Wigan Diggers festival
Wigan
Gerrard Winstanley Gardens
The Wiend
WN1 1YB
Contact: info@cpgb-ml.org / 07827 501420 (Josh)
Our party will have a book stall all day at this year’s Wigan Diggers festival.
Talking to us in person is the best way to understand out what makes our approach to politics different from the rest of the self-identifying ‘left’.
We also have a wide range of literature on every topic of essential importance to the working class.
In particular, pick up a copy of our essential guide to the present situation: Manifesto for the Crisis: Class Against Class.
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The Diggers were a group that was organised in the aftermath of the English Revolution (aka the English civil war) to represent the voice of the common people, and especially that of the propertyless poor. Led by Gerrard Winstanley, the group was also known as the ‘True Levellers’ to distinguish them from ‘The Levellers’, who, while seeking equality before the law and an extension of the right to vote for most men, did not support the abolition of private property and common ownership of the land.
The Diggers’ nickname came from their belief that the land should be available to every person to dig and sow, so that everyone, rich or poor, could live, grow and eat by the sweat of their own brows, as according to them: “The earth was made to be a common treasury for all.”
The Diggers were a movement before their time, but their principled defence of the poor and their championing of ideals that also underpin communism – that every person should work and every worker should share the wealth of society’s labour – have inspired workers since the earliest days of the socialist movement in Britain.