*Ø* Blogmanac October 10, 1609 | Gerrard Winstanley, ahead of his time

The work we are going about is this, to dig up George Hill and the waste ground thereabouts and to sow corn, and to eat our bread together by the sweat of our brows... that we may work in righteousness, and lay the foundation of making the earth a common treasury for all, both rich and poor.
Gerrard Winstanley

Every day poor people are forced to work for fourpence a day, though corn is dear. And yet the tithing priest stops their mouth and tells them that 'inward satisfaction of mind' was meant by the declaration 'the Poor shall inherit the earth'. I tell you, the Scripture is to be really and materially fulfilled. You jeer at the name 'Leveller'; I tell you Jesus Christ is the Head Leveller.
Gerrard Winstanley

Last year, I joined campaigners seeking to erect a memorial to the Diggers on St George's Hill. We occupied a small corner of the estate and started negotiating to plant a stone close to the site on which the Diggers built their village. We stayed for a month, before being injuncted, with the memorial, off the property.
‘Still Digging’, by George Monbiot

1609 Gerrard Winstanley (baptised; his date of birth is unknown), leader and theoretician of the group of English agrarian communists known as the Diggers, who in 1649–50 cultivated common land on St. George's Hill, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, and at nearby Cobham until they were dispersed by force and legal harassment. They believed that land should be made available to the very poor. In The Law of Freedom Winstanley took the view held by the Anabaptists that all institutions were by their nature corrupt:

"Nature tells us that if water stands long it corrupts; whereas running water keeps sweet and is fit for common use". To prevent power corrupting individuals he advocated that all officials should be elected every year.”

Soon after publishing The New Law of Righteousness, in which Winstanley identified private property as "the curse and burden the creation groans under", he established a group called the Diggers. In April 1649 Winstanley, William Everard, a former soldier in the New Model Army and about thirty followers took over some common land on St George's Hill in Surrey and "sowed the ground with parsnips, carrots and beans."

English Diggers
Kenneth Rexroth, Winstanley, The Diggers
Levellers Chronology and Bibliography
Levellers.org
Levellers often confused with Diggers
The Religion of Gerrard Winstanley and Digger Communism
Billy Bragg's page on the Diggers, with links
Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties and Beyond
Gerrard Winstanley and the Republic of Heaven
The Diggers
More on Winstanley and the Diggers
Diggers and Dreamers – The Guide to Communal Living in Britain