We do not occupy in isolation. Yet while spiritual-mystical-historical connections to other popular movements are evident, it is not always welcome to make them publically. Witness the BBC reaction to Darkus Howe’s claim, much replayed on Youtube, that the riots in London were part of a world-wide spirit of “insurrection of the masses of the people”. To the BBC, the riots must properly be seen purely as isolated incidents of wanton criminality that are disconnected from their historical precedents and resonances.
So now, as people occupy places all over the world, (951 cities in 82 countries according to Wikipedia), it seems to be the unwritten rule of public figures to avoid as much as possible making the link between the Greek uprisings of 2008-2009, the subsequent insurrections in North Africa and the Middle East and the current Occupation movement. However, it is difficult to avoid the comparison, not least because of the obvious link in tactics between the current wave and January’s occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo.
Beautifully, and perhaps totally coincidentally, the idea of occupation in England brings us back to the occupation of St. George’s Hill, Cobham in Surrey by the Diggers or True Levellers in 1649. In a global movement, it is nice to consider the nuances of the local links.
Then, as now, the ruling class were in crisis. The fighting of the Civil War ended with the execution of Charles I and the establishment of Cromwell’s republic, but many people were not satisfied with the new order and even less willing to put up with it than they were the old one. “Hard times” were truly hard in the 17th century with starvation-level famine. Today, we demand a return for the trillions of public money given to banks. Back then, perhaps even more urgently than now, the people of the English Revolution wanted something in exchange for the lives and money that had been spend to defeat the King’s army.
The Diggers started a commune on an uncultivated piece of common land at St. George’s Hill. Gerrard Winstanley, a failed London merchant and son of a Wigan manufacturer, heard the voice of God telling him to “work together, eat bread together, declare all this abroad.”(The New Law of Righteousness, January 1649)
His God was Reason: when a person is tempted “to oppress or deceive his neighbours or to take away his rights and liberties, to beat or abuse him in any kind, Reason moderates this wicked flesh and speaks within, ‘wouldst thou be dealt with so thyself?’” (The Soul’s Paradise; summer 1648). This repositioning of God as a spirit that lives in all of us was part of a radical stream at the time, shared by diverse groups who all rejected the established Church and its priests.
Winstanley’s social and political observations that are most relevant to us now, and, perhaps even more so, his deeds. The Diggers’ Occupation lasted from April 1649 to April 1650. They attempted to create a self-sufficient community of equals, living on some uncultivated land south of London. The idea spread around the country and became a movement. Moderate ‘levellers’ distanced themselves from it. Propaganda, arrests, fines, imprisonments, as well as beatings (one fatal), the uprooting of their crops, smashing of their houses and eventually the burning of their belongings and the cordoning off of the little heath that they had been forced onto (with the threat of death and hired goons as 24 hour security guards to prevent their return), ended the occupation.
After the original Diggers’ were first arrested for trespassing in July 1649, they were tried without being informed about the charges against them, and without being allowed to defend themselves (because they refused to – or could not afford to – engage a lawyer). In response, Winstanley wrote ‘An Appeal to the House of Commons, Desiring their Answer; Whether the Common-People shall have the quiet enjoyment of the Commons and Waste Lands: or whether they shall be under the will of Lords of Manors still.’
In it, he asks the House of Commons to consider “the equity or not equity of our cause”. The question for Winstanley is not just about their innocence or guilt in their trespass trial but “whether the common people, after all their taxes, free-quarter and loss of blood to recover England from under the Norman yoke, shall have the freedom to improve the commons and waste lands free to themselves, as freely their own as the enclosures are the property of the elder brother.” The issues were property, equality and freedom.
Their aim, he assured parliament, was “not to meddle with any man’s enclosure or property, till it be freely given to us by themselves, but only to improve the commons and waste lands to our best advantage, for the relief of ourselves and others.” The idea that the rich would “freely” give over their land to the poor is perhaps deliberately ridiculous, but Winstanley is simultaneously emphasising both the non-violence, and the revolutionary and global aims of their movement. For the Diggers, England was to “be the first of nations that shall begin to give up their crown and sceptre, their dominion and government into the hands of Jesus Christ”. They argued for a world where authority (sceptre/government) would be removed from any person’s hands, private property (crown/dominion) would be abolished and only Jesus-Reason would rule.
The principle he stood by was that “all of us by the righteous law of our creation ought to have food and raiment freely by our righteous labouring of the earth, without working for hire or paying rent one to another.” To Winstanley, employment and property ownership distorted natural equality.
To many Diggers, parliament had an obligation to assist the people. The common people joined parliament to fight “the bad government and burdening laws under the late King Charles, who was the last successor of William the Conqueror”. That war was fought “between the King that represented William the Conqueror, and the body of English people that were enslaved”.
Today, we use the elite’s rhetoric of “democracy” against their own arguments. In the 17th century, Winstanley could similarly point out Parliament’s hypocrisy in freeing themselves from arbitrary royal rule while leaving the people enslaved. Mirroring Parliament’s justification of their military coup, Winstanley emphasised the people’s right of conquest: “We have given plate, free-quarter and our persons – now unless you and we be besotted with covetousness, pride and slavish fear of men, it is and will be our wisdom to cast out all these enslaving laws”. A 17th century Parliament elected only by ‘freeholders’ had used the people to fight a freeholders’ war; in the 21st century, the people’s representatives have use the people’s money to pay off the debts of the financial establishment.
Winstanley had no illusions about parliamentary rule. He knew that members of the House of Commons “were summoned by the King’s writ, and chosen by the freeholders, that are the successors of William the Conqueror’s soldiers.” Yet still he asked them to see the truth of how wealth, property and land should be shared and managed, because, if not, God may “be offended and … and work a deliverance for his waiting people some other way than by you”. The message: Come quietly or be ready for worse.
Winstanley’s address to Cromwell is not altogether different from today’s discussions about governmental and financial institutions. Like Winstanley, we ask that they “dispute no further when the truth appears, but be silent and practise it”. All of us who voted for green or left-wing parties or who abstained from voting because of a lack of candidates that seemed qualified to represented us, remain unrepresented. Here we are now, joining together, occupying land, discussing alternatives and asking our government and the corporations, to whom we have given our taxes, and sooner or later if not already, large chunks of our wages and our pensions, to listen to the voice of the 99%: Winstanley’s “common people”.
There are always lessons to be learned from our past. It is easy to dismiss the Diggers’ attempt at protest as unsuccessful – their programme failed, and their occupation lasted for only one year. But now, as we are in the middle of an ongoing protest ourselves, twelve months seem like a daring goal and a good effort by the Diggers. Their cultivation of land and building of homes made their community a more sustainable one than ours, a camp that lives under canvas and relies on food donations. They lived their alternative. Perhaps at present there is not enough emphasis on the inequity of property ownership. We would do well to find spokespeople who can present non-violence as eloquently, persuasively and as threateningly as Winstanley did in his writings.
How will our occupation end? Anti-protest propaganda and occasional arrests are the first tactic. The question is: Will the rich “lords of the manor” pay for violence to have us removed if these tactics fail to weaken us?
By Sam Berkson