Look Back And Wonder

In the wake of the death of Margaret Thatcher I read an interesting piece by historian Dominic Sandbrook. In it, he proposed the theory that whether or not Margaret Thatcher had been Prime Minister, the changes attributed to her would still have happened. She was a product of her times and therefore if she hadn't become PM, some like-minded soul would have done so and followed the same path. Now, I don't want specifically to talk about recent history, but the point itself struck me as interesting. Since Sandbrook also compared the former Prime Minister's divisive capacity to that of Oliver Cromwell, I'll take that as my cue and look back to another time when one man appeared to rewrite Britain's destiny.

Historians are often divided about the impact of the seventeenth century civil wars on our history. Some see them merely as the final act in the religious struggle that followed Henry VIII's break with Rome, others as a defining point in the story of our parliamentary democracy. The Commonwealth can likewise be seen either as a brief interregnum or the birth of constitutional monarchy depending on your point of view.

Obviously, if you take the view that the civil wars were a closing act or a brief moment of madness, Cromwell's role is of necessity unimportant. If nothing changed, it really doesn't matter how much Cromwell was responsible for what happened. The Sandbrook of early modern history would end his piece here. To me, this would be a mistake - and not only if the writer was paid by the word. Because I take the view of Simon Schama, who makes the argument that the Glorious Revolution of 1688/89 was not only made possible by the earlier wars, it led directly to a political settlement based on Cromwell's constitutional experiments of the 1650's. And there's little doubt it was that settlement made the difference between Britain's restrained and retained monarchy and France's absolutist and abolished one.

So if the events matter, the question is one of whether Cromwell also mattered or whether history had any number of Cromwells ready to take on the reforming mantle. The popular myth is that Cromwell was a prominent parliamentarian with republican views who used the army in his quest to become essentially Britain's only president. If you watch Robert Harris' turn as the wart-faced puritan, you see him playing a key role in events from the very beginning, agitating against the King, almost praying for revolution. In that light it seems almost inevitable that the wars would happen and that Cromwell would end them as ruler of England.

The truth, of course, is somewhat different. Cromwell's own writings show him as a typical, if somewhat devout, country gent who turned to politics to make things better for his local area. In the days of the Long Parliament he barely features and it is rather Pym who leads the faction calling for a more accountable monarch. Charles resists any attempt to restrain his (as he sees it) god-given authority and when he eventually declares war by raising his standard at Nottingham, Cromwell duly sides with Parliament and raises a cavalry division from his native East Anglia. Subordinated to Sir Thomas Fairfax, he makes his mark in a string of victories which demonstrate a remarkable military mind. He is also instrumental in the professionalisation of the army, creating the basis for what becomes known as the New Model. By the time the first stage of the war is reaching its close, Cromwell has become such an asset to parliament's cause that when they pass the self-denying ordinance (by which terms no Member of Parliament can hold a commission in the army) special dispensation is given to ensure Cromwell retains his command. Throughout this period it is clear that Cromwell, as with most of the country, wants a settlement of the war which leaves the King on the throne. It is only when circumstances make Charles a prisoner of the army that Cromwell comes to realise that the King is duplicitous and impossible to trust. Even then, his first instinct is to believe the role of monarchy is more important than the role of an individual monarch and that the crown should go on. And it is still Fairfax more than Cromwell who instigates Pride's Purge and paves the way for the King's trial. It is only as Parliament struggles with the issues of a standing army, reluctant to disband without back pay and riddled with radical opinion, that Cromwell finally emerges as the key player. By the time the King's death warrant is signed, he is seen as a leading Parliamentarian. When Fairfax backs away from the conflict in Scotland due to his Presbyterian sympathies, Cromwell becomes finally the head of the army.

So many things in this chain of events could have been different. A less arrogant monarch would never have brought his country to a state of civil war; a more competent monarch would have won it. A less sensible parliament might have kept the army entirely under their control, or made the self-denying ordinance absolute. A more prosperous parliament might have been able to pay the soldiers' arrears and disband the army, leaving the country open to invasion from Scotland or - had the Thirty Years' War run a little shorter - from France. The King might have died in battle or never have been captured. And Cromwell (who also had a close call on the battlefield) might not have combined the mix of military and political skill which ensured both his victories and his rise to prominence. Even assuming that monarchy would inevitably have produced a tyrant sooner or later, it doesn't follow that Parliament would have ended that tyranny. Other countries have tried to topple autocratic regimes with hugely variable results. It's this roll of history's dice which makes the period so interesting.

Of course we know how the dice landed. The King was tried and executed and after Parliament tried to run the country in the interests of its members, Cromwell purged it and spent the best part of a decade trying various systems of government, putting down uprisings and entertaining a superstitious belief in the importance of September 3rd. When he died (on September 3rd), his son was unequal to the task of following in his father's footsteps and the monarchy was restored under Charles II.

