barrier to a further development of the productive forces, it's only a matter of time before they're burst asunder or smashed through by a social revolution that lays the basis for a new type of society and a further development of the productive forces. Now, the English Civil War was in fact a revolution just like that. And the ruling class of that time and all the structures that came with it, such as the absolute monarch, and that was one pillar of the regime. And then you had the Anglican Church, which was another pillar of the regime, and the Bishop class that came with it and their parasitical existence and the huge church lands, the huge lands of the old feudal landlords, the heavy taxation on the peasant masses and the working masses and stuff. All of this was becoming a huge barrier to further progress. In fact, humanity was kind of sliding backwards for a period. And the English Revolution smashed through all of these structures and completely changed the foundations basically and laid the basis for the development of capitalism. And this was a hugely progressive thing in the sense that it allowed an enormous development of the productive forces, unprecedented in history. And capitalism for a time therefore was in some ways, not in a moral way, but in a scientific way, extremely progressive. We would say now capitalism is a barrier on human progress, it's turned into its opposite. And the main barriers to further development of human progress and of the productive forces are private property and the nation state. And they are the nation state and private property, our products of capitalist society. As people who want to change society for the better, it's obviously important to us that we study how change has taken place historically. And the English Revolution is one of those moments and it's got important lessons for us. These lessons are deliberately withheld from us, sometimes deliberately, sometimes subconsciously I think, but overall they're deliberately withheld from us by our own rule in class, by falsifying history through historical distortions. And the main distortion is this theory of gradualism, basically. That's the point of the matter. They try and argue that change takes place gradually. And this is a general philosophy of change that the rule in class forced down our throats. And they do this in a couple of ways. One is that all the popular histories of the English Civil War and the bourgeois histories of it, they take this impartial stance if not outright support for King Charles. And they do this because they try and paint the picture that the English Civil War was basically just a moment of madness in the history of England, which is otherwise defined by conservatism, moderation, and reform. They argue that basically you had Parliament on the one hand, King on the other. They both got a bit power hungry. They came into conflict. They ended up losing their heads, having a civil war, Parliament won. And then the King actually lost his head. Parliament cut off the King's head. And then you had a dictatorship under Cromwell for a while. And then when he died, they say everyone's kind of saw reason. They brought back the monarchy. And then capitalism developed gradually out of feudalism and that nothing had really fundamentally changed. This completely misses the point of what happened in that period of history. Although they did bring back the monarchy afterwards, after Cromwell died, everything had changed basically. Everything had fundamentally changed. It could not be undone. There was a new rule in class and that was the bourgeoisie. That's the most important point. And so they put this argument forward to argue that gradualism is the best way. Revolution should be avoided at all costs. They just nasty accidents. And this is extremely relevant to take. It affects the way people think now. And we have to combat this philosophy of change with the real philosophy of change, the real way that change takes place, which is through sudden revolutionary transformations. As Trotsky said, he said the philosophy of the Labour Party leaders is merely an echo of the Conservatives' historical theories. And so this philosophy, it infects the Labour movement, particularly through the Labour leaders. That's the point he's trying to make. And I mean, Keir Starmer is the perfect example of this. It is perfectly obvious, I think to everyone here, that Keir Starmer is just an echo of the Conservatives and their theories. But it also affects the so-called lefts. A guy called Len McCluskey, who is the general secretary of Unite the Union, is the biggest union in the country, 1.4 million members. So it could be a huge social force. And he's supposedly a left, an ally of Corbyn. And just to give you an example, that this gradualism even acts as a barrier there, at the last Labour Party conference, our comrades brought a motion to restore a socialist clause to the constitution of the Labour Party for the communal control of the means of production. And the majority of constituency Labour Party supported this motion. But Len McCluskey and the Unite bureaucracy, they used the block vote to stop this motion from passing. And our comrades confronted him outside about this afterwards. He was like, oh, don't worry, we're gonna do that anyway once we get into power. Just you wait, slowly, slowly, catch a monkey, bit by bit, and now look at the situation in the Labour Party. We've got a right-winger, Keir Starmer, in the leadership. And I think it's safe to say it would be quite helpful for the left if they had a socialist clause in the constitution to use as a lever. So you can see this gradualist approaches. It's a huge barrier, basically. And the other thing that the popular histories do to distort history, not just this, they distort history in general, but with the English Civil War, they deny that it was even really a revolution. That's why they call it the English Civil War. And Trotsky defined