The Wellingborough Diggers 

A Tribute to Mischief-making on a Grand Scale

The Wellingborough Diggers:

A Tribute to Mischief-making on a Grand Scale

I would like dedicate this short post to Les Parsons. Les was responsible for undertaking the original research in the Digger movement in general and the Wellingborough Diggers in particular during the 1970s. Much of what I am about to say is as a result of this work. But Les was also a local political campaigner whom I deeply respected and admired. Without Les I would have probably remained unaware of the Digger movement in general and the Wellingborough Diggers in particular.

I have called this “a tribute to mischief-making on a grand scale” because the contribution of the Diggers cannot be underestimated as we struggle into the 21^st century with the challenges of gross and disgusting inequalities of wealth and income across the globe that is there for all to see and the threat to our very existence as a consequence of us raping the earth and its environment leding to global heating. The Diggers dreamt of a new type of world and that dream is still with us today, albeit the language in which the dream is described may have changed over the passage of time. I have used the term mischief, because this is the word used to describe the Diggers at the time in a contemporary letter of April 15^th 1650, from the government of the day (Council of State) to “ … Mr. Pentlow, Justice of Peace for County Northampton”. (Mr. Pentlow – a good Northamptonshire name!).

The letter said:

“We approve your proceedings with the Levellers in those parts, and doubt not you are sensible of the mischief these designs tend to, and of the necessity to proceed effectively against them. If the laws in force against those who intrude upon other men’s properties, and that forbid and direct the punishing of all riotous assemblies and seditious and tumultuous meetings, be put in execution, there will not want means to preserve the public peace against attempts of this sort of people”.

In particular I draw your attention to the words “… mischief these designs tend to, and of the necessity to proceed effectively against them.”

What were the Digger’s designs and actions that were so threatening that “… there will not want means to preserve the public peace”?

In a unique “Declaration of the Grounds and Reasons” (reproduced on the front cover) issued by the Wellingborough Diggers in 1649 (1650), we have an opportunity to hear their own voice across the centuries:

Their actions were very simple:

• “(We) have begun and give consent to dig up, manure and sow corn upon the Commons and Waste Ground called Bareshanks, belonging to the people of Wellinborrow by those that have subscribed and hundreds more that give consent”

Why were they taking this action?

• “We are in Wellinborrow in one parish of 1169 persons that receive alms… our trading is decayed; our wives and children cry for bread; our lives are a burden to us, divers of us having 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 in family, and we cannot get bread for them by our labour. Rich men’s hearts are hardened; they will not give us if we beg at their doors. If we steal, the law will end our lives. Divers of the poor are starved to death already; and it were better for us that are living to die by the Sword than by the famine …”

How did they justify their action – what underpinned the philosophy or set of ideas that encouraged them?

• “We find (in the word of God) that God made the earth for the use and comfort of all mankind, and sat him in it to till and dress it…
• God never gave to any sort of people that they should have it all to themselves and shut out the rest …
• We find that no creature that ever God made was deprived of the benefit of the Earth, but mankind … it is nothing but covetousness, pride and hardness of heart that hath caused man so far to degenerate.
• That in the last day the oppressor and proud man shall cease and God will restore the waste places of the Earth to the use and comfort of man, and that none shall hurt or destroy in all His Holy Mountain.
• We have great encouragement from two righteous Acts, which parliament of England has set forth, the one against kingly power and the other to make England a free Common-wealth”

Within a few weeks the Digger enterprise in Wellingborough had been brought to an end by the forces of “law and order” - unleashed by the nice Mr. Pentlow, Justice of the Peace, on instruction from the Government. He referred to them as a “mischief” that had to be dealt with. The Wellingborough Digger’s leaders were arrested, taken to Northampton, and charged with riot and affray. After this nothing is known of what happened to them.

I don’t think it was so much what the Diggers did that rattled the ruling class of the day (is sowing seed on common land so threatening?), so much as the ideas that the declaration promoted and were spreading throughout the country with other Digger colonies emerging in other parts of the country.

