1 January 2007: thanks to Martyn Everett

For sending me details of the Walden 1647 programme.

29 December 2006: commemoration planned

An interesting item is tucked away in the minutes of the Operations Committee (whatever that is) of Uttlesford Council: 'In May 1647 one of the most significant events in English history took place in Saffron Walden. It has been described as the birth of English democracy and took place shortly after the end of the first Civil War when the soldiers of the New Model Army camped in this area elected spokespersons to speak on their behalf in debates with Oliver Cromwell and his officers in St Mary’s Church.  Saffron Walden Initiative plans to celebrate the 360th anniversary of this event with a number of events [including a] re-enactment that will take place in St Mary’s Church. A professional script writer has been approached...' Anyone who knows any more, do pass it on.

27 December 2006: Thanks

To Michael Walker who runs blogs on the radical history of Hayes and of the health workers' union COHSE for some nice lines on the geography of the left in past generations: 'Braintree had a Communist councillor', he writes, 'and Leiston in Suffolk had more CP councillors than Maerdy in the Rhondda.' 

29 May: Saffron Walden and the English Civil War

Thanks to Martyn Everett, for many years the custodian of the extraordinary local history collection at Saffron Walden library, and the author of Booksurfer, who I met for the first time the last weekend, and who tells me that the town will be organising a festival next year to celebrate the 360th anniversary of the Saffron Walden debates. These latter were held when the New Model Army was stationed in the town, and took place just months before the better-known Putney debates. Key to both were the Agitators, a system of elected soldiers' representatives, and which acted as a conduit for views such of those of the Levellers' to be tested in debate. Paul Foot's recent book The Vote portrayed Putney as a decisive moment in the emergence of democracy: I've not read the transcript of the two-day debate at Saffron Walden: it would be interested to see the extent to which the later views had already been formed.

21 April: not all Essex history is so radical

Jason Cowley's piece in the Observer, 'Cecil Rhodes's dream ends where it began - in Bishop's Stortford', is a useful reminder that Northern Essex is home to more than just Thaxted church with its chapel dedicated to 1381 and the Blessed John Ball. 

A South African replies to Cowley here.

I've written elsewhere on this site about the political limitations of regional identity. The region cannot be innately left- or right-wing: it becomes so with the history of people and the necessarily changing fortunes of different classes and traditions.

Take the North East: The Leveller John Lilburne was born in Sunderland, the French Revolutionary Marat visited Newcastle twice and had his first book published in the North East.  Robert Burns visited Northumberland in 1787.  The radical poet Lord Byron lived at Seaham Hall, and Shelley travelled through the North East in 1811. But Gertrude Bell was also a product of the region: growing up outside Middlesbrough before setting off on her adventures including anti-suffrage campaigns and the drawing up of the modern borders of Iraq.

I am interested in the radical histories of Essex, but I'd take any idea of innate regional militancy with a heavy dose of salt.

11 April 2006: the radical history of Essex

A friend writes, suggesting that I use the site to develop radical history links relating to the history of Saffron Walden, Dunmow and Thaxted: the North Western region of the county where my parents live.

'There was a great deal of activity in the Saffron Walden and Thaxted areas', during the early years of the twentieth century, he writes, 'with local farmworkers involved in not insignificant scuffles and picketing.'

I've written before about the activities of Conrad Noel, and the ways in which they were felt in the lives of my grandparents.

I had also noticed Booksurfer's interesting account of the library at Saffron Waldren.

Chelmsford TUC have a useful timeline of local working-class history.

Finally, I think the best source on the struggles of the Essex farmworkers is almost certainly to be found in the work of Arthur Brown, whose Guardian obituary is published here. If anyone else can suggest sources please pass them on.