lessons for today's australian "Diggers"

Lessons for  today's Australian "Diggers" . 

                                   "Diggers" Memorial in Melbourne 



The Levellers were a relatively loose alliance of radicals and freethinkers who came to prominence during the period of instability that characterised the English Civil War of 1642 – 1649. The most prominent Levellers were John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn, John Wildman, Edward Sexby and Colonel Thomas Rainborough.

What bound these people together was the general belief that all men were equal; since this was the case, then a government could only have legitimacy if it was elected by the people. The Leveller demands were for a secular republic, abolition of the House of Lords, equality before the law, the right to vote for all, free trade, the abolition of censorship, freedom of speech and the absolute right for people to worship whatever religion [or none] that they chose. This programme was published as ‘The Agreement of the People’. 

These ideas came out of the social classes from which the Levellers originated; they were mainly skilled workers and peasants and the ‘petty bourgeoisie’. Since many of them had fought in Cromwell’s New Model Army they were used to discussion, argument and the free dissemination of ideas; it was this intelligent debate allied to the need for discipline that had led to the defeat of the Royalists and the victory of the republic.






The Levellers argued that since God had created all men as equals, the land belonged to all the people as a right. Their programme was, then, essentially an attempt to restore the situation that they believed had existed previous to the Norman Conquest; they wanted to establish a ‘commonwealth’ in which the common people would be in control of their own destiny without the intervention of a King, a House of Lords and other potential oppressors.



The New Model Army had been set up to defend Parliament at home, not to act as a mercenary force which would advance the imperialist ambitions of the English ruling class. The Catholics in Ireland, it was argued, had a claim to freedom and equality which was just as valid as that which the Levellers were arguing for at home.

In ‘The English Soldier’s Standard’, it was argued that military intervention in Ireland would only mean that the Irish would become a subject people exploited by precisely those who the Levellers were struggling to overcome in England. The point was that influential levellers were implacably opposed to the reconquest of Ireland.

http://libcom.org/history/1642-1652-diggers-levellers