According to Wikipedia, the Diggers were "a group of Protestant English agrarian socialists, begun by Gerrard Winstanley as True Levellers in 1649, who became known as Diggers, because of their attempts to farm on common land." I first heard about them on a Billy Bragg record (he was covering a tune by Leon Rosselson, called "The World Turned Upside Down"):
Chumbawamba have a song about them as well:
As someone who's never been terribly political in practice, but pretty political in talk, & who grew up in conservative suburban Texas, the Billy Bragg song seemed damned inspiring. Utopian communities in the United States have usually been religiously based - I couldn't place myself in a Shaker community, or with the Beechers. But stories of the Paris Commune & the Diggers have always made me wish I could belong to something that idealistic & good even though it would be doomed to failure.
(I had similar feelings about the recent Occupy Wall Street movement & the Arab Spring - hopeful they would succeed, but knowing in my cynical, defeated heart they would fail.)
(I might also mention here some of my work in community radio - but I won't.)
These two songs were in my mind as I thought about a show with the theme "Dig It" (which is the theme for this week's show, of course). In addition to songs about actually digging things (like with one's hands, or shovels, or cranes), & songs about "digging" things like hipsters & hippies might say, there are these two songs about a seventeenth century socialist movement. How does one fit them into the context of a radio show with the theme "dig it"?
Maybe one just mentions them on one's blog?
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