The 1660 Restoration and the Lessons of Defeat

KEITH FLETT considers how the return of the monarchy after Cromwell offers lessons for a left facing the return of Donald Trump, showing that radical traditions endure despite reactionary victories

HISTORIC DEFEAT: Charles II landing in Dover in 1660 Photo: Wellcome Images/Creative Commons

ROSA LUXEMBURG saw the future as a choice between socialism and barbarism.

In that respect, the presidential landslide for Donald Trump is not good news for the left. Of course, Trump does not lead directly to barbarism, but there is a clear direction of travel, although whether he or his Democratic opponent would be the more likely to start a world war is a moot point.

In the US, abortion rights, civil liberties and much else may be under question and threat. No doubt, organisations from the community and from the labour movement will fight to defend them.

It is an experience of defeat — but on a historical scale much worse has happened.

Perhaps the original one in the modern era was the restoration of the monarchy in England and Wales in 1660 after the Commonwealth period from 1649.

The restoration saw numbers of those who had signed the death warrant for Charles I — regicides — executed. Oliver Cromwell, who had died in 1658, was dug up and executed in his absence, as it were. Censorship of radical ideas was reinstated and those who held such ideas were persecuted.

After the death of Cromwell, those disparate factions who did not want the return of the monarchy were unable to find a way forward. Well-off urban and landed interests saw the return of King Charles II.

The events of 1649 and 1660 remain a touchstone in English history, not least for the current King and Queen.

The Marxist historian Christopher Hill noted in his book The Experience of Defeat: “We know something of the practical consequences of defeat. After 1660, nearly one in five of the beneficed ministers lost their livings without even the meagre compensation which the ejected of the 1640s and 1650s had received. Lay dissenters had to endure nearly 30 years (until 1688) of sporadic but often very damaging persecution.”

Hill was interested in the radicals that had supported the revolution and how they came to terms with events after 1660, in particular the poet and radical activist and thinker John Milton.

He noted, and here one must suspect a parallel with Trump 450 years on, that the problem for radicals after 1660 was, of course, the suppression of ideas and publication and the possibility of arrest, but even more so the unpredictability of the matter. Some were able to protect themselves in local communities; others were not so fortunate.

Two groups were able to survive. The Quakers adapted to a degree to the new royalist regime, while the Muggletonians — a far more radical grouping — disappeared from public view and carried on privately.

Their ideas influenced William Blake, and there were a few surviving adherents even in recent times. The socialist historian EP Thompson described himself as a Muggletonian Marxist.

The survival of the radical ideas and traditions, which became easier after the “glorious revolution” of 1688, which constrained the authority of absolute monarchy, was important.

In the 1790s, the London Corresponding Society declared that it would have “members unlimited” — that is, that political activity and representation would not be tied to property. It was exactly the same principle that had been central to the debate at Putney in 1647 between Cromwell’s supporters and army agitators.

It’s a reminder that defeats, often very serious ones, happen, but ideas and radical organisations can and do survive even in the most difficult of times.

Beyond the defeat of 1660 and that in the US in 2024, we can look at the experience of the 1930s, a much more serious matter still, but one that still saw resistance and eventually the defeat of reaction. Socialism or barbarism is a perpetual process of struggle.

Keith Flett is a socialist historian. Follow him on X @kmflett.