Winstanley is the title of a film made in 1975 in the UK by Kevin Brownlow

Kevin Brownlow

Kevin Brownlow is a filmmaker, film historian, television documentary-maker, author, and Academy Award recipient. Brownlow is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era. Brownlow became interested in silent film at the age of eleven. This interest grew into a career spent...

 and Andrew Mollo

Andrew Mollo

Andrew Mollo is a British expert on military uniforms that has led him into a career in motion pictures and as an author of various books on military uniforms...

, based on the 1961 David Caute

David Caute

John David Caute is a British author, novelist, playwright, historian and journalist.Caute was educated at Edinburgh Academy, Wellington, Wadham College, Oxford and St Antony's College, Oxford. A Henry Fellow at Harvard, he was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford in 1959, but resigned in...

 novel Comrade Jacob.

This deals with some of the life story of the 17th Century social reformer and writer Gerrard Winstanley

Gerrard Winstanley

Gerrard Winstanley was an English Protestant religious reformer and political activist during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell...

, who, along with a small band of followers known as the Diggers tried to establish a self-sufficient farming community on common land

Common land

Common land is land owned collectively or by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect firewood, or to cut turf for fuel...

 at St. George's Hill

Saint George's Hill

Saint George's Hill is a private estate in Weybridge, Surrey in the United Kingdom.The estate features both a Golf and Tennis club as well as approximately 420 houses. The estate is a popular residential location for celebrities and successful entrepreneurs...

 near Cobham, Surrey

Cobham, Surrey

Cobham is a town in the Borough of Elmbridge in Surrey, England, about south-west of central London and north of Leatherhead. Elmbridge has been acclaimed by the Daily Mail as the best place to live in the UK, and Cobham is a prosperous part of the London commuter belt...

. This was one of the world's first socialistic living experiments which was copied elsewhere in England during the time of the Protectorate

The Protectorate

In British history, the Protectorate was the period 1653–1659 during which the Commonwealth of England was governed by a Lord Protector.-Background:...

 of Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....

, but was quickly suppressed and in the end left only a legacy of ideas to inspire later generations of socialist theorists.

Great efforts were made to produce a film of high historical accuracy. Armour used was actual armour from the 1640s, borrowed from the Tower of London

Tower of London

Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London, England. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, separated from the eastern edge of the City of London by the open space...

. Real-life activist Sid Rawle

Sid Rawle

Sidney William "Sid" Rawle was a British campaigner for peace and land rights, free festival organiser, and a former leader of the London squatters movement...

 played a Ranter

Ranter

The Ranters were an alleged sect in the time of the English Commonwealth who were regarded as heretical by the established Church of that period...

 (English Revolution

English Revolution

"English Revolution" has been used to describe two different events in English history. The first to be so called—by Whig historians—was the Glorious Revolution of 1688, whereby James II was replaced by William III and Mary II as monarch and a constitutional monarchy was established.In the...

 period anarchist-type group).

The film was reissued on DVD and Blu-Ray in 2009 by the British Film Institute (BFI) who funded the original project.

External links

• Winstanley website
• Book 'Winstanley: Warts and All' by Kevin Brownlow (about the making of the film)