a revolution as being those moments in history where the masses sweep away all the barriers that keep them out of the political arena, and they take their own historical destiny into their own hands. And that describes with astonishing accuracy the events between 1940 and 1949 in the English Revolution. So the question we have to ask ourselves is why? Why did the masses enter the stage of history? And why was there such a revolutionary change in their consciousness in such a short time? And the first thing to say is it was the material conditions. There was a process going on called enclosure, basically, where the common lands and even people's own private land was being enclosed off or people being driven off their land by much larger landowners for the sake of pasture of sheep for the developing war trade. There were other reasons that I can't put out of time to go into, but basically people's way of life has been stripped away from them through violent means. And there were a lot of rebellious uprisings against this in the early 1600s in the countryside. The term leveler and the term digger, who were two of the key movements of the masses in this revolution, they actually come from these rebellious uprisings where people were leveling the fences and digging to fill in the ditches that were enclosing off all this common land. So you can see where the terms come from but later became proper movements. And also in the towns, there was a lot of cause for discontent. Apprentices, for example, were bounded to seven year apprenticeships. And this came through the absolute estate as well, which helped to focus the anger. The absolute estate basically centralised the functions of the guilds and was enforcing them on a national level. It kept wages with a maximum. It fixed prices. It forced apprentices into these seven year apprenticeships. It limited the amount of people who could be a master of their trade. So you ended up with all these people who were skilled labourers, but they had to be journeymen. That means a day labourer would sell their wages, their labour for a wage for a day. That's the closest thing at the time you'd really get to the working classes, we know it. The proletariat, as we know, it didn't really exist. That's probably the closest thing, along with the rural labourers who sold their labour for small wages as well. So there were all kinds of reasons in town and country for a huge anger. And amongst the women as well, the livelihoods of their family were being absolutely destroyed and the women played a big role, particularly in Scotland in some of the riots that went on there, and also later on in this process with petitions to parliament for the freedom of their husbands and their families and stuff. And then all of this is underpinned by a struggle for religious freedom, basically. The Anglican church carried out the most brutal religious repression, with cutting people's ears off and branding people for heresy and stuff like that. And we also have to understand that everything at this time was seen through a religious lens. Any political movement, any ideological movement would always take the form of a religious movement because that was the only way people understood the world around them. And this took the form of different religious sects. You had the Anglican church, which was the pillar of the regime. And then in parliament, who were forming serious opposition to the king, the parliamentarians were mostly Presbyterians, and they were quite moderate. The parliamentarians were basically the big bourgeoisie, the big landowners, the new money in the world, basically the big merchants, people engaged in this new wool trade and stuff. And the Presbyterians therefore, almost like the religious form of a party of the big bourgeoisie. And then you had the independence, which made up the main bulk of the revolutionary masses. Puritans being one of the main sects. Oliver Cromwell, he was a Puritan, but so were some of the much more radical, poorer masses as well. And what I want to focus on is the poor masses, the completely disenfranchised masses basically. And this all really starts with the new model army being established in 1945. And the level of movement, which eventually took hold of the new model army, the level of movement can be summarized, I think, as basically the crystallization of the revolutionary masses into an independent political force. But into a political party, really, a revolutionary political party. And that there was an independent force really begins with the establishment of the new model army. In 1645, the war started with a position of what we call dual power. And when we say dual power, what we mean is there were two different poles of power. Initially, it was king on the one hand, the parliament and the other, they had different interests that had to be resolved. And they also had a power base. They both had an army and it had to be resolved. That's what we mean by dual power. Initially, the royalists were winning in the battlefield. And this was for a few reasons, it was largely to do with the kind of the conservatism of the parliamentary leadership. They were very moderate, they were hesitant and this filtered into the ranks of the soldiers. So they created the new model army, basically, parliamented, as a sharper tool in order to improve their situation on the battlefield. And it had huge significance, basically. This turned the tide. Firstly, it had huge military significance. The soldiers were better trained, more disciplined and they were politically and revolutionary committed. This was the basis with which Oliver Cromwell recruited his troops. I should add here, yeah, Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax were the two main commanders of the new model army. And they recruited the most religious, disciplined masses. And this military significance, this was intentional. That was the point of it. But there was also a political