2. Commoners
This blog is 2nd in a series that I will release weekly which will end with the release of the Utopian Manifesto covering Land and Property.
Earlier blogs in this series can be read here:
Being common, or a commoner is seen as a bit insulting. Its a term used for someone lacking in manners, having a strong regional accent or liking reality TV shows. Its a put down, similar to Chav. Working class is similar, but working class has retained an element of proudness to which people still want to claim a right to. But common, thats a clear put down. If you're common as muck, you're essentially muck.
Wikipedia defines commoners by what they are not. They are not royalty, and they are not the aristocracy. That is true for me. I don’t see this as a badge of shame in the slightest. Even the bible held up commoners as being the highest person in the eyes of god, it is us the powerless (the meek) who will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5), or it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven (Luke 18:18-30). In the Bible, the commoner is king. We should feel proud to be a commoner.
I’m common. I am a proud commoner. I am taking this back. Its what I am. Common.
“I said pretend you’ve got no money, she just laughed and said, oh you’re so funny, I said yeah, well I can’t see anyone else smiling”
Common People ~ Pulp
However, the term common has been appropriated by the aristocracy during Cromwell's time.
Cromwell took back control from the Crown and said running the country was to be by the commoners and not the Lords, but that place named The Commons was full of the landed gentry and aristocracy and to this day, isn’t much better.
Cromwell was not a commoner. He was wealthy. He resisted universal suffrage. Suffrage during Cromwells time meant you had to satisfy a property qualification. The property qualification was that you had to own land or capital, or in other words, you had to be a wealthy man (women were property without any value bar any dowery attached to them, they did not own property).
And it was British commoners who had to work the land for the landed gentry prior to them discovering that there were even better workers available in Africa. Skin colour made little difference to your disposability, the important thing was that you were making your masters rich. Thats capitalism, thats the important factor, Black or Common, your life didn't matter much beyond that.
But if you are thinking that land ownership is not hugely relevant, remind yourself that whoever controls the ownership of something decides what happens to it. Female commoners were once deemed property. The term rape was never initially used to describe a crime against a woman. It was a crime against a man, when someone breached his property rights by having sex with the woman he owned. Property and ownership matters.
And there have been politicians who were once talking about the interests of common people. In 1948, U.S. President Harry S. Truman made a speech saying there needs to be a government:
"that will work in the interests of the common people and not in the interests of the men who have all the money."
How we have lost our way. I agree with Truman, we need Government that works in our interest. Its time we finished what Cromwell started and filled The Commons with real commoners.
Commoners were the original humans. Land dwelling mammals on a land mass, originating somewhere in modern Africa, eating the plants available, sleeping in natural shelter and cooperating as a group to live within a community.
Community, a word derived from the Latin communis, which means common, public, shared by all or many.
Permission was not needed from anyone to use the land to survive, it was common, public, shared by all. The land was the original form of the welfare state. The land provided for the commoners without question and without taxation.
The land belonged to no one. The land belonged to everyone. The land belonged to you. The land belonged to me. The land is common land, and common land belongs to commoners.
Next week, where is this common land, and where has this common land gone?
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