‘GERRARD WINSTANLEY – THE DIGGER MESSAGE FOR TODAY’S WORKERS.’
Saturday 13th
2-15pm
Friends Meeting House,
Manchester M2 5NS.
After the defeat of Charles the 1st anything seemed possible with many people taking hold of their own lives and their gradual realisation that freedom could not be had without the ownership of property being destroyed.
In the Parliamentary army there grew up a movement known as "The Levellers" which demanded political freedom. Whereas the Levellers saw the first English revolution as a springboard for the creation of political equality (a case they argued for unsuccessfully in the Putney Debates) but being inexperienced in rebelling against the injustices of the market, and still to recognise the incompatibility between freedom and property, they sought only to reform and make property relationships more just. The "True Levellers", however, sought social equality, fusing economic and political objectives as all socialists must.
On the first day of April in the year 1649, on St. George's Hill, some men spent the day digging and sowed parsnips, carrots, and beans. The Council of State instructed the commander-in-chief of the army, General Fairfax, to send a force to dispel this "Disorderly and tumultuous" assembly before it might grow and spread. Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard, were taken before Cromwell and Fairfax. They stood before the Lord General with their hats on, claiming that he was but their fellow man. They stated that for many years the people had lived under oppression and tyranny. The remedy was to cultivate the common land, everyone working and living communally. The members of this movement called themselves the "True Levellers", better known as "The Diggers."
Gerrard Winstanley continued his activities after the Digger movement had faded. Gerrard Winstanley can well be described as England's first articulate socialist. In an age of pamphleteering, Winstanley penned many pamphlets, and his writing is cloaked in religious phrases for it was a time of religious fervour. He saw clearly that there could be no real freedom whilst there was private property.
"True freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the earth . . . A man had better to have no body than to have no food for it . . . True freedom lies in the free enjoyment of the earth."
(The Law of Freedom.)He also recognised the real function of religion as propounded by the Church.
"While men are gazing up to heaven, imagining after a happiness or fearing a hell after they are dead, their eyes are put out, that they see not what is their birthrights, and what is to be done by them here on earth while they are living . . . And indeed the subtle clergy do know that if they can but charm the people . . . to look after riches, heaven and glory when they are dead, that then they shall easily be the inheritors of the earth and have the deceived people to be their servants. This . . . was not the doctrine of Christ."
(The Law of Freedom.)He saw the real cause of war and of class struggles.
"property and single interest divides the people of a land and the whole world into parties, and is the cause of all wars and bloodshed and contention everywhere."
(The True Levellers' Standard Advanced).
". . . Rich men receive all they have from the labourer's hand and what they give, they give away other men's labours, not their own"
(The Law of Freedom.)The kind of society the Diggers aimed to establish can be shown by this description
"Shall we have lawyers? There is no need for them, for there is to be no buying and selling; neither any need to expound laws; for the bare letter of the law shall be both judge and lawyer, trying every man's actions. And seeing we shall have successive Parliaments every year, there will be rules made for every action a man can do."
(The Law of Freedom.)The Diggers stood for common ownership where all wealth was owned communally and where there will be no need for money.
The Diggers proclaimed that:
“we must neither buy nor sell. Money must not any longer . . .be the great god that hedges in some and hedges out others . . .”
It meant that production must be solely for use and all people able to take from the common store on the basis of free access.
As Winstanley explained: “As everyone works to advance the Common Stock so everyone shall have a free use of any commodity in the Storehouse for his pleasure and comfortable livelihood, without buying and selling or restraint from any”.( Law of Freedom)
His s a wonderful and compelling socialist vision of a society where all things in and on the Earth are the common property of all; where all people give according to their abilities and take freely according to their needs; where money and other time-wasting features of property relationship are done away with. It is a practical alternative to capitalism’s property mania.
“The earth with all her fruits of Corn, Cattle and such like was made to be a common Store-House of Livelihood, to all mankinde, friend and foe, without exception” (A Declaration From the Poor Oppressed People of England).
Cromwell and those he represented believe, as far as they were concerned, that the revolution had gone far enough. They held political power and they were prepared to use it to suppress their supporters as they had suppressed their former class enemies. In fact, they were prepared to compromise and ally with their former enemies to subdue the aspirations of their extremist followers.
"While this kingly power reigned in one man called Charles, all sorts of people complained of oppression . . . Thereupon you that were the gentry, when you were assembled in Parliament, you called upon the poor common people to come and help you . . . That top bough is lopped off the tree of Tyranny, and the kingly power in that one particular is cast out. But alas, oppression is a great tree still, and keeps off the sun of freedom from the poor commons still."
( A New Year's Gift for the Parliament and Army.)
Winstanley and his Digger comrades clearly stood for a society in which all goods would be held in common, with free access for all to the common store. Winstanley explicitly rejected money, the rule of government and (despite his use of religious metaphors) belief in churches or omnipotent gods and it would be right to consider Winstanley as a materialist. Indeed, there is not much said by the Diggers which socialists today would want to argue with. The difference is that they were advocating what could them have only been a utopian strategy, which they attempted to implement and were persecuted for so doing, whereas now capitalism is ripe for being replaced by a new system of social organisation. We who seek to bring it about have good reason to remember Winstanley and the Diggers who provide us with a unique insight into the movement and its revolutionary ideas.
Winstanley realised the need to propagate his ideas and to gain support for them from a majority of the people. But none of them challenged the political supremacy of the wealthy capitalists. Instead, they appealed for a change of heart. The more wily of the capitalists recognised at the outset the need to capture and hold political power to ensure the domination of their class over society. With the political machine in their hands their opponents on all sides were powerless.
The capitalist class even today still recognises that, and clings to political power tenaciously. It will continue to impose its will on society until the working class deprives it of that power and
proceeds to remodel society in keeping with working-class interests.
As Winstanley stated:
“True freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the Earth”.
Those in Britain living beneath the poverty line and the millions in the world dying from starvation should see the sense of that.
"In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination 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 single man, Male and Female, is a perfect Creature of himself; and the same Spirit that made the Globe, dwels in man to govern the Globe;so that the flesh of man being subject to Reason..."
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