TWO weeks ago today, Levellers Day in Burford was a moving and uplifting celebration of all that is good in our radical tradition, commemorating as it does the three Leveller soldiers executed there for mutiny by Cromwell’s forces during the English Revolution of 1649.
 
It always brings a wry smile to my face when I hear right-wing working-class Ragged Trousered Philanthropists going on about how they are “proud to be English” and so on. We don’t need kings, queens, wars and flags to be proud of where we come from.

We have our own history and the massed ranks of the Peasants’ Revolt, Levellers, Diggers and Chartists are the English people we should be acclaiming, not some overprivileged accident of birth financed by our taxes.
 
I was honoured to bring my early music punk band Barnstormer 1649 to the event and play the songs I have written about those momentous times on instruments which would have been used back then.

Well done to John Rees, Cathy Augustine and all those involved in the organisation of a memorable day.
 
Today I’m performing at another celebration of radical history in another country — the Merthyr Rising Festival, held at Penderyn Square in the centre of the Welsh valley town.