The English Revolution still causes significant unease among the British establishment nearly four centuries later. The monarchy abolished in 1649 was quickly restored, the republic removed from history, and Oliver Cromwell’s image flattened into a mere caricature of a killjoy who “cancelled Christmas.” The most transformative decade in English history has been domesticated, diminished, and pushed to the sidelines of national memory.

Notably, a new major history of the Cromwells portrays them not as agents of social upheaval but as a “dynasty”: a family like the Tudors or Stuarts, driven by marriage, ambition, and inheritance. This framing is more than a narrative choice; it signals a broader ideological shift in current historiography, moving away from class, revolution, and social struggle toward a focus on the personal, domestic, and genealogical.

Miranda Malins, trustee of the Cromwell Association and author of two historical novels about Cromwell’s daughters, has embarked on a truly ambitious project. The House of Cromwell: Power, Family and the Making of Modern Britain explores the family lineage over two centuries, connecting Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief minister, with his distant relative Oliver, and tracing their family from a Putney brewhouse to the heights of political influence and back. The research is extensive; Diarmaid MacCulloch, a leading biographer of Thomas Cromwell, has praised the book warmly. Its focus on the family’s women, a group often overlooked by historians, will attract many readers and undoubtedly add depth to the biography.

The book’s core idea, highlighted in its subtitle and throughout its promotion, is that “family mattered above all else,” emphasising that understanding the Cromwells requires understanding their family. However, this premise needs to be challenged. While family ties certainly influenced Thomas, Oliver, and others, genealogy alone cannot fully explain their historical importance. Instead, their significance stems from their roles in the revolutionary changes in English society. Viewing the Crawleys as a “dynasty” swaps cause and effect: their family connections gained historical importance because they were linked to the emergence of a new social class, not because the family held inherent political power.

The irony of the Putney connection highlights the core issue. Putney, Thomas Cromwell’s birthplace, was also the site of the 1647 Putney Debates. During these debates, ordinary soldiers and Leveller leaders challenged army leaders Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton about the nation’s future. Colonel Thomas Rainsborough declared that “the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he,” which Ireton countered by arguing that political rights depend on “a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom,” meaning property. In that church on the Thames, the revolution’s class conflicts were revealed. Whatever the Ireton–Cromwell marriage’s other implications, it was fundamentally a political alliance of the propertied class versus the common people who fought.

Viewing Ireton mainly as a son-in-law, rather than as the leading theorist challenging bourgeois property, reduces the revolution to mere family drama. It shifts the focus from sovereignty, representation, and property to domestic stability. The Cromwells did not transform Britain solely through family ties; rather, their family connections gained historical significance because they were linked to the rise of a new social order.

Malins’s framing faces a key problem. While a connection exists between Thomas Cromwell and Oliver Cromwell, it is not a direct family line. Instead, it reflects broader shifts in property relations such as the dissolution of monasteries, the rise of the gentry and merchant classes, the expansion of capitalist agriculture, the assertion of parliamentary authority, and the revolutionary end of feudal absolutism. Reducing this history to a story about a “house” or “dynasty” misses the very processes that made the Cromwells historically significant.

Putney: The Forgotten Battleground of Class

The connection to Putney carries a poignant, revealing irony. Although Putney was Thomas Cromwell’s birthplace, it also witnessed one of England’s most remarkable political clashes. In the autumn of 1647, at St Mary’s parish church by the Thames, ordinary soldiers of the New Model Army and their Leveller leaders faced off against the army’s elite, including Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton, as they debated the country’s future constitution. The Putney Debates were not typical family discussions; they exposed the revolution’s profound social conflicts, with those who fought for Parliament questioning whether victory would serve them or the propertied classes leading them.

Colonel Thomas Rainsborough’s statement that “the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he” stands as one of the most radical expressions of democratic ideals in English history. This was not simply rhetorical; it reflected the hopes of thousands of soldiers, artisans, apprentices, and small producers who believed that toppling the king would bring about a change in political rights. They called for a voice in the nation proportional to their sacrifices. They insisted that political power must be based on the consent of everyone living under the government, not just landowners.

Ireton’s response was just as definitive. He asserted that political rights should be based on a lasting stake in the country, namely, property. Allowing those without land to vote would threaten the social order’s core, risking “anarchy,” “confusion,” and the downfall of the propertied classes. According to Ireton, the revolution wasn’t a push for democracy but rather a safeguard for property against the threat of popular sovereignty.

In that church, the revolution’s sharp class conflicts were exposed. The Levellers expressed the era’s most progressive democratic hopes. At the same time, the grandees defended their own interests: gentry, merchants, and rising landlords whose ascent had been driven by social changes Thomas Cromwell had initiated a century earlier. Beyond its political implications, the Ireton–Cromwell marriage symbolised an alliance between the revolution’s propertied class and the ruling elite, against the common people who had fought the battles.

The framing of The House of Cromwell is fundamentally misleading because it portrays Ireton mainly as a son-in-law rather than as the key theorist defending bourgeois property against the Levellers. This reverses cause and effect, reducing the revolution to a domestic story. It shifts focus from the battles over sovereignty, representation, and class power to family continuity. The Cromwells did not transform Britain simply through family ties; rather, their family bonds gained significance because they were linked to the emergence of a new social class.

Viewing the Cromwells as a “dynasty” misses the core point. Dynasties only matter when political power is passed down through hereditary succession. The Cromwells were significant because they disrupted this inheritance, not because of family ties. Oliver Cromwell’s authority stemmed from the organised strength of the New Model Army, a force made up mainly of men with no lasting vested interest in the kingdom. His power arose from a revolutionary upheaval, not from inheritance or lineage.

The Putney Debates highlight the folly of viewing the Cromwells as a family on par with the Tudors or Stuarts; unlike the hereditary rule of the Tudors and Stuarts, the Cromwells governed out of revolutionary necessity. Oliver’s refusal of the crown in 1657 and the Protectorate’s quick collapse after his son Richard’s brief rule show that the Cromwells were not a dynasty, but a temporary manifestation of class struggle that couldn’t be stabilised through hereditary succession. Once the immediate revolutionary threat was over, the bourgeoisie preferred restoring a monarchy they could control rather than risking a mobilised army and a politicised population.

Reducing this process to a “house” or “dynasty” story obscures the forces that made the Cromwells historically important. It shifts the focus from revolutionary change in English society to family drama, replacing class analysis with genealogy, political conflict with domestic stories, and revolutionary ruptures with familial ties.

The Putney Debates highlight that the English Revolution was not merely a family story. It centred on political power, property rights, and the rights of common people. Grasping the Cromwells is essential to understanding the revolution itself. Viewing them as a dynasty, however, risks obscuring the broader revolutionary significance.

Thomas Cromwell and the Transformation of Property

Thomas Cromwell’s career clearly exemplifies this. The dissolution of the monasteries, which he carried out with a harshness that even some of his peers found shocking, represented the largest transfer of land in English history before the Revolution. It was more than an administrative change or Tudor state-building; it caused social upheaval. In less than ten years, nearly a quarter of England’s land shifted from church ownership to secular control. The winners were not the traditional feudal aristocracy but the emerging gentry, merchants, lawyers, and city investors, who bought monastic lands cheaply and turned them into successful agricultural and commercial ventures.

This redistribution of land established the social class that would dominate English politics for the next century: landlords, commercial farmers, and London trading interests. It hastened the decline of feudal tenures, promoted market-focused agriculture, and strengthened the class whose interests would later influence Parliament and the New Model Army. Essentially, the dissolution served as the beginning of the bourgeois revolution. It transformed the economic landscape, eroded the foundations of the old order, and empowered the groups poised to challenge royal absolutism in the 1640s.

Understanding Thomas Cromwell’s importance involves grasping the shift in property relations. His policies not only enriched select families but also reshaped England’s class dynamics. The new landowners- many minor gentry or driven urban figures- became the foundation of the parliamentary movement a century later. They pushed for limits on royal power, opposed arbitrary taxes, invested in trade, and adopted the Puritan ethic, blending religious discipline with economic reason. Their perspective, formed through property ownership and market competition, laid the groundwork for the ideology behind the English Revolution.

The link between Thomas and Oliver is genuine, but it lies in this shift in property relations, not in family lineage. Their connection is rooted in the social changes Thomas helped shape, and Oliver later embodied. Thomas Cromwell helped shape the developing bourgeois order, while Oliver Cromwell led it militarily and politically during a revolutionary upheaval. Thus, their bond is based on history, not ancestry.

Viewing the Cromwells as a “dynasty” misses their true significance. Dynasties are relevant when power is passed down hereditarily. However, the Cromwells were significant because they disrupted traditional hereditary rule. Thomas Cromwell advanced through talent, ambition, and the opportunities of a transforming economy. At the same time, Oliver Cromwell gained power by mobilising a revolutionary army mostly composed of those who benefited from the dissolution. Their importance lies in breaking from established lineage, not in family succession.

The dissolution of the monasteries established the social class that would later oppose the monarchy; the New Model Army was the means by which that opposition was expressed. Tracing a family line between Thomas and Oliver misses the core issue. The true division lies in the development of capitalist property relations, the rise of the gentry and merchant classes, and the revolutionary end of feudal absolutism. It is a class line, not a familial one.

