14-22 April, LORD vs COMMONERS: A Week of Action for UK Land Rights

Thu Mar 22 22:28:22 GMT 2018

Lords vs Commoners

https://www.landjustice.uk/lords-vs-commoners/

[]

Land ownership in Britain is one of the most unequal in the world.

This is a call out to groups and individuals all 
over the country who think the time has come for 
us to have more control of our land.

In order to draw attention to this injustice, we 
invite you to organise an event in your area 
between the 14th and 22nd of April. This could be 
a public meeting or protest with leafleting or 
maybe a banner drop, occupation or mass trespass.

<https://www.landjustice.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/LJN-week-of-action-and-walking-tour.pdf>Download 
flyer to print

<https://www.facebook.com/events/1893890770922164/>Visit 
Facebook page for Week of Action

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On Saturday April 14th, the Land Justice Network 
will be holding a walking tour of two of the 
wealthiest boroughs in London, yet where many 
still live in poverty: Westminster, largely owned 
by the Duke of Westminster, and Kensington and 
Chelsea, where the Earl of Cadogan owns 93 acres.

<https://www.facebook.com/events/154637835243225/>Visit 
Faceboook page for the walking tour

Here we can see the massive area that has been 
taken from the people centuries ago, and now home 
to some of the richest landowners, investors and 
property speculators. By accident of birth these 
privileged individuals inherit a life of luxury, 
and by use of trusts they avoid the inheritance 
taxes everyone else is required to pay, so 
enabling the grossly unequal distribution of land 
to continue. Is it right that the rich can avoid 
paying their taxes and that their land and wealth 
continues to grow at the expense of the rest of society?

More than a third of our land is still owned by 
the aristocracy, whose ancestors seized it during 
the Norman Conquest. By fencing off land and 
using violence to exclude people, landowners (the 
lords) have deprived the rest of us of what should be a shared resource.

The vast majority of us, the commoners, own 
little or nothing. Even most of the land that was 
once declared common land (for local use) has 
been taken away from us. Land in community use, 
such as hospitals, fire stations, school playing 
fields, is increasingly being sold off for the 
short term profit of private developers.

[]

Land issues are central to much inequality and 
environmental degradation in society today. 
Landowners control and exploit our natural 
resources and force the rest of us to be beholden 
to them for food, shelter and other needs. 
Despite their huge wealth, our taxes are used to 
pay them £billions in farming subsidies and 
housing benefit, increasing inequality still further.

In the countryside, large landowners dominate 
agriculture, squeezing out small farmers and 
collective farming. Agriculture workers are 
poorly paid and struggle to find housing that 
they can afford. Huge tracts of land are turned 
over to grouse moors to provide the rich with 
space for their destructive pasttimes. Our 
freedom to walk and enjoy nature is largely 
restricted to a limited network of rights of way.

In the cities, land is also unequally 
distributed, owned by a combination of 
traditional aristocrats and their modern-day 
equivalent: offshore companies and institutional 
investors. Increasingly homes are now owned by 
buy-to-let landlords rather than by individual 
home owners or social landlords. All of this 
forces up the cost of living for those who have 
to rent. Tenants have little security with 
standard tenancies running for just 6 months.

There are no controls on rent, so now on average 
people pay a quarter of their wages to their 
landlord, while in London its roughly half their 
salary. Even those who manage to buy their own 
home rarely own it outright until late in life. 
Most people are stuck paying a big chunk of their 
salary on their mortgage every month, with the 
worry that if they lose their job they could lose their home too.

In the last 6 years homelessness has dramatically 
increased. It is obscene that in this day and age 
so many people do not have a secure home. This 
could be achieved if the £9.3 billion a year paid 
in Housing Benefit to wealthy landlords was 
instead used to build social housing in all communities.

Urban areas also need well managed parks, 
community gardens and allotments, so that 
everyone has access to nature and the opportunity 
to grow food. But increasingly these spaces are 
being sold off or rented out to private companies 
for events, damaging the parks and shutting out 
residents for lengthy periods of time.

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 From South America, where payment must be made with subtlety, the 
Bormann organization has made a substantial contribution. It has 
drawn many of the brightest Jewish businessmen into a participatory 
role in the development of many of its corporations, and many of 
these Jews share their prosperity most generously with Israel. If 
their proposals are sound, they are even provided with a specially 
dispensed venture capital fund. I spoke with one Jewish businessmen 
in Hartford, Connecticut. He had arrived there quite unknown several 
years before our conversation, but with Bormann money as his 
leverage. Today he is more than a millionaire, a quiet leader in the 
community with a certain share of his profits earmarked as always for 
his venture capital benefactors. This has taken place in many other 
instances across America and demonstrates how Bormann's people 
operate in the contemporary commercial world, in contrast to the 
fanciful nonsense with which Nazis are described in so much "literature."

So much emphasis is placed on select Jewish participation in Bormann 
companies that when Adolf Eichmann was seized and taken to Tel Aviv 
to stand trial, it produced a shock wave in the Jewish and German 
communities of Buenos Aires. Jewish leaders informed the Israeli 
authorities in no uncertain terms that this must never happen again 
because a repetition would permanently rupture relations with the 
Germans of Latin America, as well as with the Bormann organization, 
and cut off the flow of Jewish money to Israel. It never happened 
again, and the pursuit of Bormann quieted down at the request of 
these Jewish leaders. He is residing in an Argentinian safe haven, 
protected by the most efficient German infrastructure in history as 
well as by all those whose prosperity depends on his well-being.
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