Robin and Dave TLIO Gathering 2011

["Gill Barron"]

[Thanks Gill - two points - 1. land ownership is fundamentally wrong - rights for a family to reside forever are the tradition but as a Diggers list this idea should be fundamental to all we do. Nobody can 'own' the land - it is a free gift to mankind as a whole - and if we drop that as an ideal in compromises, we are lost - 2. then on council housing how do the ill, infirm, bonkers, disabled & old build their own? - They can't so social housing has to be one of our priorities - Tony]


Hallo Dave,
On behalf of the Monktonians and Simon and myself, many thanks for the
thank-yous, it was terrific having everyone here and the old place got a blast of energy that'll linger on ... And a chance here to express my own frankly awestruck thanks to Mark, who dealt with the many-headed (though always charming) M Wyld admin with aplomb, and tenacity - and pulled off an extraordinary feat there. What fun was had. Cheers Mark. Wow!

It was great to have some voices such as yours Dave from the traditional Left, what I think of as the "straight" ( in the old hippy sense) Left, making all those fundamental points loud and clear.

However -
For example, the call for TLIO to support the re-provision of Council
housing, publicly provided housing -
Well, for myself, I've never wanted to be provided for. I just want to be allowed to provide for myself. I hear your call for more Council Housing, but wonder how many of the folk on waiting lists (etc) wouldn't prefer to be allowed to build their own, low-impact low cost - dwelling? It is a fairly simple matter of judiciously re-writing the Planning Regs and that's what Chapter 7 has indefatigably campaigned for from the start. That, I think, is at the roots of TLIO. I want to stick with it.
That is the - or at least, a - method for pursuing land justice. We do it.

As for the ownership debate, I believe with several others - notably Brendan
- that
small-scale ownership is quite OK. It's human nature to look after - to love
- what is yours. It really matters that what bits of this world we have, we
should look after properly. I heartily agree that large-scale ownership (of
anything) is destructive of the common good, but - a collective of
well-tended individual small-holdings which enable the "owners" to express
their ideas, their energy, to house and feed their families as they think
best, is for me the ideal. That's what I strive for.

Surely we are for the smallscale, the D I Y, low-impact, living a healthy
productive life on the land ( it doesn't take much land) rather than the
state-designed, state-provided, yer pays yer rent or else model ?

There are also  ways of living on land which isn't ours but we get to look
after it, as here at Monkton. There are many approaches, depending on
circumstances and opportunities, which are random. We should take (all) our
chances. To me the whole idea of Land-ownership is a myth and a red herring
anyway. Who can dare to claim to OWN land? We're just transient blips of
life, just passing through - custodians, caretakers, never "owners". But
those
who do the looking-after - who sacrifice lives of urban fun to do the hard
graft of growing the food that feeds the townsfolk (who may also be doing
useful, reciprocal work) should get first dibs at the (temporary)
"ownership" rights. (Stewardship is a useful concept here, somewhat
recognised by the state land-management beaurocracy, taking a long-term view
for the legacy that Land is)

I don't think we're skirting round the issues of inequity in land ownership
- we're addressing them from the ground up, literally, by getting as many of
us lot as we possibly can back onto the land to dilute the Behemoth
structures of mega-holdings currently smothering the country. It's a
practical tactic. And it's working ... see for instance the new Welsh
planning policy, OPD, One Planet Development  ... hey! We will get there.

Yup. The cows are mooooing, better go milk 'em. Lucky me.
Good morning all, thanks for being here
love from
Gill

http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk
http://www.ipaint.org.uk

on 13/10/11 9:00 PM, david bangs <dave.bangs at virgin.net> wrote:

> Robin, I enjoyed your contribution.
>
> Certainly many at the gathering were concerned about lack of access to
small
> land parcels for food growing. That is as one would expect and as it
should
> be. I would agree, though, that it did sometimes sound as though the big
> issues of inequity in land ownership and private landownership were
skirted
> around.
>
> Private and unequal landownership has so many huge consequences...
>
> - tying us into the capitalist global food economy (with all the
> consequences in terms of bad/damaging food, elimination of land-based
> labour, horrible impoverishment in the neo-colonial world, and the
> destruction of nature),
>
> - driving many folk into housing need and bad housing and impoverishing
them
> with grotesque mortgages and rents,
>
> - taking good food growing land out of production and devoting it to the
> leisure needs of the owning class or to non-agricultural production (like
> biofuels).
>
> I'm sorry that you "could not find a single person opposed to private
> ownership of land". You missed me !!...a shame we didn't meet and
talk...and
> there were others there, too, for sure.
>
> What's my own initial penn'orth on the gathering ???
>
> - I was exhilarated to meet so many folk who are passionate about the
> injustice of our land system and so committed to ending the madness of our
> capitalist food production system...so much so that I found myself welling
> up after I'd arrived and having to fight for a moment to stop myself
showing
> it...
>
> Please tell me, someone, that the gathering ended with a resolution to
> expand the TLIO core group and re-commit to long term work on land
justice.
> (I left before the last plenary).
>
> Big, big credit to Mark Brown (double credit) ...and to Simon Fairlie, and
> James A, and Jyoti (BRILLIANT farm visit), and Gill, and all the other
> organisers and speakers and core group folk  and Monkton Wyld Ct
residents.
> You all did fantastically. Really nice to meet you in person, Simon, after
> so many emails and the odd tiff over the years.
>
> - I was really pleased to hear about all the energy going into campaigning
> for local affordable housing and self-build, to see how the madness of the
> housing market was driving out local farming families and poorer folk from
> even the remoter countryside (the film by Russ, the Craswall farmer and
his
> colleagues) and to hear about the campaigning against mega farms.
>
> - I thought the workshops on the CAP and GM did approach the wider issues
of
> land ownership, mostly tangentially but also directly...both were
excellent.
>
> - I enjoyed the contribution from the Labour Land campaign on Land Value
> Tax. We'll have to debate that much more.
>
> - I thought that the lack of any strong attempt to locate issues of
inequity
> in a class context showed how badly our politics have regressed in the
past
> 30 years. That class politics is a rural culture that was strong in some
> parts of the UK and has not yet been driven out completely.
>
> It is that labour movement culture (nothing to do with the Labour Party)
> which will serve to reconnect all the issues that folk were most concerned
> about with the issues preoccupying the urban majority.
>
> ...For most of us, like myself, are townies and always will be...but I
love
> nature and the countryside more than anything else in my life apart from
my
> family and pals. I do not want to grow food, but I do want to feel that
the
> land, the countryside and nature belongs - co-equally - to me and to all
> other folk, and that we belong to it...
>
> Dave Bangs
>
> Brighton Socialist Resistance
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Robin Smith
> To: undisclosed-recipients
> Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2011 11:48 AM
> Subject: [Diggers350] The Robin Smith Institute: This Land Is Ours Autumn
> Gathering 2011
>
>
>
> My report can be found here
>
> http://gco2e.blogspot.com/2011/10/this-land-is-ours-autumn-gathering.html
>
> All comments welcome
>
> Robin.
>
>
>
>