A-Infos (en) UK, ACG: Land and Liberty (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

'Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at 
ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures of the Earth from 
others, that these may beg or starve in a fruitful land; or was it made 
to preserve all her children?' ---- Gerrard Winstanley ---- 'We abuse 
land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see 
land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love 
and respect.' ---- Aldo Leopold: Sand County Almanac ---- 'Land' is all 
the earth's resources: the physical surface of the earth, both land and 
water, urban and rural, what lies beneath, and the atmosphere above. 
Land is also more than its physical attributes. Land is home to people 
and other species. It contains history, memories, stories, dreams and 
aspirations. It is a 'place' that people are rooted in, the context in 
which their lives are played out.

Land inequality goes back into history. With the advent of class 
society, linked to the rise of farming and the production of a surplus, 
an elite has managed to grab the lion's share of the land and therefore 
wealth. This has continued to the present day with land ownership 
increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. Taking control of the 
land meant that this class would have a monopoly of the wealth. In 
different societies and different systems through-out history, this 
complete monopoly was limited. Indigenous societies even today do not 
have one class that owns the land. And for centuries, peasants have had 
a range of rights to land. However, with the advent of capitalism, land 
ownership has become increasingly centralised and, with that the 
expropriation of wealth, such that the working class and peasantry has 
become dependent on these land owners for their very existence. This 
aspect of capitalism, in which capitalists own land and then extract 
profit from what is done on the land they own, is often called rentier 
capitalism.

According to Ian Angus: "For five centuries, the development of 
capitalism has been inextricably connected to the expropriation of 
working people from the land they depended on for subsistence. Through 
ruling class assaults known as enclosures or clearances, shared common 
land became privately-owned capital, and peasant farmers became 
propertyless laborers who could only survive by working for the owners 
of land or capital." "Contrary to many accounts that treat the 
reorganization of agriculture as a purely domestic matter, Angus shows 
that there were close connections between the enclosures in Britain and 
imperial expansion. The consolidation of some of the largest estates in 
England and Scotland was directly financed by the forced labor of 
African slaves and the colonial plunder of India."

https://monthlyreview.org/product/the-war-against-the-commons-dispossession-and-resistance-in-the-making-of-capitalism/

In Britain, the Norman Conquest is often cited as a key moment in the 
acceleration of the centralisation of land ownership, though In Anglo 
Saxon times only 4,000 Thanes owned the land. With the Norman Conquest, 
this land was divided between two hundred Norman Barons and clergy and 
the rest subsumed by the King.

Very small and small landholders owned 4% and 18% of land (by value) 
before the conquest, afterwards they represented only 0.2% and 2% 
respectively. In contrast, the proportion of land held by large 
landholders increased from 43% to 64% over the same period, and the 
monarch's holdings increased from 12% to 23%. King William radically 
altered the distribution of land in England.

Enclosures

There are many factors that have led to such extreme levels of land 
concentration, but the most blatant and most contentious has been 
enclosure - the subdivision and fencing of common land into individual 
plots which were allocated to those people deemed to have held rights to 
the land enclosed. As medieval England progressed to modernity, the open 
field system and the communal pastures came under attack from wealthy 
landowners who wanted to privatize their use. The first onslaught, 
during the 14th to 17th centuries, came from landowners who converted 
arable land over to sheep, with legal support from the Statute of Merton 
of 1235. Villages were depopulated and several hundred seem to have 
disappeared.

By the end of the 18th century the incentive to convert tilled land in 
England over to pasture was dying away. There were a number of reasons 
for this. Firstly, the population was beginning to rise rapidly as 
people were displaced from the land and ushered into factory work in 
towns, and so more land was required for producing food. Secondly, 
cotton imported from the US and India, was beginning to replace English 
wool. And thirdly, Scotland had been united with England and therefore 
could be used for sheep.

The fact that these lands were populated by Highland clansmen presented 
no obstacle. In a process that has become known as the Clearances, 
thousands of Highlanders were evicted from their holdings and shipped 
off to Canada, or carted off to Glasgow to make way for Cheviot sheep. 
Others were concentrated on the West coast to work picking kelp seaweed, 
then necessary for the soap and glass industry, and were later to form 
the nucleus of the crofting community. Some cottagers were literally 
burnt out of house and home by the agents of the Lairds.

