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As discussed in the previous blogpost, the Diggers exited the English radical scene between 1650 and 1652. Many of them, such as Gerrard Winstanley himself, moved on to live rather ordinary lives. Sometimes, these lives were still marked by some form of religious non-conformity, but they were not publicly advocating for land access and property reform anymore.
In the immediate aftermath of the Digger movement, the group were mainly regarded as something that belonged to the short footnotes of History – they were often viewed with a negative connotation, or, more commonly, completely forgotten and ignored.
Historiography is the study of the writing of history, that is, of the different approaches and methods employed by historians in analysing and writing history.
In the field of history, we talk about appropriation when a historical fact, episode, character, etc., is mobilised by an existing cultural and or political movement, group, party, and the like. Appropriation usually entails mobilising history for a specific purpose, such as supporting an argument or opinion, or providing an example.
Doctrine that defends the abolition of private property, and believes in communal control of the means of production. The communist ideal is a society without division by social class, prioritizing the collective good over the good of the individual. Some of the main thinkers on communism are Karl Marx, Vladmir Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg.
Contrary to what happens under capitalism, in socialism the so called means of production (industries, trade, tools, etc.) are communally owned and regulated by society as a whole. It is a political, social and economic theory which advocates for a more egalitarian distribution of production and wealth.
Refers to the social economic theory developed by Karl Marx, with contributions by Friedrich Engels, in the 19th century. Marx believed that philosophy should be concerned with ‘reality’, instead of ‘abstract’ issues, and he believed the real basis of society to be the economic structure. From this standpoint, he developed the concept of historical materialism, and the analysis of society through the lens of class struggle, for example.
A political and economic system where trade and industry are privately owned, and where profit is the ultimate goal of progress.
Political, philosophical, social and economic current which is centred on the guarantee of individual freedoms, as well as equality before the law, and the defence of a minimal state which is kept from interfering in the economy.
The Whigs were a British political group, which later became a party, that opposed the Tories in Parliament between the 17th and the 19th centuries. In the 1850s the Whigs merged into the Liberal Party, with many individuals leaving it in 1886 to form the Liberal Unionist Party, which became the Conservative Party in the beginning of the 20th century. As a political current, Whiggism is associated with early liberal ideas in Britain.
Similar to Whigs, the Tories were a British political group which later organised as a party. They were the classic opponents to Whiggism, representing more conservative and traditionalist values and perspectives.
In the field of History, to think of something anachronistically is to think about it outside of its proper date and context, hence making erroneous considerations and analysis of it. The Oxford English Dictionary defines anachronism as ‘an error in computing time, or fixing dates; the erroneous reference of an event, circumstance, or custom to a wrong date’, and ‘anything done or existing out of date; hence anything which was proper to a former age, but is, or, if it existed, would be, out of harmony with the present’ (‘Anachronism, n.’ OED Online. Oxford University Press, 2021).
To observe something through different angles before reaching a conclusion.
In History, a reductionist analysis reduces the object or topic in question to only one characteristic. In a way, it is the opposite of multidimensional, as it fails to consider all the necessary perspectives and complexities.
‘The theory or practice of revising one’s attitude to a previously accepted situation or point of view; spec. a movement or process involving the revision of an established or accepted version of historical events’. (‘Revisionism, n.’ OED Online. Oxford University Press, 2021).
Regarding British historiography concerning the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, during the 1970s revisionist historiography heavily criticised previous interpretations of history, accusing past historians of being biased and committing anachronisms, as well as having faulty methodologies.
Historical materialism refers to Karl Marx’s theory of history, which puts class and labour at the centre of historical analysis. For Marx, the ultimate causes of historical events lie in economic development (for example, changes in the mode of production), as well as in the social and political upheavals caused by such changes. Through materialism, Marx challenges the idea that capitalism and liberalism are the ultimate ‘goal’ and ideal of all societies, symbolising the ‘end of history’.
