A re-evaluation of the hoary problem of the question of revolution
in Britain and Ireland during the allegedly dying years of the Age
of Revolution. On the 16 November 1802 a posse of Bow Street
Runners raided the Oakley Arms, a working class pub in Lambeth, on
the orders of the Home Office. Over thirty men were arrested, among
them, and the only one of any social rank, Colonel Edward Marcus
Despard. Despard and twelve of his associates were subsequently
tried for high treason before a Special Commission, and Despard and
six others were executed on 21 February 1803. It was alleged that
they had planned to kill the King, seize London and overturn the
government and constitution. Until recently this event had been
almost entirely neglected by historians, principally on the grounds
that it was an isolated occurrence, the brainchild of a disgruntled
and probably insane Irishman. The incident is relegated to a
footnote in the relevant volume of the Oxford History of England
and even then only in support of First Minister Addington's
habitual 'calmness'. Apologists speedily claimed that Despard was
just another dupe of the supposedly notorious hoard of informers
and agents-provocateurs employed by the younger Pitt and his
supposed lackey, Addington, to support their outrageous assault on
the constitutional freedoms and rights of Englishmen. One pamphlet
attacking the revelations of the infamous Oliver the Spy, typically
claimed that in 1817 Oliver was 'by no means a novice in matters of
treason, but ... was closely and deeply implicated in the mad
schemes of Colonel Despard'. These views, that any insurrectionary
activity manifested by Englishmen was either the product of insane
individuals or the manipulations of secret-service agents, or both,
rather than an indigenous phenomenon, were also adopted by Whig and
Fabian historians. The first coherent reappraisal of the Despard
affair was provided by E. P. Thompson, in his magnificent work, The
Making of the English Working Class. An integral part of Thompson's
thesis hinges on his analysis of what happened to one seminal
political development in the 1790s, namely the first primarily
English working-class movement for democracy. E. P. Thompson's
claim that determined physical force revolutionary groupings
originated after the suppression of the Popular Democratic Movement
in 1795 has been seriously challenged by conventional British
historians. This book offers a reinterpretation of Thompson's
evidence, through a detailed overall study of post-1795 British
politics. It throws new light on the organisation of government
intelligence sources, Pitt's repressive policies and machinery, and
oscillating popular responses; all developments, including
recrudescences of the open Democratic Movement, and notably the
emergence of insurrectionary conspiracies, are firmly related to
both events in the critical Irish theatre, and the course of the
war against France.
General
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