The final and most contentious wave of land enclosures in England 
occurred between about 1750 and 1850. Whereas the purpose of most 
previous enclosures had been to turn productive arable land into less 
productive (though more privately lucrative) sheep pasture, the 
colonization of Scotland for wool, and India and the Southern US states 
for cotton now prompted the advocates of enclosure to play a different 
set of cards: their aim was to turn open fields, pastures and wastelands 
- everything in fact - into more productive arable and mixed farm land. 
Their byword was "improvement". Their express aim was to increase 
efficiency and production and so both create and feed an increasingly 
large proletariat who would work either as wage labourers in the 
improved fields, or as machine minders in the factories. The end result 
was even more concentration of land in the hands of a few, c0ntinuing 
the process of dispossession.

For more detailed information see: 
https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain

Corporate Landowners, Carbon off-setting and Environmental Payments

In recent years, ownership of land has continued to be centralised. The 
small family farm is now disappearing.

"The number of US-style mega farms in the UK has increased by 30% in the 
past 5 years alone. This collapse in family farms has in part been 
driven by the rise of concentrated animal feeding operations; CAFOs. In 
these industrial farming units, pigs, cows and chickens are crammed by 
the thousand into rows of barns. Many units are semi-automated, with 
feeding run by computer, with periodic visits by workers.

Industrial farming dominates animal production and has an outsized 
influence on crop growing and land usage. The UK is now home to at least 
789 mega-farms classed as CAFOs. Most highly geared industrial farms are 
not far off the CAFO status, and there are thousands of industrial farms 
taking up huge swathes of British land - once home to a tapestry of 
smaller farms." 
https://pipersfarm.com/blogs/journal/the-slow-disappearance-of-small-british-family-farms

Statistics from 2019 estimate that corporations own 18% of the total (in 
England). With the money to be made from carbon credit trading and 
environment payment schemes, many more corporations are joining the land 
grab, especially in Scotland. Examples of corporate owners are Brewdog, 
Shell and Standard Life.

"Scotland's increasingly valuable rural land is only available to a 
limited few as high demand from forestry, natural capital investment, 
and corporate estate buyers continues to drive high prices, according to 
a new report by the Scottish Land Commission."

See: 
https://www.landcommission.gov.scot/news-events/news/high-demand-and-rising-prices-continue-to-limit-access-to-scotlands-valuable-rural-land?p_slug=news

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/scotland-is-on-the-global-frontlines-of-the-great-net-zero-land-grab/

Land Ownership and Inequality Today

It is hard to know exactly who owns the land as there is a lack of 
transparency. Unless land changes hands, there is no need to the owner 
to reveal what they own, which applies largely to the aristocracy. 
However, research by people such as Guy Shrubsole in England and Andy 
Wightman in Scotland gives us a picture of the situation.

Who owns the land

Government: 8.5%

Crown: 1.4%

Church: .5%

Conservation: 2%

Companies 18% (2% overseas)

Private 69%


Inequality

69% of land in the UK is owned by 0.6% of the population.

70% of land is agricultural land and 150,000 people own all of it.

UK housing is concentrated on 5% of the country's land mass so people 
owning their own home represents a small amount of total land ownership.

1/3 of British land is still owned by aristocrats.

432 people own half the land in Scotland.

The property wealth of the top 10% of households is nearly 5 times 
greater than the wealth of the bottom half of all households combined.

London

To give an idea of land ownership in urban areas, here are some 
statistics from a 2017 report: 
https://www.propertyweek.com/data/who-owns-london/5088280.article?/5088280.article. 
The article gives the top 100 biggest land owners. Here are some 
examples according to type of landowner with their ranking.

