"Thomas Paine - The Most Valuable Englishman Ever"

Broadcast on BBC2 in 1982, this masterpiece written and presented by Kenneth Griffith is now available as a commercial video. Watch this film and you will never again see the world in the same way. It's a hard person indeed who at the end does not shed a few tears when contemplating the appalling treatment that was meted out to this great philosopher whose only "crime" was to tell the truth.

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Freddie Madden (freddie AT ddsmedia.co.uk)

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Thomas Paine's Clarion Call For Freedom

When in 1776 the United States of America broke away from Britain, a country without a written constitution, with an established Church and an unelected House of Lords, Thomas Paine, an artisan from Thetford in Norfolk, England, made a call for freedom that is still reverberating around the world today. Thanks mainly to the American broadcaster, Jeff Rense, and the Internet.

At the end of the 18th century this great free-thinking philosopher was wanted dead or alive in England for daring to fight for democracy, votes for all men and women, the abolition of slavery, and a welfare state with pensions for all. Those caught reading the following books were heavily fined or transported to Australia:

Common Sense (1776)

"The sun never shone on a greater worth. It is not the concern of a day, a year or an age, posterity is virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now: now is the seed time of American continental union, faith and honour. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe, Asia and Africa hath long expelled freedom. Europe regards freedom like a stranger, and England hath given freedom warning to depart. O America, receive the fugitive freedom, and prepare, in time, an asylum for humankind."

Crisis (1777)

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis turn from the service of his country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have the consolation with us, the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it."

Rights of Man (1791)

"When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government. Independence is my happiness, the world is my country and my religion is to do good."

The Age of Reason (1794)

"I hope for happiness beyond this life, I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow creatures happy. I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Muslim Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church."

"All national institutions of Churches appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and to monopolise power and profit. Now some will say are we to have no word of God, no revelation? I answer, yes, there is a word of God, there is a revelation, the word of God is in the creation we behold, and it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God, speaketh, universally to man."

"Where freedom is", said Benjamin Franklin, "there is my country,"

"Where freedom is not," replied his friend Paine, "there is mine,"

All these quotations are taken from the brilliant Thomas Paine documentary that somehow, in 1982, crept past the thought police who control the BBC in England. All requests for a repeat have been flatly rejected.

Thomas Paine links

The Most Valuable Englishman Ever - Michael Roll's article about Thomas Paine (1736-1809)
This outstanding tribute to Thomas Paine - "The Most Valuable Englishman Ever" - is taken from Arthur Findlay's suppressed history of humanity, "The Curse of Ignorance".

Thomas Paine's Clarion Call for Freedom - by Michael Roll - published in The Seeker Magazine and on www.rense.com

The BBC's site for A History of Britain by Simon Schama

Programme 12 of the series explains the historical significance of Thomas Paine:

"Nature was turned into a revolutionary idea by radicals and poets like Thomas Paine and William Wordsworth, and events across the channel following the fall of the Bastille initially seemed to point a way forward for Britain."

The BBC's Thomas Paine site, a profile by Professor John Belchem:

"Thomas Paine was a driving force in the 'Atlantic-Democratic revolution' of the late 18th century, personifying the political currents that linked American independence, the French Revolution and British radicalism."