Clare Jackson

speaker

190 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 18 Jun

Clare Jackson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

In Our Time · The Levellers · 18 Jun 2026 podcast

But then you begin to get this very immersive sense of how the army sought to hear these different voices, some of which were much more radical, some of which, as Ted was saying, were more conservative.

And I think Theresa's right to say that

As historians in the 20th and 21st centuries, they've tended to hone in on things like the franchise.

But looking at the debates as a whole, one gets not only a sense of the army's keen, acute sense of its own professional honour, and it wants to know that they will be treated properly for the services that they've done.

I mean, what is the point of having...

fought and died for Parliament if they're not going to be granted indemnity or any kind of protections.

And if they're going to be treated that badly or shabbily, then that doesn't all go very well for citizens thereafter.

So they're interested in things like indemnity.

They're interested in legal reform as a standard sort of leitmotif that reappears, abolishing monopolies, abolishing tithes, really reimagining a settlement that's not only fairer, but also, they hope, durable, that won't just lead to some resumption of hostilities.

I mean, I think no group has probably suffered more than being sort of placed out of time.

I mean, people often say they were ahead of their time, which doesn't help us as historians, or they were kind of remarkably modern.

I think it is a fundamentally transformative moment.

And I think that is part of the sheer upheaval of the country having been at war with itself.

I mean, events like the Putney debates forever.

a huge amount of radical thinking in unforeseen circumstances.

I mean, the idea that you could put your divinely ordained king on trial publicly and execute him with the axe of the common hangman is an incredibly radical outcome.

And I think you can certainly see these ideas among 18th century revolutionaries, 19th century chartists, sort of 20th century trade unionists.

I came across exactly sort of 50 years ago, Tony Benn gave this very long lecture in Burford Church about the influence of the levellers.

And he said it was a real comfort for him to have discovered that class struggles, industrial struggles had this long antecedent.

And he asked this brilliantly sort of ahistorical question, what would the levellers make of us if they could see us today?

Showing 81–100 of 190 · page 5 of 10