The Road Not Taken Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Frank Mclynn

  List of Illustrations

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Preface

  Introduction: Revolution

  1. The Origins of the Revolt of 1381

  2. Failure and Consequences of the Peasants’ Revolt

  3. Jack Cade

  4. The Pilgrimage of Grace

  5. Treachery and Debacle

  6. Cromwell and the Levellers

  7. England’s Revolution Manqué?

  8. The Jacobite Rising of 1745

  9. Evolutionary Jacobitism

  10. The Advent of the Chartists

  11. Chartism’s Decline and Fall

  12. The General Strike: Prelude

  13. The General Strike and Its Enemies

  14. Towards the Abyss

  15. Revolution’s Last Chance

  Revolutions: Conclusion

  Picture Section

  Notes

  Appendix

  Index

  Copyright

  About the Book

  * Britain has not been successfully invaded since 1066; nor, in nearly 1,000 years, has it known a true revolution – one that brings radical, systemic and enduring change. The contrast with her European neighbours – with France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece and Russia – is dramatic. All have been convulsed by external warfare, revolution and civil war – all have experienced fundamental change to their ruling elites or their social and economic structures.

  * In The Road Not Taken Frank McLynn investigates the seven occasions when England came closest to revolution: the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, the Jack Cade rising of 1450, the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, the English Civil War of the 1640s, the Jacobite Rising of 1745–6, the Chartist Movement of 1838–50 and the General Strike of 1926.

  * Mixes narrative and analysis, vividly recreating each episode and providing compelling explanations of why social turbulence stopped short of revolution.

  * McLynn’s powerful narrative explores massive themes of social, religious and political change over seven centuries of British history, and shows them at certain moments bursting forth to threaten the existing order.

  * Why, at these dramatic turning-points, did history finally fail to turn? The actions of individuals at key moments had a huge influence, as he shows, but were there underlying currents in our history which have allowed England (and, since 1707, Scotland) to evade the revolutions which engulfed their neighbours? This is the deeper question which Frank McLynn explores in this fascinating book.

  About the Author

  Frank McLynn is a highly regarded historian, who specialises in biographies and military history. He has written over twenty books, including critically acclaimed biographies of Napoleon and Richard the Lionheart. His other books include 1066, Stanley, 1759, and Marcus Aurelius. He is a graduate of Wadham College, Oxford, and London University, where he obtained his doctorate.

  Also by Frank Mclynn

  France and the Jacobite Rising of 1745

  The Jacobite Army in England

  The Jacobites

  Invasion: From the Armada to Hitler

  Charles Edward Stuart

  Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England

  Stanley: The Making of an African Explorer

  Snow Upon the Desert: The Life of Sir Richard Burton

  From the Sierras to the Pampas:

  Richard Burton’s Travels in the Americas, 1860–69

  Stanley: Sorcerer’s Apprentice

  Hearts of Darkness: The European Exploration of Africa

  Fitzroy Maclean

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  C. G. Jung

  Napoleon

  1066: The Year of the Three Battles

  Villa and Zapata

  Wagons West: The Epic Story of America’s Overland Trails

  1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World

  Lionheart and Lackland: King Richard, King John

  and the Wars of Conquest

  Heroes and Villains

  Marcus Aurelius: Philosopher, Emperor

  The Burma Campaign

  Illustrations

  1. Illumination from Jean Froissart © akg-images/British Library

  2. Wat Tyler is wounded © IAM/akg

  3. The Tower of London © Bibliotheque Nationale/The Bridgeman Art Library

  4. Illustration from History of England by Henry Tyrell © Look and Learn/Bridgeman

  5. Illustration from Hutchinson’s Story of the British Nation © The Stapleton Collection

  6. Illustration from The Church of England: A History for the People by H. D. M. Spence-Jones © The Stapleton Collection

  7. Letter from Lord Darcy to Robert Aske © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman

  8. Death warrant of Charles I © Houses of Parliament/Bridgeman

  9. The Battle of Naseby © IAM/akg/World History Archive

  10. Prince Charles Edward Stewart © Scottish National Portrait Gallery/Bridgeman

  11. The Battle of Culloden, from The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/Bridgeman

  12. The execution of Lord Lovat © Hulton Archive/Getty Images

  13. Charter for domestic workers © Private Collection/Bridgeman

  14. The Great Chartist Meeting, from The Royal Collection © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/Bridgeman

