Winstanley (UK, 1975)
Cert (UK): 15
Runtime: 95 mins
Directors: Andrew Mollo, Kevin Brownlow
Cast: David Bramley, Jerome Willis, Miles Halliwell
Looking back in regret at Winstanley
Winstanley is a remarkable film for many reasons, but in adapting my book the film-makers left out the difficult religious motivations of the time
by David Caute
Friday October 17 2008
David Caute: Looking back in regret at Winstanley | Film | guardian.co.uk
Today St George's Hill in Surrey boasts some fine stockbroker-belt residences and an exclusive golf course to accommodate idle hours. Here opulent private properties sit untouchable behind security gates and surveillance cameras. It was not always so. In 1649, as the civil war drew to a close and Charles I stepped out on to a Whitehall balcony to face the executioner, the landowners of St George's Hill were confronted by an influx of nightmare neighbours, the so-called Diggers.
These Diggers brashly laid claim to the common land, arguing that if the title meant anything it meant communal agriculture, the tilling of the soil and the cultivation of crops by the people. Local gentry, vigorously abetted by the incumbent Presbyterian parson, called on General Fairfax's army to intervene in defence of their traditional grazing rights. The Diggers were intruders, trespassers, ploughing the commons and cutting down vast quantities of wood to erect their dwellings, to cook, and to fend off the cold. Their eloquent leader, Gerrard Winstanley, advanced their claims in the name of natural justice
Winstanley (UK, 1975)
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