IF ATTILA the Stockbroker had his way, the fate of Charles II following his defeat at the battle of Worcester in 1651 — the last of the English civil war — would have been sealed. His escape would have been foiled and the restoration of the monarchy postponed indefinitely.

The ranting radical poet from Southwick on the Sussex coast has a special interest in the escape of the future king because it took place a few hundred yards from where he has lived — and fished — most of his life.

“It’s a big story around here. The Great Escape festival, the yacht race — it’s all a celebration of him getting away. I wish he’d been caught and strung up. It would have ended the monarchy once and for all and left a lot more money for the NHS — if they’d had one in 1649.”

Admittedly, Cromwell’s revolution did not develop a public health service, but the point Attila makes is clear. The future king, whose father had been executed for war crimes by Cromwell two years earlier, escaped along what is now called Monarch’s Way and would return as king nine years later, ending England’s first and only republic.

Now, Attila’s lifelong fascination with the English revolution has turned into an album of early music and songs that is little short of revolutionary for a poet best known for satirical swipes at the right in pubs and venues across the land.

Back in the early 1980s, Attila was in a group of performance poets called the Ranters, in recognition of his hero Abiezer Coppe, leader of the band of dissenters during the English Commonwealth of 1649 to 1660. The new album Restoration Tragedy by Barnstormer 1649 is a salute to the legendary characters of the time, including Coppe, Gerrard Winstanley, Thomas Harrison and others with contemporary resonance.

One song, The Man with the Beard, draws historical parallels between the original “man they call JC” and the current leader of the Labour Party, via John Lilburne, leader of the Levellers. The song warns against the cult of personality, insisting — as Corbyn does — that it’s ideas that matter, not leaders. “He’s not a messiah or a naughty boy/but a man Murdoch wants to destroy,” goes the song.

I ask him is Corbyn a Lilburne or is he Winstanley, leader of the proto-communist Diggers? The answer is clear. “It’s Winstanley — because he’s got an allotment.”

Another song, Pride’s Purge, which has a suitably punkish urgency about it, makes a direct link between the removal of members of parliament who wanted peace with the king in 1648 and the current crop of careerists on both sides of the house, some of whom think they should have jobs for life.

Strictly speaking, this is not his first attempt at early music. The original Barnstormer group was formed in 1994, when he played recorder, but Restoration Tragedy is the first album with the full range of 17th-century instruments, including crumhorn, bombarde, rauschpfeife, viola, mandolin, mandocello and five different recorders. Attila penned all the songs but two — one is written by his wife Robina and another by Leon Rosselson.

Attila has toured solo for years, organising his own gigs, his own publishing and selling his own CDs at the shows. “People ask me how I make a living from poetry and it’s simple, really. I do a gig in the back of some pub and sell a few CDs. It works — I manage my own gigs, I produce my own records, publish my own books.”

The thing that changed everything was a new band line-up, he says. Now performing as Barnstormer 1649 with Tim O’Tay playing recorders, Dave Cook on bass and backing vocals, Jason Pegg on guitar and MM McGhee on drums, he realised that his lifelong dream of an early-music punk band was now possible.

“It came at a really good time — the family’s grown up and I don’t have the same kind of financial pressures. I don’t have to worry so much about when you take a band on the road, you don’t earn very much money.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the period and I suddenly thought I could write a whole album about it — all the characters and using all the instrumentation.”

Remarkably, Attila plays all the early-music instruments on the album — and does the same live. The album was 30 years in the making, but he penned it in record time. “I wrote it in three weeks and recorded it at the beginning of this year. The band played it live and people were captivated by it.

“This is something I’ve always wanted to do, I’ve always thought that early music can be combined with punk and nobody has done this before. Literally no other band in the world is doing this. The response is really good.”

He’s modest about his achievement learning a range of archaic instruments at the age of 60. “The thing about early music instruments is that it’s virtually the same fingering for all of them, although the blowing on the crumhorn is bloody hard.”

The relevance of the album to today’s divided Britain is clear. “All the songs are connected to the period, about the characters, but also very much connected to what’s happening now,” he says.

“We’re not actually in a civil war but we are in a culture war — it could actually get physical, hopefully it won’t, but we have to be really clear about what we stand for.”

There’s a warning, and hope, from history contained in the songs about our own pre-revolutionary situation and where it could go. “All of that is there too — the divided nation of 1649 is back.”

The tour is now on and Attila will be bringing his revolutionary band to a venue near you very soon.

Don’t miss.

Copies of Restoration Tragedy and full tour details are available at attilathestockbroker.com.