Corporations

1. Canary Wharf Investment Holdings Qatar and Brookfield (Canadian 
origin but headquarters in Bermuda)

4. Aviva- British Insurance- various properties across London

The Crown and Aristocracy

6. The Crown Estate, Regent St and St James

20. Grosvenor Estate- Mayfair

Foreign Governments

16. Kuwait- City Hall

51. Qatar- The Shard, 20% of Heathrow, 10% of London Stock Exchange, 
Harrods, Olympic Village, Chelsea Barracks Development

Much of the investment comes from offshore tax havens, e.g. Jersey.

Public

2. City of London

3. Transport for London (1.5% of London landmass) properties all over 
London, e.g. Earl's Ct development

10. Network Rail

13. The UK government

14. GLA

15. Newham Council

Benefits of land ownership: Capitalism, wealth creation and working 
class exploitation

The most obvious way capital makes money out of land is by extracting 
resources that are crucial to the rest of industrial system. Mining and 
logging are two of the main examples. The dominance of the food system 
through agribusiness is another key way that profits are extracted, 
whether that be through large plantations of crops such as coffee, 
bananas and palm oil in the Global South or the large industrial farms 
in the UK with the focus on livestock and growing crops to feed that 
livestock. Together with their links to the large supermarkets, food 
prices continue to increase.

Another source of huge profits is owning land for housing. House prices 
are crucially linked to the value of land on which the properties are 
built such that the same property could be worth 100 times as much in 
central London as on the outskirts, far from transport links. Anyone who 
owns a home, and the land it is on (as opposed to being a leaseholder) 
will be in a position to make money without doing anything. The building 
of the Elizabeth line in London has led to rising house prices anywhere 
near a station. This has helped a number of both middle and working 
class families enhance their income, creating a big divide between 
homeowners and renters. However, firstly, many of these 'owners' don't 
actually own their home; it is owned by the banks and financial 
institutions. Secondly, it doesn't help when you can't really use the 
value of the house as you need to live in it.

However, the buy to let market has meant that buying up a second 
property has become quite common amongst the middle class and even 
sections of the working class. The banks are only too willing to lend to 
anyone who owns property because they know they can always repossess the 
property in case of default on the mortgage.

The main winners are those that own large tracts of urban land that 
either has housing on it or has planning permission to build. These 
include traditionally aristocrats and other extremely wealthy 
individuals, universities and the Church but increasingly corporations 
and financial institution have become the main landowners. Billions have 
been made from property development, both residential and commercial. 
Meanwhile, the working class has to fork out a large part of their wages 
to pay a mortgage or rent.

There are many other ways in which landowners negatively affect the 
lives of people. Rents for all sorts of different premises continually 
increase, making a place unrecognisable to those who have lived there 
for years. This process of gentrification has caused the closure of 
local shops, community spaces, and favourite pubs and cafes. Green 
spaces are also under threat. During Covid, it was noticed how valuable 
these places are for people's mental health, especially low-income 
groups who may not have access to a garden. Though usually owned by the 
local council, with the financial difficulties many are in, green spaces 
are now a target of developers and others. Whether it is getting 
permission to build, or holding big ticketed events such as concerts, 
corporations see any space that is not used to make money as an 
opportunity for them.

The climate emergency has led to capitalism finding more ways of making 
money out of rural land that was not considered valuable because it was 
too remote or no good for agriculture. This can be seen all over 
Scotland with the proliferation of windfarms, benefits going to the 
landowner and the corporation who owns the windfarm. Another way is 
through carbon offsetting and carbon credit trading. In a previous issue 
of Stormy Petrel we discussed this at length. Scotland in particular is 
seeing a new land grab as corporation rush to buy up land. Companies 
include Shell, Standard Life and Brewdog. This has caused the price of 
land to go up, making it impossible for communities to embark on their 
own development projects through community buy-outs.

These actions of landowners are exacerbating climate change and the 
ecological crisis. The carbon offsetting scheme means that corporations 
do not actually reduce emissions in their own industry. Instead of 
working to conserve energy, capitalism needs to have continual growth, 
thus the expansion of wind farms and the development of coal mining and 
North Sea oil production.

