Civil War - Political Radicalism
The civil war brought death and disruption to many people, but it also provoked a questioning of many of the assumptions upon which society was based. The authority of the king was being challenged in the field, the Church of England was under sustained attack by Puritans and radical religious sects proliferated. The familiar rituals of the year were also under attack, even the subordinate position of women was being questioned. Some greeted this upheaval and questioning with enthusiasm; many regarded it as a great threat to the established, divinely ordained, structures and norms of society.
Since its inception the New Model had had a distinct character based, initially, on Cromwell’s determination that it should be recruited as far as possible from the ranks of ‘well affected’ Independents. Having fought side by side in 1645 and 1646 and been victorious, the officers and men soon found they had a common cause in resisting Parliamentary attempts to disband them. The soldiers’ grievances and sense of purpose coincided with the radical political programmes being put forward by the Levellers in 1647. John Wildman worked with the agitators at Putney to articulate the grievances of the rank-and-file soldiers against the high command of the New Model called the Grandees. Through its links with the army the Levellers achieved influence far above that it could have attained otherwise
Levellers
Levellers were political radicals associated with John Lilburne, Richard Overton and William Walwyn. The term "Levellers" was coined by their enemies to imply that they favoured the abolition of property rights and the equalisation of wealth, which they strenuously denied — unlike the Diggers or "True Levellers". The Leveller program included religious toleration, reform of the law, free trade, an extended franchise, rights guaranteed under a written constitution and a government answerable to the People rather than to King or Parliament.
The movement started in London and the surrounding areas by middle ranking civilians. In October 1645 Walwyn published England's Lamentable Slaverie in which he stated that Parliament's authority derived from the people who elected it and that Parliament should be answerable directly to them. This was restated in A Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens, published by Overton and Walwyn in July 1646, along with calls for the dissolution of the present House of Commons, the abolition of the House of Lords, religious toleration, equality before the law and an ending of trade monopolies. The Remonstrance also expounded the theory of the "Norman yoke", which maintained that the English had enjoyed full constitutional rights and liberties until the Norman conquest, and that William the Conqueror and his successors were tyrannical usurpers.
Leveller ideas took hold in the New Model Army in 1647 the military Levellers adopted A Solemn Engagement of the Army and succeeded in setting up an Army Council where representatives of the common soldiers sat alongside the senior officers. The Case of the Armie Truly Stated called for a new constitution, in contrast to the Grandee Henry Ireton's Heads of Proposals which outlined a basis for a constitutional monarchy. The military Levellers supported the civilian Agreement of the People, leading to the Putney Debates of October-November 1647 between the Levellers and the Grandees.
Oliver Cromwell kept control of the Army during the Second Civil War and throughout the trial and execution of the King. With the establishment of the Commonwealth, however, the Levellers soon came into conflict with the Council of State. Lilburne, Overton, Walwyn and others were imprisoned in March 1649 for publishing England's New Chains Discovered.
Unrest amongst the Levellers in the Army, fanned by opposition to the Council of State's plans for the invasion of Ireland, led to the Leveller mutinies of April and May 1649. These were quickly and efficiently suppressed by Thomas Fairfax and Cromwell. Without the support of the Army, Leveller influence faded very quickly. It had ceased to exist as an organised movement by the end of 1649.
After the establishment of the Protectorate in December 1653, some of the most radical of the former Levellers and Agitators became involved in conspiracies to overthrow the Cromwellian régime, which they regarded as a betrayal of the principles for which the civil wars had been fought.
Many Leveller ideas were far in advance of their time; their legacy has been claimed as an influence by all shades of political opinion. The Levellers made full use of the printing press to circulate pamphlets and petitions, effectively developing the first mass political propaganda techniques to be used in Britain. A weekly newspaper, The Moderate, ran from July 1648 until its suppression in October 1649, co-ordinating Leveller supporters across the country.
Diggers
The Diggers called themselves "True Levellers" The Digger agenda of the "levelling of all estates" — i.e. the abandonment of private property rights — was too radical a step for the Levellers.
Gerald Winstanley was a leadin Digger who was inspired by a vision of communal cultivation of the land and an ending of property rights, which he outlined in his tract: The New Law of Righteousness. Similar ideas were arising spontaneously around the country. A Digger community in Buckinghamshire published a tract entitled Light Shining in Buckinghamshire in December 1648.
Winstanley attempted to put into practice his ideals for a utopian communistic society, but the Surrey Diggers were persecuted by local landowners and clergymen. The Council of State sent soldiers to break up the community and the Diggers were taken to court accused of trespassing.
In 1652 Winstanley published The Law of Freedom in a Platform in which he proposed the introduction of his utopian commonwealth by state action. Though dedicated to Cromwell, Winstanley's approach to the rights of the common man over the rights of landowners had little influence during the Commonwealth and Protectorate
The Impact of the Movements on Politics of the Cromwellian Period
The Leveller movement was not a political party in the modern sense with manefestoes. In today's venacular they may have been seen as a pressure group cum Think Tank, but it was a repository for radical thinking where lots of different ideas and concerns revolved around. Some concentrated on religious freedom while others focused on widening the franchise and often they would disagree amongst themselves.
As for the Diggers all their communities failed and Winstanley later conformed to the restored Church of England and died in a Quaker burial ground. However, it is impact on late 19th Century and 20th Century Socialist thinking that is influence is now seen.
The movements were relatively short-lived. They blossomed quickly and brightly but the blooms quickly faded. There was really not much they could feed into in the late 1640's. The conservatism of Cromwell silenced many such as John Lilburne, while the popular support they enjoyed fro the people ebbed under the relentless disruption of high taxes, civil strife and the like. The population, once fired up over religious conformity to the Church and the intransigence of the king, now hankered for peace, normality and the good old days of the peaceful 1630's. With their power base rapidly shrinking many of these political thinkers found a home in the Quaker movement.