What's interesting here is the flexibility of Cromwell's politics. Even before the execution of the King, he used the Putney Debates to allow the radical elements in the army to have a voice. That he ultimately steered clear of implementing the army's proposals was because of his small-c conservatism, a fear that to move too far from the status quo was to invite anarchy. Indeed, some of the proposals that emerged in those debates would still be regarded as radical now, including as they did such things as an end to land ownership. Cromwell's resistance was not, however, about preserving his own power: after the death of Charles he was content to allow the Rump Parliament to continue. It was only when it became clear that the Rump were using their position to line their own pockets that Cromwell seized power in what can only be described as a military coup. His first action was then to hand-pick an alternative parliament - the so-called parliament of saints - and only when that also proved less than saintly did he end up ruling personally. Even then, he saw this as merely a temporary expedient - he declined the offer to take the crown for himself. Such lack of ambition is not only out of keeping with the public perception of Cromwell, it is incredibly uncommon, a rare modern comparison being the 1948 uprising in Costa Rica, where the military assumed power and then abolished itself a year later. Cromwell did not, in the end, relinquish power, much less abolish the army, but this is because unlike Costa Rica he could not look to the rest of the world for a functioning model of democracy to copy. Cromwell was a pioneer in government and it can't be held against him that he failed. It certainly can't be said that Cromwell or no Cromwell, history would have been exactly the same - compare with the self-proclaimed Emperor Napoleon a little over a century later and you see what the combination of military success and revolution can produce.

So was Cromwell entirely out of his time? I think not and you only have to look across the Irish Sea to find a place where he was as much a slave to historical forces as anyone else of his day. Cromwell's actions in Ireland have earned him a particularly dark reputation amongst Irish Catholics, but to write him off as a religious bigot is to miss the point - this is the man who allowed the Jews back into England after four hundred years in exile. To understand Cromwell and the Catholics is to understand the bitterness of the religious divide in Christendom. There had, after all, been a hundred years of religious factionalism and fighting. Successive monarchs had taken one side or another in the schism, persecuting or even killing those who took the opposing view. As recently as 1641, the Irish Catholics had risen against the planted Ulster Scots and stories of atrocities had crossed the Irish Sea to England. No doubt there was much exaggeration in the telling, but stories of baby burning and of the rape and murder of Protestant women resonated with an already fixed view of the Catholic menace. At the same time, the ongoing fighting in England had made brutes of the army: in the early stages of the conflict, the civil war was largely civil - there are stories of gentlemen's agreements, of troops being allowed to leave sieges with their heads held high and weapons in hand. The continual resurgence of the conflict, however, had bred an aggressive war-weariness, with later battles such as Preston turning into slaughters in the hope such carnage would bring the war to an end. When Cromwell came to Ireland, therefore, there was little prospect of quarter being given: the nature of the enemy and the dehumanising effects of a long war made the outcome inevitable, regardless of who was leading the army. And quarter wasn't a requirement in the articles of war: whilst the modern reader may balk at the idea of slaughtering an entire garrison, what Cromwell did was accepted practice in its day. In fact, we lionize Wellington for his war against Napoleon, despite his pursuing a very similar policy against quarter in French-occupied Spain. In Ireland, Cromwell is a convenient bogeyman for a period of oppression which actually dated back to the reign of Elizabeth I. And this is because Cromwell is easy to caricature as a villain: imagine how people would feel if it were Gloriana herself whom the Irish vilified for their troubles. In times to come, I suspect Margaret Thatcher will also retain that villain's visage, for whilst a more nuanced history would suggest conflict with the unions was an ongoing issue and that the collapse of the coal and steel industries was inevitable, she remains a convenient scapegoat for one side in a particular societal division.

In the end, however, what both Cromwell and Thatcher demonstrate is that history isn't entirely inevitable. Sometimes parts of it hinge on the presence of the right person at the right time, whether it's a military genius with a lack of personal ambition, or a stubborn grocer's daughter with a belief in individual empowerment. Had Cromwell not been there in the seventeenth century it is likely that the outcome would have been a stronger, more absolute monarchy - much as was the case in contemporary France. Would that ultimately have fallen? Possibly, but it's hard to see what would have triggered it: the French revolution was triggered by the country's financial collapse after taking sides in the American War of Independence. This, in turn, was influenced by the revolutionary thinking which drove the English Civil War. Had the English Civil War not happened, or had it been a triumph for monarchy it's hard to say what course history might have taken. And if Cromwell had been less small c conservative? Would a more radical Britain have produced a stable democracy without a monarch?

For 1980's Britain, too, we can see that a weaker Prime Minister would have allowed the 1980's to continue much in the vein of the 1970's, with governments continually toppled by unions, the weight of wage demands driving inflation to ever-greater heights and Britain's export trade continuing its collapse. Like Greece, we might have fudged our way into the Euro to paper over the cracks, but like Greece we would have been crippled when the next financial storm hit. Because, deregulation or no deregulation, there would have been some kind of financial storm - there always is. Perhaps a less combative leader might have found another way through, but the unions were determined to finish the government from the day it took office, so this seems unlikely. Her predecessor Callaghan was of the left and the unions didn't do him any favours either.

Sometimes history really does hinge on a single character. They may be a product of their times, with their prejudices forged in the events of their time, but their unique personal characteristics mean they end up making a difference. It is for history - after sufficient time for the prejudices to die down - to judge whether that was the right difference.