Oh dear, oh dear …….what would Gerrard Winstanley make of this? ………..St. George’s Hill, the site of the first Diggers’ Commune is now marketed globally to the World’s super rich as Europe’s ‘Premier Private Estate’ and THE place for them to live, or spend the odd weekend if they can find the time, in the UK. If this isn’t rubbing our noses in it, I don’t know what is!
Maybe he’d say something along the lines of what he wrote in 1649 in ’A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England’
“The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land.”
As St. George’s Hill was ‘common’ land in 1649 how else other than by some ‘thieving power’ did it ever become ‘privately’ owned? How different is it either, from the present Government’s ‘legalised’ thieving of our public services and public assets for the benefit of the super rich ‘propertied interests’ they represent?
WWGWD? -if that’s puzzling google WWJD.
It’s no accident this has happened, to desecrate the memory of the Diggers action there. It’s a perfect place to reclaim the land so why don’t we honor Winstanley with our deeds as well as our words, and take over that land as he did, and nullify the prviate theft of creation at that very spot?