The Diggers were a group of religious and political dissidents in England, associated with agrarian socialism.[1] Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard, amongst many others, were known as True Levellers in 1649, in reference to their split from the Levellers, and later became known as Diggers because of their attempts to farm on common land. Due to this and to their beliefs, the Diggers were driven from one county after another by the authorities.
True Levellers | |
|---|---|
Woodcut from a Levellers document by William Everard
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| Leader | Gerrard Winstanley |
| Founded | 1649 |
| Dissolved | 1651 |
| Split from | Levellers |
| Ideology | Agrarian socialism Christian socialism |
| Religion | Dissenter Protestantism |
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The Diggers tried (by "levelling" land) to reform the existing social order with an agrarian lifestyle based on their ideas for the creation of small, egalitarian rural communities. They were one of a number of nonconformist dissenting groups that emerged around this time. Their belief in economic equality was drawn from Acts of the Apostles 4:32, which describes a community of believers that "had all things in common" instead of having personal property.
In 1649, Gerrard Winstanley and 14 others published The True Levellers Standard Advanced,[2] a pamphlet and manifesto in which they called themselves "True Levellers" to distinguish their ideas from those of the Levellers.[3] 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".[4] With this the Diggers sought to establish a communistic utopia.[5]
The True Levellers advocated for an early form of public health insurance and communal ownership in opposition to individual ownership.[6][3] They rejected the perceived immorality and sexual liberalism of another sect known as the Ranters, with Gerrard Winstanley denoting them as "a general lack of moral values or restraint in worldly pleasures".[7][8][9]
The Council of State received a letter in April 1649 reporting that several individuals had begun to plant vegetables in common land on St George's Hill, Weybridge near Cobham, Surrey[5] at a time when harvests were bad and food prices high.[12] Sanders reported that they had invited "all to come in and help them, and promise them meat, drink, and clothes." They intended to pull down all enclosures and cause the local populace to come and work with them. They claimed that their number would be several thousand within ten days. It was at this time that "The True Levellers Standard Advanced" was published.[2]
Where exactly in St. George's Hill the Diggers were is a matter of dispute. Sanders alleges that they worked "on that side of the hill next to Campe Close."[13] George Greenwood, however, speculated that the Diggers were "somewhere near Silvermere Farm on the Byfleet Road rather than on the unprofitable slopes of St. George's Hill itself."[14]
Winstanley remained and continued to write about the treatment they received. The harassment from the Lord of the Manor, Francis Drake (not the famous Francis Drake, who had died more than 50 years before), was both deliberate and systematic: he organised gangs in an attack on the Diggers, including numerous beatings and an arson attack on one of the communal houses. Following a court case, in which the Diggers were forbidden to speak in their own defence, they were found guilty of being sexually liberal Ranters (though in fact Winstanley had reprimanded Ranter Laurence Clarkson for his sexual practices).[15][16] If they had not left the land after losing the court case then the army could have been used to enforce the law and evict them; so they abandoned Saint George's Hill in August 1649, much to the relief of the local freeholders.
Some of the evicted Diggers moved a short distance to Little Heath in Surrey.[5] 11 acres (4.5 ha) were cultivated, six houses built, winter crops harvested, and several pamphlets published. After initially expressing some sympathy for them, the local lord of the manor of Cobham, Parson John Platt, became their chief enemy. He used his power to stop local people helping them and he organised attacks on the Diggers and their property. By April 1650, Platt and other local landowners succeeded in driving the Diggers from Little Heath.[9][13]
There was another community of Diggers close to WellingboroughinNorthamptonshire. In 1650, the community published a declaration which started:
This community was probably founded as a result of contact with the Surrey Diggers. In late March 1650, four emissaries from the Surrey colony were arrested in Buckinghamshire bearing a letter signed by the Surrey Diggers including Gerrard Winstanley and Robert Coster inciting people to start Digger colonies and to provide money for the Surrey Diggers. According to the newspaper A Perfect Diurnall the emissaries had travelled a circuit through the counties of Surrey, Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire before being apprehended.[17]
On 15 April 1650 the Council of State ordered Mr Pentlow, a justice of the peace for Northamptonshire to proceed against "the Levellers in those parts" and to have them tried at the next Quarter Session.[18] The Iver Diggers recorded that nine of the Wellingborough Diggers were arrested and imprisoned in Northampton jail and although no charges could be proved against them the justice refused to release them.
Captain William Thompson, the leader of the failed "Banbury mutiny", was killed in a skirmish close to the community by soldiers loyal to Oliver Cromwell in May 1649.
Another colony of Diggers connected to the Surrey and Wellingborough colony was set up in Iver, Buckinghamshire about 14 miles (23 km) from the Surrey Diggers colony at St George's Hill.[17] The Iver Diggers' "Declaration of the grounds and Reasons, why we the poor Inhabitants of the Parrish of Iver in Buckinghamshire ..."[19] revealed that there were further Digger colonies in Barnet in Hertfordshire, Enfield in Middlesex, Dunstable in Bedfordshire, Bosworth in Leicestershire and further colonies at unknown locations in Gloucestershire and Nottinghamshire. It also revealed that after the failure of the Surrey colony, the Diggers had left their children to be cared for by parish funds.
Oliver Cromwell and the Grandees' attitude to these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.[20]
The San Francisco Diggers were a community-action group of activists and Street Theatre actors operating from 1966 to 1968, based in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco.
Since the revival of anarchism in the British anti-roads movement, the Diggers have been celebrated as precursors of land squatting and communalism. On April 1, 1999, the 350th anniversary of the Diggers' occupation of the English Civil War on the same hill, The Land Is Ours organised a rally, then occupied land at St. George's Hill near Weybridge, Surrey.
In 2011, an annual festival began in Wigan to celebrate the Diggers. In 2012, the second annual festival proved a great success and the sixth took place in 2016.[21]InWellingborough, a festival has also been held annually since 2011.[22] Bolton Diggers were established in 2013 and have promoted the commons as a foil to privatisation. They have established community food gardens, cooperatives and the Common Wealth café, a pay-as-you-feel café using surplus food from supermarkets.[23] The Manchester Urban Diggers, which operate out of Platt Fields Gardens, takes its name and ethos from the historical diggers, and supports developing food sovereignty through "educational services and growing fruit, vegetables and herbs to make available to the local community."[24]
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That we may work in righteousness, and lay the Foundation of making the Earth a Common Treasury for All, both Rich and Poor, That every one that is born in the Land, may be fed by the Earth his Mother that brought him forth, according to the Reason that rules in the Creation. Not Inclosing any part into any particular hand, but all as one man, working together, and feeding together as Sons of one Father, members of one Family; not one Lording over another, but all looking upon each other, as equals in the Creation.