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(This has been mirrored from The Freedom Press' Freedom Archive). It was written back in 1987 - but while a little old, is still good. Allotments and AnarchismWHAT have allotments to do with anarchism? Quite a lot, for they are the nearest we have to a right to some land, apart from the occasional common rights. Access to land is an important requirement for liberty. It enables local, shared control, as well as a more diverse life incorporating small industry with cultivation of the land. Allotments represent a 'right' to land in the sense that the Council is legally obliged to provide them, as long as there are more than three people who demand them. However, there are often long waiting lists, so it seems that Councils don't feel obliged to provide them to all applicants. Allotments are a way of becoming more independent of the system. Growing your own vegetables, and becoming involved in the local informal economy by exchanging produce and skills represents a potentially undermining independence from the system. It needs us, and if we reduce our dependence on it, it may flounder. More individual access to land would greatly facilitate small scale organic agriculture. This type of cultivation can produce more food per acre and more people can be involved in it, as opposed to the 3% of the population now engaged in agriculture, for it replaces with human effort what is currently dragged from the soil with oil-dependent chemicals. This very dependence on oil sets a time limit on modern agriculture, as does the irreversible damage to is doing to our soil through erosion and humus depletion. Having the use of some land has been a symbol of freedom for a long time. For many this freedom was lost when the enclosures turned land into a commodity to be bought, sold and owned. They became dependent on landowners or mill bosses for an income. Those who retained some land were strengthened in their fight for working rights, for they had some sustenance to fall back on. Land could confer an independence and strength which was later to come from the unions to a certain degree. Brief historyThere is a complex history to allotments of which just a poor glimmer will be given here. Allotments started as a rural 'dole' in the early 16th century. They were charitable allocations to those people who, after the enclosure of the village open fields, ended up with virtually nothing, even thought the enclosure commissioners professed to be doing a fair job. Allotments were encouraged in the 19th century by liberals as well as the defendents of property interests. The latter sort of proponent used the argument that if the labouring population had some property, then they would respect the vast properties of the ruling classes more; they would have an interest in the sanctity of proeprty. Also it was good for the labourers' moral well-being that they should be cultivating in their leisure hours. This would keep them out of mischief, and the independence that land could give them would be strictly limited by keeping the amount small to which they had access; so that there would be no fear of them not needing the wages of the employers. The liberals encouraged allotments because they could compensate for low wages, they enabled more independence and were an antidote to the cramped and unhealthy urban existence. Some heated politics revolved around the provision of allotments at the end of the 19th century, with some areas electing 'allotment candidates'. Arch capitalists said they represented intervention in 'the free market and so were bad. The Small Holdings and Allotments Acts of 1907 and 1908 mark the start of the increased urban provision of allotments which rapidly gained ground during the First World War, during which 50,000 acres were requisitioned by the government and the number of plots reached a peak, in 1918, of 1.4 million. Roughly 10% of the country's food was produced in this way. This was essential in order to overcome the German Blockade of the cheap food coming in from Britain's empire on which it was completely dependent. Some people were talking about the desirability of a movement back to the land: an urban exodus as opposed to the rural exodus that was leaving the countryside depopulated and agriculture depressed. F.E. Green in Contemporary Review (1918) said that this could 'relieve the frightful congestion of our urban slum areas . . and weld into an organic whole the dwellers of the towns with the dwellers in the 'villages'. In order to facilitate this, s/he suggests that the people cultivating the allotments during the war and who effectively 'saved' the country should have a right to that land after the war or at least to equivalent bits of land. But of course most of that 50,000 acres went back to the landowners. From about 1923 to the early thirties there was a decline in the amount of land under allotments for many reasons. Several organisations arose to protect them, and these; along with the Agricultural Land (Utilisation) Act of 1931, stemmed the decline. This legislation enabled the provision of plots for the large numbers of unemployed. In the minute books of allotment associations there are many instances of plot holders paying the rent for their unemployed comrades. Also during this period, the idea for keeping livestock was encouraged to complement