Landowners directly exploit the working class through employment, 
whether this be as agricultural workers, foresters, miners, or sporting 
estate staff. Wages are notorious low and working conditions poor. 
Agricultural workers are often migrants with temporary contracts and 
living in caravans on site. We cannot forget that most of our fruit and 
veg come from abroad, and workers in countries like Spain face a similar 
situation to workers in this country, if not worse. Those working for 
the big sporting estates and farms often are given tied cottages so that 
when they leave the job they are without housing. Though many now look 
back with nostalgia at working in a mine, largely because of the sense 
of community, we cannot forget that mining jobs are difficult and 
dangerous. Employers in all these land-based industries aim for maximum 
profit and therefore maximum exploitation of workers.

Landownership gives the right to restrict access. In London, there are 
private, gated parks dotted around the wealthiest boroughs. Canary Wharf 
and large swathes of the Olympic Park are privately owned and private 
security guards come down heavy if you do something apart from spending 
money. Liverpool 1 shopping district is also private land and expels the 
homeless and other 'undesirables'. In the countryside large estates 
vigorously guard their 'right' to do what they want (usually hunting and 
shooting) and keep others out. The fight for access has a long history 
with urban dwellers desperate to enjoy nature as a respite from hard 
working lives and poor living conditions.

Much land is owned by the Crown, estimated to be 1.4% of total land 
area, though its value is very high. As of mid-2022, the Crown Estate 
reported £15.6bn in assets across the UK, including more than 115,000 
hectares of agricultural land and forests, retail properties, most of 
Regent Street and about 55% of UK foreshore (beaches). Then there are 
the royal residences, plus another six palaces, seven castles, 12 homes, 
56 cottages and 14 ancient ruins. See: 
https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/en-gb/what-we-do/asset-map/.

Apart from Balmoral Castle in Scotland and Sandringham House in Norfolk, 
which King Charles now personally owns, the vast majority of the 
monarchy's real estate assets are held by the Crown Estate. Although the 
royal family owns the Crown Estate in name, it is not actually its 
private property. The monarchy surrenders 25% of its revenue from the 
estate to the Treasury each year, said to average about £3 billion each 
year, in exchange for the 'sovereign grant' worth £86.3 million in 2022. 
This funding arrangement dates back to 1760, when George III reached an 
agreement to surrender his income from the estate in return for an 
annual fixed payment. That still leaves 75% of the income in the hands 
of the monarchy. The other issue is why should the monarch be able to 
decide what large parts of the country are used for. Currently, Charles 
is trying to apply environmental and biodiversity principles to the 
management of the estate but the public has very little knowledge or 
control of what actually goes on.

The State also owns large tracts of land: 8.5% of total, most managed by 
the MOD and the Forestry Commission. Local authorities own large tracts 
of land as does Network Rail and Transport for London. As with the Crown 
the 'public' as little say in how this land is used and managed. Whole 
swathes of places like Northumberland are off limits to the public 
because of military manoeuvres, supporting ruling class wars. Land in 
the cities is being sold off to private developers. Even when it embarks 
on public building projects, such as council housing, tenants themselves 
have no say in what kind of housing is being built. Therefore, like 
private ownership of land, State and Crown ownership serves the 
interests of capitalism, not the general public.

The system of land ownership is an integral part of capitalism and must 
be a target of our struggles. There is much overlap with other aspects 
of capitalism, with corporations such as Dyson buying up large tracts of 
farm land and the State as a major landowner.

Resistance

"The popular resistance to enclosures took many forms over the 
centuries. There were large armed revolts involving thousands. There 
were physical attacks on unpopular landlords or their property. Some 
repeatedly levelled and burned the enclosers hedges, dykes and fences. 
Other commoners engaged in long-lasting guerrilla-style campaigns to 
steal or kill the livestock that had been placed on former common lands.

