7th Wigan Diggers' Festival

Saturday, 9 September 

11:00am - 9:30pm

Venue: Gerrard Winstanley Gardens, The Wiend, Wigan WN1 1PF 

Manchester Branch will again have a stall distributing and selling literature at this annual festival.

Gerard Winstanley, the seventeenth-century utopian communist, was born in Wigan in 1609 and was virtually unheard of for over two centuries after his Digger writings. British political radicalism up to the latter half of the nineteenth century emphasised the contribution of the Levellers and the defender of parliament against the crown, John Hampden, to political democracy. Winstanley’s legacy was mainly focused on his possible contribution to Quakerism. This all changed, however, with the rise of Marxian revolutionary socialism which led to an interest in Winstanley’s communism and his rise from historical obscurity. It was the German social democrat, Eduard Bernstein who, in 1895, revived Winstanley’s reputation as an early proponent of ‘communistic utopia’ in his Cromwell and Communism. Today, Winstanley is probably the most celebrated radical figure of the English Civil War period. It is possible to see in Winstanley’s writings the rudiments of the Marxian concepts of alienation and the labour theory of value. This is, though, to see him through the lens of future developments. He was not a forerunner of Marxian socialism but the turbulence of the English Revolution did lead him to lay down writings which offered up a communistic utopia as the solution to the social and economic challenges he faced.  The historical turn away from celebrating constitutional political radicalism and towards Winstanley’s communism is interesting and positive.