significance, which was not intended by parliament. And this was that basically, once the masses were organized into this army, it was the first standing army that England had ever really had. Before that, if soldiers were needed, they'd hire mercenary armies or a lord would get their sworn knights to organize and rally the peasants and they'd put weapons in the hands of the peasants and that would be their sort of temporary army. This was the first standing army. And it created a different social existence for all the people who came into it than they'd ever really known before. A much higher level of organization was possible than was possible in their normal everyday lives and their social relations there, which should be obvious for like small independent peasants. And even in the towns where people were more closely knit, their actual existence was still based on individual property quite a lot or small groups of apprentices or whatever. This is actually a reason why we say the working class is naturally a revolutionary class. You've got this mass body of people, often under one roof, with the same economic interest, all paid a wage. This, it wasn't exactly the same, but this was the sort of thing that happened with the establishment of the new model army. People organized into regiments under one national body all paid a wage. And this was not intended. People didn't foresee the political implications that would come from this. One example of how this social existence affected their organization was that by 1647, jumping head a couple of years, every single regimen in the new model army was electing two agitators, which were like their political representatives to pursue their interests within the army. And the army was full of political debate. And in this new social existence, the soldiers were drawing new political conclusions, such as this idea of the fact that they should have political representations completely unknown to them. Alan Woods, who's got this great podcast series on the English Civil War, he says the new model army was like the red army in the Soviet Union. It was like the red army, the Soviets and the Bolshevik party all rolled into one. And I think this is quite an accurate description actually. There's a bourgeois historian called Macaulay, who's better than most in the level of detail he gives to this. And this quote I think summarizes actually what Alan means by that. He says, in general, soldiers who form themselves into political clubs, elect delegates and pass resolutions on high questions of states will soon break loose from all control. But such was the intelligence, the gravity and the self-command of the warriors who Cromwell had trained that in their camp, a political organization and a religious organization could exist without destroying military organization. The same men who off duty were noted as preachers. When on duty, they were distinguished by steadiness, by the spirit of order and by prompt obedience on the battlefield. The most rigid discipline was found in company with the fiercest enthusiasm. His troops moved to victory with the precision of machines while burning with the wildest fanaticism of crusaders. So I think that explains extremely well the process that was going on within the new model army. And basically the tide was turned. Within a year, the king was defeated in the battlefield. They moved through a series of decisive victories. And in, I think it was June 1646 or something, the last royal stronghold was Oxford. And as the army was moving on Oxford, the king fled in disguise from the city and was eventually captured by the Scots who handed him over to Parliament. And this opens up the second phase of the English Revolution and a second dual power because with the king defeated in the field, that first dual power was resolved. But a new dual power opened up between Parliament on the one hand and the army on the other, which was now developing its own interests through that process that were clearly described of this political debate and political representation going on within its ranks. And of course, they had different interests to Parliament. Parliament was made up of the biggest bourgeoisie and what they wanted was they wanted to get rid of the bishops but still have a kind of top-down structure in the church. The Puritans wanted the bottom-up structure in the church, which was a reflection of their class interests. The Parliamentaries also, in general, they wanted to keep the monarchy. They didn't want to, they wanted to keep it as an institution. They just wanted to put King Charles in his place basically. They wanted to stop the excessive taxation. They wanted to stop him writing off debts that he owed them because these people actually all had all the money in society now. And they wanted to get rid of these tariffs and royal monopolies that were basically artificially stopping trade from flourishing in the way that people thought it could. So that was basically the limit of their interests. The army, on the other hand, was composed of men with absolutely no rights. And what they wanted was justice against the King for a start. They wanted peace. They wanted political immunity. They wanted accountable Parliaments to be elected every year, which is something we still haven't achieved. And they wanted rights in general, but not just for the sake of it as a means to an end. One of the leading levelers, who later become a really leading leveler when it took more of an organized form, he wrote a text at this time, condemning Parliament basically, which shows this divide, this new dual power between Parliament and the army. And I quote him now. He said, What a multitude of precious lives have been lost. What a mass of monies have been raised by your committees to force men to pay or to lend or else to swear that they are bankrupt. You have sat in Parliament now for a full five years, which is four years longer than we intended, for we would