Poster work from ‘ If The Wasteland of England Were manured by Her Children’ . A series of (digitally generated) posters made from text in ‘The Digger’s Manifesto’ 1649 and their aims to make the land ‘a common treasury for all’ in reaction to the inclosures of land and rise of private ownership. The Diggers were a small but ambitious movement, who concentrated more on slogans and manifestos than violent protest (the fence smashing and hedge ripping we see in later protests against the inclosures). The movement has been said to foreshadow the French Revolution and the partageux (sharers) who advocated the even distribution of common land and gave root to the allotments movements of the 20th century.

The Diggers Movement and its impassioned rejection of the governing classes and their ‘Covetous, proud’ ways has much resonance in today’s Britain where people labour under the illusion that they have somehow won back their land -through the myths and mythologies spun by Brexit-when as a reality we as a nation are farther away than ever from being in touch with, or in command of our land. England is indeed ‘not a free people’.

The posters are meant to be viewed in Situ and will be installed in specific rural locations in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Essex, Lincolnshire, Cheshire, Northumberland and Wales through-out 2021 -22.

Installed here by Iain Irving at IOI Space Kettering Scotland.

Images Curtesy Iain Irving.