"The World Turned Upside Down"....The Levellers today ..... on the wireless

Now I have always been fascinated by that upsurge of political debate before, during and after the English Civil War.

An Agreement of the People, 1647

From discussions on politics and democracy, to arguments about how the land and wealth should be more equitablty distributed, to competing religious visions,  the middle decades of the 17th century had the lot.

I often return to the Putney Debates when the army of Parliament sat down and talked out the future of England  after the Civil War.  Debates which were echoed again in Februray 1944 when members of the Eighth Army in Cairo, met, and debated on their expectations of a post war Britain, voting for the nationalisation of banks, land, mines, and transport in the United Kingdom.*

All of which means I have booked my seat beside the wireless today to listen to the "Levellers", from the BBC Radio Four programme In Our Time.**

In which "Misha Glenny and guests discuss the group which came to be known as the Levellers and emerged during what would become arguably one of the bloodiest and most turbulent periods of English history. 

After the First English Civil War, the Levellers started calling for reforms to achieve legal and social equality. They pushed for a new constitution, extended franchise, popular sovereignty, and religious toleration. 

To do this, the Levellers pioneered the use of pamphlets and petitions, as well as taking to the streets in their thousands to demonstrate wearing their signature sea-green ribbons and sprigs of rosemary. 

To some they were radical, and to others not radical enough. Though the Leveller movement itself may have been short-lived, the arguments that they made have both inspired and challenged generations since.

Private John Church, Corporal Perkins, and Cornet James Thompson, 2024

With, Teresa Bejan, Professor of Political Theory and Fellow of Oriel College, University of Oxford, Ted Vallance, Professor of History and Dean of Research and Doctoral Study at the University of Roehampton, and, Clare Jackson, Honorary Professor of Early Modern History and Walter Grant Scott Fellow in History at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge

Producer: Martha Owen"

And because I can I will remember the three soldiers who were sympatheic to the Levellers and who took part in the Banbury Mutiny and were executed.

Location;In Our Time, BBC, Radio 4

Pictures; An Agreement of the People, 1647,Private John Church, Corporal Perkins, and Cornet James Thompson, 2024

 *Cairo Forces Parliament, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Forces_Parliament as well as The Troops' Parliament, Karl Hansen, Tribune, May 8, 2023, https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/05/the-troops-parliament and The Desert Parliament , Olivia Humphreys October 26th, 2019, Tribune, https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/10/the-desert-parliament

**The Levellers, In Our Time, BBC, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002wkhq