choose you for the most one year. And now we wish you would publish to all the world, what good have you done for us? What liberty have you brought to us? You would excuse yourselves by saying it's been a time of war, but that will not do. For the war might in the beginning have been prevented if he had drawn a little more blood from the right vein. And by this vein, he means the king, I think. They're basically saying, if you'd just been more decisive initially and dealt with this treacherous monarch efficiently, cut off his head, I assume he means, you could have prevented all this suffering, all this war. And Parliament didn't want to hear it. Overton was arrested by Parliament a month later, obviously, directly for writing this, but the movement continues. It didn't stop anything. Parliament had conjured up, by creating the New Model Army, they'd conjured up a force they could no longer control. It quite literally had a will of its own. And the army acted decisively to secure its interests against Parliament. In July 1647, like I said before, the king was in, what's the word? He was in Parliament's custody, basically. The New Model Army sent 800 soldiers to where the king was being kept and they ordered him to come with them and they basically took him as their hostage. So the king being the ball was very much in their court. And then a month later, in August 1647, the New Model Army moved into London and basically held Parliament ransom, basically occupied London, just marched in, held the Parliament ransom basically. And now at this point, the army is asserted itself. It's very much in control of the situation. And basically with that, that dual power had been temporarily resolved. The army was where power lay. And this opens up the third phase of the revolution. Parliament are obviously absolutely bricking it at this stage. But Cromwell, who is probably quite worried as well, he still knows he has to use the ranks of the New Model Army as a battering ram against his moderate opponents in Parliament, because he was far more radical than most of them. Because he was actually quite a small landowner compared to the big, borderline Parliament. And this new period of dual power, well, it's not quite dual power, for reasons I'll explain later, but it's definitely two different political organisations. The masses as an independent political force organised through their agitators and the levelers are now winning a majority amongst those agitators. Coming into conflict with the commanding officers in the army who were like small property owners basically. And they were called the grandees. So you've got the grandees versus the levelers. This is basically the moderates versus the radicals, the property, middle classes versus the poor. And because Cromwell is getting a bit worried by this now as well, he does defeat his opponents in Parliament. But he organised something called the Putney debates to basically channel all this political debate that's happening amongst the rank and file soldiers. He wants to channel it into safe channels, put it in plain sight basically. And this is the Putney debates. Putney is in West London now, but before it was just outside of London. And basically the level leaders brought to the table a document that they wanted to be the manifesto of the army and basically the manifesto for the way the country would be run. And it was called an agreement of the people of England. I'll just call it the agreement of the people. And the demands they were putting forward were basically for a republic. So getting rid of the king and what they would call this would be the Commonwealth. Obviously it never ended up becoming wealth in common for most people, but that was the kind of vision that had a common wealth for a republic. They wanted male suffrage, so every man to have the vote. Freedom of religion. Parliaments to be elected every year at least, which like I said, we still haven't managed to get. The right of recall of all officials, which again, we still don't have now. Accountability, that's basically tied in with the right of recall. They were against the conscription to fight for a cause you don't believe in. So that's really advanced stuff. The right to a jury. The right to remain silent. So basically the Fifth Amendment, this is a way before the American Revolution. A quality boy before the law. Freedom of movement. And then these last three, free trade, no tariffs, and an equal rate of taxation. So you can see these last ones in particular, they're not proletarian demands because the proletariat, as we know, it didn't really exist yet as a proper class. It's basically the program of the small trader, the small peasant, the apprentice who aspired to be a legitimate trader or whatever. And this was the document they were basically debating. And it ended with the line, and if any person shall by force of arms disturb elections of representatives, he shall incur the penalty of a riot. So it's quite clearly revolutionary stuff here. And really advanced demands for the time. And in the debates, the grandees are obviously arguing against this document. And the main ways they're arguing against it is firstly with the argument of legalism, basically. Saying, you know, we have certain, they call them engagements. We have certain legal obligations and duties and stuff like that. And we implemented this document, these policies, they'd be unconstitutional. They'd go against our obligations and our engagements and our duties. And one of the main spokesmen of the levelers, a guy called John Wildman, he dismissed this argument as follows. He says, our very laws were made by our conquerors. We are now engaged for our freedom. That should be the role of parliaments, not to constitute what is already established, but to act accordingly to justice. Every person in England has as clear a right to elect his representatives as does the greatest person in England. And he's backed up by a guy called