The Putney Debates
In Our Time
BBC
4.6 • 9.9K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2013
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Putney Debates. For several weeks in late 1647, after the defeat of King Charles I in the first hostilities of the Civil War, representatives of the New Model Army and the radical Levellers met in a church in Putney to debate the future of England. There was much to discuss: who should be allowed to vote, civil liberties and religious freedom. The debates were inconclusive, but the ideas aired in Putney had a considerable influence on centuries of political thought.
With:
Justin Champion Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London
Ann Hughes Professor of Early Modern History at Keele University
Kate Peters Fellow in History at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.
Producer: Thomas Morris.
Transcript
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| 0:46.7 | Hello the Church of St Mary's Putney stands on the south bank of the Thames |
| 0:51.2 | about six miles upriver from Central London. |
| 0:54.0 | On the north wall of its nave, a slate plaque commemorates a seismic event which took place here |
| 0:58.9 | during the English Civil War and which went on to influence politics here and abroad for centuries. |
| 1:04.5 | The possibility of modern democracy could be said to have emerged here. |
| 1:09.3 | On October 28, 1647, Oliver Cromwell and other members of the new model army met in St Mary's church as it turned out to discuss a new constitution for England. |
| 1:18.0 | Charles I had been defeated and imprisoned and it seemed a new future beckoned. |
| 1:22.0 | There was still religious and political |
| 1:24.4 | differences to be overcome and over many days discussions on many days of |
| 1:28.4 | discussions the participants tried to resolve them. But within a month the |
| 1:31.9 | king had escaped and the talks ended |
| 1:33.6 | without agreement. Nevertheless the Putney debates are commonly regarded as a |
| 1:37.4 | major advance in our idea of what democracy is and how it can be realized. |
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