The framing of The House of Cromwell is flawed because it emphasises family continuity, which obscures the social forces behind the Cromwells’ historical importance. Thomas Cromwell was influential because he altered the economic base of English society. At the same time, Oliver Cromwell was significant for leading the political and military efforts that finalised these changes; seeing them as merely a “dynasty” risks obscuring the revolutionary aspects of their contributions.

The Revolution as Bourgeois Breakthrough

Marx and Engels viewed the English Revolution as the first major bourgeois revolution of the modern era, serving as the prototype for 1789. It marked the moment when emerging capitalist forces challenged and dismantled the declining feudal absolutist structures. They saw the execution of Charles I not as a religious or personal act but as a political expression of a deep shift in property relations. This revolution laid the foundation for capitalist growth, the creation of a national market, and the rise to dominance of the propertied middle classes. Ultimately, it was the crucial break that signalled the beginning of modern Britain.

Christopher Hill, a leading Marxist historian of that era, expanded this analysis by illustrating how Cromwell’s Puritanism reflected the worldview of the emerging middle class. More than just a religious sentiment, Puritanism was the ideological lens through which the gentry, merchants, and commercial farmers viewed their role in a transforming society. Its focus on discipline, thrift, hard work, and moral self-assessment echoed the developing capitalist values. Hill argued that Cromwell’s speeches, correspondence, and actions reflected this perspective. He was not a mere mystic but a political figure representing a class whose goals included dismantling feudal privileges and establishing a state to safeguard property and maintain social order.

However, Hill emphasised that the revolution unleashed forces far beyond the ruling elites’ intentions. The Levellers pushed for political democracy, while Gerrard Winstanley’s Diggers promoted communal land ownership. The Fifth Monarchists envisioned a millenarian societal transformation. These movements were not mere fringe ideas but reflected the hopes of the common people who drove the revolution. They suggested, though perhaps only briefly, that dismantling the monarchy could bring about a deeper societal overhaul.

Cromwell responded firmly. He quelled the Leveller uprisings, notably at Burford in 1649, where soldiers demanding democratic rights were killed by their commanders. He also dismantled Winstanley’s Digger communes, which sought to cultivate common land in violation of property laws. He also enforced discipline within the New Model Army to prevent it from becoming a tool for social upheaval. These measures were consistent with his character; they stemmed from the nature of the class Cromwell represented- a class that aimed to abolish feudalism but also feared the revolutionary masses it had fueled.

Any fair assessment of Cromwell’s influence must include Ireland. The massacres at Drogheda and Wexford, along with the large-scale confiscation of Irish lands that ensued, established the long-lasting foundations of British colonial dominance. The same revolution that facilitated capitalist growth domestically also ensured the subjugation of Ireland. This wasn’t driven by personal cruelty or virtue but by the logic of a class whose expansion depended on forcibly integrating Ireland into a new imperial framework. The violence seen in Ireland encapsulates the colonial aspect of the bourgeois revolution.

In his 1925 work ‘Where Is Britain Going?’, Leon Trotsky advised Labour Party leaders to study Cromwell instead of the Fabians. He believed Cromwell understood that major historical issues are resolved through the organised power of a revolutionary class, not parliamentary tricks. Trotsky did not seek to idolise the Lord Protector, whose revolution ultimately favoured property owners, but argued that the British working class should embrace the revolutionary legacy its rulers have tried to erase. After their own revolution, the bourgeoisie spent centuries hiding its violent and upheaval-filled origins rooted in class struggle. Reclaiming the essence of the English Revolution means understanding the real Cromwell- not as a dynastic figure, but as a complex symbol of a class whose victory changed the world.

The Ideological Function of “Dynasty” History

The ongoing burial signifies a shift in how historians study and understand history. Recent decades have seen a move away from focusing solely on class struggles towards exploring personal, domestic, and identity-related aspects. This has led to detailed research that sheds light on private lives, highlights marginalised voices, and deepens our grasp of everyday experiences. However, this approach also serves an ideological purpose. By framing major social conflicts as stories of individual psychology and family drama, it downplays the role of structural forces, making revolution appear as mere costume melodrama scenes of personal and household conflicts set against a vague political background. Consequently, the English Revolution is viewed less as a fight over sovereignty, property, and class, and more as a struggle of temperaments and domestic affairs.

The comparison between Malins’s book and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is quite insightful. Mantel, an exceptional novelist, vividly captures Thomas Cromwell’s inner world with deep psychological nuance. However, a historian must explain facts that a novelist dramatises. Mantel’s Cromwell is engaging because he is a fictional creation, a consciousness brought to life through imagination. Conversely, Malins’s Cromwells are depicted as historical figures whose importance rests on their family continuity. This shifts the historical novel’s techniques into the realm of historical analysis. The Cromwells are portrayed as characters in a multi-generational saga rather than active participants in a revolutionary process.

The idea that the Cromwells formed a “dynasty” akin to the Tudors or Stuarts warrants careful examination. Dynasties rely on hereditary succession, passing political power through bloodlines. However, Cromwell’s period in control was characterised by the collapse of hereditary legitimacy. Oliver Cromwell’s refusal of the crown in 1657 was not just an oddity; it recognised that his authority could not be secured through monarchical traditions. His power rested on the New Model Army, the revolutionary upheaval that dismantled the old order, and the temporary alignment of class forces that enabled his leadership. It was not founded on bloodline.

The swift fall of the Protectorate under his son Richard clearly illustrates this point. Although Richard Cromwell inherited the bloodline, he lacked the political support. He lacked the army’s confidence, the backing of the property-owning classes, and the authority that came from his father’s leadership in the revolutionary victory. His downfall was not a sign of a failing dynasty; it revealed that no dynasty had been established. The Protectorate was not a hereditary government but an unstable Bonapartist-like regime, teetering between the army, the wealthy classes, and the subdued radicals. It was a regime born from revolution rather than inheritance.

After the Protectorate fell, the bourgeoisie faced a dilemma. They could try to maintain the revolutionary army as a political force, risking the Leveller traditions, democratic unrest, and potential social chaos. Alternatively, they could restore a monarchy stripped of its absolutist powers, one they could control through Parliament, property laws, and financial influence. They chose the latter option. The 1688 settlement delivered exactly what they sought: a constitutional monarchy that protected property rights, ensured political stability, and prevented the army from acting as an independent revolutionary force.

Calling the Cromwells a “dynasty” misreads the revolution’s entire course. It imposes a familial continuity narrative on a process marked by rupture, conflict, and class struggle. It treats the Protectorate as just another form of monarchy, rather than a transitional regime emerging from revolutionary needs. This obscures how the bourgeoisie, after employing the army to dismantle the old order, quickly moved to neutralise it when its revolutionary promise became dangerous.

The shift towards family-centred history is not without political implications. By emphasising domestic life, emotional connections, and lineage, it diverts focus from the structural forces driving historical change. It prompts readers to view the past as a series of personal dramas rather than the result of social contradictions. This framing makes revolutions seem accidental, chance-dependent, and ultimately subordinate to family dynamics. For example, in the case of the Cromwells, it recasts a revolutionary upheaval into a story about generations- precisely the kind of narrative that allows the English Revolution to be remembered without fully understanding its complexities.

Family History Is Not Class History

None of these points diminishes the importance of recovering the stories of the Cromwell women or other lesser-known family members. Such details can deepen our understanding of the era, highlight the nuances of daily life, and help correct enduring historical biases. The domestic sphere mattered to the revolution; it shaped the experiences, restrictions, and opportunities of those involved. However, it should be viewed as part of the larger historical process, not a replacement for it. Family mattered to the Cromwells, as it did to everyone. What truly made their story significant to history was something else entirely.

Malins’s framing is problematic not because it focuses on the Cromwells’ private lives, but because it makes those lives the story’s central focus. This approach risks echoing a wider trend in modern history writing: moving away from discussions of class, revolution, and structural forces that influence change. Instead of portraying the English Revolution as a conflict over sovereignty, property, and national destiny, it becomes a tale of family ties, marriage, and domestic loyalty. The Cromwells are cast as family figures rather than as representatives of a class whose victory transformed the world.

This change reflects a broader cultural trend. In an era when political disputes are often seen as personal issues, social crises are viewed through individual identity and life stories, and class struggle is considered outdated, it’s natural for historians to focus more on personal and domestic aspects. However, this distorts the picture. Major social conflicts are reduced to notions of individual psychology. Revolution becomes melodramatic, and structural change becomes mere backdrop. The political becomes personal and thus depoliticised.

The Cromwells show the limits of this approach. Their importance isn’t rooted in marriages or household affairs but in the transformative events that elevated them. Thomas Cromwell played a key role in orchestrating the largest transfer of land in England before the 1600s. Oliver Cromwell led the army that toppled the monarchy, paving the way for capitalist growth. Their family ties were secondary to these larger forces and did not drive them. Viewing them as a “dynasty” distorts the true relationship between societal forces and individual lives.