Thomas Rainsborough, who I would say is the best leveler leader, Thomas Rainsborough. He backs him up by saying, even if there are laws which the people have always been under, if the people find that they are not suitable as they are, I know no reason that should deter me for endeavoring by all means to gain anything that might be of more advantage to them than the government under which they live. So that makes it pretty clear, it's not about the law, it's about me doing what I can to improve the lived experience of the ordinary people of England. And then the second argument that the Grandies are using to argue against the masses, against this document, is that they're saying that they can't give men of no property the vote because that would lead to anarchy and that that would lead to the abolition of private property. And I mean, he's onto something there. It's not exactly true that that automatically happens if you give the property list a vote, but he is right in the fact that the property list will naturally draw conclusions to abolish private property. He definitely was onto something there. And anyway, he basically puts forward the point that, yes, all men have natural rights that God intended them to have, but not everyone is entitled to democratic rights. He argues that the right to representation and the right to power over the wealth and the lands of the kingdom is only the right of those who have staked it. They call this a fixed permanent interest, i.e. those that own property, that's their fixed permanent interest. Otherwise, he says any foreigner or any person with no permanent interest in the kingdom would have representation and power to destroy that wealth and take those lands, whatever. And Thomas Rainsborough dismisses this argument, brilliant me. He basically says that a lot of people in the army have been pursuing God's will in this war. They consider it to be God's will and they've lost their estates, they've lost their wealth all for the cause. And they're now deemed, because they've lost all their wealth for it, they're now deemed to have no permanent interest in the maintenance of the kingdom. So he's basically saying, if you follow this line of logic, what it does is it incentivizes men to prioritize maintaining their property over prioritizing maintaining God's will. And I quote him, he says, I say, what shall become of those many men that have laid out themselves for parliament of England in this present war? They have ruined themselves by fighting, by hazarding all that they had. They are Englishmen and they have now nothing to say for themselves. So the general ultimate and being put forward by Rainsborough is that it's ordinary people who've actually won this war and it should be them who benefit from the results of it. And he's basically saying also that the means justify the ends. Sorry, the ends justify the means. If the ends are worthy, the means can be justified. And this sort of steely revolutionary conviction, that's the tradition that we should aim to follow, I think. It really gets to the heart of the matter, that this is a question of class interests and of social forces, not of legal semantics. And these are actually some of the main conclusions I wanna draw from this talk. One is that the masses must rely on their own revolutionary strength, not the law, which is written by the oppressors. And legalism is a barrier. Still the case today, it was a barrier used by the grandies then. And it's a barrier now. I've sat through Labour Party meetings where it's clear that everyone in the meeting wants to oppose. There's this big building being built in bricks and office blocks. No one wants it there. And they're like, demanding the councillors to oppose it in the council meetings. And we said, oh, sorry, we're not allowed to discuss this. We can't be seen to have any political, what's the word, political bias on whether this building gets bought. And it's like, what's the point in having a Labour councillor if you're not allowed to articulate the interests of the Labour members? It's a joke. And it's not just there, you'll see it everywhere. It's constantly used legalism as a barrier to people actually putting their own interests forward as a class. And we should argue that progress is actually driven despite the law, not because of it. Law is basically just putting into writing the power relations that actually already exist. It's just simply codifying and preserving the ruling class of that time. The whole process of class struggle and revolutions in particular is for a social force to burst through all legal barriers and assert their own power in concrete reality. Of course, the law can then be used. It can be a useful tool to preserve those gains and to codify them in writing. But the point is it's real material force and organisation that our power comes from. You've had about 30 minutes, Joe. Cool. Yeah, the point I'm trying to make is that our power and our rights, they come from the sword, not from the pen. That's something we should always remember. And the second conclusion that we can draw at this stage is about the way the process of a revolution develops. Consciousness in the masses develops extremely rapidly. People can draw conclusions that have been unthinkable. In the space of years or even months, the masses had drawn political conclusions that had been absolutely unthinkable before. I know they seem like ordinary democratic demands now, but at the time, that was not the case. That's an inherent aspect of consciousness. Through their own experience of the revolution, which then reaches higher levels and higher levels, and new class differences emerge through their own experience, political conclusions can be drawn extremely quickly, extreme radicalisation. And this then finds its organised expression in parties. As Trotsky said in a different document called The Class, The Party and the Leadership, he said, a leadership is shaped in the process