Historical determinism is usually embedded within historical materialism. It starts from the premise that historically, individuals and their actions are not the product of their free will, but rather the result of certain factors such as class. Consequently, a determinist analysis will attribute certain characteristics to a specific social group of people based on their class.
Shot of Diggers in the distance, from the 1975 film 'Winstanley'
During the 19th century, interest rose in the ‘civil war sects’. This was due to the rediscovery of George Thomason’s collection (Pocock, 2001, p. 284) – which would later become known as the Thomason Tracts. George Thomason was a 17th century English bookseller who took on the self-imposed task of collecting all sorts of printed materials during the period of the Wars of Three Kingdoms. His collection contained around 32,000 items, and today it is held at the British Library, in London.
The various pamphlets, newsbooks, and broadsides that were gathered by Thomason brought about new perspectives on the conflicts, since cheap print was a popular method used by dissonant, ‘marginalised’ groups (such as Diggers, Levellers, Ranters and Fifth Monarchists) to share their opinions and demands during the wars. This led historians to realise that the wars had been fought between more than two sides: it could no longer be abridged as a conflict exclusively between King and Parliament.
Historians devoted significant interest to the Levellers throughout the years since the Thomason Tracts ‘re-discovery’. This was due to them being regarded as 17th century supporters of ideals that had advanced greatly during the 19th and 20th centuries in Western societies, such as: religious freedom, equality before the law, expanded male suffrage, and – in many countries if not in the United Kingdom – the virtues of the republican system. Therefore, especially during the 20th century, the newly discovered Levellers were being held by many as the forerunners of Liberalism, and defenders of its core values.
Obelisk in the Alexander Gardens, Moscow. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the names of Tsars were replaced with those of ‘communist and socialist revolutionary heroes’. Gerrard Winstanley’s name is the 8th from top to bottom.
As had happened with the Levellers, heading into the 20th century there was also a surge of interest in the Diggers, influenced by the spread of a new political ideology: Communism. Since the publications of Karl Marx (considered by many the Father of Communism) from the mid-1800s, Communism, or, more specifically, Marxism, began to experience a widespread influence, starting in Europe.
Following this vogue, in 1895, Eduard Bernstein published Cromwell and Communism: Socialism and Democracy in the Great English Revolution, in which he depicted Winstanley and the Diggers as advocates for ‘practical communism’ (Bernstein also considered the Levellers to have ‘atheistic and communistic tendencies’). A similar tone can be found in the first book published solely about the Diggers, by Lewis H. Berens, in 1906. In The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth, Berens characterised the Diggers as proto revolutionaries, their ideas the forerunners of communist ideals. A clear example can be found right in the extended title of Berens’ book, which reads: ‘As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social Reformer’ (Berens, 1906, p. 3).
As we have seen on the previous blog posts, Winstanley and the Diggers did, indeed, advocate for changes regarding the use of land in England, with emphasis on the abolition of private ownership and defense for widespread access. This, for us, can indeed resonate with present-day communist and left-wing ideals, such as those of a classless society and abolition of private property (Holstun, 2000). Such associations even led Gerrard Winstanley’s name to figure on a soviet monument in Moscow, in honour of the ‘revolutionary heroes’, alongside Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Charles Fourier, Thomas More, Mikhail Bakunin, and thirteen others.
However, other historians such as Winthrop S. Hudson were wary of this approximation between the Diggers and communism in historical analysis. Hudson feared that many historians were finding historical antecedents with the aim of backing the ideas they were defending in the 20th century, instead of considering all the characteristics of the Diggers in their analysis, resulting in an allegedly biased historical narrative. For Hudson:
“Unfortunately, from the point of view of a balanced appreciation of Winstanley, his initial resurrection from the limbo of forgotten men was accomplished by one who was better Marxist than historian. Edward Bernstein found Winstanley interesting as an early exponent of the class struggle and as a class-conscious agitator in behalf of ‘a complete social system based on communistic principles’. This is the pattern or interpretation that has been followed by most of those who have given attention to the Digger movement since that time. Indeed, much of the current interest in Winstanley is due to a desire to demonstrate that ‘the ideals of Socialism and Communism are not…something of foreign origin…, alien to the genius of the English people’. On the contrary, in the Diggers it becomes evident that left-wing socialism is indigenous to the British Isles and has its roots in ‘the native British tradition’.”
