Between the years 1626 and 1632 there were massive anti-enclosure riots in western England. Collectively known as The Western Rising, these riots occurred in Gillingham Forest on the Dorset-Wiltshire border, the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, Braydon Forest in Wiltshire, Feckenham Forest in Worcestershire and Leicester Forest. The cause of the uprising was the Crown's policy of disafforestation and enclosure, denying the immemorial, customary rights of common held by all. The main body of the rioters was made up of artisans, landless peasants and wage-earners as, although the Crown had consulted with and offered compensation to the Lords and landowners for their losses, the rights of the majority, who were landless peasants and relying upon the forest and its raw materials for subsistence, were ignored and their rights had no basis in the Crown's laws.

Facing extreme poverty, having access to the land stolen from them, their customary rights denied, and enjoying no rights in law, the pulling down of the enclosures was the only course of action possible. Although many were involved in the riots, (sometimes as many as 3,000 rioters), only few were arrested. This was due to the view of the ruling class that the commoners were incapable of organising themselves, as Buchanan Sharp puts its in In Contempt of All Authority, Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586-1660:

Most of those escaping punishment were persons of the lower orders. The Crown's object was to capture and punish the ringleaders in order to set an example to others and to break the spirit of the rank-and-file. Since Stuart government took it for granted that a ringleader was a person of quality, gentlemen were prime suspects, while artisans and laborers would more easily have escaped notice.

A recurring theme in official opinions on the Western Rising is that the belief that the lower orders were incapable of organizing and directing themselves and, consequently, that persons of quality were behind the riots. This was, of course, only one manifestation of an opinion universally held in the seventeenth century. It is expressed, for example, in that near-limitless storehouse of the period's aphorisms and commonplaces, the essays of Francis Bacon. In "On Sedition" Bacon ascribes the root of sedition to poverty in the common people and discontent among their betters: "If poverty and broken estate in the better sort be joined with a want and necessity in the mean people, the danger is imminent and great: for the rebellions of the belly are the worst." Sedition required the better sort to provide leadership, "for common people are of slow motion, if they will not be excited by the greater sort."

Buchanan Sharp, In Contempt of All Authority, Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586-1660
(University of California Press 1980), 130-131

This was ruling class naïvety, as there were no rogue gentlemen leading the revolt and the commoners, of course, were more than capable of organising themselves.

Here we are about 400 years later and what has changed? The middle class are now doing the dirty work of maintaining inequality, whilst the ruling class hide themselves from public view. The proletariat are viewed as the ignorant masses or chavs, whilst the media encourages them to fight amongst themselves and reinforces their lack of self-belief and self-worth. Their history is largely hidden, their identity fragmented. At some point morning will come and it will be time to wake up.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 7:21 and is filed under Books/Magazines/Printed Papers, Culture/Politics, history from below.
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