Gerrard Winstanley (10/10/1609- 10/09/1676) Vision Still Burning Bright

 

Pioneering English revolutionary Gerrard Winstanley who  was the founder of the Diggers, a visionary, land squatter , early communist pamphleteer., political and religious reformer, died  on this day 1676. Regarding the earth ‘a common treasury’, Winstanley was the leader of the agrarian Civil War-era Diggers movement that established communities across England to cultivate waste and common land. His writings, as well as the Digger manifestos, advocated absolute human equality - and the emphasis on the common ownership of land and natural resources, as relevant today as when they were first written. Less concerned with individual scarcity than in sharing what little there was, and in increasing it for and by the community. The Diggers or True Levellers as they described themselves anticipated the conservationist and commune movements of the present day.
Born in Wigan, Lancashire on 10th or 19th October 19th 1609, he moved to London in 1630, where he became an apprentice in the cloth trade and became a freeman in 1637. In September 1640 he married Susan King and the couple moved to Walton-on-Thames.  Influenced by the ideas of John Lilburne and the Levellers he commenced to see his own visions, from his earlier mystical writings he developed his own thought, that clearly displayed a revolutionary design,  which led him to a form of communism. Although influenced by Christian thought, his movement was not just symbolic, it was a political one, using religion as a dialectical base, he boldly declared that it was the Diggers not the priests who observed true religion. By action and deed.
He denounced the domination of man by man, proclaiming the equality of women, basing their reason not just on God's but also Nature's Laws. The times that these activities were happening, were set at the backdrop of the English Civil War,  and a time of great social unrest in England where old reasonings were being cast away,  a time of revolution and change. He and the Diggers were part of a radical ferment that was sweeping the country at the time, a broad movement which had at its heart a radical template, a yearning for something new, a society based on harmony and happiness and a sense of community. Though Winstanley infused these ideas with a religious sensibility he also bought with it a  reasoning grounded in living here on earth.
In 1649, the Parliamentarians had won the First English Civil War but failed to negotiate a constitutional settlement with the defeated King Charles I. When members of Parliament and the Grandees in the New Model Army were faced with Charles’ perceived duplicity, they tried and executed him.
Government through the King’s Privy Council was replaced with a new body called the Council of State, which due to fundamental disagreements within a weakened Parliament was dominated by the Army. Many people became active in politics, suggesting alternative forms of government to replace the old order.
Royalists wished to place King Charles II on the throne; men like Oliver Cromwell wished to govern with a plutocratic Parliament voted in by an electorate based on property, similar to that which was enfranchised before the civil war;  a radical group of agitators called the Levellers, influenced by the writings of John Lilburne, wanted parliamentary government based on an electorate of every male head of a household; Fifth Monarchy Men advocated a theocracy;but it consisted of small property owners who argued for universal manhood suffrage. The Levellers in the army came nearest to all of the radical groupings in winning their gains. But the Levellers disowned the landless poor to avoid the accusation that they were against private property. They ignored the issue of enclosures until they realised that Cromwell was not going to implement their demands for reform of the franchise. As small property owners, the Levellers were actually scared of the revolt of the radical poor, unlike the Diggers.
Winstanley was the spokesman for a much wider layer in society. He generalised from the struggle that was already taking place, articulating a way forward for the dispossessed, giving it shape and form. While the revolution benefited the wealthy capitalist, it made things worse for the poor. However, the Diggers were more than just a reaction to economic hardship. The execution of the king was a traumatic act that cowed the nobility and thrilled the radicals, many of whom expected wonderful things to happen. God was 'shaking the heavens and the earth', throwing down the thrones of kings. The Diggers felt that they had won the war and they were due their just rewards. Was it going to be the few rich or the many poor who would control the common lands? Winstanley had a worked out programme of how to achieve his new society, based on a movement of the poor that was already taking place. This was despite the fact that Winstanley claimed that his idea to dig the commons was revealed to him in a vision from god!
Winstanley’s vision was as much religious as political; he was strongly influenced by the mystical writings that were so popular among seventeenth-century radicals, and he shared fully in the millenarian excitement of the age. He used the Bible to justify his actions, as did every other person in the 17th century. Religion was central to the English Revolution. Radicals believed it was not the king or priests who interpreted the Bible but the individual. This doctrine meant that the word of god could be in each person, and because any one person could be talking directly for god this led directly to equality.
It did not concern Winstanley whether the Bible was true or not. He used it to justify what he already believed in. For Winstanley the biblical stories were, at best, allegories. Many of the religious ideas that Winstanley expressed were not new. They had existed in society before and persisted after Winstanley. What made him radically different was that he put into practice what his religious theory preached. It was this synthesis of theory and practice that created the revolutionary challenge that was the Digger colonies.
On  April 26 1649 Gerrard Winstanley and 14 others published a pamphlet^[ in which they called themselves the “True Levellers” to distinguish their ideas from those of the Levellers, and contained many of their key demands, which they would repeat in other pamphlets. I reprint it here.