(Hudson, 1946, p. 2-3).
Woman reading one of Winstanley’s pamphlets in the 1975 film ‘Winstanley’
Despite the admitted resonances of some of the Diggers’ ideas with communism, I believe we should always try to be careful when making such approximations in history. This is because of the dangers presented by anachronism for historical interpretation. We say something is anachronic when it is taken out of it’s appropriate time and context. This can produce serious analytical errors in a historian’s analysis, if she or he constructs an interpretation of history based on ideas that were not part of a specific period.
When it comes to the Diggers and their associations with communism, it is imperative we remember that they developed their ideas and actions in a period that much anteceded the emergence of communist theories. To fully grasp the totality and complexity of their enterprise, it is crucial we place them in their adequate context – otherwise we might mistakenly ignore or misinterpret important aspects of their worldviews.
An example of this kind of anachronistic practice could be the dismissal of the Diggers’ religious beliefs. Karl Marx famously asserted that ‘religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people’ (Marx, 1844). Since religion is therefore not an important theme in communist doctrines, an analysis that aims at portraying Winstanley and the Diggers as communist icons might not take into proper account the enormous religious dimension of the Diggers’ experience, something that was central to their worldviews.
Thus, we should always be mindful of the dangers of anachronism, and proceed with care when reading analysis of historical subjects that try to showcase them as ‘forerunners’ of a certain idea or doctrine, or as ‘ahead of their time’, since these might be biased.
Christopher Hill and members of Cobham Labour Party dressed in 17th century costume. The photograph was taken when Dr. Hill gave a speech to Cobham Labour Party in 1999. Hill is 4th from the right.
Since the days of Bernstein, Berens, and Hudson, a great deal of scholarly research has been conducted on the Diggers. It was Christopher Hill, in his now canonical (if outdated) study of the English Revolution, The World Turned Upside Down (1991), first published in 1972, who was responsible for bringing attention to the Diggers once more. Hill’s passionate portrayal of the revolution and the many groups that disputed it was able to communicate not only to historians, but also to a relatively broader public audience.
Hill’s work was, nevertheless, still the subject of much scrutiny and criticism from the so-called Revisionist historians from the 1970s onwards. According to John Morrill, Revisionism was:
“a revolt against materialist or determinist histories and historiographies, and most periods and schools of History have had their revisionist moment. In many cases, it was straightforwardly a revolt against Marxist historiographies […]; or against Whig histories, with their […] grand narratives of progress, stories determined to find the buds of the present fully formed in the past (as in the case of England). It was also a revolt against interpreting the past using the categories of the present—anachronism.” (Morrill, 2015, p. 577).
The revisionists drew attention to faults in Hill’s methodology, and how he was also guilty of committing every historian’s ‘greatest sin’: anachronism. Hill was a socialist and for a long time a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, so it was argued that he was unable to separate his own personal and political values from his historical analysis, wishing to push a revolutionary agenda through his writings, and portraying Diggers and Levellers alike as being ‘more revolutionary’ or ‘ahead of their time’, than they had actually been.
Some of Hill’s critics were John Kenyon, John Morrill, Jack Hexter, Glenn Burgess, Conrad Russel, Kevin Sharpe, and Mark Kishlansky, among others. Morrill was particularly critical of Hill’s ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ (1991), a book he considered was driven by anachronism and a ‘sentimental rather than an intellectual Marxism’ (Morrill, 2014, p. 233). Regarding the alleged weakness of the method adopted by Hill in the book, Morrill claimed to be ‘uncomfortable with Hill’s exclusive use of printed sources’ – that is, texts that were produced with a printing press like Gutenberg’s, as seen on blog 2 – and the ‘complete lack of engagement with manuscript sources’ (Morrill, 2014, p. 233) – that is, handwritten texts, such as letters, diaries, etc. where he had ‘begun to find so much rich material from those on the margins of literacy’ (Morrill, 2014, p. 233). Still, regarding Hill’s method, Morrill stated that:
(Morrill, 2014, p. 231).
