Brexit Is A More Impressive Achievement Than The French Revolution

25/06/2016
Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution
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ANDREW ROBERTS
24 JUNE 2016 6:13PM
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A Leave EU supporter hold a Union Jack ag aloft
n Easter Sunday, May 6 1867, the Reform League pressure group had a difcult
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decision to make. Would they obey the diktat of the Home Secretary, Spencer
Walpole, and not hold a huge meeting in Hyde Park to call for Reform, or would
they defy him?
Founded only two years before, they campaigned for the franchise for all ratepayers, as
well as secret ballots and an equal numerical distribution of seats in parliament, the
basis of our modern democracy. Yet the police were padlocking the gates to the Park,
which in those days was surrounded by high iron railings.
The Prime Minister and Cabinet urged caution and predicted dire consequences if the
meeting went ahead; the police were called out en masse, and there was a run on the
pound. With 200,000 supporters of Reform marching towards the park, the decision
was nonetheless taken by the Leagues leaders simply to pull down the railings and
allow the vast surge of humanity to hold their (in the event, entirely peaceful)
meeting.
Spencer Walpole burst into tears under the pressure and resigned; 10 speakers
addressed the crowds, and the Second Reform Bill was passed later that same year. The
railings never went back up.
The role of bloody-minded insurgents willing to do the opposite of what theyre told
by the authorities has long been central to great political events in British history, and
the 17,410,742 people who voted to leave the European Union can certainly be ranked
among their number.
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Samantha Cameron looks on as David Cameron resigns in the wake of the news Britain voted to leave the
EU
Almost every single agency of the international Establishment was deployed to thwart
them the CBI, IMF, Bank of England, OECD, big business, Goldman Sachs, all but
one party leader, the World Bank, Presidents Obama, Hollande and Abe, the EU
Commission, two-thirds of the cabinet, the Treasury, The Guardian, Davos, The Times,
and so on yet over 17.4 million people told them precisely what they could do with
their expert opinion.
It is the British people who have now sent Obama to the back of the queue.
In Melvyn Braggs ne novel about the Peasants Revolt, Now is The Time, one sees a
template for the uprising of ordinary people that resulted in the Brexit vote, much as
the pro-EU Lord Bragg might like to deny it. The huge groundswell of ordinary
peoples opinion led rather than followed their own leaders.
Todays insurgent leaders were themselves a ragbag bunch: a half-albino Classicist
whose friends called him the trufe-pig; a German-born female Labour MP; a beerdrinking, cigarette-smoking man of the people; and an innitely courteous
intellectual with a razor-sharp brain, who had nevertheless been sacked as education
secretary a few years earlier. It wasnt much to set against the combined forces of the
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Establishment, yet they won.
Just as the National Union of Womens Suffrage Societies (founded in 1897) and its
more militant offshoot the Womens Social and Political Union (founded 1903) took on
the Establishment and won, and as the Anti-Corn Law League had a generation earlier,
so the Brexit movement enlisted armies of supporters across the country whose
motives were traduced and posters defaced and supplications ignored, until the vote
was taken and their voices nally had to be heard.
The popular uprising campaign was therefore not like the Poll Tax riots of 1990 but
much more rmly in the mainstream of the long British tradition of legitimate peaceful
protest.
In this way, too, it was a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution,
soaked as that was in blood. This popular uprising has toppled the established order
without calling upon the tumbrel, the scaffold and the guillotine. It will secure its
place in history as a result.
And when that history of the Brexit movement comes to be written later this century,
there will be a number of people who are by no means household names but who kept
alight the torch of British independence ever since it was so nearly extinguished by
Ted Heath in 1973.
Michael Ivens, Douglas Jay, Alan Sked, Patrick Robertson, Jimmy Goldsmith, Bill Cash,
Robert Oulds, Nigel Lawson, Rodney Leach, the McWhirter twins, Bill Cash and many
others did as much to keep the popular insurgency alive over more than four decades
as Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, who had the honour of lighting the
blue touchpaper this year.
Their contribution should not go unmarked, even though not all of them are famous.
Similarly, organisations like the Freedom Association, British Weights and Measures
Association and Bruges Group deserve recognition in keeping the ame kindled.
The Establishment ignores legitimate popular insurgency at its peril, as it found out
yet again.
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Matt Cartoon
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25/06/2016

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

24 JUNE 2016 6:13PM

A Leave EU supporter hold a Union Jack ag aloft

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

Establishment, yet they won.

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

How to Make One

Most Aw esome Places on Planet

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

24 Jun 2016, 9:40am

24 Jun 2016, 5:34pm

24 Jun 2016, 2:17am

24 Jun 2016, 8:05pm

24 Jun 2016, 5:02am

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

Sealing the deal: the art of

The age of the olderpreneur

Negotiating a major deal can be a nervewracking experience for business owners

Still full of energy? You dont have to retire.

Knowing how to recognise

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

24 Jun 2016, 8:23pm

24 Jun 2016, 7:52pm

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

24 Jun 2016, 7:44pm

24 Jun 2016, 6:36pm

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

24 Jun 2016, 6:35pm

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

24 Jun 2016, 6:31pm

24 Jun 2016, 6:20pm

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

24 Jun 2016, 6:12pm

24 Jun 2016, 5:53pm

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

24 Jun 2016, 5:41pm

24 Jun 2016, 5:36pm

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

24 Jun 2016, 5:34pm

24 Jun 2016, 5:17pm

24 Jun 2016, 5:16pm

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

24 Jun 2016, 5:15pm

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

24 Jun 2016, 5:15pm

24 Jun 2016, 5:09pm

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

24 Jun 2016, 5:08pm

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

24 Jun 2016, 5:04pm

24 Jun 2016, 4:44pm

24 Jun 2016, 4:42pm

Brexit is a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution

Telegraph Media Group Limited 2016

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