Be nice to someone day: Oliver Cromwell

You might not think a piece on Oliver Cromell is exactly cutting edge political commentary - but in East Anglia you'd be oh so wrong. Readers of the Cambridge Evening News will have spotted that the old ironside has subjected to a curse no less from the high priest of the British Coven of White Witches, Kevin Carlyon.

What brought this on say you? Well, Cromwell's a local boy and down the road in Ely they are celebrating the 350th anniversary of his death with a bit of do.

Master of magic Kevin is displeased as Cromwell "turned a blind eye to the exploits of the self-appointed "Witchfinder General" Matthew Hopkins, whose witchcraft trials led to the death of about 300 people between 1644 and 1646, including women from the Cambridgeshire villages of Haddenham and Sutton." Which has led him to curse the celebrations.

Charming.

A few things. Firstly, just to get this out the way, white witches are always claiming they don't curse people - this is now clearly untrue. There's no point moaning that everyone thinks you use your non-existent powers for selfish ends if you go round trying to literally rain on people's parades.

Secondly, and rather more to the point, Hopkins' title Witchfinder General was not one bestowed upon him by Parliament but by himself and his brief career (and he did make money out of it) flourished during the civil war - which was clearly a time of upheaval and agitation. 200,000 people died during a conflict (more than 3% of the population) that resulted in a fundamental change in the social structure of this country. All sorts of shit went down at this time - Hopkins was by no means the worst of it.

I'd also like to point out for the record that none of his "witchfinding" actually happened once Cromwell was in charge, so it seems a bit unfair to blame Cromwell for something that was essentially out of his control at a time when he had quite a bit on his plate. So, Kevin, I don't think the good people of Ely deserve your rather horrid little spell.

Cromwell gets a bad press as it is. He was a good guy and the moderate leader of revolutionary forces, without whom the first modern democracy would not have been founded. The revolutionary forces did not simply replace one set of religious dogmas with another that prohibited Christmas presents.

Historian Christopher Hill describes it this way "The Civil War was a class war, wherein on the side of reaction stood the landed aristocracy and its ally, the established Church, and on the other side stood the trading and industrial classes in town and countryside . . . the yeomen and progressive gentry, and . . . wider masses of the population whenever they were able by free discussion to understand what the struggle was really about ."

The victory of the Parliamentary forces signalled the end of absolutist monarchy and, despite their stern reputation, actually allowed a more progressive, and tolerant, form of religion - less dominated by social hierarchy - to flourish. This was the end of the period when citizens of England would be murdered by the state for their religious views and, for instance, saw the resettlement of many Jews in England, who'd previously been discouraged by rampant anti-semitism. It seems particularly unjust for that reason to lay at Cromwell's door the charge of religiously motivated murder.

After all you don't have to look very hard to realise that Cromwell had plenty of blood on his hands, and not just of the blue variety. Whether it was the king's supporters, the revolutionary wing of his own movement, the Irish, the Scots, indeed the blood stretches all the way to the West Indies - there's plenty of killings, much of which is totally justifiable in my view - but we certainly don't need to add these ones to weigh upon his restless soul.

If you'd like to thwart the curses and turn out to support the great man here are the details; "Saturday, September 6, will see a squadron of Civil War re-enactors perform military drills outside the historic cathedral - just a few yards from Cromwell's Ely home - from 10am-4pm, while an actor on horseback will play Cromwell himself."