{"id":34369,"date":"2026-03-01T16:21:45","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T21:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=34369"},"modified":"2026-03-01T16:21:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T21:21:45","slug":"why-the-great-revolt-matters-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/why-the-great-revolt-matters-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Why The Great Revolt Matters Today"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Wat<\/a>T<\/span>hirteen eighty-one. Almost 650 years ago in the time of Chaucer, the English people did something unprecedented: they rose up against their oppressive king and nobles.<\/strong> It is known today as The Great Revolt<\/em>. It should serve as a lesson for the American people today to take to heart. An uprising against the dictator and his fascist administration is overdue. Trump \u2014 who started a war with Venezuela and Iran, demanding “regime change” in both \u2014 should look to his own people who are demanding the same thing at home. Many of the issues that triggered the English uprising are happening in the USA today: inflation, high taxation (tariffs), corrupt officials, recovering from a pandemic, and unpopular wars.*<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Although later historians and aristocrats would belittle and even denigrate the event and label it “the Peasants’ Revolt” or even “Wat Tyler’s Revolt” after one of its several leaders, this widespread uprising was earth-shattering for the rulers of England. Don’t be fooled by the later titles, the attempts to lessen its impact or its relevance to today.**<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Great Revolt is not alone in history. Over the centuries, the under-classes \u2014 peasants, workers, downtrodden, poor, serfs, indentured workers, slaves \u2014 have risen up hundreds of times against the ruling class in many nations worldwide. Nor was it the first: similar uprisings have been recorded since classical times, although this was the first such rebellion recorded in English history. Some of those uprisings resulted in victory for the under-classes, although, sadly for the peasants, not The Great Revolt. ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It was sparked by the imposition of a poll tax in 1380 to raise money for the king’s ongoing, financially unsustainable war against France (the Hundred Years’ War<\/a>),\u00a0 by taxing the peasants. Of course. That was the third imposition of oppressive taxation to pay for the increasingly expensive war in the past five years, and even more costly and widespread than the previous two. The war itself had been raging almost 50 years, and was deeply unpopular. On top of that, the war and the subsequent plague caused international trade to collapse. In 1381, one of the king’s tax collectors, the notoriously corrupt John Bampton<\/a>, started a riot over his rough attempts to collect unpaid poll taxes from Essex. The riot spread and grew across southern England, led by a handful of men determined to end the widespread corruption of officials, and establish the people’s rights.<\/p>\n

England, like the rest of Europe, had been slowly recovering from the devastation of the Black Death. It arrived in England in 1348<\/a> and stayed until the end of 1349, killing between 40 and 60 percent of the population. It returned in 1361-62, killing about 20 percent of the survivors and displacing many of the remaining population. The deaths of so many caused massive labour shortages particularly among farm workers, and left entire villages empty. Food shortages were common because fields and livestock were left untended. Inflation was rampant.<\/p>\n

As normalcy returned, survivors demanded higher wages and better living conditions for their work, but the landowners resisted paying it (when they weren’t busy scooping up all the vacant shareholdings around them). The nobles and aristocracy then were like today’s billionaires who fight against unions, labour laws, and paying higher wages. To keep the irksome peasants down, King Edward III passed the Ordinance of Labourers<\/em>, fixing wages at pre-plague levels and in 1351, Parliament then passed of the Statute of Labourers<\/em> to reinforce the edict. You can imagine how popular those were. Laws could not stifle the workers’ demands: their wages and buying power rose over the following decades. In response, Parliament passed A Statute Concerning Diet and Apparel<\/em>, a sumptuary law to “prevent them from consuming expensive goods formerly only affordable by the elite.”<\/p>\n

Wikipedia notes, “The labour laws were enforced with ruthless determination over the following decades.” But landowners’ incomes fell, too, in part because they had little left to sell without the farm workers to harvest crops.<\/p>\n

Again from Wikipedia:<\/p>\n

…[the gentry] started to show an increased interest for offices like justice of the peace, sheriff and member of parliament. The gentry took advantage of their new positions and a more systematic corruption than before spread. A result of this was that the gentry as a group became highly disliked by commoners.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Low wages, inflation, taxes, war, a nation recovering from a devastating pandemic, declining international trade, corrupt officials, and a dictatorial ruler. Sound familiar? That’s the USA today.\u00a0Consider, for example, the US federal minimum wage, always kept well below any ethical measure of poverty. Lawmakers keeping workers poor and unable to climb out of poverty, while enriching the aristocracy, is one of the things that sparked The Great Revolt. ****<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Also keep in mind the similarity of the poll tax with Donald Trump’s erratic and oppressive tariffs. These are taxes on American citizens, despite his frequent lie that foreign countries pay them. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation estimated they meant the average American household paid $1,000 more in taxes in 2025<\/a> and will pay another $1,300 extra in 2026. The group called the tariffs “the largest US tax increase since 1993.” And you know how much people like paying taxes. Tariffs have affected a decline in both international trade and visitors to the USA (the latter compounded by the violent, xenophobic ICE Brownshirts and their reign of domestic terrorism against immigrants, people of colour, tourists, and even American citizens).<\/p>\n

\"Jack<\/a>Add to that the egregious costs of the dictator’s military attacks on (so far) Venezuela, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and now Iran. Included in that list are the two illegal wars (Trump has no authority to start a war; only Congress has). The USA is the largest spender on the military in the world<\/a> by far and taxpayers foot the bill for it and his arbitrary and illegal use of it. Just like in 1381. ****<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The analogy falls short, of course, when we look for leaders of any opposition. Yes, there are some vocal critics of the administration among the Democrats, yes there have been public protests against the regime. But no clear, outstanding, capable and charismatic leader has arisen to organize the unrest into something substantial and lasting. We have not seen the likes of Wat Tyler<\/a>, John Ball<\/a>, and Jack Straw emerge. Not even a John Pym<\/a> among them. No one to lead a nationwide revolt against the despotic Trump and his corrupt, criminal cabal of administrators and cabinet members \u2014 yet.<\/p>\n

Perhaps in the coming months, as Trump maneuvers to cancel the midterm elections through his usual web of lies, deceit, insults, threats, and illegal edicts, someone will be seen as the champion to rally the people against the regime and restore democracy to the beleaguered nation.*****<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n