Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP for Harwich since 2005, claimed that the Conservative Party is the party of the Levellers. Not the folk-rock band from Brighton, but the political movement which emerged from the ferment of the English Civil Wars. The Levellers were a coalition of individuals and groups, and had no single party platform. But at their heart were ideals of liberty, equality under the law, religious and political tolerance, and an end to corruption in Parliament. They would have both recognised and been appalled by expenses-gate.

One of their demands, presented to the Army Council in 1647 in The Agreement of the People was:

‘that the people of England, being at this day very unequally distributed by Counties, Cities, and Boroughs for the election of their deputies in Parliament, ought to be more indifferently proportioned according to the number of the inhabitants.’

This is a call for parliamentary reform along the lines of the 1832 Reform Act, but nearly 200 years earlier. The Levellers have long been claimed by the political left. Fenner Brockway, the veteran Tribunite MP, wrote a book about the Levellers, Agitators and Diggers, calling them ‘Britain’s First Socialists’. It is near-impossible to hear a Tony Benn speech without reference to the Levellers. As well as demonstrating their influence on the French and American Revolutions, Benn writes:

‘The English reformers of the early 19th century also drew many of their ideas and language from the Levellers’ mix of Christian teaching, religious and political dissent, social equality and democracy. It fired the imagination of generations of Congregationalists, trade union pioneers, early co-operators, Chartists, and socialists.’

There is a huge danger in claiming historical figures would support contemporary causes. The Sun in 1992 claimed, thanks to a spiritualist, that they knew how historical figures would vote in the general election. Churchill was backing Major. Stalin, Marx and Chairman Mao were all for Kinnock. It might be reassuring to claim that your past political heroes would approve of what you are doing today, but it is as scientific as claiming that Nelson would support Manchester United, Queen Victoria would shop at Waitrose, or Boudicca would have been a Liberal Democrat.

But you can convincingly argue that political ideas and values can form a golden thread running through social movements and forces. The kinds of ideas that the Levellers stood for – freedom of expression, assembly, conscience, and liberty under the law – find expression in a range of individuals and groups. They are not always the preserve of the political left. William Wilberforce, who campaigned for the emancipation of the slaves, was a Tory. I happen to agree with much of Douglas Carswell’s programme for direct democracy and citizen engagement (we both face much opposition to it within our own parties). But on balance, the people standing on the shoulders of the Levellers, from the co-operators, to the trade unions, to the Chartists, to the Suffragettes, to the campaigners against racism, imperialism, apartheid or in support of rights for lesbians and gay men, have been people on the political left, not the right. Like the Levellers, who Cromwell had crushed by force of arms, reformers and radicals since have faced great danger in pursuit of their ideals.

When Thomas Rainsborough, MP for Droitwich and a colonel in the New Model Army, took up the side of the Levellers at the Putney Debates in 1647 he famously said:

‘the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he’.

To my ears, that sounds like the kind of thing a socialist would say. The power of the statement springs from two sources: one is the truly revolutionary sentiment for the time in which it was expressed. The second is that we still fall woefully short of that ideal 400 years later.

I won’t fall into the trap of arguing that the Levellers would vote Labour, any more than supposing who they would back in Dancing On Ice. But like the Chartists or Suffragettes, their ghosts stand at our shoulders, willing us to reform, not compromise, to be radical, not conservative, and to never rest in pursuit of our noble goals.

Photo: Digiguy 2007