The landlords were brutal in defense of their stolen property. During 
the 1700s, England's landlord-dominated parliament passed numerous laws 
that legalised enclosure and criminalised dissent against enclosure. The 
Black Acts of 1723 created more than 200 new capital offenses. The death 
penalty applied even to stealing a sheep, felling a tree, killing a deer 
or poaching from a rabbit warren."

https://monthlyreview.org/press/on-the-commons-and-enclosure-a-story-to-be-retold-the-war-against-the-commons-reviewed-in-green-left/

One notable group of popular resisters in England was the Diggers. On 
1st April 1649, two months after the execution of Charles I, the 
Diggers, a group of poor radical agrarian protesters, arrived to farm 
unused land at St George's Hill in Surrey, England. Prominent Digger 
Gerrard Winstanley wrote, "England is not a Free People, till the poor 
that have no Land, have a free allowance to dig and labour the Commons, 
and so live as Comfortably as the Landlords that live in their 
Inclosures." Charles I's death, interpreted by many as the end of the 
divine right of kings, opened the floodgates for previously 
inconceivable claims to land access. Diggers took the former Crown Land 
and surrounding wastes to collect wood, grow beets, carrots and corn, 
and to house and clothe those in need. Their acts of care were met with 
ongoing violent assaults.

Winstanley rallied adamantly against the 'buying and selling of the 
Earth' calling for the abolition of money, private property, 
imperialism, and enclosure. He declared, "Those that Buy and Sell Land, 
and are landlords, have got it either by Oppression, or Murther, or 
Theft". The backlash from local landlords was systematic. The Diggers 
faced beatings and arson, forcing them to move from St George's Hill to 
a second site in Cobham, until they were finally driven off the land 
entirely.

For 200 years after the Diggers were forced from St George's Hill, the 
land continued to be the site of various disputes over gathering wood 
and other commoning practices. St George's Hill went from a prominent 
site for resistance against enclosures and imperialism to some of the 
most expensive acreage in the world. All the while, anti-enclosure 
protestors in England were routinely deported to Barbados, as vast 
amounts of plantation wealth from the Caribbean flowed into landed 
estates in Surrey.

https://www.stirtoaction.com/articles/imperialism-and-the-diggers

https://monthlyreview.org/press/on-the-commons-and-enclosure-a-story-to-be-retold-the-war-against-the-commons-reviewed-in-green-left/

https://monthlyreview.org/product/the-war-against-the-commons-dispossession-and-resistance-in-the-making-of-capitalism/

Scotland also has its tradition of resistance. One example is the 
Highland Land Wars.

"On the 25th July, 1970, a memorial cairn was unveiled at Colbost Hill 
on the Isle of Skye. The legend on that cairn reads: 'To Commemorate the 
Achievements of the Glendale Land Leaguers, 1882-1886', and it marks 
area of the celebrated 'Battle of the Braes', where the crofters of 
Glendale fought a pitched battle with police over the issue of land. The 
Skye protests were only part of a widespread movement that covered most 
of the Highlands and Islands, and that lasted long after the 
implementation of the 1886 Crofters' Act. The Highland Land War saw the 
mobilisation of the community in rent strikes, land raids, and deer 
killings. The perceived threat to 'law and order' was so great that the 
government despatched gunboats, marines, soldiers and extra police to 
the area. But the solidarity of the Highland community, including its 
expatriate members in Glasgow, Edinburgh and London, was such that only 
the creation, and favourable operation of, the Crofters' Commission was 
enough to undermine the protest. However, a substantial proportion of 
that community, the cottars, were left unsatisfied by the 1886 Act. The 
cottars' struggle was for land itself, but once their erstwhile allies, 
the crofters, had achieved their primary aims of tenure and fair rent, 
the cottars found themselves alone to continue their land struggle. 
Similarly, the Crofter MPs, returned as genuinely popular 
representatives of the people in the 1885 and 1886 General Elections, 
had, by 1892, lost themselves in the mire of parliamentarianism, taking 
the remains of the popular movement into the Liberal Party. Action 
through parliament proved, in the end, to be no real answer, and 
landless ex-servicemen were, in the late 1940s, still being imprisoned 
for land seizures; whilst ownership patterns in the 1990s are little 
changed from those of the 1880s."

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/stephen-cullen-the-highland-land-war

Resistance Today in Scotland

The fact that the resistance in Scotland is more recent than in the rest 
of the UK explains to some extent why the movement for land reform is so 
much stronger. The main impetus for land reform comes from the sense 
that Scotland is an unequal society, especially in the rural areas- 
backed up by anti-landowner ideologies dating back to the Clearances. 
Scotland has one of the most concentrated patterns of ownership in the 
world. 432 people own 50% of Scotland's rural land.