The fall of Richard Cromwell’s Protectorate clearly disproves the idea of a hereditary ruling house. If the Cromwells had truly been a dynastic family, Richard’s succession would have stabilised the government. Instead, it revealed its instability. The Protectorate was not a hereditary monarchy but a delicate Bonapartist balance maintained only by the temporary alignment of class interests following the revolution. When that balance unravelled, the regime collapsed. The bourgeoisie, wary of the army and opposed to radical plebeian movements, reinstated a monarchy they could control. The 1688 settlement finalised this shift: establishing a constitutional order that protected property, stabilised the state, and suppressed revolutionary ideals.

The burial of the past has never been complete. Those studying the English Revolution need to go beyond family histories and domestic accounts. They should consult Marx and Engels, who recognised its global importance; Christopher Hill, who identified its radical currents; the Leveller pamphlets, expressing the democratic hopes of ordinary people; and Trotsky, who argued that the revolutionary tradition belongs to the working class, not the bourgeoisie. While Malins’s book offers useful details, it doesn’t explain the revolution itself or the forces that made figures like Cromwell significant. To understand that, we must focus on the transformation of property, class, and political power, the real foundation of modern Britain.

Academic Articles and Bibliography

I. Foundational Marxist and Social-Historical Interpretations

Christopher Hill

Hill remains indispensable for any serious analysis of Cromwell, the English Revolution, and the radical movements it unleashed.

• Hill, Christopher. God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1970. A classic Marxist interpretation of Cromwell as representative of the rising bourgeoisie; essential for understanding the class dynamics behind Puritan ideology.
• Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1972. A definitive study of Levellers, Diggers, and Fifth Monarchists; it shows how popular radicalism exceeded the grandees’ intentions.
• Hill, Christopher. “The English Revolution 1640.” Past & Present 1955. A seminal article establishing the bourgeois revolution thesis in English historiography.
• Hill, Christopher. “Puritanism and Revolution.” The Economic History Review 1958. Connects Puritan ideology to emerging capitalist social relations.

Marx and Engels

• Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Not about England directly, but foundational for understanding Bonapartism and class balancing — crucial for interpreting the Protectorate.
• Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich. Selected Correspondence. Contains remarks on Cromwell and the English bourgeois revolution.

II. Radical Movements and the Levellers

Leveller Studies

• Woolrych, Austin. “The Levellers and the English Revolution.” The Historical Journal 1974. A balanced but rigorous account of Leveller ideology and its challenge to property-based political rights.
• Manning, Brian. The English People and the English Revolution. London: Heinemann, 1976. A Marxist social history emphasising plebeian agency.
• Reid, John. “The Putney Debates: Popular Sovereignty and Property.” History Workshop Journal 1985. Excellent analysis of Rainsborough vs Ireton; directly relevant to the Putney section.

Primary Sources

• The Clarke Papers, ed. C.H. Firth. Essential primary source collection for the Putney Debates and Army Council discussions.

III. Cromwell, the Protectorate, and State Formation

Cromwell Studies

• Coward, Barry. The Cromwellian Protectorate. Manchester University Press, 2002. A modern scholarly account of the Protectorate’s political instability and class contradictions.
• Durston, Christopher. “The Fall of the Cromwellian Protectorate.” English Historical Review 1992. Shows why Richard Cromwell’s failure was structural, not personal — supports your anti‑dynastic argument.
• Smith, David. Oliver Cromwell: Politics and Religion in the English Revolution. Cambridge University Press, 1991. A nuanced political biography.

Bonapartism and Class Balancing

• Kishlansky, Mark. “The Army and the Levellers.” Past & Present, 1979. Analyses Cromwell’s suppression of radicalism within the army.
• Underdown, David. Pride’s Purge. Oxford University Press, 1971. Classic study of the political crisis that produced the Rump Parliament.

IV. Ireland, Empire, and Colonial Violence

Ireland under Cromwell

• Lenihan, Pádraig. Confederate Catholics at War, 1641–49. Manchester University Press, 2001. Contextualises the Irish campaigns within broader colonial dynamics.
• Barnard, Toby. “Cromwellian Ireland: Land and Society.” Irish Historical Studies 1980. Key article on land confiscation and settler colonialism.
• Murphy, Elaine. Ireland and the Cromwellian Conquest. Routledge, 2010. Modern scholarly synthesis of the massacres, land seizures, and colonial restructuring.

V. Historiography, Revisionism, and the Turn to the Domestic

Revisionist and Post‑Revisionist Debates

• Russell, Conrad. The Causes of the English Civil War. Oxford University Press, 1990. A revisionist critique of class-based interpretations; useful as a foil to Hill.
• Morrill, John. “The Religious Context of the English Civil War.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1984. Emphasises religious motivations over class — relevant to a critique of depoliticised narratives.

History and the Domestic Turn

• Fletcher, Anthony. Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500–1800. Yale University Press, 1995. Foundational for the turn toward domestic and gender history.
• Sharpe, J.A. “The History of the Family and the English Revolution.” Social History 1992. Directly addresses the historiographical shift you critique.

VI. Trotsky and Revolutionary Strategy

• Trotsky, Leon. Where Is Britain Going? (1925). Essential for your argument: Cromwell as a model of revolutionary decisiveness, contrasted with Labour’s parliamentary cretinism.
• Trotsky, Leon. History of the Russian Revolution. Not about England, but foundational for understanding class forces, dual power, and revolutionary leadership — concepts applicable to Cromwell’s era.

VII. Suggested Further Reading for Workers and Students

• Hill, Christopher. The Experience of Defeat. On the radical memory of the revolution.
• Winstanley, Gerrard. The Law of Freedom. Primary source of Digger communism.
• The Leveller Tracts, ed. Don Wolfe. Comprehensive collection of Leveller pamphlets.

The English Revolution is a crucial turning point in world history, marking the collapse of the old order- monarchy, divine right, and feudal hierarchy- at the hands of a rising bourgeoisie and the plebeian masses it mobilised. Within ten years, the king was defeated, tried, and executed; the House of Lords was abolished; and the structures of absolutism were dismantled. The political forms of absolutism were broken, and with them the claim that a divinely sanctioned hierarchy stood above the will of the people. At the forefront of this upheaval were the Levellers, the most articulate and politically aware force of plebeian radicalism in the 1640s.

Gary De Krey’s Following the Levellers, Volume One is the latest attempt to dissolve this radical edge. It is a carefully written, academically respectable, and thoroughly revisionist effort to minimise the Levellers’ significance, shrink their organisational coherence, and reduce their political challenge to a sectarian ripple in the religious culture of London’s out‑parishes. It is a book that must be read critically and, for readers of A Trumpet of Sedition, polemically.

The Revisionist Project: Erasing the Revolution

De Krey’s work belongs to a historiographical trend that has dominated the academy for forty years: the revisionist counter‑offensive against the Marxist interpretation of the English Revolution. Beginning in the 1970s, Conrad Russell, John Morrill, and Mark Kishlansky launched a sustained attack on the idea that the civil war had social causes, class dynamics, or revolutionary content. They portrayed it as an accident, a misunderstanding, a crisis of multiple kingdoms. Ordinary people were reduced to spectators. Radicalism was dismissed as marginal. The Levellers were downgraded to pamphleteers with a loose following.

This intellectual change did not happen in isolation. It aligned with the Thatcher-Reagan campaigns against the working class, the fall of Stalinism, and the declaration of “the end of history.” The idea that ordinary people could shape history through collective action became not only outdated but also embarrassing. Revisionism became the ideological stance of a bourgeoisie that no longer wanted to acknowledge that it had earned its power through revolution. De Krey is not an uncritical revisionist; he is meticulous, nuanced, and detail-oriented. However, his main claims, such as the absence of a movement, early faction, significant organisation, or a role in 1649, align with the same perspective. They aim to undermine the Levellers.

De Krey’s Four Minimising Claims

De Krey’s book presents four claims aimed at minimising the Levellers’ historical significance: that they were not a true movement but a mere sectarian “response,” that they did not form as a distinct faction before October 1647, that they lacked extensive organisation, and that the 1649 Army mutinies were not Leveller-influenced. All these claims are incorrect and, more critically, politically motivated. De Krey argues that the Levellers were not a political movement but simply a “response” from churches such as Baptists, Independents, and separatists. This approach exemplifies the oldest revisionist tactic: reducing political radicalism to religious culture, thereby stripping it of its social significance.

Positioning ‘sects’ against ‘movement’ implies viewing the religious form as its core essence. Indeed, sects served as organisational tools for working-class mobilisation. They did not generate Leveller politics; rather, they enabled artisans, apprentices, and small traders to organise independently of traditional authorities like parishes, bishops, and guilds. Limiting the Levellers to sectarianism disregards the political awareness of these common people. It suggests the most vibrant commercial city in Europe only fostered religious dissent, overlooking its political radicalism. Such a view fails to recognise that the English Revolution was propelled both from the grassroots and from the leadership.

De Krey’s assertion that the Levellers only appeared as a distinct group after October 1647 seems overly precise, aimed at downplaying their early cohesion. While it’s true that “Leveller” was a hostile term and alliances shifted, the core ideas of Leveller politics existed well before the label was used. For instance, Overton and Walwyn’s July 1646 Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens criticised the Lords, championed popular sovereignty, and called for major reforms. Similarly, the March 1647 Large Petition proposed law reforms, religious freedom, and the abolition of monopolies. Lilburne’s pamphlets consistently emphasised that authority stems from the consent of the governed.

