Or “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”
My favourite book on English History is A.L. Morton’s “A People’s History of England”. It tells our history from the perspective of the common man, rather than that of the Kings, rulers and other notables. The book loses me a bit as it approaches the modern age, showing the author’s almost communist tendencies, but before that it is a fair representation of how England would have been for… the Peasants.
Of course, we are so much more civilized, educated and democratised these days and the barbaric events of times past couldn’t possibly happen today, could they? But as I look at history around that key year of 1381, the similarities with today strike me profoundly:
“Late in May the inhabitants of villages in South Essex attacked and killed tax collectors. They took to the woods and sent out messengers asking for
support to other parts of the County and Kent.”
And in 2013 and 2014, at County, Borough and District elections, the villages and burgers of Kent and Essex took to their ballot papers to vote for unprecedented numbers of UKIP Councillors:
- Kent 2013: 17
- Essex 2013: 9
- Basildon 2014: 11
- Castle Point 2014: 5
- Maidstone 2014: 4
- Rochford 2014: 4
- Southend 2014: 5
- Thurrock 2014: 5
Back to 1381:
“On the 7th June Rochester Castle was taken and on the 10th Canterbury”
Well, well, well, Rochester again in 2014. We keenly await the result on Thursday night, perhaps many kippers reading this helping to get out the UKIP vote “on the day”. Canterbury perhaps not so, it’s a LibLabCon stronghold for now, but not far away is South Thanet, a highly likely Commons seat for Nigel Farage in May 2015.
“By this time the revolt was general all over the Home Counties and East Anglia and a concerted march on London began.”
And here we are, in 2014 and 2015, many of UKIP’s target seats along the East Coast from Lincolnshire to Kent, and other towns around the Home Counties. What is it about the people of the East of England that makes them so bolshy? I put it down to Danish and French blood, which gene studies show is still predominant. The People’s Army of the East is marching on Westminster.
In 1381, they even managed to gain support from Londoners:
“The apprentices and journeymen had their own quarrel with the government and John of Gaunt, whose financier friends formed a ruling oligarchy in the City. Besides, there were the numerous slum dwellers, reinforced during the past two or three decades by hundreds of runaway villeins. Even sections of the well-to-do citizens, including two aldermen, Horn and Sybyle, were friendly.”
This has striking parallels with today. As academics Rob Ford and Matthew Goodwin have observed in their book “Revolt on the Right”, it is the “left behinds” who are turning to UKIP. The increase in wealth is only going to those higher up the scale: like George Osborne’s financier friends in the City perhaps? And the runaway villeins? They are the settled English population in East London who have fled out of London in the last few decades in droves, driven away by high property prices and immigration, swelling the populations of areas such as South and coastal Essex, Medway and Thanet. And we have our own two “friendly aldermen” in Messrs Carswell and Reckless.
Morton continues the story:
“On the next day there was a massacre of the Flemings living in London.”
Ah, the Belgians again, nowadays responsible for hosting the EU Headquarters in Brussels. That is where today’s anger is directed, at the unelected bureaucracy to which our politicians have been handing power for the last 40 years. In fact, that anger is now directed at those politicians, and many of them will pay the price for that disloyalty to our country in May 2015.
Of course, the Peasant’s Revolt did not change the world overnight. The King made some promises to the assembled rebels, and then when they left, he broke his promises. Sounds like Cameron making promises to “do” things, but then never doing them. As Morton reports:
“But, though the rising had failed, there was no complete return to the old conditions.”
We must not allow this rising to fail. We must remain unified and resolute. We must hold the present rulers to account and force them to change, so we can remain a United Kingdom where the people, the peasants, can enjoy a fair share of the wealth that the country can generate when freed from the shackles of the European Union and the metropolitan elite.
Photo by The British Library
This is the nature of power, and probably more to the point man’s nature. Where there is power people in the know will use it to enrich themselves and pull even more power to themselves – hence the elite today. History shows us this ebb and flow of when power aggregates to itself like a black hole it gets destroyed, or even destroys itself. This dissipates the power once more only for it to once again, by gravitational forces, start to form another ‘star’. And round and round we go…
As academics Rob Ford and Matthew Goodwin have observed in their book “Revolt on the Right”, it is the “left behinds” who are turning to UKIP.
Its bad enough that urban liberal academics sneer down their noses about the so called ‘left behinds’! What we don’t need are dim witted Kipper PPC’s reinforcing their prejudices that we are some sort of under-privileged underclass!
It is Ford and Goodwin who invented the sneering condescension that UKIP supporters are, to simplify it, ‘Old, Poor ,Thick and White’ sending dog whistles to every urban liberal elitist with a superiority complex in the country.
So Otridge don’t be a prat! Don’t do their miserable mean spirited jobs for them!
I am oldish and white, but don’t include myself in the “Old, Poor, Thick and White” definition. However, for the sake of this article, I regard myself as a Peasant, with the analogy I make to 1381. We now have the uber-rich, the 1%, the big landowners, BIg Company Board Directors, Senior Public Servants who are in that category, and the 99%, the rest of us: factory workers, surveyors, unemployed, middle managers, McDonalds hands, IT specialists etc. The levelling of redistributive distribution is bringing us all together in the same band financially, and the political elite regard us all as Peasants.
I do not personally agree with all of Ford/Goodwin’s analysis, Yes, a lot of “left behinds” do support UKIP. but so do a lot of relatively well-to-do self-made people, and a lot of thinking people who can see through the political smokescreen. We are a broad church, as were those revolting in 1381, if you read my quote above on support of Londoners.
And why do you spoil your whole otherwise excellent post with calling me a prat? I shall not return the compliment.
Rocester and Strood will fall to the UKIP army, the Tories have thrown everything at the town to no avail and are now back to scare tactics. Where is the proof what does the Tory candidate say ” I have been told” by whom may I ask? No the Tories have spent a lot of money they can ill afford just like Newark but where Newark was a safe Tory seat, that they almost lost, Mark is a well respected candidate and he will prevail.
But what is the point of the People’s Army if UKIP is just another political party?
We need major change to the political process and adopting the Harrogate Agenda would be a good start:
Pretty much all of the Harrogate agenda can be interpreted as the current political system with the exception of separating the executive from the legislature as in the American system that ensures long periods of complete stagnation and one year as opposed to five year parliaments.
Like most utopian theories it’s useful to protest about but offers no more than we already endure and, as idealogues usually fail to acknowledge we are all subject to human nature whatever system happens to be in place.
Really, so just how is the current system:
1. protecting our sovereignty?
2. allowing local democracy?
3. No taxation without consent?
and so on.
So you are telling me that UKIP will just be more of the same!
‘From the beginning all men by nature were
created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of
naughty men… And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come…
in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.’ (from sermon by John Ball at Blackheath, 1381)