19 March 2006: Killing Noe Murder

Edward Hyams' Killing No Murder opens with a curiously lengthy list of the world leaders assassinated between 1870 and 1915. 

The victims included Juan Prim the Prime Minister of Spain, the Earl of Mayo who was Viceroy of India, Gabriel Moreno, the President of Ecuador, Sultan Aziz of Turkey, Tsar Alexander II of Russia, President Garfield of the United States, President Carnot of France, Shah of Persia, del Castillo another Spanish Prime Minister, Barrios, the President of Guatemala, Empress Elizabeth of Russia, King Umberto of Italy, President McKinley of the United States, King Alexander of Serbia, Petkov, Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Delyannis, Prime Minister of Greece, King Carlos of Portugal, Butrus Gali, Prime Minister of Egypt, President Caceres of the Dominican Republic, Prime Minister Mendes of Spain, President Madero of Mexico, and finally (of course) Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The title of Hyam's book is a reference to Edward Sexby's pamphlet of roughly the same name (Sexby's exact title gains the additional 'e'), published in 1657, as a defence of Sexby's own attempts to secure the removal of Oliver Cromwell. 

Sexby was a former ally of first Cromwell and then the Levellers, and in the early 1650s, perhaps the furthest left figure in the English revolution. Even the Levellers, of course, ceased largely to organise against Cromwell after their military defeat in 1649. Sexby showed no such qualms. To defeat Cromwell, Sexby was willing to pursue an alliance even with the Royalists in exile. His pamphlet argues:

+ One may resist a tyrant without title than a tyrant by practice.

+ One may slay new tyrants more justly than tyrants who have ruled for some time.

The decision to ally with the future Charles II had fateful consequences for Sexby, it has ensured also that he is largely unknown among radicals today.

We understand the extent to which even today British politics plays on the faultlines of 1649. We judge it wrong for anyone of the left to ally with the right. 

People do not know Sexby's story, but if they did, it would be a cautionary tale, like that of Ramsay MacDonald, cited this last week by both Rory Bremner and the Labour Education bill rebels in criticism of Blair. Sexby is discussed in James Holstun's excellent book Ehud's Dagger. But I've struggled to find any discussions of what Holstun terms Sexby's 'strange engines' in either Manning or Hill.