Ready to rebel? You are part of a glorious tradition

Angry disenchantment with the political and financial establishment has rarely been deeper. David Horspool says that the English rebel — culturally affronted rather than ideologically left-wing — is an honourable archetype of our nation’s history

G.K. Chesterton’s famous line in The Secret People, ‘We are the people of England, that never have spoken yet’, still seems to appeal across the political spectrum. It is quoted by BNP bloggers, by socialist thinkers agonising over a nation without an identity, and it was famously invoked by Martin Bell, the white-suited independent. In truth, Chesterton’s picture of a quiescent English population doesn’t reflect today’s brash, opinionated culture, where queuing is obsolete and ignorance seems the best qualification for airing your views or demanding ‘respect’. But was it ever credible? If you went only by the most solid evidence of our past, you might think it was. The bits of England’s heritage that footsore children will traipse round this summer are the ones left by history’s winners, the castles, palaces and country houses that still survive all around us. Unlike rulers, however, rebels don’t often get the chance to build things. And rebellion is part of England’s heritage too.

If I were asked to take someone on a rebels’ tour of London, I might start in Stoke Newington in north London, say Walford Road, where one of the Angry Brigade was picked up in 1972, and a stone’s throw from the flat on Amhurst Road that four Angries turned into a bomb factory. Then we could head for Church Street, past Defoe Road, where Daniel Defoe, who fought with the rebel Duke of Monmouth in the last pitched battle on English soil, once lived. On Church Street itself once stood Wallingford House, where a clique of New Model Army officers gathered to plan the overthrow of Richard Cromwell, the unlucky heir to the reluctant revolutionary Oliver. From