October 1647 was not the birth of the Levellers. It was the moment when their programme collided openly with the class interests of Cromwell and Ireton. It was the moment when the grandees could no longer contain the rank-and-file’s radicalism.

De Krey’s claim that the Levellers lacked significant organisation is clearly contradicted by ample evidence. Subscription-funded treasurers and weekly meetings at the Whalebone tavern organised petitioning efforts across London and the provinces. Women’s mobilisation campaigns led by Katherine Chidley and Elizabeth Lilburn, the sea-green ribbon as a political symbol, and the large funeral procession for Robert Lockyer all attest to this. None of these actions happened by chance. In reality, the Levellers built a movement that resembled a modern political organisation, though not a party in the sense of coordination, discipline, and political awareness. To deny this is not merely a mistake; it reflects an ideological position.

De Krey’s main controversial assertion is that the Army mutinies in spring 1649 were not driven by Leveller ideals. This claim is a clear example of blatant revisionism. The mutineers explicitly referenced the Agreement of the People, linking their radicalism directly to Leveller activism from the 1647 Agitator movement. “To separate the soldiers’ material demands from the political programme… is precisely to repeat the operation the grandees themselves performed.” Cromwell and Fairfax realised well that the mutinies had political motives. That awareness led them to respond with harsh violence, exemplified by the execution of three soldiers in Burford churchyard. The Commonwealth, having executed the king and abolished the monarchy, immediately turned its guns on the plebeian forces that had pushed hardest for the revolution. That is the significance of Burford. It was the moment when the bourgeois revolution revealed its class limits.

The Levellers and the Class Limits of the Revolution

A critical defence of the Levellers does not mean idealising them. They were not socialists; they supported small property owners and excluded servants and charity recipients from voting. In their April 1649 Manifesto, they explicitly denied intentions to “level men’s estates.” These boundaries were real, but they do not lessen their importance. Instead, they highlight the bourgeois revolution’s structural limits. The Levellers were the most progressive democratic force to emerge from 1640s social conditions. They pushed the revolution to its furthest point and were suppressed when they threatened to exceed those limits.

The Putney Debates remain astonishing documents. Colonel Rainsborough declared that “the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he.” Ireton replied that political power must rest on those with “a permanent fixed interest” in property. Here the class limits of the bourgeois revolution were stated openly by its own leaders. The Levellers mattered because they revealed the contradiction at the heart of the revolution: the bourgeoisie needed the plebeian masses to defeat the king, but feared their democratic aspirations. The Levellers were the political expression of those aspirations.

Why De Krey’s Book Matters and Why It Must Be Opposed

De Krey’s book is not simply an academic monograph. It is part of a political struggle over historical memory. The Levellers represent a tradition of plebeian radicalism that the modern bourgeoisie would prefer to forget. They remind us that democracy was not granted from above but fought for from below. They remind us that the ruling class has always mobilised the masses when convenient and repressed them when necessary.

The fight over the Levellers is not an antiquarian quarrel. Indeed. It is a fight over whether ordinary people can make history. It is a fight over whether democratic rights can coexist with vast concentrations of wealth. It is a fight over whether the state serves the few or the many. In Britain today, where protest is criminalised, inequality is rampant, and democratic rights are under assault, the Levellers’ questions return with renewed urgency. Their defeat revealed that democratic aspirations cannot be realised within the framework of bourgeois society. Their struggle is part of the modern working class’s heritage.

De Krey, But Read Him Against Himself

De Krey’s ‘Following the Levellers’ offers valuable insights for those interested in a detailed overview of the London neighbourhoods, congregations, and petitioning efforts that sparked Leveller activism—however, anyone aiming to grasp the true meaning of the Levellers and their continuing relevance should approach it critically. Consult De Krey for his detailed account and archival reconstruction, but compare his work with Hill, Manning, and especially the Levellers’ own writings, which remain among the most inspiring political texts in English.

Introduction: The far right and the crisis of world capitalism

Across Europe and Britain, the far right is gaining strength. This isn’t a fleeting anomaly or the work of individual demagogues; it reflects a deepening crisis in global capitalism. Years of austerity, stagnant wages, failing public services, and a cost-of-living crisis have pushed millions into desperation. Privatisation, deregulation, and the systematic dismantling of welfare systems have torn the social fabric. Workers face rising rents, unaffordable energy bills, and collapsing essential services, even as corporations post record profits and governments claim there is “no money” for social needs.

Simultaneously, all major imperialist nations are rearming and gearing up for conflict. Countries like the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, and Japan are involved in a worldwide race for markets, resources, and strategic control. The tensions between NATO and Russia, increased militarisation in the Indo-Pacific, and the rise of proxy wars signal a new phase in the disintegration of the post-Cold War global order. The ruling class is preparing for conflicts that could surpass the tragedies of the last century. Militarism is not an anomaly but a natural outcome of ongoing capitalist crises.

The ruling class offers no progressive solutions to the crisis. Reversing austerity, increasing wages, or ending militarism would require actions contrary to profit interests. Instead, they turn to reactionary measures. The far right is cultivated as a political tool to shift social anger away from capitalism and onto migrants, minorities, and the impoverished. This pattern of capitalist failure shows that, during crises, the ruling class tends to adopt authoritarian solutions. Fascist movements are not spontaneous acts of hate but are intentionally shaped and promoted by parts of the state, media, and corporate elite.

In this context, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has rediscovered the Weimar Republic. Socialist Workers warns that “history is repeating itself,” that fascism is again at the gates, and that only a broad coalition of Labour MPs, union leaders, clergy, and “celebrities” can stop it. Invoking Weimar is not an attempt to clarify the present crisis but to obscure it. The SWP’s historical analogy is politically motivated: it seeks to channel growing anger behind the Labour Party and the trade‑union bureaucracy under the banner of Stand Up To Racism (SUTR).

The SWP’s story is straightforward: fascism is the biggest threat, Labour is the lesser threat, and criticising the party or unions “divides the movement.” Workers are urged to prioritise their struggles over political institutions. This approach was what hampered the German working class in the early 1930s, as the SPD claimed the capitalist state would prevent fascism, rejected revolutionary efforts, and called for allegiance to bourgeois democracy. Ultimately, this led to disaster.

The SWP reuses this approach with a new appearance. It portrays Labour politicians who have adopted anti-immigrant rhetoric, implemented austerity, and supported imperialist wars as defenders of democracy. It also highlights union leaders who have often undermined strikes and enforced deals below inflation as advocates of anti-racism. Additionally, it advocates for a cross-class alliance that places workers under the influence of the same forces that create the social conditions enabling the far right to flourish.

This is not a lesson from Weimar; in fact, it is quite the opposite. The true lesson of the 1930s is that defeating fascism requires the working class to act independently, based on a socialist and internationalist agenda. This cannot be achieved through alliances with the political establishment but must come from breaking away from it.

The historical Weimar Republic: A deeper historiographical analysis

To grasp the current crisis, it is essential to explore what transpired in Germany from 1918 to 1933. The Weimar Republic did not emerge as a stable democracy; it resulted from a revolutionary upheaval that destabilised German society. In November 1918, after four years of brutal war, the German working class and soldiers revolted against the Kaiser and the military leadership. Mutinies in the navy quickly spread to industrial cities. Workers’ and soldiers’ councils arose nationwide, mirroring the soviets of the Russian Revolution. The old imperial regime collapsed almost instantly. Germany was on the verge of socialism.

For a short period, the working class held the lead, with councils managing factories, garrisons, and local governments. The monarchy was dismantled, and Germany had the chance to follow the Bolsheviks’ example in 1917. However, the revolution was compromised from within.

The Social Democratic Party (SPD), which supported the war in 1914 and was a key part of the imperial state, quickly moved to quash the revolutionary movement. Friedrich Ebert, the SPD leader, feared the working class more than the remnants of the Kaiser’s regime. In November 1918, he secretly negotiated the Ebert-Groener Pact with General Wilhelm Groener, where the army agreed to protect the new government from workers’ councils, and the SPD committed to maintaining the capitalist system. This pact ensured the old military and bureaucratic elites remained in power and effectively suppressed the revolution.

The SPD relied on the Freikorps, right-wing paramilitary groups made up mainly of demobilised soldiers, to suppress revolutionary uprisings. In January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, leaders of the Spartacus League and key figures in the revolution, were targeted and murdered by Freikorps officers operating under SPD orders. Their killing was a strategic political move, aimed at removing revolutionary leadership and restoring bourgeois stability.

This fundamental crime shaped Weimar’s history. The SPD emerged as the main supporter of bourgeois dominance, defending the capitalist state, military, judiciary, and police institutions still largely opposed to democracy and sympathetic to the far right. The republic rested on a delicate compromise: the working class received limited political rights, while the bourgeoisie kept its economic and institutional power intact.

The Weimar Republic faced significant structural weaknesses. Historians like Detlev Peukert, Hans Mommsen, and Richard J. Evans have highlighted that the military remained unreformed, monarchists dominated the judiciary, and industrialists continued to hold substantial influence over economic policy. The SPD aimed to keep the working class within bourgeois democratic boundaries and prevent challenges to capitalist property rights.

