What would Gerrard Winstanley have said about Russian Oligarchs on St George’s Hill?
Russians and those from former Soviet states own more than a quarter of the 430 luxurious homes in St George’s Hill, a heavily guarded 964-acre estate near Weybridge, Surrey, where mansions have changed hands for more than £20m each.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diggers#St_George’s_Hill,_Weybridge,_Surrey
In April 1649 a group of radicals, named the Diggers, including Gerrard Winstanley(1609-1676), occupied land on St George’s Hill in Surrey and planted vegetables with a view to subsisting on the land. Local landowners took legal action and hired thugs to physically attack the Diggers and by 1650 the exercise in communal life had been abandoned
The story in the Guardian (28th Feb) is focused on Russian oligarchs but in fact that majority of the very wealthy inhabitants of St Georges Hill now an exclusive gated area are from elsewhere.
Winstanley who believed property should be held in common would no doubt have had some fiery words to say on the matter. However given that even in 1649 he was harassed by wealthy landowners it’s a reminder that the world remains divided and the solution to it the same as well
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