The True Leveller's Standard Advanced

' The State of the Community opened, and presented to Sons of Men: A Declaration to the Powers of England, and to all the Powers of the world, showing the cause why the Coommon People of Engald have begun, and gives Consent to dig up, manure and sow corn upon George Hill in Surrey, by those that have subscribed and thousands more that gives consent.

In the  beginning of Time, the great Creator, Reason, made the earth to be a Common Treaury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes and Man, the Lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Dominion given  to him over the Beasts, Birds and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, that one branch of mankind should rule over another.

   And  the reason is this, every man, Male and Female, is a perfect creature of himself; and the same Spirit that made the Globe dwells in man to govern the Globe; so that the flesh of man being subject to Reason, his Maker, hath him to be his Teacher and Ruler within himself, therefore needs not to run abroad after any Teacher and Ruler within himself, therefore needs not to run abroad after any Teacher and Ruler without him, for he needs not that any man should teach him , for the same Anoynting that ruled in the Son of Man, teacheth him all things.

  But since human flesh (that king of Beasts? began to delight himself in the object of Creation, more than in the Spirit and Reason and Righteosness... Covetousness, did set up one man to teach and rule over another; and thereby the Spirit was killed, and man was brought into bondage and became a greater Slave to much of his own kind, than the Beasts of the field were to him.

 And hereupon the Earth (which was made to be a Common Treasury for relief for all, both \beasts and Men) was hedged in to the Inclosures by the teachers and rulers, and the others were made Servants and Slaves; And that Earth that is within this Creation made a Common Store-House for all, is bought and sold, and kept in the hands of a few, whereby the great Creator is mightily dishonoured, as if he were a respector of persons, delighting in the comfortable livelihood of some, and rejoicing in the miserable povertie and straits of others. From the beginning it was not so.'

 Once they put their idea into practice and started to cultivate common land, both opponents and supporters began to call them “Diggers”. The Diggers’ beliefs were informed by Winstanley’s writings which envisioned an ecological interrelationship between humans and nature, acknowledging the inherent connections between people and their surroundings. Winstanley declared that “true freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the earth”

On April 1 1649 he and his comrades took to digging and manuring land on St George's Hill, and later at Cobham in Surrey, in order to encourage the people to dig and plough up the commons, parks and other untilled lands, to break down the pales of the enclosures that existed at the time. Their struggle was essentially against private property in  land, civil law and tyranny in matters of government.  As Winstanley expressed it, ‘To dig up George Hill . . . we may work in righteousness and lay the foundations of making the earth a common treasury for all, both rich and poor. . . . Not enclosing any part into a particular hand, but all as one man, working together, and feeding together; . . . not one lording over another, but all looking upon each other, as equals’. Moreover, ‘every single man, male and female’ should have equal access to what is a ‘common store-house for all’.
What Winstanley envisaged was a movement from private to communal ownership. At first the two systems would co-exist, but increasingly, with the withdrawal of hired labour, the privately owned estates would cease to be viable and the communal system would prevail. As he explained,
No man can be rich, but he must be rich either by his own labours, or by the labours of other men helping him. If a man have no help from his neighbour, he shall never gather an estate of hundreds and thousands a year. If other men help him to work, then are those riches . . . the fruit of other men’s labours as well as his own.
Winstanley knew very well that ‘all rich men live at ease, feeding and clothing themselves by the labours of other men, not by their own; which is their shame, not their nobility’. And when the rich give charity, as if this justified oppression and exploitation, ‘they give away other men’s labours, not their own’. Without the labour of others, the rich would have to work the land themselves and it would become impossible for them to continue to maintain their large estates. In such circumstances, he argued, the rich would join the poor in the communal cultivation of the land. The result would be the end of private property, buying and selling, alienated labour, and the political authority which helped produce and reproduce all three.

