3. Common Land
This blog is 3 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:
The Commons and The Forests
Common land is land which belongs to no one and is for the use of everyone from which commoners can provide for themselves. The Commons used to provide for everyone. The commons was a place without racism. Without patriarchy without sexism. It’s without hierarchy, a common space that did not distinguish between anyone.
Along side the commons are commoners rights and English Common Law. The right to do with something as has always been done with it. These things still exist today, although they've been highjacked as we'll see.
Historically we often think of England as being one big forest, an area that Robin Hood could hide in, in woods stretching between London and Nottingham as he evades the Sheriffs men, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, crossing the forest between both of these great walled medieval cities.
"The door's open. You don't like it, stay away. What the fuck do you think an English forest is for?"
Johnny "Rooster" Byron ~ Jerusalem, by Jez Butterworth
And England was probably a patchwork of trees and clearings. But the historical use of the term forest does not mean the large wooded area we understand a forest to be today. According to Wikipedia:
“…forest was first introduced into English as the word denoting wild land set aside for hunting without necessarily having trees on the land.”
Forest comes from the Latin, foris, which means outsider. Forests were now outside of common law, and no longer common land. A forest means the removal of land from commoners for the enjoyment of a single person and his friends.
King William the 1st
This process of common land removal started in earnest in England when William the Conqueror hit our shores in 1066. The separate regions of England, on which ancient Britain's, Anglo Saxons, Celts, Danish Vikings, other Nordics and the descendants from the people of all races and colours, who would have been on these shores from the previous Roman times, would have lived in settlements, all subsisting from the land.
William arrived and said that he owned all the land, and to this day, that remains true. The Crown owns all the land in the Kingdom, it also owns all the land around it as it goes into the sea, and all the water around the land. In reality, William gave the land to his wealthy and powerful supporters, and to this day, some people continue to inherit from this patronage. More on this in a later post.
Before then, a commoner killing a deer was being self sufficient, entrepreneurial as we’d call him today, he was providing for himself and his family, taking the social security provided by the land from the land. Or he was adding his effort to the land to hunt and harvest so that he could survive. Adding your effort to the land was the claim made a few hundred years later to justify your ownership of it and everything on it. An argument used to great effect against Native Americans, Africans and Aboriginal Australians. But like these people, the commoner didn’t benefit from this argument.
Once a forest was established for the Kings hunting, the commoner was a thief, a poacher, and could be hung from the nearest tree on capture. We can now vilify and sneer at him as a taker of something he didn’t deserve, much as we do with benefit claimants today.
However, all that has happened is that the rich have stolen something he previously owned and criminalised the commoner.
This strange reversal was highlighted in a joke about a Lord who confronts a poacher who has trespassed onto his estate:
Lord: How dare you come on my land sir Poacher: Your land… how do you make that out? Lord: Because I inherited it from my father! Poacher: And how did he get it? Lord: He inherited from his ancestors! Poacher: And how did they get it? Lord: They fought for it and won it of course! Poacher: (rolling up his sleeves) Then I’ll fight you for it.
Enclosure
The process of formalised and legally backed land theft from the commoner asserted itself in earnest from the 1600’s when, despite the removal of land by William, approximately 27% of land remained common land. When the process concluded in early 1900’s 3% of common land remained.
From earliest historical records we can see land being removed by the rich and powerful from the common interest. These events were done in the name of efficiency, efficiency in food production or economic development. Or in other words, as capitalism became a more dominant the economic philosophy taking over from feudalism and mercantilism, it was used as an excuse to dress up greed as necessity. More on this in a later blog.
Of course even amongst the earliest humans, two people would stick to a patch of land, there would be a division. But clearly, there is a difference between a commoner and other commoners agreeing to allocate an area of land to graze livestock, or by me ploughing one patch of land and not over ploughing land already done by my neighbour. That is not the same as me declaring a patch of land as mine and fencing it off, or ejecting my neighbour from a patch of land he is already on.
In England, this process of removing common land from common use was known as Enclosure and as you’d expect from history written largely by the wealthy, it shows that this was done legally. A written notice was posted on the church door that anyone could read should they want (at a time when most church goers couldn’t read). Commissioners, appointed by the Crown (the largest land owner) probably land owners themselves, would ‘independently’ decide that the removal of common land was fair, and a law was passed in Parliament. Passed by your local MP, probably the largest land owner in your area, for whom you were not allowed to vote to represent you because you did not own land, and were therefore not entitled to vote. Or you were a woman. Totally fair and legal. And most of this law removing common land remains on the statue books today.
Highland Clearances
In Scotland, land removal was was known as clearances and was a much crueler affair than in England, and something which to this day creates rancour for the Scotts against the English.
The largest land owner and wealthiest individual of his time, now with a statue erected in Scotland was the 1st Duke of Sutherland, George Leveson-Gower. Scots have to stomach this statue, known as The Mannie, erected to commemorate this mans great life. For Scotts, he is usually compared to Hitler or Stalin. His hatred of the Scottish has been compared to that of the Nazi’s and the Jews, partly due to his treatment of the Scotts involved in the clearances.
The clearances were perfectly legal. Legal because as the wealthiest man in Britain at that time wanted to take land for himself, exclude commoners who had been using that land for centuries before his arrival, and enrich himself even further with lots of things he felt were perfectly justifiable to support his case. According to George, he was doing it for the good of the people and being generous towards them.
There is no one closer to an English commoner than the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish. Divisions between us suit the wealthy ruling elite because as long as we fight each other, we do not fight the common(ers) enemy. So while I totally understand a desire for Scottish independence from the English, we'd all vote for the 'anything but Westminster' option, but as commoners, I don’t think we should give the ruling classes what they want, more division. But should independence happen, commoners can still unite and make the best of it as we move forward on a path of real resistance and our ultimate unification by a common(ers) cause.
Who is taking the Commons?
This is part of an 18th Century poem which points to the hypocrisy of the theft of land from commoners:
The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from the common But leaves the greater villain loose Who steals the common from the goose.
Anon
So who are these villains stealing the commons?
Next week I will list them, in The Overclass.
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