The Digger movement was reflective of the times- the flourishing of democracy (albeit limited to some men of property) and it did not last long before Cromwell reined it in and established his own dictatorship). This was also the time when the monarchy was ended, in January 1649, with the beheading of Charles I. Within the ranks of the Cromwellian New Model Army there was the Leveller movement with its call for a wider political democracy (“the poorest that lives hath as true a right to give a vote as well as the richest and greatest”), and it was time of flourishing debate and discussion on the future society that people wanted to see where demands for political democracy went hand in and with demands for economic democracy through the common ownership of land. The writings of Gerard Winstanley especially spring to mind – the spiritual leader of the Digger movement.

All this amounted to a vision of an alternative society without exploitation, without private ownership of land, respect for the environment, and a society of equals, without “Kingly power” and a Common-wealth for all. Such ideas had to be smashed, and smashed quickly – and they were.

But smashing the movements of that time – the Levellers, the Diggers - was easier than smashing these new ideas that were emerging.

And what is clear is that these ideas resonate through history right up to the 21^st century. We owe a tremendous debt to those “ragged band of Diggers” that Leon Rosselson refers to in his famous ballad The World Turned Upside Down.

May there be mischief on a grand scale! May it start from today.

Paul Crofts

May 3rd 2025:  May Day and Wellingborough Diggers Fest 2025

The Diggers – a brief history This information is taken from Wikipedia. Footnotes are mine. The year 1649 was a time of great social unrest in England. The Parliamentarians had won the First English Civil War but failed to negotiate a constitutional settlement with the defeated King Charles I. When members of Parliament and the Grandees in the New Model Army were faced with Charles' perceived duplicity, they tried and executed him.  Government through the King's Privy Council was replaced with a new body called the Council of State, which due to fundamental disagreements within a weakened Parliament was dominated by the Army. Many people were active in politics, suggesting alternative forms of government to replace the old order. Royalists wished to place King Charles II on the throne; men like Oliver Cromwell wished to govern with a plutocratic Parliament voted in by an electorate based on property, similar to that which was enfranchised before the civil war; agitators called Levellers, influenced by the writings of John Lilburne, wanted parliamentary government based on an electorate of every male head of a household; Fifth Monarchy Men advocated a theocracy; and the Diggers, led by Winstanley, advocated a more radical solution. Gerrard Winstanley and 14 others published a pamphlet[1] in which they called themselves the True Levellers to distinguish their ideas from those of the Levellers. Once they put their idea into practice and started to cultivate common land, they became known as "Diggers" by both opponents and supporters. The Diggers' beliefs were informed by the Winstanley's writings which envisioned an ecological interrelationship between humans and nature, acknowledging the inherent connections between people and their surroundings[2]. Winstanley declared that "true freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the earth". An undercurrent of political thought which has run through English society for many generations and resurfaced from time to time (for example, the Peasants' Revolt in 1381) was present in some of the political factions of the 17th century, including those who formed the Diggers, and held the common belief that England had become subjugated by the "Norman Yoke." This legend offered an explanation that at one time a golden Era had existed in England before the Norman Conquest in 1066. From the conquest on, the Diggers argued, the "common people of England" had been robbed of their birth rights and exploited by a foreign ruling class. St. George's Hill, Weybridge, Surrey The Council of State received a letter in April 1649 reporting that several individuals had begun to plant vegetables in common land on Saint George's Hill, Weybridge near Cobham, Surrey at a time when food prices reached an all-time high. Sanders reported that they had invited "all to come in and help them, and promise them meat, drink, and clothes." They intended to pull down all enclosures and cause the local populace to come and work with them. They claimed that their number would be several thousand within ten days. "It is feared they have some design in hand." In the same month, the Diggers issued their most famous pamphlet and manifesto, called "The True Levellers Standard Advanced".   At the behest of the local landowners, the commander of the New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax, duly arrived with his troops and interviewed Winstanley and another prominent member of the Diggers, William Everard. Everard suspected that the Diggers were in serious trouble and soon left the group. Fairfax, meanwhile, having concluded that Diggers were doing no harm, advised the local landowners to use the courts.   Winstanley remained and continued to write about the treatment they received. The harassment from the Lord of the Manor, Francis Drake (not the famous Francis Drake, who had died more than 50 years before), was both deliberate and systematic: he organised gangs in an attack on the Diggers, including numerous beatings and an arson attack on one of the communal houses. Following a court case, in which the Diggers were forbidden to speak in their own defence, they were found guilty of being Ranters, a radical sect associated with liberal sexuality (though in fact Winstanley had reprimanded Ranter Laurence Clarkson for his sexual practices). Having lost the court case, if they had not left the land, then the army could have been used to enforce the law and evict them; so they abandoned St George's Hill in August 1649, much to the relief of the local freeholders.   Wellingborough, Northamptonshire There was another community of Diggers close to Wellingborough in Northamptonshire. In March 1649, the community published a declaration which started: A Declaration of the Grounds and Reasons why we the Poor Inhabitants of the Town of Wellingborrow, in the County of Northampton, have begun and give consent to dig up, manure and sow Corn upon the Common, and waste ground, called Bareshanke[3] belonging to the Inhabitants of Wellinborrow, by those that have Subscribed and hundreds more that give Consent.... This colony was probably founded as a result of contact with the Surrey Diggers. In late March 1649, four emissaries from the Surrey colony were arrested in Buckinghamshire bearing a letter signed by the Surrey Diggers including Gerrard Winstanley and Robert Coster inciting people to start Digger colonies and to provide money for the Surrey Diggers. According to the newspaper A Perfect Diurnall the emissaries had travelled a circuit through the counties of Surrey, Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire before being apprehended.   On April 15, 1649, the Council of State ordered Mr Pentlow, a justice of the peace for Northamptonshire to proceed against 'the Levellers in those parts' and to have them tried at the next Quarter Session. The Iver Diggers recorded that, nine of the Wellingborough Diggers were arrested and imprisoned in Northampton jail and although no charges could be proved against them the justice refused to release them. Captain William Thompson, the leader of the failed "Banbury mutiny" of Levellers (most were killed in the churchyard in Burford whilst trying to escape) was killed - in a skirmish on his way to join the Digger community in Wellingborough - by soldiers loyal to Oliver Cromwell in May 1649.