A famous rhyme written at around the same time still has much potency, you can here it below as sung by the band Chumbamwamba

The Diggers Song

You noble Diggers all, stand up now, stand up now,
You noble Diggers all, stand up now,
The wast land to maintain, seeing Cavaliers by name
Your digging does maintain, and persons all defame
Stand up now, stand up now.

Your houses they pull down, stand up now, stand up now,
Your houses they pull down, stand up now.
Your houses they pull down to fright your men in town,
But the gentry must come down, and the poor shall wear the crown.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

With spades and hoes and plowes, stand up now, stand up now,
With spades and hoes and plowes stand up now,
Your freedom to uphold, seeing Cavaliers are bold
To kill you if they could, and rights from you to hold.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

Theire self-will is theire law, stand up now, stand up now
Theire self-will is theire law, stand up now.
Since tyranny came in they count it now no sin
To make a gaole a gin, to serve poor men therein.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

The gentrye are all round, stand up now, stand up now,
The gentrye are all round, stand up now.
The gentrye are all round, on each side they are found,
Theire wisdom's so profound, to cheat us of our ground.
Stand up now, stand up now.

The lawyers they conjoyne, stand up now, stand up now,
The lawyers they conjoyne, stand up now,
To arrest you they advise, such fury they devise,
The devill in them lies, and hath blinded both their eyes.
Stand up now, stand up now.

The clergy they come in, stand up now, stand up now,
The clergy they come in, stand up now.
The clergy they come in, and say it is a sin
That we should now begin, our freedom for to win.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

The tithe they yet will have, stand up now,stand up now,
The tithes they yet will have, stand up now.
The tithes they yet will have, and lawyers their fees crave,
And this they say is brave, to make the poor their slave.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

'Gainst lawyers and gainst Priests, stand up now,stand up now,
'Gainst lawyers and gainst Priests stand up now.
For tyrants they are both even flatt against their oath,
To grant us they are loath free meat and drink and cloth.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

The club is all their law, stand up now, stand up now,
The club is all their law, stand up now.
The club is all their law to keep men in awe,
Buth they no vision saw to maintain such a law.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

The Cavaleers are foes, stand up now, stand up now,
The Cavaleers are foes, stand up now;
The Cavaleers are foes, themselves they do disclose
By verses not in prose to please the singing boyes.
Stand up now, Diggers all.

To conquer them by love, come in now, come in now,
To conquer them by love, come in now;
To conquer them by love, as it does you behove,
For he is King above, noe power is like to love,
Glory heere, Diggers all.

