Theft On A Grand Scale
Enclosure = No Closure:
Like most people, I was taught in school that the enclosures of the common land, which mostly took place in the 18th and 19th centuries, were a good thing. They had led to the industrial revolution and – eventually – to our present society. Like most people, I didn’t question this idea (I was, after all, only thirteen. What did I know about the world?) It wasn’t until later in life that I began to learn of the methods used, and of the misery they caused to the rural poor. My rising anger against this cultural genocide was intensified by the appalling realisation of just how much has been lost.
The open-field or strip farming system:
Before enclosure, land was mostly held in common use, and farmed under the open-field or strip farming system. In most places, when properly applied, this method of husbandry was quite flexible, as each peasant was usually able to utilise as much land as he could manage, or as his needs dictated. Very few peasants had no land under cultivation, and would often have several pieces in different locations. These strips would be rotated within the community on a yearly basis, ensuring that the burden of farming the less fertile land didn’t always fall on the shoulders of one individual, or vice versa.
The untilled ground between the rows, regarded by the champions of enclosure as wasted land and a breeding ground for weed-seeds and crop pests, was without doubt also a haven for a broad variety of wildlife. And the walk between strips, again viewed by the detractors of the old-fashioned, traditional methods as wasted activity, would have offered the labourers a break from their toil, and the chance to cross paths with neighbours, and exchange news and views.
The walk from strip to strip would also have given them a fine view out over the countryside, as there were yet few hedges. This view may have taken in their grazing cattle, sheep or geese, the coppice’d woodland which supplied their fuel and fed their pigs, or a camp of common land squatters (Cotters) making do on the edges of society. The walk would have supplied them with the wild plants and herbs they needed for medicines, and would certainly have been occasionally enlivened by the prospect of a wild rabbit or hare taken for the pot. In short, it would have formed the basis for a system which gave each peasant the ability to supply his needs for himself.
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Excellent piece. I had thought there were three enclosures acts, I didn’t realise there were hundreds and what an earner they were for Parliament.
The Swing Riots. Were they not primarily directed against well established big farmers and agricultural machinery, having more of a luddite flavour. My impression is that by that time the rural poor were already almost entirely waged labourers, the peasantry having long since been destroyed?
Thanks, John. You’re missing the point with you’re comments about the swing riots, though. You may well be right, although a lot of what I ‘understood’ from school has turned out to be rubbish. We can debate the details till we’re blue in the face (in fact, that’s just what we have been doing for years), but the fact remains that our natural birthright and heritage had been stolen from us. So long as we just discuss the problem, the thieves will continue to laugh at us. We need remedy!