Notes and queries: Why has Britain never had a revolution? Another failed rebellion ... the death of Wat Tyler, leader of the peasant's revolt of 1381. Picture: Hulton Getty A Danish colleague asks me why, given the evident inequalities in Britain, has there never been a revolution? Mention of the civil war was clearly unsatisfactory. There have been lots of revolutions in Britain (the peasants' revolt , the glorious revolution , the Jacobite rebellion ...). The reason why your colleague has never heard of them is that they all failed. In the one case where the rebels won -- the civil war -- we tried it out for a generation, decided it had been a bad idea and reinstalled the status quo, with minor amendments; which is probably why your colleague won't accept it as a proper revolution. The longer answer may be based on the fact that, regardless of how it looks, England (and later the UK) has been a relatively democratic place compared to many of its neighbours, where people have always had some kind of rights. You can see this in the chapters of the Domesday Book that list the landholdings subject to dispute at the time of the survey, when the rights established in the Saxon kingdoms and the Danelaw were holding up against the Normans. It didn't matter if you were the king's brother-in-law and the biggest landowner in the kingdom: if the men of the wapentake moot hadn't witnessed your being seised of the