The SPD and the suppression of the German Revolution

The Social Democratic Party (SPD), which supported World War I in 1914, quickly acted to suppress revolutionary efforts. Friedrich Ebert, the SPD leader, was more concerned about the working class than the imperial remnants. In November 1918, he secretly negotiated the Ebert-Groener Pact with General Wilhelm Groener, where the army promised to protect the new government from worker councils, and the SPD committed to maintaining the capitalist system.

This alliance influenced the entire Weimar era. The SPD relied on the Freikorps, right-wing paramilitary groups made up mainly of demobilised soldiers, to suppress revolutionary uprisings. In January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, leaders of the Spartacus League and icons of the revolutionary movement, were killed by Freikorps officers acting under SPD orders. Their assassination was a targeted political move, aiming to eliminate the revolutionary leadership and reestablish bourgeois stability.

This fundamental crime influenced Weimar’s entire history. The SPD emerged as the main supporter of bourgeois dominance. It upheld the capitalist state, the military, the judiciary, and law enforcement all institutions still resistant to democracy and aligned with the far right. The republic rested on a delicate balance: the working class received limited political rights, but the bourgeoisie’s economic and institutional strength remained unchanged.

Structural weaknesses of the Weimar Republic

Historians have highlighted the Weimar Republic’s structural weaknesses. The republic’s foundations were shaky, with an unreformed army led by monarchists and a judiciary dominated by nationalists who often gave lenient sentences to right-wing extremists while targeting left-wing militants. Industrialists held significant sway over economic policies, actively working to weaken democratic institutions.

The SPD’s role was to contain the working class within the framework of bourgeois democracy. It suppressed strikes, defended private property, and insisted that any challenge to capitalism would “endanger the republic.” In reality, the republic was endangered precisely because capitalism remained intact.

The 1929 Great Depression disrupted this delicate balance. Industrial output nearly halved, and unemployment rose to six million. The parliamentary system collapsed under the strain. Starting in 1930, Germany was governed by a presidential, increasingly authoritarian approach that sidelined the Reichstag and paved the way for Hitler’s appointment.

The rise of the Nazis

The Nazis’ rise wasn’t simply due to “hate,” “rhetoric,” or Hitler’s charisma, as often highlighted in liberal narratives. Instead, these explanations overlook the deeper social and political dynamics that enabled fascism’s ascent. The real cause was the collapse of the capitalist system, which pushed the ruling class to support a movement designed to suppress the working class. Fascism was a deliberate political tool of the bourgeoisie, emerging directly from a period of severe crisis, rather than an irrational outburst.

By 1930, the Weimar Republic was collapsing under the weight of the Great Depression. Industrial output nearly halved, and unemployment reached six million. Working-class areas suffered from hunger, homelessness, and despair. The parliamentary system disintegrated as governments increasingly governed by presidential decree, sidestepping the Reichstag and weakening democratic standards. The ruling elite feared the crisis could radicalise workers and rekindle the revolutionary spirit of 1918–19.

In this context, the Nazis rose as a powerful force, supported by top industrialists like Fritz Thyssen and Ruhr magnates who aimed to suppress the labour movement and restore profits. The judiciary turned a blind eye to Nazi violence, penalising fascist thugs with easy sentences while targeting Communists and left-wing activists. The army viewed the Nazis as potential allies against Marxism. Ultimately, President Paul von Hindenburg, a reactionary aristocrat backed by the SPD as the “lesser evil,” appointed Hitler as chancellor on January 30, 1933. The key factor that enabled this disaster was the working class’s political paralysis, caused by its own leadership.

The Social Democratic Party (SPD), having betrayed the 1918–19 revolution, dedicated the Weimar era to defending the bourgeois state. It argued that institutions like the courts, police, and army patrols filled with monarchists and nationalists would safeguard democracy. The party condemned revolutionary movements as “extremism,” suppressed strikes, and endorsed austerity policies that harmed workers. In 1932, it supported Hindenburg’s bid for president, claiming he could stop Hitler. However, Hindenburg was actually laying the groundwork for Hitler’s rise to power.

On the opposite side was the Communist Party (KPD), which, under Stalinist influence, followed the harmful “Third Period’ policy of the Comintern. The KPD labelled social democracy as “social fascism,” equating it with Nazism. They condemned SPD workers as adversaries, rejected any form of united front, and believed that a Nazi win would ‘speed up the revolution.” This sectarian approach fractured the working class just when unity mattered most.

Leon Trotsky, writing from exile, repeatedly warned that the SPD and KPD were steering the working class toward catastrophe. He emphasised that only a united front where workers’ organisations collaborated against fascism and criticised openly could prevent Hitler’s rise. His warnings went unheeded. The SPD persisted with bourgeois legality, while the KPD adhered to Stalinist dogma. This dynamic left the working class paralysed between these two poles.

The tragedy of Weimar was not due to a weak proletariat. In fact, the German working class was among the most powerful and well organised in Europe, with millions in trade unions, mass parties, and cultural groups. It proved its revolutionary potential in 1918–19 and again in 1923. However, what it lacked was strong revolutionary leadership to unify its efforts and steer them toward overthrowing capitalism.

The SPD’s “lesser evil” strategy and the defence of bourgeois democracy

During the Weimar era, the SPD’s strategy focused on defending bourgeois democracy against the far right. It believed that the capitalist state, such as the courts, police, and military, would contain fascism. The party rejected any pursuit of socialism, labelling revolutionary efforts as “extremism,” and viewed the working class not as agents of societal change but as a threat to “stability.” This outlook stemmed from the SPD’s betrayal of the 1918–19 revolution, turning it into the main defender of the capitalist system.

During the 1920s, the SPD formed coalition governments with bourgeois parties, claiming these alliances were essential to “defend democracy.’ In reality, however, they prioritised protecting German capitalist interests. The SPD-led administrations carried out austerity measures, suppressed strikes, and maintained the power of the army and judiciary, institutions still largely controlled by monarchists and nationalists. Their primary goal was to prevent any independent mobilisation of the working class that could jeopardise capitalist property rights.

When the Great Depression began in 1929, the SPD’s stance grew more reactionary. Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, ruling by presidential decree, implemented harsh cuts to wages, social benefits, and public expenditure. Instead of rallying workers against these measures, the SPD backed Brüning’s decrees, claiming that opposition could threaten the republic. In truth, the republic was already faltering under the strain of the capitalist crisis, and the SPD’s support for austerity worsened millions of people’s suffering.

In 1932, the SPD’s “lesser evil” strategy culminated as they supported Paul von Hindenburg for president, opposing Hitler. Hindenburg, an aristocratic reactionary who disliked democracy and favoured restoring authoritarian rule, was urged by the SPD to vote for him to “stop fascism.” Shortly after, Hindenburg appointed Hitler as chancellor.

This was no accident. It resulted logically from the SPD’s approach: defending bourgeois democracy at all costs, even if it meant empowering those who would eventually destroy it. By aligning the working class with the capitalist state, the SPD caused political paralysis among workers during crucial moments. Trotsky summarised the SPD’s impact when he stated: “The policy of the Social Democracy is the chief obstacle in the path of the German proletariat.”  What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat (1932). The SPD’s tactic of viewing the lesser evil ultimately led to disaster.

If the SPD limited the working class’s actions from the right, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) did so from the left. Led by Stalin, the KPD followed the Comintern’s “Third Period” doctrine, claiming social democracy was “social fascism” essentially the same as Nazism. This approach was not just wrong; it proved disastrous.

The KPD labelled SPD workers as fascists and refused to collaborate with them. It organised separate unions, protests, and electoral efforts, viewing the SPD as the main enemy, not the Nazis. In some cases, KPD members even tactically cooperated with Nazi forces against the SPD, believing that a Nazi victory would ‘speed up the revolution.’ This sectarian approach tore the working class apart when unity was most needed. The KPD’s stance of not cooperating with SPD workers, while still allowing criticism, left the working class divided and confused in the face of fascism.

The SWP’s misuse of Weimar: Popular front politics in new clothes

The SWP claims to oppose Trotsky’s ideas but actually practices what he warned against. Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) is not a unified front; it’s a broad alliance across classes, where the interests of workers are often subordinate to sections of the political establishment. While the SWP uses radical language, its underlying strategy mirrors that of the SPD in Weimar Germany, promoting the “lesser evil” by defending bourgeois democracy and aligning workers with forces responsible for its decline. SUTR’s platform includes Labour MPs whose government has ramped up attacks on migrants and asylum seekers, adopted anti-immigrant rhetoric to outflank the far right, enforced austerity and wage cuts, and supported NATO’s military interventions abroad.

These policies are not accidental; they are central to Labour’s identity as a party that supports British imperialism. However, SUTR portrays these politicians as defenders of democracy and opponents of racism. The SWP claims that workers should join a “broad movement” with them against the far right. Similarly, union leaders are presented as champions of anti-racism, despite their repeated actions to sabotage strikes, impose deals below inflation, and suppress rank-and-file dissent. Their main role has been to limit and demobilise workers’ struggles rather than combat racism or fascism. Nonetheless, SUTR considers them essential allies, fostering the false impression that the union bureaucracy truly represents the working class.

