More interesting comments. But McGrath of Harlow (Essex Irishman??) of course there's a case for saying Cromwell delayed democracy (and no, the UK does not yet have true democracy, nor will it after the abolition of the House of Lords). You can make a case for just about any interpretation of history as you like (but few as offensive as that I recently heard, from a couple of "respectable" UK academics, that the UK should have formed an alliance with Hitler rather than going to war with him). That's why I stuck to specific "artifacts" from his regime which were at least semi-official. Without wishing to defend Cromwell IN ANY WAY, he has suffered from an excess of propagandist "bad press" - from Irish sources (justified) and from generations of royalists (largely unjustified, in the context of their own "acheivements"). (A rare piece of Republican Irish /Royalist English collaboration, this!)

However when you write of a possible socialist viewpoint being that "Lenin and even Stalin did a lot of bad things, but they did advance the cause of socialism" I do wonder at your(trolling) analysis; as far as I can see socialists are the first to recognise that Lenin and Stalin did great harm to the cause of socialism, and it is hard to see any ground suggesting that view might change. And as for history "winding its way back" to a socialist consensus, outside the US the socialist influence on contemporary society is strongly evident - even though many of us look forward to the advance towards a more socialist world, which even embraces the good ol' US of A.

G.