of clashes between the different classes or the friction between the different layers within a given class. And that's precisely what the level has represented. They were the highest expression of the revolutionary consciousness of the masses pursuing an independent political programme. And the scale of their support, it wasn't just in the ranks of the army, it was throughout the masses, it was striking. And I'll try and outline how much support they had with a few examples. And it's best done, interestingly, in the period of counter-revolution when Cromwell and the Grandies were actually crushing the level of movement. That's when you really see some of the best examples of how much support they had. Because ultimately the levelers were defeated by the Grandies and what fired was a Cromwellian dictatorship. And you might be wondering, well, how were the levels defeated if they had so much support? So I'll try and explain, basically. In November, 1647, you had something called the Cork Bushfield Mutiny. Basically, after the Putney debates, various regiments were assembled by Cromwell and they were commanded to sign a document called the Heads of Proposals. This was basically the Grandies' manifesto for the army and they ordered these regiments to sign it. And at Cork Bushfield, they refused to. That's why it's called the Cork Bushfield Mutiny. Thomas Rainsbury was actually present there. And the soldiers, every single soldier, the whole regiment turned up, carrying copies of their own manifesto, an agreement of the people. And the troops turned up wearing banners that said the words, England's freedom, soldiers' rights. And one of Thomas Fairfax's, one of the generals, his officials approached them to try and sort of discipline them. He was stoned by the soldiers. They all lobbed stones at him. I don't know if he survives or not. But anyway, the soldiers were threatened with isolation and disbandment without back pay, basically, which is quite a severe threat for them. They were dependent on their wages. And another important thing is actually a lot of their wages have been withheld. So not only would they not receive their pay, which was enough of a threat as it is, but also, if they were disbanded, they'd lose their form of organization that actually made them a political force. They'd have to go back to earning a living to survive, which would require them splitting back up into the countryside, into the towns, as apprentices or journeymen or whatever. And they'd lose their political organization, their political strength. Ultimately, they surrendered in the face of this. And the leaders were arrested, and three were sentenced to death. A bit later on, some of the leading level has petitioned parliament for legal juries. And one third of all Londoners signed this petition, which shows you the level of support that these leading levelers had. And if a third of Londoners signed it, you can imagine there's a whole other portion that supported it, but never got their quill department, if you like, they never put their name to paper. In October 1648, Thomas Rainsborough was actually killed in a controversial attempted kidnapping. Now, I'm still not certain whether this was a royalist plot, which it was made out to look like, or whether it was a Cromwellian conspiracy to kill one of the leading levelers and get him out of the way. Either is perfectly believable, as far as I can see. And at his funeral later that year, thousands of warlords turned up, all wearing ribbons of sea green, which was a symbol of the levelers, and a bunch of the rosemary in their hats, which is another symbol of the levelers. So all the while, this repression of the level of movements happened. There's huge support coming out, but we have to understand that it wasn't exactly dual power in the sense that the levelers weren't in open conflict with the grandees. There was more of a political discussion. There was still huge respect that people had for Cromwell. And he was constantly reinforcing his legitimacy as a revolutionary leader. For example, by executing, but he tried and executed Charles for treason against the people in January, 69, which would have given him huge revolutionary legitimacy, but also would have made him, again, if you can sit at the time, sort of made him seem like this absolutely unbelievably powerful figure that he could put a king to death, basically. He purged parliament of all the Presbyterian moderates who were absolutely hated, so that gave him even more legitimacy. And also he'd led the soldiers in war brilliantly and bravely, so he's hugely respected. And then in February, 1649, and riding this wave of revolutionary legitimacy, he carried out an act of parliament called the Council of State, which was basically a council that replaced the king's council with a new council of the bourgeoisie. And Cromwell was its chairman. This is where he becomes the new head of state. And this basically banned insurrections, this act of parliament, it banned insurrections or any sort of resistance. It banned democracy in the army. It enforced all authority to come from parliament. It was basically a direct attack on the rank and file of the new model army. Basically, everything that they'd done and all the methods that they used to be successful in this revolution so far were now deemed to be illegal. And the last thing that Cromwell did to effectively defeat the levelers is he deployed loads of the most radical regiments over to Ireland to put down the Catholic uprisings that were happening there. And this was very effective for Cromwell, but some of the regiments actually did refuse. There was something called the Bishop Gate Mutiny and the Bambry Mutiny, where they were ordered to go and they refused. And given the level of hate for Catholics at the time, that also shows how these religious identity barriers can be broken down on the basis of class solidarity. I can't really go into that too much. And ultimately