Issue No 1 Winter 2005/6 Contents

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COMMENT
Benefit Culture The Single Farm Payment: a new form of environmental imperialism?
It Couldn’t Happen Here — or Could It? The community right to buy empty property.
Scottish Landscapes
Dime Store Computers IT, but not exactly Intermediate Technology.

UK RURAL
Wild Scots and Buffoon History Alastair McIntosh rebuffs claims that the Scottish Clearances never really happened
Forest Villages David Blair outlines new ideas for inhabiting and using uneconomic forestry land.
Common Land is Contested Land Helen Baczkovska looks at the latest commons legislation.
A Guide to the Single Farm Payment Scheme An estate agent explains the new EU farm subsidies.
The Last Voyage of HMS Dahlia The extraordinary history of foot and mouth disease.

UK URBAN
Fixed Assets Tony Gosling investigates why so many office blocks lie empty.
One Mancunian’s ABC A beginners guide to urban regeneration..

INTERNATIONAL ISSUES
We Shall Build Heaven on Earth Jyoti Fernandes on the Venezuelan land reform movement.
Privatizing Tribal Lands The imperialist nations are blocking the UN declaration on collective indigenous land right.
Masterplanners Outdo Mugabe Forced Evictions of slumdwellers in Nigeria and India
The Cuba Diet Cuba’s organic revolution ; and Fidel’s reflections on the state of civilization.
Cocacolanization Coke in India

FULL LENGTH FEATURES
Down on the Farm The ETC group explain the threats that nanotechnology poses to food and farming.

CHAPTER 7 — UK PLANNING ISSUES
Send a Brick to John Prescott Is it worth responding to PPS3, the new draft planning policy on housing?
Keeping Self-Built Homes Affordable
Ethnic Cleansing In Basildon The largest traveller site in the UK faces eviction.
Boatdwellers Squat Oxford boatdwellers occupy threatened boatyard
Reinventing the Mobile Home Chris Coates and Simon Fairlie explore the potential of trailer parks.
Chapter 7’s House Price Monitor
Chapter 7’s Planning File

BOOKS
Not in Our Backyard, by Anthony At. Simon Fairlie reviews the NIMBY's bible.

REGULAR FEATURES
Land Ads
Campaigns
Publications for sale

ARTICLES SCHEDULED FOR FORTHCOMING ISSUES: Land Value Taxation: Panacea or Placebo?; A Concise Bibliography of the Enclosure of the Commons; Fire as a Land Management Tool; What’s Happening in Bhutan?; London Braces Itself for the Olympics; The Government’s Long Awaited New Planning Policy for Travellers.

Benefit Culture
Changes in farm subsidies are setting the mould for a new brand of environmental imperialism.
The consensus across a wide body of opinion seems to be that changes in the Common Agricultural Policy, involving a move away from EU production subsidies and towards environmental subsidies, are to be welcomed. But to anyone concerned with land rights, the new Single Farm Payment Scheme signals a leap out of the frying pan into the fire. “Paying farmers to look after the land” in effect will mean paying landowners to do next to nothing; and, by any standards, from those of Adam Smith to those of Karl Marx, paying wealthy people to do nothing out of the public purse is an economic distortion of the first magnitude.
According to estate agent MarkYoungplum, interviewed on page 14 of this magazine, by 2010 all farmers will have to do to receive subsidies will be to top their weeds once every five years. Not being entirely reassured about Mr Youngplum’s credibility, we thought we’d better check the matter. At a “Farming Any Questions” event held in Somerset recently we put it to Anthony Gibson, SW Regional Director of the NFU, that farmers were being paid for doing nothing. “Nonsense” he responded “they are paid to look after the land.”
“But all they have to do under the Single Payment Scheme is top their fields once every five years, ” we replied. “Er yes”, Gibson mumbled, “that’s correct.” and then moved the conversation on.
That was at the beginning of the discussion. During the next two hours, although the panel of four farming experts was subjected to heavy duty questioning from the floor on matters such as GM and food safety, not one person returned to the matter of farm subsidies. The silence, both at this meeting, and in the media as a whole is perverse. For the last 10 years everybody has been slanging off farmers because they have been receiving EU payments for producing our food under very difficult circumstances; now everyone seems happy to pay landowners money for doing sod all.
What will happen if this sytem of handouts is allowed to continue? Many existing farmers will continue to farm productively, because that is what they like doing; and no doubt many landowners will apply for the additional payments available for actually doing something such as planting woodland or managing hedges. But a new breed of landowner will take advantage of the fact that the best economic option is to do as little productive land management as possible and “diversify” out of farming. People with no interest in agriculture beyond sticking a few four-legged lawnmowers on the land, will buy up farms because they provide a nice place to live, a tax haven and an income courtesy of the tax-payer. If you look at the estate agent’s websites and in-house magazines you will see that this is precisely how their properties are being marketed, to people who are happy to pay a million pounds for a holding worth not much more more than half that a few years ago. About half of all farms are now acquired by non-farmers who have the capacity to send the price of farmland soaring to a level where it becomes unaffordable for new entrants who want to produce food on it.
There is no single explanation for the public willingness to pay enormous sums of public money to an idle élite: but it is clearly linked to an unspoken agreement to induce people in other parts of the world to produce our food and fibre, so that we, on our overpopulated island, can enjoy the wildlife habitat, native woodland and pseudo-wilderness that we threw away when we set out to become the world’s first industrial economy.
Having pioneered global capitalism, we are now setting the mould for a new brand of environmental imperialism. If we carry on bribing landowners to produce nothing, the UK could eventually become almost entirely reliant on food sourced from overseas — much of it grown on land in developing countries from which local farmers have been ejected, or under environmental conditions which we would never allow here. Skylarks will return to our fields, as orang-utans retreat in the face of expanding palm oil platations, the Amazon rainforest makes way for beef, soya and chicken production, and displaced peasants head for the cities. Over the last decade the UK’s food self-sufficiency decreased from 73 per cent to 63 per cent. Twenty years of paying landowners to do nothing could probably bring it down to 23 per cent.
Perhaps. as some people are predicting, this subsidy regime will not last very long. If oil prices rocket, global food production will suffer; if, on the other hand, the global economy continues to expand, more and more people in the developing countries will demand an extravagant meat-based diet, while water supplies become scarce. In either case, there is a high chance that food will become more expensive, and the requirement in the UK will turn back towards agricultural production. When it does, it will be something of an embarrassment to have a countryside monopolized by a parasitic landed gentry whose expertise in farming extends to the management of overpriced alpacas and horses that have to wear overcoats, while our remaining skilled farmworkers are earning their living driving Tesco lorries.