The idea is that land reform will help to regenerate, repopulate and 
address issues of inequality in the rural areas of Scotland. The 
Scottish National Party has taken the lead, in keeping with their 
nationalist ideology- many of the large landowners are not Scottish- 
part of the anti-English rhetoric. It is also a way to establish their 
radical credentials. However, in practice, though important reforms have 
been made, they have not addressed the fundamental inequalities.

There have been three Acts relating to land reform- 2003, 2015 (a 
Community Empowerment Act) and 2016. The main reforms include the aim of 
increased transparency in land ownership, the right of access which gave 
everyone the right to access Scotland's land and inland waters, even 
without an owner's prior consent, provided such access is taken 
responsibly and subject to certain exclusions relating to the character 
of land (deer stalking and grouse shooting), a right to buy for 
communities in both rural and urban areas and for crofters, and 
requirements for landowners to involve communities in decision-making.

Much rhetoric in the 2016 Act referred to creating a more "diverse 
pattern of land ownership" and set up a Land Commission to provide an 
overview of policy and keep momentum going.

Land Reform Bill 2024

(There may be amendments introduced as this Bill goes through the 
Scottish Parliament. It may also be impacted by the fact that the Greens 
are no longer in the government.)

This bill was introduced into the Scottish Parliament in March, delayed 
from 2023. It is largely relates to reform of agricultural tenancies but 
25% relates to land reform. It does not include urban Scotland as other 
legislation did. Land reform campaigners are very disappointed. Andy 
Wightman:

"Given the scope of coverage of the proposals, the nature of the land 
market in Scotland, the complexities of the Right to Buy and the absence 
of a Public Interest test, the Bill is unlikely to have any meaningful 
impact on the pattern of landownership in Scotland."

https://andywightman.scot/2024/03/land-reform-scotland-bill-1-2/

Community Land Scotland's Summary and Critique

Community Land Scotland is the organisation representing community land 
owners, now almost 3% of Scottish land. They have been closely following 
the Bill's development and offered comments during the consultation. 
Like Wightman, they have found the Bill severely lacking in any substance.

Land Management Plan

Owners of landholdings larger than 3000 ha (4,688 football pitches) need 
to deliver a land management plan every 5 years which includes community 
consultation. Failure to do so will incur a single fine of £5,000. 
However, CLS argues that responsible landowners are already doing this 
and that 5,000 is a worthless fine and will not have any impact on the 
landowners who don't want to comply.

Transfer Test

When land over 1,000 ha goes up for sale the government has the ability 
to assess whether the sale will support 'community sustainability', with 
the potential of splitting up landholdings. However, 'community 
sustainability' is a narrow measure of how good or bad landownership is, 
e.g. there may not be a community near the estate, there is no oversight 
on who the landowner is and what the plans are for the land, and the 
test only occurs at the point of transfer- we should be able to assess 
whether landownership is working at any point during transfer. As the 
test only applies to landholdings over 1,000 ha, most sales will not be 
included (about 8 a year). The test will not apply to land which is 
passed on through inheritance or sold to a partner company under the 
same company.

Prior Notification of Sale

Scottish Ministers must be informed of any sales over 1000 ha. Ministers 
will then alert any community bodies in the area so they can do a 'late 
application' for Community Right to Buy if they want. CLS supports this 
proposal as the majority of sales and transfers of estates happen off 
market and in secret, making it difficult for communities to buy the 
land. However, this still won't give communities enough time to register 
interest and submit an application and the size of the holding is still 
so large that it will not make much of a difference.

Their main critique of the bill is that it fails to address the central 
issue:

"As it stands, the drafted Bill focuses on land management rather than 
land ownership, although as it stands it risks making no meaningful 
difference to either. Ownership is the most important factor in deciding 
how land is used."

What should be included

CLS argued for a much more robust bill. Some of their suggestions include:

A public interest test rather than a transfer test. The landowner could 
be assessed at any stage of ownership on whether that are working in the 
overall interest of the public.

