ON SATURDAY one of my very favourite festivals is taking place, so special I wrote a soundtrack for it. Wigan Diggers’ Festival happens every year in Wigan town centre at Believe Square — which has just been renamed Sir Billy Boston Square after the local Rugby League legend — celebrating the radical 17th century social movement of the same name and its Wigan-born leader, Gerrard Winstanley. 

I’ve performed at it many times solo and with my early music punk band Barnstormer 1649, and in 2018 I wrote an album, Restoration Tragedy, about the pioneering ideas of the Levellers, Diggers and Ranters of 1649 and we launched it there. You can see and hear the performance on YouTube.

Here are the lyrics of my special Diggers’ Festival song, dedicated to all my friends and comrades organising and attending today (and Wellingborough Diggers’ Festival earlier in the year) and wishing you all good weather, good beer and a marvellous time. I’ve done so many gigs there it’s certainly right that I have some time off but I hope I’ll be back soon! 

WELLINGBOROUGH & WIGAN

The King had been beheaded, the world turned upside down
Winstanley and the Diggers cried ‘The poor shall wear the crown!’
They made their stand in Surrey upon St George’s Hill
But Winstanley was Wigan born, folk there will tell you still
The poverty around him bit deep into his soul 
He grew up watching local folk dig common land for coal
That’s where he got his digging from, his modern comrades say
And there’s a Diggers’ Festival in Wigan to this today 
It wasn’t just in Surrey they were diggin’
This song goes out to Wellingborough and Wigan

The Wellingborough Diggers were inspired to have a go
They said ‘all things in common’ and on common land did sow
The field there was called Bareshank but it soon was bearing fruit
Till thugs hired by the rich arrived to trample and uproot
The Diggers’ manifesto came from teachings by the Church
But priests just served the propertied and left them in the lurch
Although it was so long ago their statement still rings true —
And there’s a Diggers’ Festival in Wellingborough too
It wasn’t just in Surrey they were diggin’
This song goes out to Wellingborough and Wigan

Across the South and Midlands on bits of common land
Thirty-four communities in total made a stand
They made appeals to Cromwell but all fell on deaf ears
Their cries for justice drowned out by the cruel landowners’ jeers
They echo down the centuries as we campaign today
Against the men of property who hold us in their sway
So many empty houses, so many folk in need
Extremes of wealth and poverty, and profiteers, and greed
It wasn’t just in Surrey they were diggin’
This song goes out to Wellingborough and Wigan

But I won’t be in Wigan — I’m sending myself to Coventry. Tonight I’ll be doing a show in the atmospheric surroundings of the LTB Showrooms in the basement of Coventry Cathedral, and tomorrow Brighton play Coventry City for the first time in 15 years and for the first time ever in the Premier League. Brighton fans have huge fellow-feeling for the Sky Blues after our mutual years of battling hideous ownership, and we wish them all the very best now they have finally overcome their problems and returned to the highest level of football. 

And next week, for the first time in decades, I go back on the road with my original musical friends and fellow travellers of the last 46 years, Newtown Neurotics. We shared the political turmoil of the ’80s together, did three fascinating tours of East Germany before the Wall came down, have collaborated on and off ever since, and Neurotics singer Steve is my best mate. It will be wonderful to share a stage in Leeds, Darlington, Glasgow, Morecambe and Stoke, and you can find all details at newtownneurotics.com.

Cheers everyone!

For further info please visit facebook and/or bandcamp.