E.P. Thompson

Professor J.C. Davis has written a book to show that the Ranters did not exist. There was no Ranter sect: no organisation: no acknowledged Ranter leadership. Those alleged to be leaders did not agree with each other on some points of doctrine; or they denied that they were Ranters; or they quickly recanted; or (like Laurence Clarkson, or Claxton, who acknowledged in his autobiographical The Lost Sheep Found that he had been known as the ‘Captain of the Rant’) might have been falsifying their own record for the sake of better setting off their new convictions (Clarkson had become a Muggletonian). Accusations of drinking, swearing and sexual libertinism against the Ranters can be dismissed as the lampoons of opponents or the sensationalism of the ‘yellowpress’. Accounts of Ranter beliefs and practices coming from Quakers, Baptists and other observers are valueless as evidence, being doctrinal polemics or lampoons. Davis demonstrates all this with tedious repetition and a swaggering pretence of rigour. He rounds it off with sixty pages of reprints from the worthless and salacious ‘yellowpress’ anti-Ranter tracts. This is like tying a large lead weight to the neck of whatever weakling kitten of the imagination has survived immersion in the tedium of his text, and sinking it finally to the bottom of the pond.

Thales, according to gossipy Plato, was walking abstractedly, watching the stars, when he fell into a well. I did that a few weeks ago, being preoccupied with the most elevated thoughts when I suddenly found myself lying at the bottom of the well of the NHS. This made me think about several things which no doubt have long been blindingly obvious to fellow citizens who keep their eyes closer to the ground.

In the previous article we discussed the unusual concern of the past 14 years to ‘strengthen’ (or subdue) jury practices, some of which date back hundreds of years. There has always been another resource of jury ‘strengthening’, which is jury-packing. A disquisition on this ancient British practice would require a further essay, much longer than the present one. Jury-vetting is not the same thing as jury-packing, although the first may prepare for the second. Whether packing does or could take place in contemporary English practice is a matter remarkably obscure. The Police may properly inspect the panel against their records, in order to remove disqualified persons, and in the course of this scrutiny much other information will come to light, which may or may not be passed on privily to the clerk of the court or to the prosecution. Of one thing we may be certain: the current monitoring of practice by the Director of Public Prosecutions (reported in Command Paper 9658) will tell us nothing that the Police (or ACPO) does not wish the public to know.

It was nice to be awoken on 12 November by the BBC informing us that the Queen’s Speech would announce measures ‘to strengthen the jury system’. It is, after all, a very ancient English institution for which we feel a ritualistic affection. And it is good to know that our betters are taking care of it.’