These days, Cromwell is still portrayed as a great hero: there’s a huge statue to him right in front of the Houses of Parliament, in London. But the more I read about this stuff, the more it looks like ‘victor’s history’. Reality seems to be that Cromwell’s so-called ‘Commonwealth’ had almost nothing about wealth-in-common, like the Levellers had wanted. Instead, sounds little different from King Charles’ world: a despotic state, raddled with intrigue, corruption, spies and secret-police, but here with Cromwell himself as its king in everything but name.

With the Agreement sidelined out of sight, Cromwell dragged his New Model Army around Ireland and Scotland, trashing everything everywhere he went. And his soldiers still weren’t being paid by Parliament – the key grievance that had triggered the Putney Debates in the first place.

The only light relief in the whole miserable mess was bizarre laws banning Christmas and things like that. Corrupt and daft, both at the same time. Fun not allowed, in any sense.

Real hard not to be cynical about all of this. The more I read about it, the worse it gets.

—

When Cromwell died in 1660, about a decade later, it did look like he was setting things up for just another family-dynasty – a bit like North Korea today. But Cromwell’s son had the sense not to follow in his father’s footsteps – and that’s what led to the Restoration of the old monarchy, with Charles II.

Must have felt like real relief. For a while, anyway….

The Restoration seems to have thrown away the only bits of the Commonwealth worth keeping, and restored just about everything that wasn’t. If the kickbacks and corruption were bad in Cromwell’s not-so-Commonwealth, it really kicked off big-time in Charles’ reign. Just now I’ve been ploughing my way through the diaries of Samuel Pepys: he was secretary for the Navy back then. Everyone was on the take: most of the money for the Navy vanished into rich-people’s pockets, whilst the Navy’s ships sank and its sailors starved. What a mess…