they were persuaded to surrender through the same threats and punishment was swiftly dealt out. So you can see that not only did they have extreme support, it was a contradictory process. So did Cromwell and he was successful in question. The last point to make is also that this had never been done but these were completely new ideas and this vision that the level of movement had. This idea of democracy and rights and this vision for the future. It wasn't actually something, it wasn't a reality that ever actually known. So it's easier to fight a revolutionary struggle to the death for rights you've already secured that are being stripped away from you than things you've never known anyway, basically. And so this brings me to the last main lesson. What was the role of the bourgeoisie? What is the role of the bourgeoisie in general? The bourgeoisie became the ruling class through this process but they were never a majority. They never have been a majority and they're certainly not now. And so in order to become the ruling class, well firstly they had to carry out a violent revolution. That's something they try and sweep under the carpet. But secondly they had to use the masses. They needed the masses to execute the king to assert their authority, to sweep out the moderates from parliament. And then what they needed was an authoritarian ruler to crush the working poor, crush the very people who'd helped them carry out the revolution and cement their position as the ruling class. This is a phenomenon that Marxist called Bonapartism. Because that was the role that Bonaparte played in the French Revolution. And that's the role that Cromwell played in the English Revolution. And the same fundamental process took place in the American Revolution as well but it has less of a clear figurehead. And then the bourgeoisie, they try and distort this history for example by condemning Cromwell as some villain and some authoritarian, which he was from the perspective of the working poor. But the factor of the matter is that the bourgeois need a Cromwell. They need a Bonaparte to carry out suppression. Even suppression of some of their own class temporarily in order to cement their ultimate rule as the new ruling class. And then they look back on this history. They look back at their own reflection and disgust basically and try to distance themselves from it. In order to basically hide the lessons of history, hide the lessons of history from the class that they've suppressed under their heel. And that's what we have to bring back to life basically. So even though the levelers were defeated, changes have taken place that could never be undone. And most importantly, the ideas of the levelers would never go away. Capitalism, which was only just being born at this stage, it would be plagued by similar revolutionary movements for the rest of its history. Charterism being a key example in Britain, but everywhere you look, this is the history of capitalist revolutionary struggles of the downtrodden masses against the bourgeoisie. And now I can't finish, I should finish, I can't finish without talking about the diggers very briefly. Because although the diggers never became a mass movement at the time, like the levelers, they talked about just as widely today. And the reason for that... I've got 14 minutes, Joe. Okay, I'll be two more. The reason that they talked about just as widely today is because they're even more relevant today than the levelers, and even more relevant today than they were then. And that's because they had explicitly communist ideas. The most famous of the diggers was a guy called Gerard Winstanley, and is writing heavily influenced later socialist, deutopian socialists. And here's a quote that explains Winstanley's communism. The earth is to be planted and the fruits reaped by the assistance of every family. If any family want corn or other provisions, they may go to the storehouses and fetch without money. If they want a horse to ride, go into the fields in summer. The reason why all the riches of the earth should be common stock is this, because the earth and the labor thereupon are managed by common assistance of every family. So you can see a primitive form of communism here and of a labor theory of value. They know that's where the actual value in society comes from. These are the most advanced ideas at the time. But they never connected with the mass movement. And this is a good example of how not any idea can not take hold at any one time. It requires a certain material basis. But it shows us that communist ideas, they're not the invention plucked out of Marx's imagination. They emerge almost naturally, I would say, from the dispossessed, from the property list. It's not surprising that people without property look to a future where property is communal or essentially private property doesn't exist, basically by default. And at that time, only a minority were completely properless. Most labor was based on owning your own tools, your own workshop, or a small piece of land. But what the English Revolution did is it laid the basis for capitalist development. And through capitalist development, the working class was formed as the vast majority of the population who were now properless workers. And this is what Marx means when he says capitalism creates its own grave diggers. So again, as capitalism was being born, we don't only see a glimpse of the struggles that it would be plagued by, but we see a glimpse of its demise in the demise of a workers' revolution and the establishment of communism. So the achievement of Marxism was to take the ideas of the diggers and of Gerard and Stanley, to put them on a scientific basis. And the working class has now been formed, which basically creates the material basis for these ideas to not just be a vision for the future, but to be a reality for genuine freedom and for a genuine Commonwealth for the working class in Britain and throughout the world. Cheers.