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Gerrard Winstanley (1609 - 10 September 1676) was an English Protestant religious reformer and political activist during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. Winstanley was one of the founders of the English group known as the True Levellers for their beliefs, based upon Christian communism, and as the Diggers for their actions because they took over public lands and dug them over to plant crops.

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  • Gerrard Winstanley
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  • Gerrard Winstanley (1609 - 10 September 1676) was an English Protestant religious reformer and political activist during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. Winstanley was one of the founders of the English group known as the True Levellers for their beliefs, based upon Christian communism, and as the Diggers for their actions because they took over public lands and dug them over to plant crops.
  • They believed that land should be made available to the very poor. In one of the Digger tracts, 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. In 1652, Winstanley published The Law of Freedom in a Platform in which he proposed the introduction of his utopian commonwealth by state action.
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  • They believed that land should be made available to the very poor. In one of the Digger tracts, 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 (January 26, 1649; "In the beginning of time God made the earth. Not one word was spoken at the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule over another, but selfish imaginations did set up one man to teach and rule over another"), in which Winstanley identified private property as "the curse and burden the creation groans under", he established 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 and "sowed the ground with parsnips, carrots and beans". In 1652, Winstanley published The Law of Freedom in a Platform in which he proposed the introduction of his utopian commonwealth by state action. Oliver Cromwell is reported to have said: "What is the purport of the levelling principle but to make the tenant as liberal a fortune as the landlord. I was by birth a gentleman. You must cut these people in pieces or they will cut you in pieces." The name 'Diggers' was revived in San Francisco for a radical guerrilla theater group The Diggers, offering street theater, information and free food during the hippie movement associated with the Haight-Ashbury, 1965 - 68. A counter-cultural broadsheet newspaper in Australia in the 1970s was called The Digger, probably deriving its name from Winstanley's Diggers, the San Francisco movement, and also the fact that 'digger' is an Australian colloquialism similar to 'mate', deriving from the 'diggers' (infantrymen) of World War One.
  • Gerrard Winstanley (1609 - 10 September 1676) was an English Protestant religious reformer and political activist during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. Winstanley was one of the founders of the English group known as the True Levellers for their beliefs, based upon Christian communism, and as the Diggers for their actions because they took over public lands and dug them over to plant crops.
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