Compulsory purchase on landowners who fail a public interest test and/or 
fail to complete a land management plan with the community.

Needs to include urban Scotland so that communities can address the 
issues of vacant and derelict land and the housing crisis

Limit to land ownership: no company, organisation or individual should 
be able to own more than 500 ha of land unless they can show it is in 
the public interest.

Source: https://www.communitylandscotland.org.uk/land-reform-campaign/

The legislation depends on the political will to implement it. The 
Scottish government has not shown this will. It all looks good on paper, 
as if they are challenging the concentration of private ownership, but 
very little is likely to happen.

Private landowners have a huge amount of power, and that includes the 
new 'green' lairds. They can easily argue that they are managing land 
for the public good. For example, Seafield and Strathspey Estates argued 
that land concentration is not a bad thing, as it may lead to more 
efficient management. Seafield and Strathspey Estates is a 35,000 ha 
(86,000 acres) enterprise which includes salmon beats on the River Spey, 
and is managed on behalf of the family of the Earl of Seafield. It said 
landowners were being blamed for the inefficiencies of local and central 
government. "There is a myth presented by individuals sponsoring land 
reform in Scotland that 'too many acres are owned by too few 
individuals.' It may be true that 'many acres are owned by few 
individuals' but there is very little evidence presented to show that 
this is a bad thing".

The organisation representing Scotland's private land owners pays lip 
service to compliance with the spirit of the reforms. On the website of 
Scottish Land and Estates, they have set out a Landowners' Commitment, 
setting out "good practice for landowners on how they can continue to 
operate their businesses, while contributing to the public good. It is 
flexible according to the nature and scale of individual situations, and 
can be used for all types and sizes of landholding." See: 
https://www.scottishlandandestates.co.uk/about-us/landowners-commitment

The Scottish government, including the Greens, seem happy to believe the 
landowners, trusting them to do the right thing by the public. This can 
be seen in the watered down proposals in the 2024 Bill as well as the 
lukewarm implementation of the reforms so far.

Who owns the land matters!

Community Land Scotland is highly critical of the government's land 
reforms initiatives and has launched its own campaign for radical land 
reform. "Scotland's experience of land reform is often described as a 
journey, if that is the case then our journey is stalling and all but 
ground to a halt. Community ownership of land has flat lined since 
2016/17 when the last piece of Land Reform legislation was introduced - 
only 16 hectares of land went into community ownership in 2021/22. Less 
than 3% of Scotland's land is in community ownership and patterns of 
private landownership remain highly concentrated. Progress has slowed 
dramatically because the existing legislation is not working and soaring 
land prices make ownership the preserve of a privileged elite." 
https://www.communitylandscotland.org.uk/scotlands-land-reform-journey-is-stalling/#:~:text=Less%20than%203%25%20of%20Scotland's,private%20landownership%20remain%20highly%20concentrated.

They have no time for the rhetoric of landowners who claim to be 
operating in the public interest when in fact profit is their main 
motive and everything they do is a public relations exercise. Who owns 
the land matters! Only community ownership will ensure that land is 
managed for the public god- both the community and the environment.

https://www.communitylandscotland.org.uk/land-reform-campaign/

Anarchist Communism and Land

Anarchist communists have a long history of fighting for land rights. 
They have much in common with the community land movement in Scotland 
with its rejection of private property and profit-motivated land 
management. However, the aims of nothing more than a complete 
revolutionary transformation of society.

The slogan 'Land and Liberty' has long been an anarchist slogan. It was 
the name of the Russian revolutionary organisation 'Zemlya i Volya' in 
1878 and was used by the peasants in the Russian Revolution. When women 
marched in St Petersburg on the 8th of March, 1917, helping to kick off 
the revolution, the slogan was Bread, Land and Peace. 'Tierra y 
Libertad' was prominent in the Mexican and Spanish Revolutions and is 
still used today as the name of the Iberian Anarchist Federation paper.

It is not surprising that land is a key demand. Rural land workers 
represented the majority of the working population well into the 20th 
century in much of the world. Land ownership was concentrated in the 
hands of a few large landowners and people struggled to survive under 
this semi-feudal system. And it is still an important demand for many 
peasants and agricultural labourers around the world.

