Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers are inspiring a new generation of artists, writers and activists. Nearly 1,000 people came to hear Tony Benn and Paul Mason discuss the Diggers and the legacy of English radicalism at the Southbank last month (to launch Verso's new collection of Winstanley's writings). Now the composer James Weeks has written a new choral piece inspired by Winstanley, which will be premiered at Spitalfields Music Festival on Monday 13th June. 

Most brilliantly, squatters have returned to St Georges Hill, site of the Diggers' original land occupation, and now site of an expensive gated estate with golf course and private security. As reported on Ian Bone's blog: 

‘A private estate that is home to a host of celebrities - including former Chelsea star Claude Makelele and Big Brother contestant Shilpa Shetty - is being taken over by a gang of squatters.

Continue Reading

By Tamar Shlaim / 10 June 2011 / post comment

Legendary figure of the British left Tony Benn was on BBC Radio 3's Nightwaves with novelist Marina Lewycka (author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian) to discuss Gerrard Winstanley - "the English communist who lived 200 years before Marx" - and the Diggers, looking back to a time, as the presenter puts it, "when instead of putting royal heads on tea-towels we watched them roll off the executioners block". 

Tony Benn is author of the introduction to Gerrard Winstanley - A Common Treasury (in Verso's Revolutions series). 

Continue Reading

By Tamar Shlaim / 12 May 2011 / post comment