There have been many moments in history when working people have looked at what was happening around them and knew, clearly and without doubt, that things were very wrong and who then set about affecting a change for the benefit of all. 

My own great hero in this regard, and one which every person with an interest in the countryside should know, was Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1676) the leader of the radical movement known as the Diggers who felt that the earth and its fruits were a "Common Treasury" for all.  He once memorably asked:

"Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures of the Earth from others, that these may beg or starve in a fruitful land; or was it made to preserve all her children?" (Gerrard Winstanley The New Law of Righteousness, 1649)

Our age is not Winstanley's but the situation we find ourselves in after years of following a neoliberal agenda which has foisted upon us all a market driven approach to economic and social policy makes Winstanley's words resonate with us today in a remarkable way. The frightening cuts to the whole range of public services caused by the greed of big business and banking is increasingly leading many working people into real poverty whilst, at the same time, we see those who have run and supported this destructive big business capitalism continuing to live at ease by bagging and barning up what should be common fruits in obscene pay packages and bonuses. 

All working people across the UK are suffering but the countryside has been hit in its own, particularly hard ways. The litany is almost too painful to rehearse, and here are just a few of the issues that spring immediately to mind: the removal of bus services isolating many individuals and communities; the closure of many local shops and traveling libraries; the scandalous lack of affordable rural housing; the lack of jobs and, when they do exist, we know that they are often ones with extremely low pay and with bad conditions of employment.

Winstanley and his followers took their fate back into their own hands - they refused to remain silent in the face of the many painful injustices they had to face. Their response was to dig common land as a powerful expression of the truth that the fruits of the earth are common to all. As I said at the beginning our times are different from Winstanley's but we, too, can offer up a powerful expression of this same beautiful truth by actively supporting, in word and deed, the People's Charter.

The People's Charter is nothing less than our way of ensuring that we will preserve all the earth's children and give them a better future - not only those in our own country  but, as the Charter concludes, for all the people of the world.

Ciao,

Revd Andrew Brown
Minister of the Memorial (Unitarian) Church, Cambridge

www.cambridgeunitarian.org/
andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/

Public Education Programmes Manager
The Woolf Institute