"A Violent Hubbub".

In these words Guttery summaries the cross-fire of recriminatory and justificatory pamphlets which followed the Battle of Birmingham - a fight between an armed mob of two or three hundred courageous townsmen and nearly two thousand of the King's picked troops. However the major part of the pamphlets is concerned with the subsequent behaviour of the victors. The Royalists justified their vengeance by the laws of war, and the deserts of disloyalty {Walsall Letter}. The Parliament pamphleteers wrote of the Prince's 'burning love to England discovered in Birmingham's flames', and of his barbarous and inhuman cruelties - the "Birmingham Butcheries".

It is, in fact, possible to distinguish, in these pamphlets, certain general examples of what might be described as 'the art of the pamphleteer'. To facilitate this a consideration of some of Orwell's comments would be of value.

Orwell wrote: "A pamphlet…is written because there is something that one wants to say NOW, and because one believes there is no other way of getting a hearing…they always have a clear political imp1ication…in essence, it is always a protest."

Now, a careful reading of the three pamphlets which constitute the basis of this discussion, will show that each conforms to the points that Orwell makes. The dates of publication (12th, 14th April, 1st May for the 'official statement of the wronged party') bear out the first statement. Probably there was very little alternative to the pamphlet, as a form of getting a hearing either. Certainly official journals would be heavily biased towards their own point of view (e.g. the references in Vicars, or the Diurnal), and so the letter from the Walsall gentleman was probably the only way of getting a justification of Prince Rupert into print. All three pamphlets show a very clear political origin - two written to disparage Prince Rupert, and exalt the citizens of Birmingham, one written to justify Rupert's crimes, and dis-credit the Parliamentary leaders (see below for further discussion of this point.) And of course, by virtue of what they are, each pamphlet is most assuredly a protest.

Orwell continued: "Good pamphlets are likely to be written by men who passionately want to say something and who feel that the truth is being obscured but that the public would support them if only it knew the facts. If one had not a certain faith in democracy, one would not write pamphlets, one would try to gain one's ends by intriguing among influential people. This is another way of saying that pamphleteering will flourish when there is some great struggle in which honest and gifted men are to be found on both sides."

Although not so directly applicable to these pamphlets as the previous quotation, nevertheless, there is a direct link between what Orwell is saying and the situation in England, of which Birmingham in 1643 is partially repres-entative.

The fact is that these pamphlets were written by men who wanted to produce a statement about facts which they felt were not being truthfully publicised. It is significant, too, that Orwell should produce a direct ref-erence to belief in democracy, for "It was one of the great, though accidental, achievements of the English Civil War that it gave the common man a chance, briefly, to taste the possibility of power and to speak his mind" {'The Common Man in the Civil War' by C.V.Wedgwood}.

Whilst it would be rash to claim that these pamphlets represent the voice of the 'common man', one can reasonably claim that their intention to influence "the people" one way or the other does provide support for the theory advanced by Orwell. Moreover, it is a rash man who would deny the truth of the last state-ment made by Orwell, for there were undoubtedly honest and gifted men fighting on both sides - not to mention those who changed over!

It will now be of value to consider these representatives of "the Golden Age of pamphleteering" in more specific fashion.