Despite such criticism, Hill is still today largely regarded as one of the most important British historians of the 20th century, and his work continues to influence and instigate present day historians. In 2022, the 50th anniversary of the publication of ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ was celebrated, and some of the leading historians in the field gathered at the conference ‘Christopher Hill and the English Revolution: 50 Years after The World Turned Upside Down’, to discuss and honour Hill’s enduring legacy.
The points brought up by revisionist historians from the 1970s onwards promoted the broadening of analysis about the 17th century. Questions were once again being asked about whether the Diggers should actually be interpreted as 17th century communists – but they did not stop there. Historians started to look more deeply into other parts of Digger history, and slowly distanced themselves from the outdated debate about whether Winstanley had been a 17th century communist or not. Instead they moved forward to new, unexplored topics.
Consequently, nowadays there are a variety of ways in which historians seek to understand the Diggers. Some choose to focus on their religious perspectives (Rowland, 2000; Bradstock, 2011; 2014; Hessayon, 2014). Others focus on tracking who the individuals that became associated with the Diggers were (Gurney, 2007; Taylor, 2000). And yet others focus on matters related to gender (Hobby, 2000; Apetrei, 2014; Hughes, 2012), politics (Holstun, 2000; 2002), or on their pamphlets, rhetoric, and literary style (Jowitt, 2000; McDowell, 2003; Corns, 2014; Smith, 2000).
In summary, historians nowadays try to emphasize that the Digger experience was multidimensional, and, therefore, should not be understood and analysed in reductionist ways.
Historians, however, do not hold a monopoly on how people interpret history, or on how they mobilise it and, most importantly, choose to relate to it. To fully understand how the Diggers are remembered nowadays, it is important to look beyond Universities’ walls and formal scholarship on the topic.
There are a variety of ways in which the history of the Surrey Diggers has been mobilised throughout the 20th and 21st centuries by ordinary people. In Britain, The Diggers Festival, held annually in Winstanley’s birthplace of Wigan, gives us an amazing insight into how the Diggers became part of the local culture.
In the above interview with Stephen Hall – one of the event’s founders and organisers – myself and the Elmbridge Museum team learned that the festival happens every year on the nearest Saturday to the 10th of September (Winstanley’s probable birth date), and it gathers around 5 to 6 thousand people, being one of the biggest radical left-wing event of northwest England, according to Hall. It takes place in the Gerrard Winstanley gardens, and is an interesting mixture of a celebration of left-wing values, culture and politics, alongside the more specific focus on the history of Winstanley and the Diggers. It features attractions such as live music, poetry, food and drink stalls, and much more, with the most curious part of the festival perhaps being the re-enactment of the Digger’s occupation of St. George’s Hill, which marks the beginning of the festivities.
Hall recalled his astonishment at finding out – while on a night out with his fellow Green Socialist comrades – that Winstanley was from Wigan. By then, he knew about the Diggers, who he thought ‘must have been a great bunch of people’, but had never heard of Winstanley, or that the Diggers had any connections whatsoever with Wigan. So, in 2011, they decided to do something about it, came up with the idea for the festival and, in his own words, ‘the rest is history’. According to Hall, the festival is all about promoting the ideas and history of Winstanley.
A similar event takes place annually on May Day in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. The Wellingborough Diggers Festival also features live music, comedy shows, poetry, and lectures from political activists, and its goal is ‘to remember the impoverished people of the town who moved to common land to carve out a humble life for themselves’ (Carter, 2023) in the 17th century.
