Oliver Cromwell

1599 - 1658

OLIVER CROMWELL died on 3rd September 1658. Cromwell, the MP for Huntingdon, was the leading Parliamentary commander during the English Civil War which began in 1642 and ended in 1649 with the trial and execution of Charles Stuart and the abolition of the monarchy. The Republic of England, or Commonwealth as it was usually styled in English, was proclaimed soon after.
    In 1653 Cromwell became head of state, the Lord Protector. By then the republic Cromwell led included England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, as well as colonies in New England and the Caribbean.
    During its short life the Commonwealth became a force in Europe. Culturally it inspired the great poetry of John Milton and Andrew Marvell and other radical and pacifist religious movements such the Quakers who are still with us today. Oliver Cromwell was succeeded by his son Richard, who was neither a politician nor a soldier. Unable to reconcile republican generals with the demands of the rich merchants and landowners to curb the influence of the New Model Army, Richard Cromwell resigned the following year. The government collapsed. The monarchy was restored in 1660 and the New Model Army was dissolved.
    These days most bourgeois historians simply dismiss Cromwell as an upstart general who made himself dictator through his command of the army. But Marxists have always recognised the historic role of Cromwell and the English Revolution.
    It was, of course, a bourgeois revolution and one that by Cromwell’s terms failed. But the monarchy that came back wasn’t the autocracy Charles Stuart had imagined. The rich merchants and land-owners who wanted an oligarchy were the ultimate victors. They got their “mixed monarchy” when they dumped the last Stuart king in 1688 and put the House of Orange on the throne.
    The English revolution clearly influenced the thinking of the leaders of the later American and French revolutions and the ideas of the Victorian co-operator, Robert Owen. But the question of the monarchy and the House of Lords remains unresolved.

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

1599 -- 1658

That 'tis the most which we deteremine can

If these the Times, then this must be the Man

Andrew Marvell
1621-1678

by Andy Brooks

OLIVER CROMWELL, the leader of the bourgeois English Revolution, died on 3rd September 1658. Stricken by a malarial fever that proved to be fatal the Lord Protector willed himself to live until his auspicious day – the day his first parliament met in 1654. The day he smashed the Scottish Royalists at the battle of Dunbar in 1650 and forced the young Charles Stuart to run for his life the following year when the Royalists were routed at the battle of Worcester.

Cromwell led the parliamentary forces to victory in the civil war which began in 1642 and ended with the trial and execution of the king, Charles Stuart, in 1649. He presided over the establishment of the Republic of England, or Commonwealth as it was styled in English, and in 1653 he became head of state, or Lord Protector. Cromwell’s death was marked by genuine mourning throughout the country. His state funeral was the biggest London had ever seen. Two years later the Stuart royalty were back.

Today Cromwell’s death passes largely unnoticed but Oliver is not quite forgotten.

Marie Lloyd, the Victorian musical hall queen, sang about “the ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit”. Elvis Costello wrote Oliver’s Army, a sardonic song about the modern British Army in 1979, and a radical punk rock band took the name of Cromwell’s New Model Army for their own. The name of Cromwell is preserved in the streets of London. Countless books, and articles have been written about his life as well as two feature films and a number of television documentaries and every year enthusiasts re-enact the major battles of the civil war.

The Quakers we meet on the peace demonstrations were founded by George Fox, whose pacifist beliefs were borne out of the violence of the revolution. Robert Owen, the founder of the Co-operative Movement, and William Morris, the Victorian socialist and artist, were both influenced by the writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the leader of the Diggers, the “True Levellers” whose attempt to establish co-operative farms in Surrey and other parts of the country were suppressed during the Commonwealth.

Irish nationalists call Cromwell a brutal English invader while many Protestants still see him as a religious reformer who fought for freedom of conscience for all faiths apart from Catholicism. And the Jewish community still remembers Cromwell as the leader who allowed Jews to live, worship and work in England for the first time since the pogroms of 1290.

But for the bourgeoisie Oliver is best forgotten, even though their ascendancy began when their ancestors took up the gun in the 1640s.