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[1]     The New Law Of Righteousness (January 26, 1649), Gerrard Winstanley

[2]     The Diggers have also been described as the first British “communists” and “socialists” because they also sought an egalitarian society, challenged the privilege and wealth accruing from land ownership, and opposed “kingly power”. They said in the Wellingborough Digger Declaration: “God made the Earth for use and comfort of all mankind, and let him in to till and dress it, and said, that in the sweat of his brow he should eat his bread; and also we find that, that God never gave it to any sort of people, that they should have it all to themselves, and shut out all the rest, but he saith, The Earth hath he given to all the children of men, which is everyman”

[3]     Bareshanke is a piece of land on the left-hand side of the road coming from Wellingborough (from the Park Farm Industrial Estate past the “Mad Mile”) at the junction where it meets the Sywell to Little Harrowden Road. This has now been developed as distribution warehouse!

The Richer, The Poorer with Stuart Lansley

We were delighted to welcome Stuart Lansley to an Independent Socialists in Wellingborough meeting held on March 24th 2024 via Zoom. 

Stuart is the author a 2021 book "The Richer, The Poorer - How Britain Enriched the Few and Failed the Poor".

"The Richer, The Poorer charts the rollercoaster history of both rich and poor and the mechanisms that link wealth and impoverishment. This landmark book shows how, for 200 years, Britain’s most powerful elites have enriched themselves at the expense of surging inequality, mass poverty and weakened social resilience. Stewart Lansley reveals how Britain’s model of ‘extractive capitalism’ – with a small elite securing an excessive slice of the economic cake – has created a two-century-long ‘high-inequality, high-poverty’ cycle, one broken for only a brief period after the Second World War. Why, he asks, are rich and poor citizens judged by very different standards? Why has social progress been so narrowly shared? With growing calls for a fairer post-COVID-19 society, what needs to be done to break Britain’s destructive poverty/inequality cycle?"(Google Books)

Stuart is also visiting fellow in the School of Policy Studies, the University of Bristol, a Council member of the Progressive Economy Forum and a Research Associate at the Compass think-tank. He is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and has written widely on poverty, wealth and inequality. His recent books include A Sharing Economy (2016), Breadline Britain, The Rise of Mass Poverty (with Joanna Mack, 2015) and The Cost of Inequality (2011). 

Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration: Saturday, January 28th 2017

The text of my HMD presentation to the Wellingborough commemorative event held on Saturday January 28th 2017 at the Wellingborough Museum

Good morning. Thank you for this opportunity to give this presentation to you today. It’s an honour and privilege and I hope that you find it interesting, but also challenging – for which I don’t apologise!

Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day which is commemorated on 27 January every year in commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland by Russian/Soviet troops in 1945 towards the end of the Second World War.

What was the Holocaust?

Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazis attempted to kill all of Europe’s Jews. This systematic and planned attempt to murder all Jewish people in Europe is known as the Holocaust (The Shoah in Hebrew) and it is unique in Human history. The first time an attempt was made to eliminate a whole group of people based on their religion/race/ethnicity using the whole apparatus of a modern state and society.

The holocaust also resulted in the murder of millions more as a result of prejudice and hatred: homosexuals, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled people, Black people and other ethnic minorities, and political opponents of the Nazis.

From the time they assumed power in 1933, the Nazis used propaganda, persecution, and legislation to deny human and civil rights to Jews and other groups. They used centuries of antisemitism (hatred of Jewish people) as their foundation and new pseudo-scientific ideas of eugenics and the notation iof creating a “perfect human being”. By the end of the Holocaust, six million Jewish men, women and children had either perished in ghettos or through mass-shootings, in concentration camps and by gassing in extermination camps, such as Auschwitz.

Can you imagine what six million people looks like? It’s hard. That’s at least 200+ football stadiums (with 30,000 capacities each) or 100 towns the size of Wellingborough: women, men, children and older people, all murdered.

Ivor Perl

Today we are going to watch a short film clip, in which this man, Ivor Perl, who was born in Hungary, tells us his experiences during the Holocaust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxSlCzOB1IY

Watching Ivor’s film tells us about the stories beyond those statistics which are too huge for us to comprehend. It tells us that the Holocaust was the story of Jewish people being forced to move from their own homes to ghettos and camps. Of families being forced apart. Of the diseases like typhus which were allowed to spread as people were forced to live in appalling conditions. And his story tells us that half of Hungary’s Jewish population were killed in only four months in 1944, and that Ivor himself lost all but one of his 8 brothers and sisters, and both of his parents.

Ivor’s testimony also tells us that, for Ivor, the legacy of the Holocaust continues. He tells us that he fears people more than he fears God; it was people who played with him as friends one week and on the second week herded him and his family into a ghetto. He speaks of his daily reminders of things which happened to him in the past.

But he also speaks of his delight at moving to the UK and beginning to set up a life here, displaying so proudly in his home the pictures of his children and grandchildren. He tells us about his talks in schools and community groups, and that he feels if only one person hears his story and makes a difference, it was worth his while.

There are hundreds of us here today. On Holocaust Memorial Day we can reflect on the ways in which we can make a difference after hearing Ivor’s testimony. We can reflect on the particular questions that Ivor asked in the film.

What has it helped?

He asks ’What has the world learned since 1945?’ and, sadly, since the end of World War Two, there have been genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur where millions of people have been murdered simply because of who they are. This suggests the world has not learnt much. So what can we learn?

Our understanding of social psychology – how our brains work within a social context - might have some of the answers. This tells us that all human beings (you, me, and others) are all capable, given the wrong/right circumstances, of committing great crimes and horrors. Genocides and human rights abuses are not committed by evil people, but by people, just like you and me, doing evil thinks to other human beings.

• Playing the “us”/“them” game of stigmatising groups in society who we don’t like or blaming for all our problems. Or holding prejudicial or stereotyped views of such groups. We do this easily and almost automatically, without thought. We are easily seduced by the lies and misrepresentations of unprincipled politicians hungry for votes and power who tell us such groups are to blame. And what groups are in the frame in today’s world for such demonisation and hatred?  Mexicans (in the US), Muslims, refugees, immigrants, migrants from the European Union, asylum-seekers, benefit scroungers... you can add your own favourites if you like as more are added on an almost daily basis as we split up into our own clans and comfortable zones of exclusion behind walls, borders and fences – physical structures - but possibly even more damaging divisions in our minds and thoughts. Us and them... it’s an easy game to play, but with disastrous consequences.
  
  
• Inflicting harm on “others”, especially those who are stigmatised: being blind to their suffering or actively creating the conditions in which harm is done: harassment and hate crimes; our indifference or even hostility to hundreds of thousands of refugees, some of whom are dying in the Mediterranean or freezing to death in Serbia or Greece, or living in dire conditions in concentrations camps at the borders of Hungary; our indifference to disabled people who are dying or committing suicide because of the dehumanising nature of our benefit system; physical attacks on Polish people, or Muslims, or indeed anyone who stands up for minorities and the vulnerable – such as MP Jo Cox.
  
