Dig for Victory

AQUILA Dig for light from the train at Weybridge station and jump into a cab. As you head along Golf Club Road the houses A Victory become mansions and the environment changes. When you reach your destination at the top of St George’s Hill you enter one of the most exclusive private estates in England. This area has many names. The British Beverly Hills and ‘Celebville’. Residents over the years have included “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed footballers, actresses, oil tycoons and that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared even former Beatles. ‘The Hill’ (as those everything they had. With great power the apostles continued lucky enough to live there like to call to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace it!) epitomises the aphorism that an was so powerfully at work in them all that there was no needy Englishman’s home is his castle. person among them. For from time-to-time those who owned land Houses guarded by electronic or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it gates, fences monitored by CCTV, at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.” roads patrolled by private security. The message is clear. Private. Keep Out! As you can imagine the landowners at the time were far from impressed with this ragged band of Christian idealists. They took to the courts to evict the Diggers. When that process began to drag, the pacifist Diggers But this was not always were subjected to a campaign of violent intimidation and arson. the case. St George’s Hill is the most ironic of sites for an area now dominated by exclusive multi-million pound properties. For in the Mid-17th Century a unique The Diggers’ occupation of St George’s Hill failed. The group disbursed but their vision lingers on. It resurfaced in the anarchist movements of the 19th Century who claimed that all property is theft. We saw it again recently in the Occupy Movement, who camped outside Wall Street and St Paul’s Cathedral campaigning for a fairer economic system. social experiment took place The Diggers believed in a new world order. Their idealism still appeals and in its environs. In April 1649, their story echoes down the ages. The Diggers remind us that boundaries common land on the hill was are not just physical but mental and spiritual. They call on all of us to occupied by a radical Christian work for a fairer and better future, one where, to quote lyrics from movement known as the Diggers, a song chosen by Tony Benn when he appeared on BBC Radio 4’s who began to farm there. The Desert Island Discs, Diggers were proto-Marxists who This earth divided believed that all land should be free for We will make whole everyone to use. Their belief in economic So it will be equality is based upon a specific passage A common treasury for all in the Acts of the Apostles: N McKain, Head of RS