Jeremy Corbyn received a warm welcome at the Wigan Diggers’ Festival this weekend – six years after he was elected leader of the Labour Party.
The Islington North MP spoke of the importance of community campaigning to deliver social justice as he toured around the North West.
The festival celebrates the life and ideas of Wigan-born Gerrard Winstanley and the 17th Century Diggers’ (True Leveller) Movement, which campaigned for the right to farm on common land.
The Diggers tried (by “levelling” land) to reform the existing social order with an agrarian lifestyle based on their ideas for the creation of small, egalitarian rural communities.
They were one of a number of nonconformist dissenting groups that emerged around this time.
Corbyn emphasised the importance of community campaigning in his speech, saying:
“Political change comes about from what we do in our own communities.”
He also appeared in Liverpool, where he campaigned against the Liverpool Arms Fair, which is due to be held at the city’s Arena and Convention Centre in mid-October.
Hitting back at the major weapons event, he said:
“Security isn’t the ability to kill others – it’s to be able to eat, have clothes and deal with the environmental disaster we face.”
The two events coincided with his leadership election win in 2015.
Corbyn won the contest with 59.5 per cent of the vote, and went on to face prime ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson in general elections.
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