On St George’s Hill in Surrey Gerrard Winstanley, leader of the seventeenth-century Diggers, established a commune in protest at the enclosure of common land. Here, a writer makes a case for Winstanley as the founder of liberation theology, deserving celebration ahead of St George’s Day On an April day in 1649 Gerrard Winstanley and his companions walked up the gentle slope of St George’s Hill in Surrey and into history. Spades and tools clinking in their hands, the wheels of their manure cart creaking, they were setting out not only to build a commune but to declare a new way of life. St George’s Hill, common land, had recently been enclosed for private use. Winstanley pulled down the enclosing hedges and filled in the dividing ditches. The earth is a common trea