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The film deals with a part of the life story of the 17th Century social reformer and writer Gerrard Winstanley, who, along with a small band of followers known as the Diggers, tried to establish a self-sufficient farming community on common land at St. George's Hill ("Diggers' Hill") near Cobham, Surrey. The community was one of the world's first small-scale experiments in socialism/communism, and its ideas were copied elsewhere in England during the time of the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, but was quickly suppressed and in the end left only a legacy of ideas to inspire later generations of socialist theorists.