The whole world's insane
On January 1st 1650 Gerrard Winstanley's A New-year's Gift for the Parliament and Army1 was published. The English Civil War was over, the Parliamentarians, with the help of the Common People, had overthrown the Royalists and beheaded the King, Winstanley had been arrested again for digging on the Common Land at George's Hill, and the fact that the Common People had been duped into assisting the overthrow, only to have one set of tyrants replaced by another, was all too apparent. Yet Winstanley still appealed to Reason and Rationality to reverse the shocking hyprocrisy of the new state.
England is a prison; the variety of subtleties in the laws preserved by the sword are bolts, bars and doors of the prison; the lawyers are jailors, and poor men are the prisoners; for let a man fall into the hands of any from the bailiff to the judge, and he is either undone or weary of his life.
We are still living out this history, and what has changed?
1 A New-year's Gift for the Parliament and Army: Shewing what the Kingly Power is; And that the Cause of those They call DIGGERS is the life and marrow of the Cause the Parliament hath Declared for, and the Army Fought for; The perfecting of which Work, will prove England to be the first of Nations, or the tenth part of the city of Babylon, that falls off from the Beast first, and that sets the Crown upon Christ's head, to govern the World in Righteousness: By Gerrard Winstanley a lover of England's freedom and Peace.
"The whole world's insane" Re: Null & Void, 'Still…it must go on', 7" single, Not So Brave Records, 1984