  15. Attack on the Westgate Hotel © Private Collection/Bridgeman

  16. The wreckage of a bus © The Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman

  17. Women on horseback © akg/NordicPhotos

  18. Volunteer transport © The Stapleton Collection

  19. Commuters at Paddington Station © National Railway Museum/Science & Society Picture Library

  20. Congestion along the Embankment © The Illustrated London News Picture Library/Bridgeman

  21. Trouble breaking out in Hammersmith Broadway © The Illustrated London News Picture Library/Bridgeman

  To Lucy, with love

  PREFACE

  This is not a book aiming to provide a synoptic view of all rebellions in Britain, like David Hospool’s The English Rebel (2009), or even one that sets out to identify the progressive or left-wing thread running through certain insurrections, as for instance in Edward Vallance’s A Radical History of Britain (2009). The objective, rather, is to identify and zero in on those comparatively rare genuine ‘revolutionary moments’ in British (and especially English) history, defined as occasions when the possibility for overthrow of a regime and a drastic change of direction, politically, economically, socially, was present. These were the occasions when an anarchist’s bomb, a bloody pogrom, or a volley fired from the gun of a frightened and panicky soldier might have ignited a general conflagration. For my purposes a revolution need not necessarily be in a leftward direction, provided it satisfies the criteria for monumental change. The book is primarily a work of synthesis and interpretation, with no claims to definitive solutions. If anyone is stimulated to provide more cogent reasons why this nation-state has avoided real revolution, I shall be delighted. Though based on a range of primary sources, archival research has been limited to the material in Chapters Eight and Nine, where I am a recognised authority. Perhaps I should add a word about ‘where I am coming from’, as our American cousins say. I am not a Marxist nor even a socialist, but I do have an instinctive sympathy for the underdog and this has informed my work; the villains tend to be members of the elite or their minions. I have tried to achieve empathy with those seeking to change things while sceptical long-term about the human capacity for far-reaching social amelioration. In the eras I am describing, the wr
etched of the earth genuinely were struggling for bread-and-butter survival. British society today with its generous welfare provisions, is very different, though inequality persists, and even hardship. There is relative deprivation, of course, but no one could seriously claim that today’s citizens face the spectre of starvation and therefore have no choice but to pick up the cudgels or raise the barricades.

  As with all my recent books, I must particularly acknowledge the invaluable help given me by my wife Pauline and my editor Will Sulkin.

  Frank McLynn, Farnham, December 2011

  INTRODUCTION

  Revolution

  The riots in England in 2011, perhaps even more than the Poll Tax riots of 1990 or the miners’ strike of 1984, provoked much loose talk about the dangers of revolution and with some reason, for on this occasion civil disorder was accompanied by the near collapse of the world financial system. Nevertheless, unless any of the ‘Big Four’ banks were to collapse, which would mean that the apocalypse really was at hand, revolution in Great Britain remains a distant chimera. It is a matter of historical record that Britain has never experienced a true revolution, in the sense that the French Revolution of 1789–94 was ‘true’, with all the convulsions, confusions, chaos, terror and bloodshed that the term connotes. This proposition of ‘no revolution’ may surprise those who think of riots, rebellions, coups d’état or simply transfers of power within the elite as revolutionary acts. But real revolution is a very different animal (see Appendix). Political scientists would probably say that all the above phenomena represent struggle within the regime whereas revolution, properly so called, means struggle about the regime – the idea is to change the whole system not just irritating or irksome parts. Unfortunately the concept of ‘regime change’ has been sullied by recent attempts to rationalise US foreign policy, where ‘change’ usually means no more than the ousting of a hostile despot and his replacement with a friendly, pro-US one, paying lip-service to ‘democracy’. Changing a regime should, in short, refer to root-and-branch transformation of the social structure, the economy and the political system. Astonishingly, such a process has never happened in British history.

