The Green Ribbon Books

The Politics of Englishness

Arthur Aughey
Manchester University Press
2007

University of Ulster Professor Arthur Aughey turns his attention to the English question in this new study inspired by the ubiquity of the flag of St George across England during the 2002 and 2006 World Cups .

As in his 2001 study of the impact of devolution on the UK, Aughey's approach is to conduct an exhaustive survey of the literature on the subject.

Much of this literature is preoccupied with the 'peculiar lack' of any politically significant sense of English nationality, The most important examples being the work of Tom Nairn and Perry Anderson.

The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution

Christopher Hill
Penguin
1972

Magisterial study of the left-wing of radical puritanism in England during the Civil War and the Commonwealth.

Hill describes a period of intellectual and social ferment that gave rise to a huge range of radical sects, Levellers and True Levellers, Ranters, Diggers and Quakers, and which left its mark on great writers like John Bunyan and John Milton.

For Hill, these ideas represent the germ of a deeper social upheaval, 'the world turned upside down' within what ultimately became a bourgeois revolution.

This Marxist reading has been subject to much criticism from later scholars, but this book remains a classic study of an inspirational period in English radical history.

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Paine: Political Writings

Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
Thomas Paine, edited by Bruce Kuklick
Cambridge University Press
1989, 2Rev Ed 2000

Tom Paine was arguably the most important thinker in the English radical tradition and a significant figure in both the French and American revolutions. He transformed the art of political writing with a lucid plain style designed to appeal to the common people rather than the classically educated elite.

This useful anthology includes a number of his most important writings:

Common Sense (1776) - tract containing the first open call for the Thirteen Colonies of America to throw off their allegiance to Britain. At one time there was one copy in circulation for every five people on America.

The Crisis Number I (1776) - Famous pamphlet written while Paine accompanied George Washington's army in its retreat across New Jersey. Washington had it read to his men before crossing the Delaware. Its power is exemplified by the famous opening lines:

The Enchanted Glass: Britain And Its Monarchy

Tom Nairn
Radius, 1988

An incisive critique of the Monarchy and its role in sustaining the British establishment. Nairn sees the monarchy as the lynchpin of an oligarchy in which Westminster, Whitehall and the City of London all seek to contain popular democratic/nationalist demands in order to maintain a residual sense of global greatness.

Some of Nairn's targets; Trident - 'the Royal bomb', the 'pseudo-feudal socialism' of much of the Labour Party, appear even more well taken twenty years on.

Indeed, it has become ever more apparent that New Labour's early constitutional reforms were ultimately an attempt to shore up the system Nairn describes rather than challenge it. This book is arguably even more timely now than when it was written.

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The English Levellers

The English Levellers
Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
Edited by Andrew Sharp
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge 1998

A selection of key texts from the Levellers, the radical democratic movement which emerged on the Parliamentary side of the English Civil War in the late 1640s.

Includes the Levellers revolutionary blueprint for an English constitution, the Agreement of the People, and a report of the Putney debates, a classic confrontation  between the rights of the majority and the rights of the propertied few, as well as writings by key Leveller thinkers such as John Lilburne, William Walwyn, and Richard Overton.

The volume also includes a useful introduction, bibliography, chronological table and biographical notes.

An Online version of the texts is available at constitution.org

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