  
•  But I hear you say: “we wouldn’t do that, we wouldn’t do harm to others”. But what would you do I ask?

How would I have behaved?

·        Ivor Perl asks us to reflect on our own actions or inactions. Do we/you stand by and watch, or do you say “no, this is wrong, it must stop!”? Do you actively get involved in challenging prejudice and injustices? Would you stand up or would you remain silent?

Ivor asked ‘how would I have behaved if I had been the gentile (the person who was not Jewish)?’ We can also ask ourselves ‘what would I have done if I had seen my neighbours forced out of their homes and onto trains or into ghettoes simply for who they were? Would I have stood by? Or would I have spoken out?’ The Holocaust was allowed to happen because the people with the power and the knowledge to stop it stood by and did nothing.

So in the contemporary world we need to ask: what am I doing?

Elie Wiesel

At the end of Ivor’s film he says ‘the only thing we can do is not answer hate with hate.’ Perhaps we can challenge ourselves to go even further.

As Elie Wiesel, another Holocaust survivor, wrote:

‘I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.’

Don’t stand by

With the words of Ivor Perl and Elie Wiesel in mind, with our understanding of human psychology in mind, I would ask you today to commit to not standing by.

When we see acts of injustice, don’t stand by. When we hear of intolerance, don’t stand by. When we see people being picked on because of who they are, don’t stand by. And when we see others act on their hatred, don’t stand by. And, if and when we see others “not standing by” and challenging, support them too – especially if we don’t have the courage to do it ourselves.

If we can all make the commitment today that we will not stand by when others face prejudice, perhaps we can help the world learn lessons from the past to create a better, safer future.

HMD 2017 Film

I would like to finish with another short film that has been produced for HMD 2017. It challenges us to think about how we can support those who face hostility today and create a safer society together.

http://hmd.org.uk/news/we-launch-our-film-hmd-2017

Call Mr. Robeson comes to Wellingborough

Black History Month 2016 and Hate Crime Awareness Week

Wellingborough Afro-Caribbean Association (WACA) 

presents in conjuction with

Northamptonshire Rights and Equality Council (NREC), UNISON, UNITE–the union, National Union of Teacher, Independent Socialists in Wellingborough (ISW), The Big Lottery

Paul Robeson is a world-famous actor, singer and civil rights campaigner. When he gets too radical and outspoken for the establishment's liking, he is branded a traitor to his country, is harassed, and denied opportunities to perform or travel.

This roller-coaster journey through Robeson’s remarkable life highlights how his pioneering and heroic political activism led many to describe him as the forerunner of the civil rights movement. It features some famous songs (including a dramatic rendition of Ol’ Man River), speeches, and a spectacularly defiant testimony to the US Senate House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s.

Friday   October 14th   2016

7.30pm

FREE Caribbean buffet food from 6.00pm

Rock Street Centre Rock Street

Wellingborough NN8 4LW

Tickets:

£6.00 in advance (see below)

£8.00 on the door

           

Disabled access             BSL Signers for the deaf

Advanced bookings: https://callmrrobeson.eventbrite.co.uk

Or tickets can be purchased from WACA and

NREC (cash or cheque – payable to WACA)

Further info: telephone Paul 07872836463

or iswwellingborough@gmail.com

     

SOLIDARITY: A new range of luxury products supporting the people of Greece

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+ postage and packaging

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To order or make inquiries email: 

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or telephone 07872836463

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Privately educated children earn more than state-educated children with the same grades

To download the full pdf click here

Explaining the data

The figures on earnings for privately-educated children were calculated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank and can be viewed here -http://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/pr/graduate_earnings_301014.pdf

Visit Inequality Briefing

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There are more disadvantaged children in Britain than in many other advanced economies

A higher proportion of UK children grow up in households with incomes well below the national median, while more young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training

To download the full pdf, click here

Explaining the data

These figures are taken from the UNICEF Innocenti Report Card, an annual comparison of living standards for children and young people in advanced economies. The figures are from 2012 (child poverty) and 2013 (young people not in education, training or employment) because these are the figures used in the most recent version of the report. You can read the full report here:http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc12-eng-web.pdf

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