***The Once And Future King- “The King’s Speech”-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film The King’s Speech.

The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth, Helen Bonham Carter, directed by Tom Hooper, 2010

No question Mr. Darcy (oops) Colin Firth deserved every accolade, including the coveted Oscar, for his performance as the stammering King George VI (the current monarch’s father). Anyone from king to kid (including this writer) who has had even a passing acquaintance with stammering can relate to the story line here, and the sheer talent necessary for an actor to convincingly produce such a realistic portrayal (especially that climatic pep talk speech to the empire). And hats off to Geoffrey Rush as the unorthodox tutor who sees the king through his travails. However, at the end of the day and as the good king himself was painfully aware, good republican that I am I was left with the gnawing feeling that the monarchy
(and the monarch) portrayed add nothing to our accumulated historical experience. Old Oliver Cromwell and his boys had it right in 1649-and it hasn’t been right since 1660.

***At The Birth Of Modern Revolutions- Professor Ashton’s “Civil War In England: Conservatism and Revolution 1603-1649”

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the 17th century English Revolution as background for this review.

Book Review

The Civil War In England:Conservatism and Revolution-1603-1649, Robert Ashton, W.W. Norton&Co., 1978

No question for the modern radical movement the French Revolution of the 18th century is more important as a source of historical examples than the subject of the book, The Civil War In England:Conservatism and Revolution- 1603-1649, under review. However, equally true, and especially for those of us readers in America, particularly New England, the mid-17th century English holds many important examples and lessons. Those lessons center on the various plebeian movements, religious and secular, Levellers, Diggers, shakers, quakers, ranters and chanters, and the like. And the preeminent authority in the field on those matters was the valuable work of Professor Christopher Hill. Also kudos to Professors Brailsford, Tawney and, grudgingly to Professor Trevor-Roper.

Those movements, however, while historically important for later movements, were other than for a brief period, and under trying circumstances, not decisive to the events that drove the English revolution. And that premise, while probably not palatable to Professor Hill, as Professor Ashton acknowledged, is what drives the narrative here, the very fluent and smooth-running narrative of this book. Professor Ashton traces some general trends from the rise of the House of Stuart in England under James I in 1603 to the execution of his son, Charles I, in 1649. Some of those trends included the intensified struggle between Parliament and the royal line to control the political terrain. Other trends like the shifting relationship between “court and country,” the escalation of foreign entanglements (especially the continental wars and the relations with the Scots), the ever present issue of religious toleration and state church authority, the conflicting attempts to extend the authority of the central government (royal or parliamentary, as the case may be), and an analysis of the issues that divided English society up to the start of the civil war get full coverage.

For my money though the real value of Professor Ashton’s book is the period of actual civil conflict, arms in hand, from roughly 1642 to that fatal 1649 date. He does an excellent of analysis of the conflicts between the various social, parliamentary and religious factions (sometimes one and the same personnel), the shifting of the factions over time as new and thorny issues of governmental authority arose, the rise and fall of King Charles’ fortunes, and other details that make this a smooth flowing and informative narrative. The highlights are the various faction fights over how and when to treat with the king, his perfidious (and self-defeating) policies and the almost fatalistic drive to the execution. Moreover the section of the relationship between the various factions in the New Model Army (and their civilian Leveller supporters) provided some useful information not previously known to this reviewer.

As usual with an academic specialty book there are plenty of propositions presented that are subject to scholarly challenge as well as subjects, for example, the weight of New Model Army chaplains (many itinerant) and their followers in the political struggles from 1647 to the execution that can be expanded on. An extensive bibliography and many pages of useful footnotes will also aid in those efforts.

***Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- For The Frontline Fighters of The Occupy Movement- Gerrard Winstanley's "The Digger's Song"-From Your Forebears On Saint George's Hill(1649)- And a Cautionary Note

Click on the title to link to a YouTube film clip of The Digger's Song.

Markin comment:

No, today I am not going to beat you over the head with a screed about how music, in whatever form, is not the revolution. You know that already, and if not life itself should have disabused you of that notion long ago. Music, however, has always had an important place in the history of progressive movements as a way to rouse the troops and keep the faith. I think back to the days of Cromwell’s plebeian New Model Army, singing New Testament psalms, while going off to do battle against England’s King Charles I’s royalist forces that started the whole modern revolutionary movement. Or the songs of the French revolution. Or those of the modern labor movement like “The Internationale”. I could go on, but you get the point.

In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

Markin comment on this song:

This is one of the greatest hits of the '40s-the 1640s- Hats off to Gerrard Winstanley and his band of primative communists, the Diggers, up on St. George's Hill. We will never forget you.
********
You Noble Diggers All (The Diggers' Song)
[Words Gerrard Winstanley]

Gerrard Winstanley (1609 - September 10, 1676) was an English Protestant religious reformer and political activist during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. Winstanley was aligned with the group known as the True Levellers for their beliefs, based upon Christian communism, and as the Diggers for their actions because they took over public lands and dug them over to plant crops. [source: Wikipedia]

Winstanley's rallying song was sung by Leon Rosselson with Roy Bailey and Sue Harris, and accompanied by Martin Carthy on guitar, on Rosselson's 1979 album If I Knew Who the Enemy Was. Twenty years later, it was included in Harry's Gone Fishing.

In 2007, Chumbawamba sang the Diggers' Song on their live CD Get on With It.

Lyrics- The Digger's Song

You noble Diggers all, stand up now, stand up now,
You noble Diggers all, stand up now,
The waste land to maintain, seeing Cavaliers by name
Your digging do distain and your persons all defame
Stand up now, Diggers all.

Your houses they pull down, stand up now, stand up now,
Your houses they pull down, stand up now.
Your houses they pull down to fright poor men in town,
But the gentry must come down and the poor shall wear the crown.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

With spades and hoes and ploughs, stand up now, stand up now,
With spades and hoes and ploughs, stand up now.
Your freedom to uphold, seeing Cavaliers are bold
To kill you if they could and rights from you withhold.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

Their self-will is their law, stand up now, stand up now,
Their self-will is their law, stand up now.
Since tyranny came in they count it now no sin
To make a gaol a gin and to serve poor men therein.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

The gentry are all round, stand up now, stand up now,
The gentry are all round, stand up now.
The gentry are all round, on each side they are found,
Their wisdom's so profound to cheat us of the ground.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

The lawyers they conjoin, stand up now, stand up now,
The lawyers they conjoin, stand up now,
To arrest you they advise, such fury they devise,
But the devil in them lies, and hath blinded both their eyes.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

The clergy they come in, stand up now, stand up now,
The clergy they come in, stand up now.
The clergy they come in and say it is a sin
That we should now begin our freedom for to win.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

'Gainst lawyers and 'gainst priests, stand up now, stand up now,
'Gainst lawyers and 'gainst Priests, stand up now.
For tyrants are they both even flat against their oath,
To grant us they are loath free meat and drink and cloth.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

The club is all their law, stand up now, stand up now,
The club is all their law, stand up now.
The club is all their law to keep poor folk in awe,
Buth they no vision saw to maintain such a law.
Glory now, Diggers all.