19-25 AUGUST 2019 BIGISSUE.COM | 27
Forests land evenlibraries Thecommons
belongtousallandweneedtoreclaimwhat's
rightfullyours.Words:GuyStandingWe need a
Charter of
the Commons
On November 6, 1217, two documents became part of our constitution, Magna
Carta and the Charter of the Forest, the latter asserting that everybody had a
right to subsistence, a right to a home and a right to work in the commons. The
commons are natural resources – land, water, air, forests and woods, minerals and
other resources in and under the land. They also include the social amenities and a
body of ideas bequeathed to us by the many generations before us.
Yet throughout history, elites and governments serving their interests have
plundered our commons illegitimately, by enclosure and encroachment, and recently
by privatisation and neglect through budget cuts under the name of ‘austerity’.
The modern plunder began with Margaret Thatcher, who launched the
privatisation of council housing. This was popular with those who had council
houses at the time, since they gained government subsidies to help acquire a
property. But those houses belonged to the whole country, not just to specific
occupants at the time.
Along with cuts to public spending on council and social housing, today we
have two million fewer council housing units than in the 1980s. Coupled with that
culling, the government has operated another
scheme benefiting the rich in the form of
‘buy-to-let’ subsidies. As a result, housing has
lost most of its commons character. There are
now over two million landlords, many with
numerous properties. Rents have soared, and
there is a housing shortage, made worse by the
fact that foreign oligarchs have been buying
posh properties as speculative investments and
keeping them empty.
The shortage reflects a phenomenon first
described in 1804 and known as the Lauderdale
Paradox. The writer noted that as private riches
grow, public wealth falls, since as the rich become
richer they could buy up the commons and create
‘contrived scarcity’, pushing up the price for
low-income people and reducing the availability.
This has happened to many parts of the
commons. When Thatcher privatised water
supply in 1989, she created private regional
monopolies that could raise water prices while
taking huge profits. The companies took the
profits, loaded the water companies with debt, and under-invested in maintenance
and storage, leading to today’s situation in which more water is lost in leakages from
old pipes and drains than reaches households.
Worst of all, instead of treating sewage, which would have a cost, they poured
untreated sewage into our rivers. Do not take my word for it. Thames Water was
convicted of pouring 1.4 billion tonnes of untreated sewage into Thames estuaries,
killing fish, birds, other wildlife and threatening anybody who swims or drinks in the
water. The company admitted it, but was fined a tiny amount (£20.3m) by comparison
with their vast profits being sent abroad.
Then there is the quiet privatisation of our forests. The Conservatives and Liberal
Democrats in 2011 tried to privatise the Forestry Commission, which since 1919 has
had responsibility for protecting our forests and is our largest landholder. At the lastmoment, public protest made them stop. However,
since then more than 11,000 hectares of what had
been commons have been sold by the Commission
and it has leased huge tracts to a private commercial
company to make big profits from renting out
luxury cabins.
Then take parks. The eight Royal Parks were given
to the nation in 1851 for everybody to use, as places
for exercise, enjoyment of nature, recreation, rest and
quiet. Since 2010, the government has slashed their
maintenance budgets, leading to neglect and to renting
out parts of them for commercial ‘events’, which leave the
grass and amenities much the worse for wear.
The 27,000 public parks scattered across the country
are also suffering decay due to huge budget cuts. In a
survey in 2016 of park managers, 92 per cent reported cuts
over the last three years, with 95 per cent expecting their
revenue budget to be cut over the next three years; 18 per
cent reported their parks were deteriorating, with almost
39 per cent saying the standard will continue to fall in
the next three years, meaning many of them will have to
commercialise or sell land.
Those parks belong to the commoners, all of us, and
are not state property that can legitimately be sold. It
is the commoners who suffer, especially lower-income
people, who most need public spaces in which to live.
The rich mostly have their own gardens.
Similarly, public libraries are part of the commons,
many built in the 19th century for public use. Under the
law, every local council has a statutory responsibility
to operate a comprehensive library service. But the
Conservative government has cut funds to such an extent
that hundreds of libraries have been closed and hundreds
more have pared back facilities to a bare minimum.
This not only restricts access to books and information,
particularly for lower-income people, but reduces the
number of places where those needing to obtain state
benefits can apply, now that it is an obligation to apply
online. As many in the precariat do not have their own
computers, this is vicious. First make people need
access to a public computer, and then limit the
access points!
The plunder of the commons extends to transport,
with the closure of over 3,000 bus routes in the past
few years, along with the privatisation of the rail system.
It extends to the limitations on regional theatre, on
museums, on art galleries. It extends to the capture of
the information commons by plutocrats and oligarchs
who now control most of our media, and it extends to the
commodification and privatisation of ideas and inventions
as a result of the globalisation of the US intellectual
property rights system since 1994. That is all explained in
the book on which this article is based.
The bottom line is that we need a progressive Charter
of the Commons to recover and revive our commons,
and in which to lay out a coherent plan to compensate
the commoners – you and me – for the commercial
incursions and theft of our commons. That Charter should
conclude with the establishment of a national permanent
Commons Fund, financed by levies on profits made by
those taking advantage of the commons, and paying out
to everybody Common Dividends, a form of basic income
as a common right. It would be a transformative policy
that is eminently feasible and affordable. It is a matter of
common justice.Guy Standing is author of Plunder of the Commons: A
Manifesto for Sharing Public Wealth, out on August 29
(Pelican, £9.99)The Charter
of the Forest
Even back
in 1217 they
knew about
rights