The SWP clearly states that if the far right is considered the main threat, workers should avoid criticising Labour, challenging union leaders, or pushing for an independent political agenda. Instead, they should support any establishment figure condemning racism. This mirrors the SPD’s “lesser evil” approach, updated for today. The SPD argued that workers had to defend bourgeois democracy by backing “progressive” bourgeois politicians. This led to political paralysis among workers and ultimately facilitated Hitler’s rise.

The SWP still uses this approach today. It insists that workers should subordinate their struggles to Labour and the unions, even though these institutions are directly accountable for the social conditions that enable the far right to flourish. This tactic politically disarms the working class precisely when an independent response is most desperately needed.

The far right’s growth isn’t due to a lack of anti-racist slogans but because it can position itself as opposing a political establishment that has caused only misery. The SWP’s populist strategies hide this truth. Each time a Labour government reduces public services and funds wars abroad, it gives the far right an advantage. Labour’s adoption of anti-immigrant language also boosts the far right’s story. When Labour blames migrants for social breakdown, it creates a political space that benefits fascist movements.

Each time union leaders cancel strikes, endorse betrayals, or suppress worker dissent, the far right expands influence. Workers recognise that the official labour movement fails to address their hardships. The union bureaucracy’s cooperation with employers and the government opens a space for reactionary forces to position themselves as “anti-establishment.”

By portraying Labour and the union bureaucracy as allies in the fight against fascism, the SWP hides their own role in creating the conditions where the far right flourishes. It directs opposition into a dead-end that initially caused the crisis. Instead of holding Labour and the unions accountable as tools of capitalist power, it protects them from critique and urges loyalty to their leadership. This leads to political paralysis. Workers are told that breaking away from Labour or the unions “divides the movement” and benefits the far right. In truth, workers’ submission to these institutions allows the far right to expand.

Lessons of Weimar for today

The lesson from Weimar is not that workers should unite with “progressive” bourgeois forces. Instead, fascism can be overcome only through the working class’s independent political mobilisation around an international socialist agenda. Workers must definitively abandon Labour and the pro-capitalist trade unions, as these organisations are incapable of reform and serve as tools of the capitalist state.

Workers should establish rank-and-file committees at every workplace, independent of union bureaucrats, to coordinate struggles across industries and borders. The fight against fascism is a global effort. Workers in Britain must unite with their comrades across Europe and the world, no matter their nationality, religion, or immigration status. Above all, the working class requires revolutionary leadership. The tragedy in Germany was not the lack of a combative working class but the absence of a party capable of leading it.

The Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) embody the ongoing tradition of Marxism. They are the only groups that truly understand the lessons of Weimar: fascism emerges from capitalist crises, the working class must maintain political independence, and only a revolutionary party can lead the fight for socialism. The SWP’s concern about Weimar is not a call to action but a surrender. The true battle against fascism starts with building the SEP and the ICFI.

Primary Sources:

Trotsky’s Writings on Germany and Fascism

Trotsky, Leon. What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat. 1932. Trotsky, Leon. The Only Road. 1932. Trotsky, Leon. For a Workers’ United Front Against Fascism. 1931. Trotsky, Leon. The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. Pathfinder Press edition. Trotsky, Leon. The Third International After Lenin. 1928. Trotsky, Leon. The German Revolution and the Bureaucracy. 

Secondary Sources: Weimar Republic, SPD, KPD, and the Rise of Nazism

Broué, Pierre. The German Revolution, 1917–1923. Brill, 2005. Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin, 2003. Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power. Penguin, 2005. Peukert, Detlev. The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity. Hill and Wang, 1992. Mommsen, Hans. The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy. UNC Press, 1996. Kolb, Eberhard. The Weimar Republic. Routledge, 2004. Fischer, Conan. The Rise of National Socialism and the Working Classes. Berg, 1995. Weber, Hermann. The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Germany. Pluto Press, 2017. Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: Hubris (1998) and Hitler: Nemesis (2000). Bessel, Richard. Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism. Yale University Press, 1984. Carsten, F. L. The Rise of Fascism. University of California Press, 1967. Haffner, Sebastian. Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918–1919. Winkler, Heinrich August. Weimar 1918–1933: The Illusion of Normalcy. Oxford University Press.

These works provide the historical foundation for this article.

North, David. The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo‑Left. Mehring Books. North, David. The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century. Mehring Books. David Walsh, Chris Marsden. Articles on Labour, the unions, and pseudo‑left politics (WSWS). Barry Grey, Thomas Scripps. WSWS coverage of British politics, Labour, and the trade‑union bureaucracy. International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). WSWS analyses on fascism, imperialism, and the crisis of capitalism.

Supplementary Sources (Use Critically)

Harman, Chris. The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918–1923. Bookmarks. Cliff, Tony. Trotsky: Fighting the Rising Stalinist Bureaucracy. Bookmarks.

Paul Greengrass’s The Uprising marks the first major effort by a contemporary director to portray a key mass uprising in medieval Europe: the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. This is noteworthy because the film industry has traditionally focused on the dramas of monarchs, aristocrats, and court factions. At the same time, moments of direct action by the oppressed have often been marginal or considered too risky to explore. Greengrass’s ambitious, sometimes uneven film highlights the lasting significance of 1381 and exposes the deep ideological concerns of today’s cultural establishment.

The revolt of 1381 stands as one of the earliest and most intense displays of popular anger against feudal exploitation. Thousands of peasants, artisans, and labourers marched to London, freed prisoners, executed despised officials, and occupied the capital for several days. This mass uprising exhibited remarkable courage and clarity, fueled by oppressive taxation, the repercussions of the Black Death, and the strict hierarchies of feudal society. However, films have seldom portrayed it. This is no accident; bourgeois cinema often favours stories about kings and nobles, portrays conflict as personal drama, and tends to shy away from depicting collective action by oppressed groups. Such portrayal challenges social order, legitimacy, and class structures.

Greengrass’s film opens powerfully, depicting the harshness of feudal taxation and how personal suffering sparks collective anger. Andrew Garfield’s Ploughman, Jamie Bell’s John Ball, and Cosmo Jarvis’s Wat Tyler are depicted with seriousness and dignity. Ball’s egalitarian sermon, “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” preserves its radical impact. Greengrass recognises that the rebellion was not a conspiracy but a spontaneous outburst of class rage, illustrating a society pushed to its limits.

The film accurately depicts that, initially, the rebels did not oppose the king. They believed Richard II was a just ruler, misled by corrupt advisers. This idea of the “good king” was common among peasant groups and, as Engels later noted in his analysis of the 1525 German Peasant War, reflected the structural position of peasants in feudal society. Spread out in villages, bound to the land, without a unified plan, they could rally heroically but lacked a vision for a new social system. Their tragedy was not naivety but real-world limitations.

The film struggles in its latter half. Once the rebels take over the king’s council, Greengrass shows the night descending into looting and random violence. The camera increasingly focuses on the palace window view, portraying the crowd as an irrational, frightening force. The deliberate, calculated violence by the ruling class is seen as treachery, rooted in personal betrayal, whereas the violence by the oppressed is depicted as chaos. This reflects a typical liberal view of revolution—sympathising with the oppressed while simultaneously fearing their autonomous actions.

The studio made a decisive change just three weeks before the release, renaming the film as The Uprising: The Rise of Robin Hood. This new title drew on a brief epilogue showing the Ploughman wearing a green hood and ambushing the king in Sherwood Forest. This connection of Robin Hood to the events of 1381 is not just a marketing tactic, but reflects an ideological shift. It shifts focus from collective resistance to individual heroism, replacing mass activism with personal rebellion. Clearly, the studio decided that portraying a collective uprising against exploitation wouldn’t attract enough viewers.

Greengrass’s film, despite its strengths, struggles to resolve its perspective on the rebellion it portrays fully. It sympathises with the peasants’ pursuit of justice but is uncomfortable with their tactics. The film begins with a serious historical tone and ends in a mythic way. The key lesson from 1381 emphasises the importance of the oppressed taking independent action, rather than outlaws like those in Sherwood Forest- a message that remains relevant today.

A society strained to the breaking point.

Greengrass begins The Uprising after the Black Death, the devastating pandemic that killed half of England’s population and disrupted social order. Few modern films have depicted the scale of this upheaval. The plague did more than reduce the population; it challenged the very ideology of feudal society. Labour shortages threatened landowners’ economic dominance, wages increased, and the ruling class responded with repression—implementing wage controls, raising taxes, and trying to keep peasants tied to the land. Greengrass’s opening scenes, where young King Richard II and the nobles and clergy decide that the Church and merchants cannot be taxed, so the burden falls on peasants, embody the core principle of class rule. The elite protects itself, shifting the crisis’s costs downward. Today’s workers recognise this pattern.

Andrew Garfield’s Ploughman symbolically echoes Langland’s Piers Plowman, an allegorical poem about social injustice and moral defiance. He begins by burying his family, victims of the plague. The tax collector insists he pays “death taxes’ again, citing missing documentation. The scene highlights bureaucratic cruelty- cold, impersonal, and typical of a system where the poor must constantly justify their existence to the wealthy. Greengrass depicts village girls being humiliated, forced to strip so soldiers can verify their taxable age, in a straightforward manner that avoids sensationalism. This serves as a stark reminder that feudal exploitation was real, enforced through physical control, surveillance, and looming violence.