The anarchist communist Ricardo Flores Magon explains why land is 
crucial to anarchism:

"We want bread for all. We consider it absurd that a few people should 
possess the earth, and the many not have a place to lay down their heads 
for rest. We want, then, that the land be accessible to all, just the 
same as the air, the light, the warm sun rays are there for all 
creatures on earth. We consider it absurd that those who neither toil 
nor produce should enjoy all at the expense 'of those who till and toil 
and have a life of misery..."

However, Magon made it clear that land was directly linked to liberty:

"We think that political liberty is a beautiful lie so long as it has 
not for its basis economic liberty and towards the conquest of that 
liberty our steps are directed... We demand that the proletariat of 
Mexico organize and by doing so enable itself to take part in the 
tremendous struggle that alone will liberate the proletariat of this 
world, the struggle which someday - maybe in the near future-will place 
all the goods of this earth within the reach and power of all human beings."

Kropotkin also explained why a demand for land is so important. Land is 
basically part of the means of production. If workers do not have access 
to land they are unable to support themselves and must sell their labour 
to the capitalist/landowner. The revolution is therefore about 
expropriation of land and other means of production.

"We do not want to rob any one of his coat, but we wish to give to the 
workers all those things the lack of which makes them fall an easy prey 
to the exploiter, and we will do our utmost that none shall lack aught, 
that not a single man shall be forced to sell the strength of his right 
arm to obtain a bare subsistence for himself and his babes. This is what 
we mean when we talk of Expropriation; this will be our duty during the 
Revolution, for whose coming we look, not two hundred years hence, but 
soon, very soon."

Expropriation is essential if the workers are to be free. Magon:

"In short, I see a society of workers economically free; owning 
themselves, because, at every step, they own the material on which they 
work; the land where the potatoes grow; the trees they fell and strip; 
the timber they fashion into limber; the houses into which the lumber 
goes, and so "ad infinitum." A society purged of tribute to the parasite."

The Spanish Revolution: Expropriation and Collectivisation

The 1936-39 revolution in Spain provides one of the best examples of 
what can be achieved by workers when they take over the land. The 
revolution on the land was more extensive and more radical than that in 
the urban areas. Not only were Spain's landowners rich and powerful but 
they were also notoriously conservative and authoritarian. They had 
opposed reform in every way, and had over the decades had financed 
violent suppression of both the CNT and the UGT. Collectivisation of the 
land was extensive covering almost two thirds of all the land in the 
Republican zone. In all, between five and seven million peasants were 
involved, the major areas being Aragon where there were 450 collectives, 
the Levant (the area around Valencia) with 900 collectives and Castile 
(the area surrounding Madrid) with 300 collectives. In the villages 
workshops were set up where the local trades-people could produce tools, 
furniture, etc. Bakers, butchers, barbers and so on also decided to 
collectivise. (Source: Kevin Doyle www.struggle.ws/talks/spain_feb99.html)

The essential features of collectivisation were:

Large landowners expropriated.

Voluntary participation in the collective.

Different from Popular Front: land managed as a collective rather than 
dividing land up into many plots.

Run on libertarian communist principles, from each according to their 
ability and to each according to their needs.

Individuals and families still independent in the collective with own 
personal possessions.

Anarchist Communists in the land struggles today

We need to be centrally involved in these struggles, arguing strongly 
against private land ownership and for community and co-operative 
alternatives, both in urban and rural areas. However, we need to be wary 
of the whole use of the term 'ownership' which could mean that land is 
still exclusively owned but just with more people as owners. We also 
need to be wary of calls for State ownership. The aim has to be turning 
all land into a Commons, used and managed for the benefit of all- 
stewarded, rather than owned. Decision-making needs to involve everyone 
who has an interest in a place, even if they do not live there. Like in 
workplaces, we need to develop community self-organisation. Community 
ownership in Scotland, community gardens and housing co-operatives, are 
all examples of steps in the right direction. But they will remain 
nothing but steps with little impact on the overall system, if these 
struggles aren't linked to a general revolutionary working class 
movement for anarchist communism.

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/
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