Powerful stuff, but at the time the diggers were seen as mad extremists and were  brutally dealt with. It quickly became clear that the Diggers represented something new; they were not squatting in the hope that local landowners would take pity on them and allow them to stay; rather, they were challenging the very idea of land ownership.
The attack on the Diggers included an economic boycott, harassment, violent assaults by hired thugs, and legal actions. It was all organised by local landowners. They even employed a clergyman, whose sole purpose was ‘to preach down the Diggers’. The men of property were determined to prevent the Diggers establishing themselves on the commons and the example this would set. When the Diggers moved their activities to Cobham Heath in August 1649, the opposition intensified, continuing what had gone before, but now burning dwellings and furniture, and hiring thugs to chase the Diggers from the area.
 In 1651, after the defeat of the communes, Winstanley produced a utopian blueprint entitled Law of Freedom. His previous writings were a savage criticism of existing society and a direct appeal to ordinary people to take action. This later pamphlet was a detailed plan for a future society. While during 1649 and 1650 he appealed to Cromwell and the army merely not to interfere with the communes, in 1651 he directly addressed Cromwell, asking him to create the new society. The experience of the communes and the violence of the landlords had led Winstanley to abandon pacifism.
Though they were short lived and as a movement they were unsuccessful, their various manifestos and pamphlets continue to hold much resonance,  inspiring people to search out new ways of living, feeding our dreams. Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers were prepared to put their beliefs into action, and since that time many political movements have come to recognise the Diggers as pioneers of their own beliefs, their hostility to rule of law and strong governments still resonates with much appeal. Their ideas can be seen in modern movements that put people first and not the thirst for profit, echoed in environmental groups and the occupy movements and others seeking social justice. His message too, rings loud and clear at the moment with the present governments austerity measures, leaving many people vulneravble, and facing the prospect of losing their homes, and their attacks and criminalisation of the squatting movement. Little is known of Winstanley's later life, he died in a place called Cobham, pm the 10th of September 1676 but his contribution to our countries radical spirit looms large and his vision, for all its limitations,continues to inspire, making sure his legacy will surely live on.
As with the Levellers, Winstanley and the Surrey Diggers struck a blow at the halls of wealth and power of 17th century English society. Their efforts and their philosophy were not wasted on later generations seeking the same spirit of liberty and freedom in a more democratic social structure and s have since been celebrated as precursors of land squatting and communalism. Winstanley's memory, and that of his fellow Diggers, has in recent years also been invoked by freeganists, squatters, guerrilla gardeners, allotment campaigners, social entrepreneurs, greens and peace campaigners; and both Marxists, anarchists and libertarians have laid claim to him as a significant precursor. In 1995 The Land is Ours activists set up camp at the disused Wisley airfield in Surrey and briefly invaded the fairways of St George’s Hill golf course. Four years later, on the three-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Digger experiment, activists marched to St George’s Hill – now an exclusive housing estate – and set up their tents, yurt and compost toilets on North Surrey Water Company land near the summit. The occupation lasted for just under a fortnight, when the site was abandoned before a possession order could be put into effect. Other land occupations soon followed. TLIO’s activities and their thoughtful publicity material helped draw attention both to pressing land-access issues, and to the continuing relevance of the Diggers’ example for modern activists.  In 2011, an annual festival began in Wigan to celebrate the Diggers. The memory of Winstanley and the Diggers will no doubt be kept alive,so that future generations of activists will be reminded of the example and relevance of their seventeenth-century predecessors. The following song written by Leon Rosselson,  The World Turned Upside Down,  powefully resonates  today, it  opens with the words ‘In 1649 …’ and still feel like it was ripped from the headlines. Billy Bragg later popularised it further, but personally much prefer the following version by the inimitable Dick Gaughan.

Dick Gaughan - The World Turned Upside Down..

In sixteen forty-nine to St. George's Hill
A ragged band they called the Diggers came to show the people's will
They defied the landlords, they defied the laws
They were the dispossesed reclaiming what was theirs
'We come in peace,' they said, 'to dig and sow'
'We come to work the land in common and to make the wasteground grow'
'This Earth divided, we will make whole'
'So it can be a common treasury for all'
'The sin of property we do disdain'
'No one has any right to buy or sell the earth for private gain'
'By theft and murder they took the land'
'Now everywhere the walls spring up at their command'
'They make the laws to chain us well'
'The clergy dazzle us with heaven or they damn us into hell'
'We will not worship the god the serve'
'The god of greed who feeds the rich whilst pepole starve'
'We work, we eat together, we take up swords'
'We will not bow to the masters or pay rent to the lords'
'We are free people though we are poor'
You Diggers all stand up for glory, stand up

'Action is the life of all, and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing' - Gerrard Winstanley


Further Reading:

The World Turned Upside Down; Radical Ideas During the English Revolution
- Christopher Hill, Penguin

Gerrard Winstanley and the Republic of heaven - David Boulton
Dales Historical Monographs 1999

  Gerard Winstanley The Diggers life and legacy - John Gurney

Their is also in my opinion a rather fine film , Winstanley that came out in 1975 , made by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollow, that is very good for historical accuracy, that deals with Winstanley's life and that of the Diggers. It has recently been reissued in D.V.D by the British Film Institute.