It’s funny which figures get vilified, as pointed out above, Cromwell was just another imperialist but one whose crimes are associated with him.
Kind of like how everyone is down with getting rid of Leopold of Belgium statues because of the horrific crimes (which we know about in part because of the work of the great Roger Casement - executed by the English as a traitor. I mean he totally was of course. He was the inspiration for Heart of Darkness by the way. Conrad knew him.) but nothing about Queen Victoria whose reign was objectively worse in terms of mass murder. Particularly in China and India and Sudan off the top of my head but really everywhere. As they say of the British empire in the 19th c, the sun never set on it, and the blood never dried.
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I’ve seen a few things online about Victoria statues being vandalised, but they don’t get headlines in the same way as Winston Churchill statues do.
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I find that books like this are part of a general tendency to simplify history down to a narrative of hero’s and villains that doesn’t really have any bearing on reality. People like to think of history as a series of great men who built the modern world or whatever but reality is often more complex. If we look at Cromwell did he help to win the Civil war and preserve parliament? Yes, but Charles II was welcomed back by cheering crowds after his death. ultimately I don’t see the divine right of kings style rule persisting much longer than it did. I think a lot of the conflict over these issues come when people build their identity on bad history like this. ( Is this book from the ladybird collection? I think I may have had this very book)
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Good to hear! At least Churchill was a person you could also say good stuff about. Victoria not so much.
I mean he was a fucking racist drunken thug who hated the working class but he did fight Nazis. Right wing intectuals of his time all idolised Mussolini but his letters to Benito were m o i s t.
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I think a lot of it is down to the very simplified version of the history that gets taught in Schools in the UK. The whole reformation / civil war/ restoration period is complex and full of shifting alliances, so people get told a really abbreviated version of the story that ignores Cromwell’s later actions and legacy. If you don’t really read into things yourself, you could easily be left with the idea that the aftermath of the civil war was just “He didn’t listen to Parliament either and cancelled Christmas, so people were basically fine with another King after he died.”
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Yeah I think that one was taken down and buried first before they foisted it on Oz. The guy who blew up Wellington’s one (fave fact about Wellington: he was made Earl of Bronte and the O’Prunty family took that as their name rather than own up to their ugly Irish name when they moved to England) was known to anyone who wanted to know in Dublin but nobody would say…
But the important thing to do is focus on the figures in Irish history who we need to look at and examine, like Mitchell say, rather than English stuff. We are a Republic, there is a process in the North (not great but its better) and BLACK LIVES MATTER, and we have a racist system called direct provision and we have racists in parliament and the coppers are racist and we don’t examine the fucking obvious racism in our society. Fuck Cromwell. He’s dead long ago. I’m more concerned with Charlie Flanagan, or Gemmtrails or John Piss or the Iona 'institute" or Noel Grealish or Verona Murphy or David Quinn or…
Or more importantly the victimhood complex which enables racism and allows us to avoid examining our obvious racism.
Fuck Cromwell: fix our citizenship laws. That’s something to care about.
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One difference is that the Congo Free State wasn’t part of Belgium but instead was a personal possession of Leopold over which he exerted direct control. With Victoria you can do more to create plausible deniability.
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Cromwell was the original Grumpy Cat. I heard he smiled once and hated it.
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Sure, but it’s actually not plausible.
she absolutely tied a cult of personality to the racist mass murder in Sudan.
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Don’t believe everything you hear
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I look foward to watching all of this Monday. I was being a bit facetious, though 
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Oliver Cromwell lay buried and dead. Hee, haw, buried and dead.
They planted an apple tree over his head. Hee, haw, over his head.
The apples are ripe and ready to fall. Hee, haw, ready to fall.
There came an old woman to gather them all. Hee, haw, gather them all.
Oliver rose, and gave her a drop. Hee haw, gave her a drop.
Which made the old woman go hippety hop. Hee haw, hippety hop.
The saddle and bridle they lie on the shelf. Hee haw, lie on the shelf.
If you want any more you can sing it yourself. Hee haw, sing it yourself.
A curse upon you, Oliver Cromwell.
But this is an out of print book from 1963.
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Cromwell is a very, very complicated man.
He did overthrow a seriously objectionable monarchy (yay him) which was replaced with an elected parliament (yay him) which he replaced when he didn’t like their laws (boo him) although that parliament was indeed extremely puritan (yay him?) and had himself installed as dictator (boo him, etc…)
Same in Ireland. He replaced an oppressive feudal system with an exploitative colonial system using an army with strict rules against looting and raping that he never enforced. He was also nice to Jews…but had catholics burned alive.
At best he was a deeply flawed man with mostly good intentions but without any abilities to wield influence and power responsibly trying to rule during a violent sectarian civil war.
A bit too much for a Ladybird book who never tried too hard to find any nuance in any of their books anyway. Don’t learn your British history from these!
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Alas this debate propagated by right-wing racists distracts from the real history. Honestly if you want to write about the abuse of the Irish people in this period it is not that hard to find real sources about real exploitation so why go for this obvious lie?
Same thing with indenture that so many Europeans fell for then. There are plenty of historical examples on how this system was abused without confusing it with African chattel slavery.
Reality is horrible enough, why go for these lies? Answer: To downplay African chattel slavery.
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Holy shirt - I’d never heard of this. Mark Steel is my favourite guest on both the News Quiz and the Bugle.
Torrent, thee are my friend. Thanks!
He has all of his radio series (Solution, Revolution and Lectures) available on his website:
https://marksteelinfo.com/recordings/
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