The Diggers also serve as inspiration for social movements such as The Land is Ours, which campaigns ‘peacefully for access to the land, its resources, and the decision-making processes affecting them, for everyone, irrespective of age, race, or gender’, while also challenging the ‘whole idea of land “ownership”’. In April 1999, on the 350th anniversary of the Diggers’ occupation of St. George’s Hill, a month-long new occupation was organised by The Land is Ours movement on the same location – which by then was a private gated estate in Weybridge, Surrey.
Learn more on The Land is Ours protest at St. George's Hill in 1999 in our 'Look Back in Anger' exhibitionThe entrance to The Land Is Ours campaign site on St. George's Hill. Many of the banners on display there make reference to the Diggers.
The Land is Ours campsite at St. George's Hill.
Photograph showing a green cloth banner inscribed in red: "Gerrard Winstanley And The Diggers 1649-1999", from the Land is Ours campsite.
The Manchester Urban Diggers in action.
In Manchester, the Manchester Urban Diggers (MUD) are a nonprofit social enterprise ‘dedicated to finding solutions to problems with our local food systems. This includes advocating for food sovereignty, providing volunteering opportunities and services and growing fruit, vegetables and herbs to make available to the local community’2. Regarding their choice of name, they explain that the original English Diggers were ‘a group of people & movement that was started 1649 by angry people who needed to feed themselves and saw unused land going to waste whilst they starved’.
The Diggers also found their place in the performative arts. The show ‘Three Acres and a Cow: a history of land rights and protest in folk song and story’ uses songs and poems to portray centuries of history relating to land rights in Britain. They connect:
One of the main features of the show is their ‘washing line of history’, where they depict years that were particularly relevant for the history of land in Britain. Notably, 1649 figures as an important year, precisely because of the Diggers. Other years included in the washing line are 1066 (the Norman Invasion), 1700-1850 (parliamentary enclosures), 1800-1850 (the highland clearances), 1870-1890 (the Irish land war), 1915 (rent strikes), and 2000 (the Right to Roam Act).
The ‘washing line of history’ from Two Acres and a Cow, marking important moments in British history concerning land rights. The 7th item from left to right references 1649 and the Diggers.
But the legacy of the Diggers is not restricted to Britain. All the way across the pond, at the height of the north American counterculture movement during the 1960s, the San Francisco Diggers took inspiration from Winstanley and his companions when coming up with a name for their collective.
According to Eric Noble, the ‘unofficial archivist’ for the San Francisco Diggers, between 1966 and 1968, the movement promoted ‘street theater, anarcho–direct action, and art happenings in their social agenda. Their most famous activities revolved around Free Food (every day in the Panhandle), and the Free Store (where everything was free for the taking)’. Regarding their choice of name, they emphasized, yet again, the original Diggers’ fight for access to the land:
The San Francisco Diggers – San Francisco, 1966.
Noble says there are many different accounts on the origin of the San Francisco Diggers’ name. He resorts to the book Ringolevio, by Emmet Grogan (one of the original San Francisco Diggers), for an account on the San Francisco Diggers’ baptism:
“The name diggers had been tossed forward by another member of the troupe who read about the seventeenth-century group in a British history book and felt that Emmett, Billy [two of the original San Francisco Diggers] and their ideas about freedom resembled those of Gerrard Winstanley, William Everard and their one hundred supporters. These men began to cultivate the common parkland they appropriated in 1649 around Saint George’s Hill in Surrey, to feed themselves as a protest against the astonishingly high food prices and to give the surplus to other poor. Cromwell and his Roundheads answered the cries of the food merchants and local farmers, who wanted the land themselves, by using the army to suppress that small, hardy, radical band of agrarian reformers who intended ‘No other matter herein, but to observe the Law of righteous action, endeavoring to shut out of the Creation, the cursed thing called Particular propriety, which is the cause of all wars, blood-shed, crime, and enslaving Laws, that hold the people under miserie’.” (Grogan, 1972, p. 237).
‘Digger Dollar’, from the San Francisco Diggers.
