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.

The enclosure movement and the slave trade ushered industrial capitalism into the modern world. By 1832 England was largely closed, its countryside privatized (some even mechanized), in contrast to a century earlier when its fields were largely open—"champion" country, to use the happy technical term—and yeoman, children, women could subsist by commoning. By 1834 slavery had been abolished in the British empire whereas a century earlier, on 11 September 1713, the asiento licensed British slavers to trade African slaves throughout the Americas. Together the expelled commoners and the captured Africans provided the labor power available for exploitation in the factories of the field (tobacco and sugar) and the factories of the towns (woolens and cottons). Whether indentured servant, West African youngster, former milkmaid, or woodsman without his woods, the lords of humankind looked upon them indifferently as laboring bodies to produce surplus value, and so emerged the Atlantic working day, which entirely depended upon a prior discommoning.

The legal cliché is that the American constitution is written, while the English is unwritten. Strictly speaking this is untrue inasmuch as both have stemmed from the Magna Carta of 1215. The important difference between English and American constitutional development is not that one is unwritten and the other is written. The difference is Africa. The maintenance and expansion of unwaged labor on the plantation where slaves produced surplus value was indispensable to American constitutional and revolutionary history, whereas the salient English development was the statutory enclosure of lands and privatization of all attempts at commoning. The Atlantic multitudes were divided by race in the emerging constitution. The Charters of Liberties were contested in this process. The enclosure movement, opposed by English commoners, conveniently ignored the Forest Charter. The movement to abolish slavery used Magna Carta and helped put it back into the English working-class movement.

Peter Linebaugh, The Magna Carta Manifesto, Liberties and Commons for All (University of California Press 2008), 94-95

From an interview with John Pilger in today's The Guide supplement in The Guardian…

Q: Who wants to be a millionaire?

A: This is the song Tony Blair hums every morning when he rises and tots up his latest windfall — a million for telling business groups in China nothing they didn't know, three or four million for buying JP Morgan influence in whatever corridors of power he imagines still welcome him. That this criminal, awash in a nation's blood, is so enriched and deluded that he believes he should be president of Europe is a shame upon all of us in Britain who deny his prosecution.

That's breviary stuff, that is.

Wee (as men) confident of your integrity did chuse you as our Proctors and Atturnies, the King's Majesty with his best councell and we (the poore Commons) entrusted you with all we had but we had no mistrust that you would deceive us of all we had. We trusted you to maintaine our peace, and not to embroile us in an universalle endlesse bloudye war. We trusted you with our estates and you have Rob'd, Plundered and Undon us; we trusted you with our freedomes and you have loaded us with slavery and bondage, we trusted you with our lives and by you we are slaughtered and muther'd every day. . . . Thus we perceive that you pretend to fight for the Protestant religion and all the world may see and say, you have made a delicate dainty Directory, new religion of it. And you have fought for the King but it hath been to catch him and make him no King. You have fought for our liberties and have taken them from us. You have fought for the Gospell and you have spoyl'd the Church, you have fought for our goods and you have em and you have fought to destroye the Kingdom and you have done it. . . .

The Generall Complaint of the Most Oppressed, Distressed Commons of England Complaining to
and Crying Out Upon the Tyranny of the Perpetuall Parliament at Westminster (1645)

It was sadly inevitable. Gordon Brown's government are encouraging the police to use the new 'anti-terror' laws against peaceful protesters in the UK. (That is the Gordon Brown who is the unelected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.)

These are climate change protesters who are against the further expansion of Heathrow airport, exercising the long-held right to peaceful protest in the UK.

This means that peaceful protesters will be subject to being stopped and searched and having their vehicles searched without there being any evidence to suspect them of terrorism. Their homes can also be searched and they can be held by the police for a month without charge.

It has been said since the introduction of the new powers in the S44 Terrorism Act 2000 that these laws would be used to erode the freedom of ordinary UK citizens. This is the first widely reported case of this process in action.

This is the government using its laws to protect the business interests of wealthy companies like BAA at the huge expense of the rest of us. But this shouldn't come as a surprise, there's a long history of laws being created and used to protect and bolster the interests of the wealthy few and destroy the power of the poor majority.

So now, if you hold some concern about the state of the planet and decide to voice that concern, according to the government, you could be a terrorist.

"Put that veggie-burger on the ground and your hands on your head."

The Plane Stupid Campaign Group
The Camp for Climate Action

Perhaps Jeremy Paxman's only quality is his interview technique, but it's a good one. Here's one such example, from BBC TV's Newsnight, 4th June 2001, which is worthy of recollection. Tony Blair provides the role of the ideal interviewee, stumbling and bumbling through his responses and clumsily confirming New Labour's shift from the traditional Labour egalitarian stance through his tactless avoidance of answering a simple question.
(The full transcript of the interview is available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsnight/1372220.stm.)

This is Tony Blair

PAXMAN: But is it acceptable for the gap between rich and poor to widen?

BLAIR: It is acceptable for those people on lower incomes to have their incomes raised. It is unacceptable that they are not given the chances. To me, the key thing is not whether the gap between those who, between the person who earns the most in the country and the person that earns the least, whether that gap is…

PAXMAN: So it is acceptable for the gap to widen between rich and poor?

BLAIR: It is not acceptable for poor people not to be given the chances they need in life.

PAXMAN: That is not my question.

BLAIR: I know it's not your question but it's the way I choose to answer it. If you end up going after those people who are the most wealthy in society, what you actually end up doing is in fact not even helping those at the bottom end.

PAXMAN: So the answer to the straight question is it acceptable for the gap between rich and poor to get wider, the answer you are saying is yes.

Life-size mannequin of Tony Blair
that stands at the entrance of
the Sedgefield Sainsburys
supermarket

BLAIR: No, it's not what I am saying. What I am saying is that my task is…

PAXMAN: You are not saying no.

BLAIR: But I don't think that is the issue…

PAXMAN: You may not think it is the issue, but it is the question. Is it OK for the gap to get wider?

BLAIR: It may be the question. The way I choose to answer it is to say the job of government is make sure that those at the bottom get the chances.

PAXMAN: With respect, people see you are asked a straightforward question and they see you not answering it.

BLAIR: Because I choose to answer it in the way that I'm answering it.

PAXMAN: But you are not answering it.

BLAIR: I am answering it. What I am saying is the most important thing is to level up, not level down.

PAXMAN: Is it acceptable for the gap between rich and poor to get bigger?

BLAIR: What I am saying is the issue isn't in fact whether the very richest person ends up becoming richer. The issue is whether the poorest person is given the chance that they don't otherwise have.

PAXMAN: I understand what you are saying. The question is about the gap.

BLAIR: Yes, I know what your question is. I am choosing to answer it in my way rather than yours.

PAXMAN: But you're not answering it.

BLAIR: I am.

PAXMAN: You are answering another question.

BLAIR: I am answering actually in the way that I want to answer it. I tell you why I want to answer it in this way. Because if you end up saying no, actually my task is to stop the person earning a lot of money earning a lot of money, you waste all your time and energy, taking money off the people who are very wealthy when in today's world, they probably would move elsewhere and make their money. What you are not asking me about, which would be a more fruitful line of endeavour, is what are you doing for the poorest people to give them a boost.

PAXMAN: Let's talk about tax. You have promised…

BLAIR: Why don't we talk about the poorest of society and what we are doing for them.

PAXMAN: I assume you want to be Prime Minister. I just want to be an interviewer. Can we stick to that arrangement?

BLAIR: Fine.