The ruling class abhor revolutionary change today because it threatens their own domination, so they naturally deny that their class ever came to power through it in the first place. For them the English republic is an aberration, a temporary blip in the steady advance of bourgeois progress, which is the myth they teach us in school. If they elevate anything at all it is the ‘glorious revolution’ of 1688, when the last of the Stuarts was deposed and replaced by a king of their own choosing. Though not as bloodless as they claimed – plenty was shed in Ireland – the establishment of a monarchy that was the gift of Parliament was achieved without the involvement of the masses, which was precisely what was intended.

For romantic socialists Cromwell represents the well-to-do Puritan merchants and landowners who dominated the Army Council – the Grandees who crushed the Levellers and the rest of the democratic movement in the army. But Marxists always recognised the historic role of Cromwell. In 1948 British communist leader Harry Pollitt said: “When the growing capitalist class, the poor farmers and craftsmen, led by Oliver Cromwell, shattered the system of feudalism, and executed King Charles I in the process, reigning monarchs and ruling nobilities everywhere saw the pattern of future history unfolding. The name of Cromwell was reviled, then, as much as Stalin’s is today, by the ruling powers of the old and doomed order of society.

“The English Revolution is ‘great’, because it broke the barriers to man’s advance. It allowed the capitalist class to open the road leading to modern large-scale industry. It permitted science to serve the needs of the new, capitalist society. And, because of these developments, it provided the basis on which, for the first time, a new class, the working class, began to grow, to organise and itself to challenge the prevailing system of society.

“Capitalism, at first progressive, in so far as it led the way for technical advance, developed to the point limited by its own structure. It became, as feudalism was before it, a barrier to the further advance of man. It ceased to serve a useful purpose. It had built up enormous productive forces, but was incapable of providing the majority of the people with a decent standard of life.

“Throughout the world, the working class, with the Communist Party at its head, now goes forward to put an end to capitalism and to build socialism. The English Revolution set this train of historic events in motion. That is why our Party is proud to honour its memory.”

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

1599 – 1658

OLIVER CROMWELL, the leader of the bourgeois English Revolution, died on 3rd September 1658. Cromwell, the MP for Huntingdon, was the leading Parliamentary commander during the English Civil War, which began in 1642 and ended in 1649 with the trial and execution of Charles Stuart and the abolition of the monarchy. The Republic of England, or Commonwealth as it was usually styled in English, was proclaimed soon after.

In 1653 Cromwell became head of state, the Lord Protector. By then the republic Cromwell led included England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, as well as colonies in New England and the Caribbean.

During its short life the Commonwealth became a force in Europe. Culturally it inspired the great poetry of John Milton and Andrew Marvell and other radical and pacifist religious movements such the Quakers who are still with us today. Oliver Cromwell was succeeded by his son Richard, who was neither a politician nor a soldier. Unable to reconcile republican generals with the demands of the rich merchants and landowners to curb the influence of the New Model Army, Richard Cromwell resigned the following year. The government collapsed. The monarchy was restored in 1660 and the New Model Army was dissolved.

These days most bourgeois historians simply dismiss Cromwell as an upstart general who made himself dictator, a “king in all but name,” through the might of his New Model Army. But Marxists have always recognised the historic role of Cromwell and the English Revolution

Engels said in 1844 that: “…because the English embodied within them both the elements which were responsible for historical progress on the Continent, they were therefore able, even without having much contact with the Continent, to keep abreast of development there and at times even to be ahead of it.

“The English revolution of the seventeenth century provides the exact model for the French one of 1789. In the “Long Parliament” the three stages which in France took the form of Constituent and Legislative Assembly and National Convention, are easy to distinguish; the transition from constitutional monarchy to democracy, military despotism, restoration and juste-milieu [happy medium] revolution [The French revolution of July 1830] is sharply delineated in the English revolution. Cromwell is Robespierre and Napoleon rolled into one; the Presbyterians, Independents and Levellers correspond to the Gironde, the Montagnards and the Hébertists and Babeuvists; in both cases the political outcome is rather pitiable, and the whole parallel, which could be elaborated in much greater detail incidentally also proves that a religious and an irreligious revolution, as long as they remain political, will in the final analysis amount to the same thing.

“Admittedly, this lead the English had over the Continent was only temporary and was gradually evened out again; the English revolution ended in juste-milieu and the creation of two national parties, whilst the French one is not yet complete and cannot be so until it achieves the result which the German philosophical and the English social revolutions have to achieve as well”.