The Editors

It Couldn’t Happen Here — or Could It?
A Community Right to Buy for England?
The most exciting development in the politics of land ownership in the UK in the last few years has been the emergence of the community right to buy in Scotland. The process began a decade ago when a number of Highland communities — such as Assynt and the Isle of Eigg — succeeded in raising the money to buy their own land back from feudal owners on the open market. The 2003 Scottish Land Reform Act takes the process further, by allowing crofting communities to force a sale on reluctant owners — and allowing other local communities under 10,000 to exercise a right to buy when land or buildings come on the market. The Act also gives the public far greater access to land than the English Countryside Right of Way Act.
The Scottish reforms have been attacked as a “Mugabe-style landgrab” by opponents, but so far landed interests in England and Wales have consoled themselves with the knowledge that this barbarian assault on property rights couldn’t happen here. “Time and again” writes Robin Maitland of estate agents Strutt and Parker, “when legislators south of the border have erred on the side of caution , the Scottish Executive has chosen to take one big, bold step further . . . Call me an old Scottish cynic, but I can’t ever see that happening in the Home Counties.”
Or could it? On 12 October, in a speech to the British Urban Regeneration Asociation, David Miliband the Minister of Communities and Local Government, announced;
"We need to support social enterprise and not just social service. One way to help this is to promote the development of an asset base - land, buildings, money - by community groups. . . . That is why in 2003, the DPM gave a general power of consent to local authorities to enable them to dispose of assets at less than best value to organizations such as community trusts that serve the local community . . .
It is also right to look at more radical options. In Scotland, legislation has created a 'Community Right to Buy'. It is focused on rural communities, and allows voluntary organisations to establish an interest in land or buildings - be they owned by the public or private sector - so that if the asset comes up for sale they have first refusal, subject to a community ballot.
The proponents of Community Right to Buy argue that it would represent as big a transfer of wealth and power to communities as housing Right to Buy represented for individuals. We are not talking about an alternative to major development. We are talking about the potential of the voluntary and community sector to take disused or under-used land and buildings - youth or community centres, unoccupied housing, and undeveloped land - and turn it into a vibrant resource for the community, raising not just morale but the value of other properties. We are determined to look at this issue as we develop our vision for sustainable communities."
For a New Labour Minister — even one whose Dad was a Marxist — this is indeed a radical option. When he talks about taking disused buildings and empty houses and turning them into vibrant resources for the community. Miliband is using the language of the squatter. Inadvertently, of course. If his proposed right to buy ever comes to pass, then the matter of who represents “the community” will require statutory definition — and it is a safe bet that the definition will focus around the section of the population most adept at drawing up feasibility studies and funding proposals, rather than those who physically take over an empty building and use it. But even if the good and the great in each community are those most likely to secure these resources, a right to buy will still strengthen the hand of squatters who will be better empowered to negotiate for a happier ending to an occupation than the inevitable court order, followed by demolition.
According to the Scottish land reform campaigner Andy Wightman “This looks like being far more radical that the Scottish model as it will apply to urban areas where most people live and where wealth can most easily be generated.” From an urban perspective this is true; but as regards the countryside the proposal is less radical than the Scottish model, because it doesn’t appear to apply to agricultural land. The subsidized estates and conglomerates which tie up the land market in so many pockets of England and Wales will no doubt remain immune from any community right to buy for a considerable time to come.
Nonetheless the proposal is very much to be welcomed, and could be the best thing to come out of the Labour government since the establishment of the minimum wage. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Home Office have set up a Working Group to develop proposals for a community right to buy in England and Wales.
However, as always, there is a concern that the minister who is steering this through may suddenly be shunted off to another department, and the matter will fall off the agenda. All of us who have an interest should make as much noise as possible to ensure that the Government carries through these proposals. A good way to start may be to write to your own MP expressing support for the proposal, and asking him or her to obtain more information from Mr Miliband as to how the Working Group is progressing, and whether there is any opportunity for public input.

