20 - Socialism

Summary

The desire to end privilege and exploitation and to reconstitute society as a community of equals runs through Britain’s history, from the Peasants’ Revolt (and with little doubt from earlier than that) to modern times. The uprising which for a few weeks in the summer of 1381 set the south-east of England ablaze was a direct challenge to a system which was now piling upon feudal rents the taxes – above all the poll tax – demanded by an increasingly centralised state. The rebels’ immediate political objectives were limited.