
Wigan Diggers digging! Photo of the symbolic digging re-enactment which took place at this year’s Diggers’ Festival, close to The Face of Wigan statue.
Organisers are pleased to report that Saturday’s 2nd Diggers’ Fest in Wigan, celebrating locally born Gerrard Winstanley and Britain’s first Socialists, known as ‘The Diggers’, was a resounding success, with some of the best weather of the year helping to swell the crowd to around 2000 over the course of the day.
Attila The Stockbroker was top of a bill of 24 separate acts including two Socialist choirs, three top radical poets, three local bands, two duos and two professional actors. The Festival also included a film showing, exhibition, audio visual presentation, and a beer tent for which we commissioned our own Wigan brewed ‘Gerrard Winstanley’ and ‘Diggers 1649’ ales.

Actors James Quinn, John Graham Davies and Maxine Peake serving two locally brewed Gerrard Winstanley & Diggers’ 1649 traditional ales from behind the Bar of the Festival’s ‘OccuPie Wigan’ Beer tent.
John Graham Davies played the part of Gerrard Winstanley at a symbolic re-enactment of the digging at St. George’s Hill in Surrey in 1649 by Winstanley and his ‘True Leveller’ supporters, which gained them their nickname ‘The Diggers’, and where the name of the Festival comes from.

John Graham Davies playing the part of Winstanley. Explaining the work ‘The Diggers’ are going about, his monologue concludes with the famous quotation “Words and writing are all nothing and must die, for action is the life of all and if thous dost not act thou dost nothing”.
They famously proclaimed: “The Earth was made to be a common treasury for all, irrespective of person”.


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Actors James Quinn, John Graham Davies & Maxine Peake serve the first pints of Gerrard Winstanley and Diggers 1649 Ales at the 2nd Wigan Diggers’ Festival in 2012
- Actors James Quinn, John Graham Davies & Maxine Peake serve the first pints of Gerrard Winstanley and Diggers 1649 Ales at the 2nd Wigan Diggers’ Festival in 2012