The Editors

Scottish Landscapes
“This land is my land, this land is your land” so the Woody Guthrie song goes. But we all know fiscally the land is in the hand of the few, not the many. Sometimes ’the few” preserve certain features, a fine woodland or hedge for example, perhaps for hundreds of years. And this landscape is part of the mindset of many locals and passing travellers. Everyone has certain small or large landscape features etched in their head and associated feelings and memories. These are very precious to us, and changes to these mutual scenes when we return to them are sometimes very upsetting.
Very oftem “our” land is managed badly. Degraded bracken-infested sheep walks where once there was tree cover, settlements, and lots of folk. Above the sheepground are vast monoculture crops of Sitka spruce, a lifeless world that renders the landscape featureless for the sake of heavily subsidised almost industrial use of our land. Is this what we pay our taxes for? Why not think longterm and grow quality hardwoods?
Think of sustainable small-scale self-sufficiency. Barter and banter with our neighbours to keep big business and goverenment at bay. Enjoy the countryside, cherish and care for the land without exploiting it, the plantlife, the creatures on it and in the soil.
We need to break free of the chains of seige mentality, change planning laws and make tens of thousands of small areas of land available for ordinary people to fulfil the dream of a home, a small croft or business, — ventures to revitalize the countryside after centuries of clearances continued to this day with not one man and his dog, but one man and his forest harvester.
Hold on to your mindscapes, protect them and dream of new ones. This land is your land.

Gilbert Milne

Dime-Store Computers
The case for Progress now relies more on the argument that it is unstoppable than that it is desirable.
The Media Lab at MIT have announced the imminent arrival of a $100 lap-top, designed for users in developing countries. The makers claim that with a projected life-span of over five years, the computer will cost no more than the $19 per child which China spends every year on text-books.
This fold-up, wind-up, solar-powered computer, with the ability to illuminate its monitor directly from sunlight, may be simpler and more desert-friendly than an I-book, but it will not exactly class as intermediate technology. If it is as successful as its protagonists hope, it will propel every peasant child world-wide into contact with the wonderful world of MIT, Kate Moss and the Simpsons, probably before some of them have access to piped water. The makers don’t even bother with marketing it to adults, who shouldn’t be trusted with the delicate task of assessing whether it’s suitable for their offspring — school kids will pick it up quicker and the whole package will be paid for by World Bank funded education programmes, and the like
The marketing of this machine to juveniles at peasant friendly prices is a belated reminder that the impact that computers have upon our world is more immediate and more radical than any other technology. Hydroelectric dams, pesticides and GM crops have all played their part in undermining indigenous cultures, but as engines of social change, they don’t even begin to compare with TV screens and lap-tops. How can the sanity of any modest, evolving, land-based culture be maintained when access to everything that an American shopping mall has to offer, and more, is dangled in front of every child at the touch of a button?
So why haven’t those of us in the global resistance movement who have criticized dams and pesticides and GM crops been equally vociferous about the far more profound levels of social destruction that will be wreaked by the computer? The answer is obvious: because we use computers ourselves; and we use them (whether we like them or not) because if we didn’t we wouldn’t be heard. Information technology is like weaponry: if you don’t update, you die. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but who cares? The computer licks both of them.
And so, as the wheels of technology roll on, Bill Gates and Google get an easy ride (and open source technologies such as Linux are adulated) while Monsanto gets taken to the cleaners by the environmental movement. Yet without Microsoft’s megabytes, the spinners of synthetic DNA would still be doing long division, and Monsanto’s researchers would be splicing in the greenhouse rather than under the nanoscope.
In a few short years the information industry will have done more than the whole of the rest of capitalism put together to hasten the collapse of human culture — that is to say, of systems of living with the land which have evolved steadily over thousands of years and which therefore (according to the principles of evolution) are likely to be close to the optimum for a given set of circumstances.
To throw all this away in so short a time prompts even those of us who normally shy away from alarmism to wonder, at least once in a while, whether humans may not be accelerating up an exponential curve which can only exhaust itself in a cataclysm of collective folly. The consensus is still to press onward and upward; but the case for “progress” now relies more on the argument that it is unstoppable, than that it is desirable. Those who decry Luddites most vehemently are starting to resemble the proverbial homophobe whose aggressiveness derives from the need to suppress his own doubts.
In the event of some kind of technological nemesis, our only compensation will be that matters may not be irremediable. Computer culture relies upon the maintenance of complex and vulnerable networks for producing electrical energy, currently derived mostly from fossil fuels. Traditional cultures rely upon the earth, the sun, and word of mouth — all of which, even the last, are fully capable of outlasting the rise and fall of the cyber-industrial complex. In the long run, human memory may prove to be mightier than the computer.

E.L.