Diggers - Influence

Influence

During the middle and late 1960s, the San Francisco Diggers (who took their name from the original English Diggers) opened stores which simply gave away their stock; provided free food, medical care, transport and temporary housing; they also organized free music concerts and works of political art. Some of their happenings included the Death of Money Parade, Intersection Game, Invisible Circus, and Death of Hippie/Birth of Free.

The Diggers were a radical community-action group of community activists and Improv actors operating from 1966–68, based in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Their politics were such that they have sometimes been categorized as "left-wing". More precisely, they were "community anarchists" who blended a desire for freedom with a consciousness of the community in which they lived. They were closely associated with and shared a number of members with a guerilla theater group named the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Like the English Diggers, they envisioned a society free from private property, and all forms of buying and selling. Actor Peter Coyote was a founding member of the Diggers.

In 2011, an annual festival began in Wigan to celebrate the Diggers. In 2012, the second annual festival proved a great success, and in Wellingborough, a festival has also been held annually since 2011.