Category: Levellers
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A New Agreement of the People
Given that this blog takes it’s name from the sea-green ribbon of the Levellers, I ought to note that we are currently going through the 360th anniversary of the Putney Debates. Gordon Brown’s speech on liberty gave a brief mention to the Seventeenth Century radical tradition, but passed over this first attempt to give England…
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The Levellers and British identity
Interesting piece on Levellers Day from historian Tristram Hunt: Yesterday, I joined Tony Benn and a large crowd in the Cotswolds to commemorate these martyrs to democracy. Organised by the Workers’ Educational Association, the Levellers’ Day festival remains one of the few living monuments to Britain’s hidden heritage of democracy. But why does Burford hold…
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Robertson on the Tyrannicide Brief
openDemocracy has an interview with Geoffrey Robertson QC, about his book on John Cooke, the Seventeenth Century lawyer who prosecuted Charles I. Charlie Devereux: Do you think that the tyrannicide brief can be used as a precedent to prosecute modern-day tyrants? Can it be cited? Geoffrey Robertson: We’ve moved on 350 years and the tyrannicide…
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Thomas Davis – The Cromwellian connection
Slugger O’Toole picked up an interesting letter from the Irish News last week, about the Nineteenth Century Irish patriot Thomas Davis. Davis – the descendant of a Cromwellian soldier – knew what he was talking about when he told his Catholic fellow countrymen that “if you would liberate Ireland and keep it free, you must…
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An English republican in Ireland
Tony Blair may be a lawyer, and married to a human rights lawyer, but that hasn’t stopped him having some harsh words for the judiciary in recent weeks. “For eight years I have battered the criminal justice system to get it to change,” he told the Labour Party conference last month, claiming improbably that “the…
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The Tyrannicide Brief
Geoffrey Roberston QC is set to publish a new biography of John Cooke, the lawyer who prosecuted Charles I. Charles I waged civil wars that cost one in ten Englishmen their lives. But in 1649 parliament was hard put to find a lawyer with the skill and daring to prosecute a King who was above…