The film’s most powerful moments are in its early sequences. Greengrass excels at capturing the moment when personal suffering transforms into collective outrage as individual grievances, long suppressed, resonate with others’ experiences. The rebellion ignites not through conspiracy or manipulation but because of the unbearable burden of exploitation. A single act of defiance sparks in a landscape full of flammable material. This portrayal is historically accurate. The Peasants’ Revolt wasn’t premeditated; it broke out unexpectedly. It stemmed from years of accumulated resentment, intensified by the poll tax and harsh enforcement tactics.

Jamie Bell’s portrayal of John Ball and Cosmo Jarvis’s Wat Tyler captures the revolt’s historical leadership. Ball, a radical priest whose sermons energised the countryside, is depicted with seriousness and conviction. His well-known statement, “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” maintains its powerful call for equality. It stands as one of the earliest clear assertions of human equality challenging divine hierarchy. Greengrass lets this line stand out without adornment. In a society that saw hierarchy as natural and divine, Ball’s words directly challenge the ideological roots of feudalism.

Jarvis’s Tyler, a seasoned soldier, appears disciplined, focused, and politically aware. While not a proto-revolutionary in the modern sense, he understands the stakes. The film portrays Tyler and Ball collaborating to bring coherence to the revolt, articulate demands, organise the march on London, and contain some of the crowd’s more destructive tendencies. This depiction is grounded in history. The revolt was not without leadership; rather, it lacked a class able to maintain political organisation beyond the immediate crisis.

Greengrass’s portrayal of the march on London stands out as one of the film’s greatest achievements. The rebels appear purposeful rather than chaotic and angry rather than reckless. The scenes of prison openings, the burning of John of Gaunt’s palace, and the execution of the Archbishop of Canterbury are depicted as acts of political justice, not mere random violence. For several days, the insurgents effectively control the capital. The film highlights the remarkable fact that Europe’s most rigidly hierarchical society was temporarily upended from below.

Greengrass’s portrayal captures the sense of possibility often missing in many historical dramas. The peasants, artisans, and labourers who marched on London weren’t just reacting to oppression; they were asserting their agency. They believed—though mistakenly—that they could appeal to the king, achieve justice, and make the world fairer. These illusions were structural rather than psychological, rooted in their worldview. As Engels later noted in his study of the German Peasant War of 1525, while the peasantry could rise heroically, they couldn’t, on their own, establish a new social order. Their fragmented, local existence and dependence on the monarchy limited their broader ambitions.

Greengrass’s initial sequences, marked by clarity and seriousness, nearly recognise this reality. They depict a society in turmoil, with a ruling class intent on maintaining its privileges and a mass of oppressed individuals realising their collective power. These moments bring The Uprising close to true historical understanding—before the film’s subsequent ideological withdrawal into fear, chaos, and eventually myth.

Illusions in the monarchy and their tragic consequences

Greengrass correctly highlights that the rebels initially did not oppose King Richard II. They regarded him as just but were deceived by malicious advisors. This trust in the “good king” was not naïve but reflected the peasantry’s social position within feudal society. As peasants spread across countless villages, connected to the land and without any national organization, they could stage significant and heroic revolts but struggled to envision a new social structure. Their demands to abolish serfdom, end feudal dues, and dismantle legal ties to the land were radical, yet articulated within feudal ideas. They looked to the monarch as a defender of justice, not as the system’s. This text emphasises Engels’ key political insight from the German Peasants’ War of 1525, which applies to 1381 as well. It highlights that while the peasantry can overthrow feudalism through a courageous, widespread uprising, they cannot establish a new order. Engels explained that the tragedy wasn’t their lack of bravery or clarity, but the social constraints they faced. Their local focus, land dependence, and loyalty to the monarchy prevented them from forming a sustainable plan to succeed beyond destroying the old system.

Greengrass stages the betrayal of the rebels with considerable dramatic force. At Mile End, Richard II promises sweeping concessions: the abolition of serfdom, freedom of labour, and the redress of grievances. The rebels disperse, believing they have won. The film captures the extraordinary moment when Europe’s most rigidly hierarchical society seemed on the brink of transformation. But the promises were a calculated deception. Once the rebels had returned home, the king revoked every concession. The ruling class acted with cold calculation, not treachery born of emotion but treachery born of class necessity. The feudal order could not survive the fulfilment of the rebels’ demands; therefore, the rebels had to be destroyed.

The depiction of Wat Tyler’s death at Smithfield emphasises its brutality. While negotiating with the king, Tyler is unexpectedly killed. This scene symbolises more than personal betrayal; it reaffirms feudal authority. Tyler’s death signifies the fall of the revolt’s leaders and the start of a counter-revolution. John Ball, a radical priest known for his inspiring sermons, is captured and executed—hanged, drawn, and quartered. In response, hundreds of rebels are executed nationwide. Greengrass highlights how this repression is methodical: rather than panic, the ruling class restores order through terror.

One of the film’s strengths is its clear portrayal of betrayal. It illustrates that the ruling class won the revolt not with better arguments or morals but through violence and deception. However, Greengrass does not fully explore the political implications. The betrayal was not accidental; it was inevitable. The peasantry’s trust in the king was rooted in their class ideology, which could not yet act independently of the monarchy. Their defeat stemmed from structural constraints, not personal errors.

In this sense, The Uprising brushes against a significant historical truth but doesn’t fully reach it. The 1381 revolt was one of medieval Europe’s major mass uprisings, yet it failed because its leadership couldn’t go beyond the social system they aimed to challenge. Greengrass highlights this betrayal; Engels clarifies why it was inevitable. The film’s most powerful scenes hint at this understanding, though later parts shy away from exploring these deeper implications.

The descent into “mob” framing

The film struggles in its second half. After the rebels take the king’s council- a rare moment in medieval European history when society’s lowest classes briefly control political power- Greengrass shows the night descending into looting, drunkenness, and random violence. The Ploughman, Tyler, and Ball are horrified, trying to control what the film repeatedly calls, whether explicitly or implicitly, the “mob.” This change is sudden and revealing. What was once shown as a disciplined, purposeful crowd suddenly appears as an uncontrollable force of nature. The leaders must restrain the crowd to prevent it from self-destructing.

There was violence in 1381, including xenophobic attacks on Flemish immigrants. No serious historian denies this. But the framing matters. Greengrass’s camera increasingly adopts the palace window’s viewpoint: the masses as an unpredictable, terrifying presence, a dark tide threatening to engulf civilisation. The king’s nightmares of “demons”, grotesque, contorted figures emerging from the shadows, become a recurring visual motif. What begins as the subjective fear of a frightened monarch becomes, through repetition and framing, a perspective the film itself partially endorses. The rebels’ seizure of power is not shown as a moment of political possibility but as a descent into chaos.

Liberal filmmaking on revolution often shows sympathy for the oppressed but also reveals a fear of their independence. The oppressed are allowed to suffer, endure, and seek justice, yet when they act together, the camera withdraws. Their collective agency appears threatening, and their violence— even if aimed at their own exploiters—is viewed as disorderly. In contrast, violence by the ruling class—systematic, calculated, and much larger in scale—is seen as legitimate. Treachery is often seen as individual dishonesty rather than a systemic flaw.

This distinction is ideological, not based on fact. In 1381, the ruling class acted with cold strategic intent. Richard II’s promises at Mile End were a calculated deception, meant to scatter the rebels and enable their slaughter. Tyler’s murder at Smithfield was not a tragic mistake but a premeditated killing. The subsequent reprisals—hundreds executed, villages terrorised, leaders hunted—were not random chaos but organised violence by a class defending its authority. However, Greengrass describes this violence as “betrayal,” a moral failing, while portraying the violence of the oppressed as “mob rule,” a natural disaster.

This inversion is key to bourgeois ideology. It shapes how revolutions are usually shown: rulers are portrayed as rational, even if cruel; the masses are seen as emotional, even when justified. The oppressed are granted dignity only while passive. When they act, they become threatening. The latter part of the film exposes the limits of Greengrass’s political vision. He can show exploitation, suffering, and righteous anger, but he struggles to portray the masses as active agents in history rather than unpredictable mobs.

The tragedy is that the 1381 revolt was not chaotic. It was organised, purposeful, and politically consistent within its class perspective. Its violence mainly targeted tools of feudal dominance: tax collectors, judges, officials, and aristocratic symbols. Meanwhile, the ruling class’s violence was unchecked and total. Greengrass’s framing flips this reality. This flip is driven not by past events but by ideology: a deep-rooted liberal fear that the oppressed might act outside the authority of the institutions claiming to serve them.

The second half of the film is not just a narrative mistake but also a political setback. It exposes how modern cinema struggles to portray collective action without framing it as a problem. Instead of highlighting a moment of real historical change, the revolt becomes a warning. Both the camera and the ruling class seem to be afraid of the crowd.