  True revolution is bound to involve violence for the very simple reason that no entrenched elite ever voluntarily surrenders its power. As President J. F. Kennedy, seeking reasons for the Cuban Revolution, said in 1962: ‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.’ Revolutions also typically precipitate several waves of change and the French Revolution, involving five years of anarchy, upheaval and blood-letting, is probably the best-known such process, although all the ‘great’ revolutions – Russian, Chinese, Mexican, Cuban – have this feature. It hardly needs to be said, perhaps, that revolutions do not occur spontaneously, that they need leaders, ideologies and mass mobilisation. As Che Guevara memorably remarked: ‘The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.’ Essential preconditions are smugness, complacency, incompetence and resistance to change by an elite. Meanwhile the ‘have nots’ or the deprived (even if only relatively so) have to crack under the strain of enduring the unendurable. There has long been a debate in revolutionary theory between advocates of ‘subjective conditions’ (Lenin, Mao, Guevara) and ‘objective conditions’ (Marx, Engels, Stalin). The former, in a modern version of the old adage that faith can move mountains, assert that willpower is the prime factor in triggering revolution (this is usually referred to as voluntarism). The latter stress that premature revolution leads only to disaster, that the time must be right, the conditions propitious and the timing of the revolutionaries perfect; for such people the so-called ‘revolutionary moment’ is everything. Of course, and this is the point made repeatedly in the study that follows, the presence of these ‘objective conditions’ does not mean that a revolution will succeed. As Lenin stated, some would say in the teeth of his own experience: ‘A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution.’ In our narrative we will present seven clear revolutionary situations which did not, in the end, lead to revolution. Whether this was because of inept revolutionary leadership, misperception of the conditions, sheer bad luck or contingency or whether, in some profound sense, there is something in the very nature of Britain that precludes revolution – all this it will be our task to discover.

  Some who have written about revolutions, especially in the 1960s, have tended to romanticise revolution, but this is a serious error. Everyone who has studied revolutions must surely be depressed by the disappointing outcomes. Overwhelmingly, what is revealed is the collision between a priori ideologies, belief in the perfectibility of Man or at least the emergence of a ‘new Man’ and basic, stubborn and irreducible human nature. The other obvious point is that revolution is necessarily a voyage into the unknown and as such will throw up unintended consequences. This is what the short-lived German dramatist Georg Büchner had in mind when he said that revolutions, like Saturn (in Roman mythology), devour their own children and what Simon Bolivar meant when, after a lifetime of armed struggle, he remarked cynically at the end of his life: ‘He who makes a revolution ploughs the sea.’ The dispassionate observer is bound to conclude that the human sacrifice involved is not worth the small gains usually made. Marxists have sometimes been heard to say that one generation of the proletariat should sacrifice its short-term interests for the sake of future generations, but this seems self-evidently absurd. If we start from human nature, we are bound to pose the question posed by the cynic (exact identity and provenance disputed): ‘What has posterity ever done for me?’ And if the creation of the ‘new Man’ means killing millions of recalcitrants who refuse to adapt and to give up the old sins of venality, corruption, greed and selfishness, is not the revolution thereby confusing means and ends? One is reminded of the notorious American war criminal in the Vietman War who remarked: ‘We had to destroy the village in order to save it.’ All sober observers have been appalled by the huge loss of life occasioned by revolutions and the scant results achieved by so much bloodshed. Oddly enough, one of the most trenchant observations on this point comes in a movie. In Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dynamite, set in the Mexican Revolution, the bandit Juan Miranda (played by Rod Steiger) is urged to join the Mexican Revolution and responds indignantly: ‘The people who read the books go to the people who can’t read the books, the poor people, and say, “We have to have a change.” So the poor people make the change. And then the people who read the books, they all sit around the big polished tables, and they talk and talk and talk and eat and eat and eat. But what has happened to the poor people? THEY ARE DEAD!’ Nevertheless, and this is the point made by Mark Twain (cited at the end of Chapter Three), elites cannot be absolved of blame for crass stupidity and blinkered resistance to change, for it is the sheer hopelessness of their position that leads the dispossessed to conclude that anything is preferable to the status quo and to launch into the unknown, regardless of consequences. Far worse than the myopia of revolutionaries and their disregard of human nature is the obscene complacency of elites in history when faced by grotesque inequality, the starvation of the wretched of the earth, and even the despised aspirations of the middle sectors of society. ‘Let them eat cake’ – the words attributed to Marie Antoinette – are apocryphal, yet the mindset they connote has been depressingly evident throughout history.