All these groups have immensely contributed to spreading the legacy of the Diggers. Most of their websites have a page with information regarding the original Diggers and their story, and some of them (including The San Francisco Diggers and The Land is Ours Movement) have gone as far as sharing public online archives which include books and articles on the Diggers, chronological indexes of the Diggers’ publications, as well as full transcripts and digital versions of their pamphlets. This is truly a priceless contribution to Winstanley and the Diggers’ legacy, making their writings available to anyone with access to the internet (and knowledge of the English language, of course).
DVD cover of the 1975 ‘Winstanley’ film.
The Diggers also made a few appearences in pop culture. The 1975 film Winstanley, by directors Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo, portrays the Diggers’ struggles when trying to occupy St. George’s Hill, in a format that mixes documentary and dramatisation. The filmmakers were particularly concerned with the historical accuracy of the project, and went to great lengths such as borrowing original armour from the Tower of London, for example. The film is available on Apple TV, as well as in Blue Ray and DVD.
In 1988, the English band Chumbawamba recorded ‘The Diggers’ Song’, as part of their LP English Rebel Songs, 1381-1914. The document with these lyrics appear in The Clarke Papers, after a letter by Winstanley addressed to Lord Fairfax and his council of war. It wasn’t published in print, and its authorship is unkown. Some historians attribute it to Winstanley, while others believe it to be the fruit of conjoined group effort. Historians Lewis Berens and Olivier Lutaud have also suggested it might have been the work of Digger Robert Coster, who published a pamphlet in prove and verse on behalf of the Diggers in late 1649. Either way, The Diggers’ Song’s lyrics were a product of the 1649 struggles of the Diggers during the occupation of St. George’s Hill, as well as the many events that followed it.
Find out more about the 'Winstanley' film on the BFI website
Chumbawamba’s 1988 album ‘English Rebel Songs 1381-1914’.
It is self-evident that the 17th century Diggers’ story seems to have resonated strongly within groups that identify themselves with the broad spectrum of the left. This can be traced to the earlier historiographical interpretations of the Diggers, and the ways in which they have been represented in history books (and even in monuments, as was the case in soviet Russia).
Therefore, the association of the Diggers with communism and socialism is something that has become entangled in the collective imagery around the Diggers.
Is this correct? Is this wrong? What does this tell us about the Diggers, and about left-wing political culture more broadly?
All around the world we can find stories of people fighting for land, throughout many centuries, in very diverse contexts. Human beings are inherently drawn to searching for historical antecedents for their ideas, for their beliefs and their causes, in order to justify and strengthen them, demonstrating that they didn’t appear out of thin air, and are not ‘delusional’, as some of their opponents might be tempted to believe.
It is safe to say that, at least in western societies, private property has perhaps become the strongest and most important aspect of our status quo. It is the one topic that is often evoked to stir fear of socialist experiences – ‘but then they would take my car? My house?’
Finding historical antecedents such as the Diggers, that confront the common idea that things have always been this way, that the abolition of property is unimaginable, that enclosing land and eventually turning it into private property was part of ‘progress’, in all probability fosters a sense of hope and righteousness in those who are nowadays still fighting for a social reality that is fairer on us all, regardless of race, nationality, gender, age, or class. And they are not necessarily wrong in mobilising the story of Diggers in such a way.
The Surrey Diggers Trail Mosaic in Cobham
It is, nevertheless, important that we are careful with such appropriations of history, so as to avoid misinterpretations that might have dangerous impacts on society. This is not to say that the Diggers cannot be appropriated by present day social movements and the like, but that it is important to do so in a fashion that is mindful of their historical context, of their historicity. It is my belief that our role as historians is to provide wide access to high quality information and research, in a way that is available to everyone, so such approximations and appropriations are made in the most informed way possible. This is what we have tried to accomplish with this blog series. We hope that you enjoyed it, and that you were able to find a new appreciation for the Diggers and everything they represented.
The titles used in the research for this blog, including primary sources
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