IT IS a wonderful to write music and words about radical history and have the opportunity to  bring them to life in exactly the right place.
 
Today is Levellers’ Day in Burford. Myself and my early music punk band Barnstormer 1649 will get up early to drive up to Oxfordshire from Brighton and lead the midday procession through the town, a march commemorating the three Levellers executed for rebelling against Cromwell’s orders on May 17 1649, protesting about lack of pay and being sent to Ireland to fight as part of Cromwell’s ghastly suppression of the people there.  

The night before their execution they and others from their regiment were imprisoned in Burford Church, and one of them, Anthony Sedley, carved his name on the font, where it remains to this day, with a plaque on the outside of the building.  A service of remembrance will take place before the march.
 
Then after three hours of discussion and debate at nearby Warwick Hall, we will be playing nearly all of Restoration Tragedy, the album I wrote inspired by the historic events of the period – the execution of Charles I in January 1649, the declaration of the Commonwealth of England and the subsequent rebellions of  the Levellers, Diggers and Ranters against Cromwell’s autocratic rule, which was no commonwealth at all but simply a continuation of the old order with a new master.  
 
The album combines two lifelong interests of mine – early music and radical history. I’ve always loved the former, have taught myself to play many ancient instruments and always believed those simple sounds could be harnessed to the energy of punk in the same kind of way that The Pogues combined Irish music and punk.