The Robin Hood graft: a revealing capitulation

The most remarkable incident happened not on screen but within the marketing team. Just three weeks before the film’s release, the U.S. distributor suddenly changed the title to The Uprising: The Rise of Robin Hood, citing a short epilogue in which the Ploughman wears a green hood and ambushes the king in Sherwood Forest. The British distributor quickly rejected this change, emphasising that Greengrass’s film was a historical epic about the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, not a Robin Hood origin story. Critics called the ending “tacked on” and “damaging,” and they were right. Attaching Robin Hood to 1381 was not just a marketing mistake; it was a revealing political statement.

The rebranding reveals how ideological pressures influence modern filmmaking. The studio apparently decided that depicting a large-scale uprising against exploitation wouldn’t attract audiences. Instead, it relied on well-known “intellectual property,” reflecting the industry’s risk-averse preference for safer content. This shift replaced collective resistance with the narrative of the lone outlaw hero, turning a significant act of political mobilisation into a personal story of defiance. This choice goes beyond marketing; it signals a retreat from the revolt’s true political significance.

Robin Hood embodies the bourgeois fantasy of rebellion, representing a form of revolt that lacks social depth. His defiance is personal and moral rather than based on social or structural change—he steals from the rich but does not question wealth or the social relations that create it. Living in the forest rather than in towns and villages, his struggle is individual rather than historical, making him an admired hero who doesn’t threaten societal assumptions. Essentially, Robin Hood symbolises rebellion without aiming for revolution.

The Peasants’ Revolt stands in contrast. It was a large-scale uprising involving tens of thousands of peasants, artisans, and labourers who marched to London, liberated prisoners, executed despised officials, and occupied the capital for several days. No lone outlaw orchestrated this; it was a collective assertion of the oppressed class’s strength. Its demands—abolishing serfdom, securing labour freedom, and ending feudal dues—challenged the core structures of the social order. Linking Robin Hood to 1381 distorts the revolt’s significance. Such an attempt represents an ideological retreat and a refusal to face the true meaning of mass action.

The epilogue is politically confusing. The Ploughman ambushes the king but then spares him, claiming his group operates “beyond royal authority.” This sentimental gesture replaces the real historical lesson—that the oppressed must act independently of the ruling class—with a romanticised fantasy of noble outlawry. The film originally depicted the peasants’ trust in the king as their downfall, yet it ends by reinforcing the myth it previously criticised. The collective effort of many, defeated by the ruling elite, is overshadowed by the lone hero lurking in the forest. Ultimately, history becomes folklore and politics becomes myth.

The film’s poor box-office performance, earning only $3.3 million against a $20 million budget, indicates that audiences were not convinced. The rebranding failed to expand the film’s appeal and instead compromised its integrity. Viewers saw the disconnect between the revolt’s serious message and the trivial Robin Hood ending. The studio’s panic and distrust of authentic history ultimately harmed the film it was trying to preserve.

The Robin Hood graft exemplifies modern cinema’s ideological boundaries. While the industry can portray suffering, injustice, and rebellion, it confines these elements within familiar narrative structures. When faced with real mass action, cinema turns to myth. Greengrass’s film, despite its merits, is limited by these constraints, starting with history and ending with legend, and unable to uphold the revolt’s true political significance.

Contemporary resonance and contemporary limits

Some reviewers have noted the film’s relevance to today: a society recovering from the pandemic, with elites growing wealthier while workers endure austerity, inflation, and escalating war costs. These similarities are evident. The social landscape of 2026, much like that of 1381, is characterised by stark inequality, political distrust, and a ruling class eager to shift the fallout of its crises onto the populace. Widespread unrest shows up in strikes, protests, and growing anger over living conditions. It’s easy to understand why the Peasants’ Revolt inspired Greengrass and why the film’s initial scenes strike such a chord.

Greengrass rightly earns praise for recognising the importance of 1381 and persisting through years of production and cast changes to bring the film to life. He stands out as one of the few modern directors willing to seriously confront issues of state violence and large-scale political movements. Garfield, Bell, and Jarvis deliver earnest performances, and the film’s first half is marked by clarity, urgency, and a sincere effort to understand the revolt on its own terms. However, The Uprising ultimately struggles to decide its stance on the rebellion it portrays. It sympathises with the peasants’ pursuit of justice but feels uneasy about their tactics. The film starts with Engels’s observation that the peasantry could rise heroically but could not, alone, create a new social order, yet it shifts away from this, fading into myth and liberal worry.

The film’s failure to portray oppressed characters acting independently highlights more than just an artistic flaw; it reveals the ideological boundaries of modern cinema. Bourgeois filmmaking can show suffering, injustice, and even rebellion, but only when these elements stay within familiar storytelling structures. When the masses act collectively, gain power, or challenge the current order, the camera pulls back. In these moments, the crowd becomes a “mob,” individual agency dissolves into chaos, and historical events turn into warnings. Greengrass’s film exemplifies this tendency: it starts with the potential for mass action but concludes with the fantasy of a lone outlaw.

The Robin Hood graft exemplifies this retreat most clearly. The studio’s panic—believing that the true history of a mass uprising wouldn’t attract audiences—exposes a deep ideological unease with collective resistance. The film’s ending, where the Ploughman spares the king and claims his group is “beyond royal authority,” isn’t genuinely political but an outright avoidance of politics. It replaces the lessons of 1381 with a romantic act that leaves issues unresolved.

The lessons of 1381 are not about outlaws in Sherwood Forest but highlight the importance of the oppressed acting independently of the ruling class and its promises. The peasants’ tragedy was not due to a lack of courage but to their misplaced trust in the monarchy, which was based on the fixed social limitations they faced. Their defeat was inevitable: the ruling class responded with calculated strategies, while the peasants lacked the organisation and ideological resources to continue the fight.

The enduring question today is whether the oppressed act independently of the institutions that claim to represent them, especially amid growing inequality, authoritarianism, and war. Greengrass’s film hints at this truth but ultimately pulls back. The true history of 1381, however, cannot be fully understood in Sherwood Forest; it calls for a direct challenge to the social order—an unresolved confrontation.

Articles and Bibliography

Marxist and Theoretical Works

• Friedrich Engels, The Peasant War in Germany. The foundational Marxist analysis of peasant uprisings, indispensable for understanding the structural limitations of rural revolts and the class dynamics that doomed them.
• Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I (sections on primitive accumulation) For the broader context of feudal dissolution, the emergence of capitalist relations, and the role of coercion in restructuring labour.
• Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution (Ch. 1–3): Not directly about 1381, but essential for grasping the Marxist method of analysing mass movements, class agency, and the difference between spontaneous revolt and organised revolutionary leadership.
• George Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: For the theoretical distinction between class “in itself” and class “for itself,” crucial for understanding why the peasantry could revolt but not reorganise society.

Primary and Medieval Sources

• Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana: A contemporary chronicler whose hostile account nonetheless provides detailed descriptions of the events of 1381.
• Jean Froissart, Chroniques: Offers a vivid aristocratic perspective on the revolt, revealing elite anxieties about mass action.
• Langland, Piers Ploughman: The literary backdrop to the Ploughman figure; a major source for understanding popular religious dissent and proto‑egalitarian sentiment.
• The Anonimalle Chronicle: One of the most detailed accounts of the negotiations at Mile End and Smithfield.

Modern Historical Scholarship on 1381

• Rodney Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381. The classic Marxist history of the revolt. Essential for its analysis of class structure, feudal exploitation, and the political consciousness of the rebels.
• Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: For the economic pressures that shaped peasant life and contributed to the revolt.
• Alastair Dunn, The Great Rising of 1381: A modern narrative history with strong archival grounding.
• Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer. Useful for understanding the ideological climate of late‑14th‑century England and elite responses to popular unrest.
• Justine Firnhaber‑Baker, The Jacquerie of 1358: A comparative study of another major peasant uprising, illuminating the structural similarities across Europe.

On Feudalism, Class Structure, and Revolt

• Marc Bloch, Feudal Society: A foundational work on the social and economic structures of medieval Europe.
• E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class: Not medieval, but indispensable for understanding how class agency develops historically- a contrast to the peasantry’s structural limitations.
• Guy Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism: For the broader European context of feudal decline and peasant resistance.

Film, Ideology, and Representation

• John Newsinger, “Revolution and the Cinema” (various essays): Marxist analyses of how film treats mass uprisings and class struggle.
• Peter Watkins, interviews on La Commune (Paris 1871): Watkins’s reflections on why mainstream cinema fears collective agency are directly relevant to Greengrass’s retreat into “mob” framing.
• Michael Wayne, Red Kant: Aesthetics, Marxism and the Third Critique: For a theoretical framework on how bourgeois aesthetics constrains depictions of mass political action.
• WSWS Arts Reviews on Les Misérables, Judas and the Black Messiah, Bloody Sunday: Parallel analyses of how liberal filmmaking oscillates between sympathy for the oppressed and fear of their independent action.

On Robin Hood Mythmaking

• J.C. Holt, Robin Hood: The definitive scholarly study of the outlaw myth, useful for understanding why Hollywood prefers Robin Hood’s individualised rebellion to the collective politics of 1381.
• Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography. Explores how the legend has been repeatedly reshaped to fit bourgeois ideological needs.