Guy Shrubsole’s ‘The lie of the land’ is an excellent read full of statistics and backed up by a series of stories which, together, challenge the lie that:
“British landowners and farmers are among the most progressive stewards of the natural environment found anywhere in the world” (p.16).
The woeful catalogue of the loss of Britain’s natural environment mirrors the loss of our public services in James Meek’s book, Private Island. This highlights again how badly we are being served by our political class as it progressively commodifies everything around us and most of what we need to live. The process which started with the enclosure acts has culminated in a neo-liberal doctrine deployed through the past 40 years which is now threatening to make our planet uninhabitable.
Shrubsole takes us around the natural environment of these islands: moors and mountains, fens, access, land use, national parks, ownership, non-native species, and concludes, as James Meek does, with a list things that need to be done.
Moor, mountain and fen
The Victorians transformed upland Britain for blood sports. Driven grouse shooting became a major industry; heather was burnt, land drained, and habitat lost. The natural and environmental impact was devastating: 2.4m tonnes of CO2 added to the atmosphere per year, increased risk of lowland flooding, botanical diversity lost, wildlife destroyed – all for a few rich people to enjoy a day of grouse shooting.
Every year 50,000 pheasants are released into the wild for sport and again, habitats are trashed, food webs disturbed, and predators killed. The Code of good shooting practice states that all shot game should be treated as food, but as the author shows, many birds that are shot are simply dumped into pits out of sight (p. 147-8).
Draining the Fens
It was well known that fenland, for example, was shrinking. Holme Fen is now reported as lying 2.75m below sea level, making it the lowest point in the country (p.104). Dutch engineers started to drain the fens 400 years ago and the destruction of the ecosystem was completed with the arrival of steam to power the pumps. This area which was once a natural carbon sink is now a carbon emitter, adding 7.6 million tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere every year.
“Land owners are making the climate crises worse chasing short term profit jeopardising the UK’s food security as the soil is being farmed out.” (p.111)
One of the institutional investors who is still draining the land is the Church Commissioners – owners of 5,000 acres of Fenland peat and still profiting from the ecocide committed 400 years ago.
Access to land
The Scottish parliament has granted people the right to roam over the majority of land, with an access code that sets out responsibilities for land owners and the public. In contrast, the English have access to just 8% of the land. In the National Parks the land is largely privately owned; in other countries the norm is for the state to own the land within their national parks (p.175).
Reclaiming grab land
The story is told of how Langholm, a 10,000 acre grouse moor in Scotland, was purchased by the community. Some of the locals objected to this, because to them it was wrong to pay for something that had been “stolen” by enclosure generations ago. It seems that few in England know much about the enclosure acts of the 17th–19th centuries: how land was taken out of common ownership and turned into a commodity that could be accumulated while denying the use of it to others. The English passed laws to grab land across the British Isles, then applied them around the world as the British Empire grew. Today, countries such as Russia and Israel are still passing laws to grab land occupied by others.
In 1997, the Isle of Eigg was bought by the residents. This was one of several similar buyouts which pushed the issue of land reform up the agenda of the new Scottish parliament. In 2003 the Scottish Parliament passed the Community Right to Buy act that laid the foundation for wider community ownership of land. This included: an obligation for the owner to sell, the right of first refusal, and funding from the Scottish Parliament to help communities acquire land. England is gradually passing similar laws, but funding mostly goes to buildings such as pubs rather than land.
The laws of access and ownership
The differences in laws relating to access and ownership between England and the devolved nations are highlighted throughout. Shrubsole writes about how laws in Scotland have granted much wider access to land with a strong commitment to community ownership. Surprisingly, the author doesn’t link the progress that Scotland has made in reforming land access and ownership to how their parliament lacks a House of Lords, unlike the English parliament which allows the largest landowners to shape our laws.
National Parks
The author quotes Robert Barnard in 1895, demonstrating how much the Victorians understood about the damage being done to Dartmoor by land owners:
“The only way to save Dartmoor is to buy it from the Prince of Wales” (p. 170)
Atlees’s 1949 National Parks and access to the Countryside Bill had a number of failings: it left the running to county councils (often more than one), no compulsory purchase powers, no right to roam, and it created the divide between landscape preservation and nature conservation. National park authorities could control what was built but not how the land was used.
The author catalogues the reviews that successive governments launched into how parks were managed. There were recommendations that the parks should own more of the land, but the reverse is happening – National Parks are being forced to sell land to address shortfalls in their funding.
Land Use
Currently, land use is down to the market and owners, rather than the needs of the people. The author uses the example of Slough (just west of London) which was built on prime agricultural land (p.192). Land use is broadly divided between food and housing, with no space for nature. Industrial agriculture, forestry, and shooting have a greater impact on nature than urban sprawl (p.195):
- 1% of the population own 50% of the land (p.3).
- Stopping farming on 21% of the least productive land would only result in a 3% loss of food production (p. 13).
A land use framework is clearly needed, but it must regularly publish maps and data with a democratic process to set priorities.
Proposals
The author’s list of proposals can each be viewed as no-brainers which should be progressed, but the following stand out:
- Ban upland burning and grouse shooting to restore a vital natural process of carbon storage, rather than investing millions in unproven carbon capture technology.
- Follow Scotland’s lead and implement Community Land Ownership and the right of responsible access.
- Provide and maintain a land use framework.
The author’s final proposal is to join any campaign that gives nature a voice. In reality, we are stuck with a parliament that is neither representative of, nor accountable to the people, and which has resisted decades of campaigning designed to make it more representative. Given how well Scotland has done, maybe it would be better to campaign for the English regions to have their own parliaments, with similar powers and levels of representation as those in Scotland and Wales. Such parliaments would be more representative and therefore far more likely to progress Shrubshole’s proposals.
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