vegetable and fruit production by providing manure. The Second World War saw a massive increase in numbers of allotments. The country once again found its own food production woefully inadequate to supply its needs. The Dig for Victory campaign was so successful that it resulted in more than 14 million plots being dug on 143,000 acres, with local authorities digging up parks and playing fields. In 1941 the total annual production from allotments (not including the thousands of gardens turned over to food production) was estimated to be 1.3 million tons. These figures are given to demonstrate the potential that allotments hold today. Perhaps the next upsurge in their popularity was in the mid.seventies when self-sufficiency ideas were popular and vegetable prices were soaring. At this time Friends of the Earth had some successful campaigns to get urban waste land turned into allotments. The arguments used were the high demand for plots and the vast amounts of spare land in cities which could be used to improve the urban environment. Since 1976, vegetables have got cheaper and there seems to have been a decline in demand and increasing numbers of vacancies, though many sites have waiting lists and there are dramatic differences from place to place. Towards a free societyIt seems that in preparing for liberty, the spare allotments and the areas of derelict land in cities (harder to cultivate, of course), could be a spring board for the decentralisation and local control of food production and, ultimately, all activities. There are numerous obstacles in this sort of process, like: is there enough land, could enough food be produced? But there has been lots written about this: and I am sure it is the right way to go. There is 'anarchic' movement amongst allotment holders themselves. In several areas they have what is called 'self-administration', and in others they are fighting for this greater degree of self' determination. It involves only paying half the rent to the Council and doing some of the Council's work for them; that is, they collect all the rent and pay them as a lump sum for that particular site. They keep the other half of the rent to be used for whatever they want as a group. In order to get the agreement of the Council for this, they must have an association with a specified constitution and democratically elected officers. In addition, they also have the power to throw people off who are not cultivating their plot, and to make other decisions which otherwise have to go through the beaurocracy of the Council. Of course this is still very much at the discretion of the authority, which is why allotments habe only some potential for helping liberty arrive. This potential could be realised, however, and taken further if people rented some of the numerous spare plots. Often several of these exist adjacent to each other and they could be taken by a group and cultivated collectively as a small holding. It is not difficult to recoup the rent, which in Bradford is £14.50 and in Huddersfield is £6.50 a year, per plot (these being the only two areas I know). There is a contradiction in paying for a right, like paying for the air we breathe, but it does not jeopardise the long term hope that land should not be owned. Frequently, all that the rent seems to be paying for is the water. There's a site in Oxford which has wells; using ground water in this way could be a way of increasing the degree of independence. Although it goes against the sometimes rather competitive nature of gardeners and the 'compare.my-patch-with-yours' mentality, it is not impossible to envisage a whole site becoming collectivised as a little farm with everyone working together. This would probably enable more food to be produced as the example of the. greenhouse will show. If one or two big greenhouses are built with the same materials that constitute the existing swarm of little ones (each to a plot) a total volume will be enclosed by glass which has a much lower surface area and hence a lower heat loss. Sirnilar physical economies could be made with other things: but let us beware of the economies of scale that have justified the increasing scale and concentrated control of human activities. As long. as that little collectivised farm remains diversified and organic in nature, re-using its own residues, and providing for the workers and the local needs, there will be no danger. The recycling of materials is already quite a tradition on allotments, ironically brought about by the low level of maintenance and resources that Councils have been prepared to put into this 'leisure' pursuit. See the old doors, bedsteads, bath tubs and compost heaps, inspiring to the heart yet so offensive to the eye of the precious condemners of allotments, typified in the attitude of the writers of the 1969 Government report. Though already quite a tradition in the site itself, there is ample toom for the extension of recycling into the surrounding area. Leaves can be swept from the street to make compost, as one man does in Huddersfield, and the gone-off vegetables rejected by the greengrocer collected for the same; local sewage can even be composted. A lot of skills in the community can be tapped and vegetables exchanged. Let skills and knowledge converge and vegetables disperse. There is potential. Fred Miller | |
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