 The first was Gerrard Winstanley (1609 – c. 1660), a linen draper who led the small movement of the Diggers during the Commonwealth.Winstanley and his followers protested in the name of a radical Christianity against the economic distress that followed the English Civil War and against the inequality that the grandees of the New Model Army seemed intent on preserving.In 1649–1650, the Diggers squatted on stretches of common land in southern England and attempted to set up communities based on work on the land and the sharing of goods.