Not so long ago, it seemed as if the Levellers might be facing historiographical extinction. The radical political group, orbiting around men such as John Lilburne, Henry Overton and William Walwyn, had long been hailed as a plucky band of proto-democrats who led England down the path towards regicide in the 1640s. From the late 1970s, however, the role of the Levellers came under scholarly scrutiny. Many historians agreed that the movement was not nearly as coherent as we’d imagined. Indeed, the very word movement began to look inappropriate. Such revisionism has, in turn, been challenged and in his impressive new book John Rees sets out to return the Levellers to centre stage. They were “first and foremost an organised group of political activists” who moved beyond philosophical speculation and were the architects of “a revolution that would not have been made without them” even if, in the end,” it was not the revolution the Levellers wanted.”

Rees sees the Levellers as unique. In soaring pamphlets they argued for popular sovereignty in a way that was “radically incompatible with kingship”. They talked of equality before the law, liberty of worship, and inalienable freedoms. When the Levellers chanted about the power of the people they meant it. They became distinctive through a process of differentiation from their rivals and they were unusually well organised. Secret presses, demonstrations, chit-chat in the ale-house, and other forms of mobilisation were deployed and no other group “used all of them so consistently and effectively”. What’s more, the Levellers appeared, at least for a while, to win the day. It was they who helped provoke agitation and radicalism in the New Model Army; they who prevented any compromise or reconciliation with Charles I.

It’s stirring stuff but, alas, rather over-egged. Rees’s research is splendid, his understanding of the period is admirable, but he lends too much coherence and significance to the Leveller cause. In his recent history of the Civil War, Michael Braddick comes closer to the likely truth. The level of influence within army ranks can easily be overstated and when it comes to the writings of the Leveller leaders one has to wonder “whether it was just paper talk”.

Rees is, perhaps, continuing a proud tradition of the British Left by granting the 1640s in general, and the Levellers in particular, a totemic quality. This isn’t to devalue his scholarship, which is first class, but it is telling that the entire period under discussion is described as a “revolution.” In truth, hardly anyone had revolutionary goals before the late 1640s. Late in the book, we receive a brief tutorial on Marx and Engels’ theorising and the backdrop of Rees’s analysis is revealed. Revolutions are supposed to fit into predetermined templates even if this means utilising notions of class that 17th-century people simply would not have understood.

None of this prevents Rees’s account from being limpidly written, thoroughly entertaining, and thought-provoking. And there are worse heroes to have than the Leveller John Lilburne. As early as the 1630s he was getting into trouble for importing radical pamphlets and in April 1638 was whipped all the way from Fleet Bridge to Westminster.

It is reasonable to see the Levellers as “a force in their own right” but hard to determine how dynamic, coherent, or representative that force was. We can, though, feel a little sorry for the Levellers. With the king dead, the new regime was not what Lilburne and his confrères had hoped for and, after a little more agitation, the Levellers morphed, remarkably quickly, from a factor in national politics to a source of endless squabbling among historians. Rees brings great passion to that perennial debate.