  1

  The Origins of the Revolt of 1381

  THE PEASANTS’ REVOLT is the name usually given to the seismic events of 1381 but is actually a misnomer, since craftsmen, tradesmen and urban workers played a greater role in the rebellion than peasants properly so called. Nonetheless it was the first large-scale revolt from below against the feudal system and its overlords and beneficiaries. Contemporary witnesses and chroniclers of the event were all hostile to the rising and recoiled in horror as from satanic forces of chaos. For the learned monks of the time, the only historians available, the revolt
was a monstrous attempt to subvert the principles of order which governed the universe; for them such an outburst of ‘insanity’ was like trying to reverse the fundamental laws of physics, such as gravitation. The chronicler Jean Froissart described it as like Lucifer rebelling against God, and it was he who first introduced the notion of ‘envy’ as the motivator of social discontent and rebellion, ushering in a mindset which is still with us, whereby a cant word is used to explain away all ills in society, and the responsibility for sin is taken away from the sinner and dumped instead on those who react to it.1 The serious historian cannot be content with such simple-mindedness and must probe deeper in the quest for causality. It is customary nowadays to return in effect to Aristotle’s hierarchy of causes2 and to identify a trio of factors operating as the motors behind any significant historical event: preconditions, precipitants and triggers. Although this approach can be overdone and result in a rigid schematisation, the troika works particularly well in explicating the causes of the Peasants’ Revolt. Accordingly, we can identify the Black Death as a precondition, the Hundred Years War as a precipitant and the Poll Tax of 1381 as a trigger.

  The Black Death, described in hideous detail in Boccaccio’s Decameron, was a pandemic that swept across the ‘world-island’ of Asia, Africa and Europe in the 1340s. Everything about it is still the subject of scholarly debate. Some say that it started in central Asia as a bacterium associated with the bobak species of marmot, was a species of bubonic plague, and reached the Crimea by 1346, whence it was carried by fleas nesting in black rats on merchant ships and spread to Europe.3 It was devastating Western Europe by 1348 and invaded England in 1348–9. Yet there is increasing scepticism about bubonic plague as the referend of the Black Death, with some opting for Africa as the original starting point, and central Asia as the secondary host; the ‘Africa first’ view tends to identify the plague as a species of ebola.4 From the unsatisfactory ‘fit’ between the historical evidence and the usual symptoms of bubonic plague, scholars have been tempted into speculation about other possible causes: N. F. Cantor, for instance, thought the Death might have been a combination of anthrax and other epidemics.5 Still others opt for a ‘perfect storm’ – a bizarre one-off congruence of typhus, smallpox and pneumonic and bubonic plagues.6 There is also a neo-Malthusian view entertained in some quarters, based on ‘homeostasis’ whereby Nature obeys a ‘Malthusian limit’, so that when population outstrips resources it finds ways to cut down on the surplus mouths.7 However, there seems to be general agreement that central Asia was a major vector of the disease, with another of history’s notorious unintended consequences manifesting itself. The Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century had created a ‘Pax Mongolica’ in Asia, from which developed a burgeoning silk trade, and it was the Silk Route that was the original vector of the Black Death as far as the Crimea.8