Diggers and Quakers: Some Communal History (Part Three)

 from Commune Life

While egalitarian movements were crushed in continental Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (see Part Two of this history), some new variants emerged in England during the middle of the seventeenth century.

That time “saw the emergence of dozens of unconventional groups, counter-cultural sects with exotic names like Muggletonians, Grindletonians, Seekers, Adamites, Ranters, Levellers, and True Levellers (better known as ‘the Diggers’).” Many of these groups, similar to the medieval movements on the continent, were religious in nature.  Probably the most important and most radical of them were the Diggers.

The Diggers called themselves the True Levellers to differentiate themselves from the movement that was being referred to as the Levellers, a group of reformers who just wanted things like universal male suffrage and other reforms.  The True Levellers, however, wanted to  “make the Earth a Common Treasury,” and started April first, 1649, by digging up and cultivating a spot of land in Surrey called St George’s Hill (thus people started calling them “the Diggers”) where they grew food and began a little commune.  They were inspired by bible passages such as Acts 4:32 where the apostles and believers “had everything in common.”  One of their main spokespersons was Gerrard Winstanley, a tailor from London who wrote the manifesto The True Levellers Standard Advanced,  where he declared: “The Work we are going about is this, To dig up Georges-Hill and the waste Ground thereabouts, and to Sow Corn, and to eat our bread together by the sweat of our brows.”

This rebellion didn’t last long.  As one writer put it:  “Fear of a communist takeover spread among local ministers and small property owners. The Diggers at St. Georges Hill suffered insults and assaults, and several Diggers were arrested for trespassing on St. Georges Hill. In March 1650, the small community of Diggers was dispersed. In April, a small Digger community in Cobham was also dispersed after a local Lord of the Manor, Parson Platt, and others destroyed Digger houses, furniture, and scattered their belongings. The Diggers were threatened with death if they returned, and several guards were posted at the property.” 

The Diggers were resurrected in San Francisco in the mid-nineteen sixties as part of the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene.  These folks consciously took the name from the original DIggers and inspired by them, distributed free food and opened Free Stores.

Interestly enough, not long after the original Diggers were dispersed, another English movement, The Society of Friends (also called the Quakers) began.  “Historians mark 1652 as the beginning of the Quaker movement. One day Fox climbed up desolate Pendle Hill (believed to be a haunt of demons) and saw "a people in white raiment, coming to the Lord.’”  As another writer noted, this was “during the aftermath of the English Civil War; a time when many people were interested in radically reshaping religion, politics and society. Early Quakers started preaching around the North of England, and then further afield around Britain, gathering followers who were convinced by their radical ideas.”

The Quakers, unlike the Diggers and some of the other egalitarian movements, are still around.  I think of them as one of the few nonhierarchical religions and organized spiritual movements.  (Offhand, the only other ones I can think of are the Havurah Movement–or at least some parts of it–and the Reclaiming Witches.  There are probably others without clergy–let me know in the comments if you know of any.)  A Quaker joke I really appreciate is the argument that the Quakers didn’t get rid of the clergy–they got rid of the laity.

The Quakers are also decentralized–they have no central authority.  As the authors of the book The Starfish and the Spider put it:  “Here was a robust network of people who lived together, conducted business with one another, and shared a common belief system.  Put together a close-knit community with shared values and add a belief that everyone’s equal and what do you get?  Decentralization.”  They go on to add, “The Quakers weren’t just decentralized themselves; they served as the decentralized platform upon which the antislavery movement was built.”

Given the time and location of the Diggers and the Quakers, I wondered if there was any relationship between them.  Apparently there were folks in the seventeenth century  who thought so.  An article on Quakers and Diggers notes that “the Dean of Durham, Thomas Comber, published a book … claiming that the Quakers ‘derived their ideas from the communist writer Gerrard Winstanley’, which in his view made ‘repression of Quakerism… not only a service to God, but a preservation of every man and his property’.”   The author of the article goes on to say that many Quaker writers over the years have claimed that there was no evidence of contact between Winstanley and the Quakers until “the late 1970s when historian Barry Reay unearthed in the Friends House archive a letter sent in August 1654 by Edward Burrough in London to Margaret Fell at Swarthmoor. Burrough and Francis Howgill had been dispatched to the capital by Fox as Quaker missionaries, and Burrough reported that ‘Wilstandley says he believes we are sent to perfect that work which fell in their hands. He hath been with us’.”  In spite of the misspelling of his name, it seems clear that this was Winstanley.  Unfortunately (but probably the reason that the Society of Friends survived while the True Levellers did not) the article goes on to say that “Quakerism had established its headquarters in a gentry house, under the patronage and matronage of a family which had greatly benefited in wealth and influence from their Cromwellian politics and entrepreneurial adventures. The Fells can hardly have been unaware that ‘the work’ associated with Winstanley was a levelling work, a communist work, dedicated to the overthrow of private property and its replacement by common ownership, under the power of an indwelling God who was more sweet reason than lord of lord protectors. It seems not unlikely to me that Margaret Fell and George Fox discouraged further contacts with so notorious an agitator.”

Finally, the author of the article points out ways in which Digger and Quaker positions were “congruent”.  He notes that “Winstanley’s and Fox’s radical religio-political ideologies were formed and framed by the revolutionary convulsions of the 1640s” and goes on to say, “these suggested congruities are not simply between Winstanley’s thought and Fox’s, but between True Levelling and first-generation Quakerism en masse.” He elaborates with ten points, but I will suggest if you’re interested that you read the article.

One of the many points that the Diggers and Quakers have in common is an orientation to nonviolence.  In my next piece, I intend to write about one of the greatest advocates of nonviolence, Gandhi, as also an advocate for sharing, simple living, and building things on a local level.