‘This House Is A Roundhead, Not A Cavalier’
My speech for the proposition. The Oxford Union. March 2021
This week, above most, it would be easy to focus on the persistent problem of monarchy. On how being royal so easily tips into arrogance, luxuriance, entitlement. My own view is that monarchy is never justified in a liberal democracy. But I do not need to argue tonight against all forms of monarchy. Remember, fundamentally, it was absolute monarchy that the original Roundheads opposed. And it was the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings they sought to overturn: the doctrine that it is from God alone that the monarch gains the ‘right to rule’.
But just as I don’t need to argue against all forms of monarchy, I’m also not going to spend my time attacking outmoded theological doctrines. Sure, the core technical distinction between being a Roundhead and a Cavalier may well be that Cavaliers, astonishingly, adhere to the idea of an absolute monarch, who gains their so-called ‘right to rule’ from God alone, passed down historically from Adam, to his sons, then his sons, and his sons, and so on. But if the other side were defending that, then we might be in for a short night.
So I’m taking the spirit of the motion to reflect what it is to be a Roundhead in a deeper sense. I want to note the important difference between divine authorisation and autocratic power. Between the idea that God is the sole source of a political power-holder’s power, and the idea that political power is held unconditionally. Modern-day Roundheads should recognise, I contend, that modern-day Cavaliers may well have set aside the commitments of formal theocracy, but that they threaten us in their ongoing commitment to an approach to political power that is both wrong and dangerous.
Like our seventeenth-century Roundhead counterparts, modern-day Roundheads fight for the requirement for political power that is justified and limited. We fight for the rights that are ours, equally, as members of a political society. Not only to hold those who ‘rule over us’ to account, but also to determine whether they should be ruling over us in the first place. To be informed about law-making and public business, and to inform it ourselves. We understand that democracy’s value is found not only in its incomparably valuable outcomes, but in its rare legitimacy as a form of government.
So this — being a Roundhead, in spirit — is about more than railing against the lavish injustices of a king, long dead, who believed himself answerable only to God. A king who, in violation of norm and right, ruled without recourse to any parliament at all during those eleven long tyrannical years of so-called ‘personal rule’. A king who made it clear that parliament’s say, indeed anyone’s say, would count only if its content formed what he, the God-born king, wanted to hear. A king who believed until the last, and I quote, that the people’s ‘liberty and freedom consists in having of government […that it] is not for having share in government, sirs. That’ — Charles said — ‘is nothing pertaining to them’.
Today, it’s no longer just about autocratic kings, denying us our share. Or queens. Or details of history, long gone. It’s about political power in whatever form we face it.
The Roundhead spirit persists, therefore, every time you question the extent and legitimacy of that power. You’re a Roundhead when you question the non-disclosure of details about state contracting processes. You’re a Roundhead when you question paternalistic state-actors seeking, manipulatively, to ‘protect’ you from the legitimate electoral outcomes they dislike. You’re a Roundhead when you question politicians making private backroom deals with ‘stakeholders’, through dodgy APPGs. You are a Roundhead when you question judicial overreach. And when you question politicians stepping on judges’ toes.
We are Roundheads when we fight for the freedom of speech in public places. When we notice that those in positions of power so often come from a limited set of backgrounds. When we acknowledge that having a ‘share in government’ is, counter to what Charles I decreed, most certainly something that ‘pertains’ to everyone. We are Roundheads when we remember our fundamental equality of status, as human beings: whether kings or workers, ministers or voters, experts or students.
We Roundheads don’t necessarily agree about the answers we give. Or even the questions we ask. But what we do is demand our rights, as free and equal citizens, to engage in political deliberation. So, among us, are people who are pro-Brexit and anti-Brexit. Pro-lockdown and anti-lockdown. Pro-this and pro-that. Anti-this-and-that. And sometimes, uncertain. We are from places of all types, follow parties of all colours, and hold beliefs of all kinds. Just like the original Roundheads, you might note. For these distinctions are not what define us. Rather, it is that we know that we cannot let ourselves fall subject to unquestioned rule.
Now, our Cavalier opponents may well contend that they no more oppose the questioning of unjustified power, than they believe in the outmoded Divine Right of Kings. But what then would they have left, in terms of being distinctive, as Cavaliers? They may well talk of the positive traits of Charles, of the personal flaws of famous Roundheads, and seek to make some separate peripheral case. But that will be because my opponents know, at heart, that they, today, must be Roundheads, too.
The cry of the first Roundheads was a cry for freedom from oppression. And it is best reflected today in the stifled voices of those who remain oppressed by tyrannical power. In North Korea. In Saudi Arabia. In China. In too many places where people not only still have no say over those who rule them, but where they still face death when they call for it. The Roundhead spirit is also reflected, however, in the voices of many living in liberal democracies, like ours. Places sadly beyond the imagination of the first Roundheads. Places in which, to varying degrees, but generally, the obligations that correlate with our fundamental political rights are typically met. In these places the Roundhead spirit is heard in the voices of the people who do not dare to stop questioning. Who oppose tyranny abroad, and exploitation at home. This spirit is heard, at least sometimes, in your voice — I know that for sure.
Cavaliers and Roundheads. You ask for which side I would ‘take up arms’. I’m not a violent person. In many of the great wars of history, I would have been, I think, a conscientious objector. But in cases of tyrannical power over us? In those cases, I stand with my favourite Oxford man, John Locke, in affirming the right to revolution: that when we face ‘intolerable tyranny’, we are ‘absolved from obedience’ — and that it is just and good to recognise this. I hope I’d have been a Roundhead back then. And I’m proud to be a Roundhead today. Failing to join us in this is more than just, well, cavalier. It’s to ignore the basic political rights of your equals — your fellow human beings. Support the motion, and confirm you’re a Roundhead tonight, because you know that you are.
