Hartwood

Despite all the climate-change rhetoric, the reason there is only one very small ecovillage in the UK today is largely due to opposition from the planning system and the whole string of hurdles that lie in wait behind it (building regs, roads, SEPA etc.) supposedly guarding the countryside and the environment, but in practise guarding only the wealth arising from immense development land values (on average worth 33,000% more than agricultural land) created and maintained by an artificial scarcity which stems solely from a supposedly public service, the planning system itself. A technique, called ‘cornering the market’ which can never, by its own definition, serve the wider public.

Overpopulation is another fable co-opted in defence of the planning system (and other abuses). It is the bogeyman used to scare us into accepting desperate measures to curb this threat to our way of life. A vivid picture is painted of our being submerged in the struggle for survival. We will drown in a sea of people, gasping for the room to breathe, as the last square foot of inhabitable land sinks beneath the overwhelming tide of surging humanity. To people living in an already crowded urban environment, where others constantly impinge upon you as you move through the day – it is a threat that is only too believeable, given the noise, the lack of space, the tense, hustling, hassling atmosphere of the streets, so dominant in most cities today. Overpopulation is one big city, with nowhere else to go.

In reality however, 92% of the UK still remains undeveloped, open soil. Uninhabited maybe, but not un-owned. 67% of the nation is owned by the richest 0.3% of the population, with a further 27% of our land under government ownership in one form or another.⁽¹⁾ Landowners who as a result sponge up EU subsidies in excess of 100 million pounds per week, with yet billions more from the drip feed of zero-cost inherited land released onto the extortionate housing market. Banks, whose ability to impose debt upon us is founded directly on the widespread dependence these black market values enforce, will not loan to projects threatening to slit the throat of the goose that lays their golden eggs. This is fundamentally why for most people – wealth, power and contentment are always dangling just out of reach.⁽²⁾ Beneath these financial overlords, lobbyists for manufacturers of fittings and equipment continually distort and devise ever more building regs in favour of making their standardised products mandatory.⁽³⁾

So, what is the true situation?

In the early 1980′s the Quakers formed a ‘concern’ to investigate the housing ‘crisis’ caused by Thatcher’s blatant bribery of the electorate by fencing stolen public housing at knockdown prices. They started by calculating how many homes were needed, and then how much space was required to build them. Their findings are remarkable.

They granted every statistically ‘ideal’ family in Britain a detached home with its own garden large enough to grow some veg, and included space for pavements and roads for every home. This resulted in the plot shown on the left. It is considerably more luxurious than the flats and homes inhabited by many living in the UK today.

Then they multiplied these plots by the current UK population to see how much land was required to house the whole population is such roomy two-storey dwellings.

Here we have updated the figures and areas required to reflect the current UK population of 60 million:

• 2 adults & 2.4 children per house
• 60 / 4.4 = 13.64 million plots
• which covers 845,455 acres
• equal to 1321 square miles, which
• fits within a circle of radius 20.5
• or diameter of 41 miles
• (1321 divided by ∏ r²)
• add in extra roads = 44 miles

So with everyone adequately housed:

• Green circle – contains all houses, gardens and access roads
• Blue outer ring – space for schools, shops, factories, hospitals, parks etc.
• Shaded area – total required market garden growing area
• Dotted circle – current extent of UK built environment
• which leaves 92% of the UK still unbuilt

They also recovered government research showing intensive market gardening was far more productive of food per acre than conventional mechanised farming. They then calculated the area required (shown as grey shading) for food growing to sustain the UK population using such techniques.

In addition it can be readily grasped that regardless of the much quoted ‘problems’ of single parents or people divorcing or wanting to live alone, even doubling the number of homes still only requires a circle of 60 miles diameter, leaving a lot of questions still to be answered.

Land Ownership UK 2011

Source: who-owns-britain.com

The 27% shown belonging to the government includes all roads, public housing and buildings, parks, open water, forestry etc., and MOD property. The royal estates are included in the 67% privately held by the 0.3% of mainly hereditary, unregistered holders. When the House of Lords was emptied of hereditary peers in 1999, 97 of them were direct descendants of the Plantagenet Royal house, the last of whom, Elizabeth I died in 1603 – four hundred years later these same people are still at the pinnacle of wealth and influence.

The Land Registry records only properties that have changed hands since its inception in the 1930′s, and even now barely covers 35% (by number) of the properties in Britain. The last complete survey of UK ownership was conducted in 1872, compiled from parish tithing maps, most of which have now been lost or destroyed, leaving no record, nor means, nor even right to know who owns Britain today.

This leads to extraordinary situations, like the 1,500,000 acres of covenanted (i.e. unsellable) land the Church of England has ‘lost’ in the last 100 years. Or the thousands of extra acres receiving EU subsidies than the total the Ministry of Agriculture holds for the entire UK. See Kevin Cahill’s book Who Owns Britain for the full story. Likewise records show that in the 1600′s, some 60% of Scotland was Common Good land, nearly all of which has been illegally ‘privatised’ in the last 400 years. See Andy Wightman’s book The Poor had no Lawyers.

Serfdom is having no land of your own.
It takes most people most of their lives to buy themselves part-way out of that serfdom, by eventually owning their own home. All that effort merely to claim enough of your own to live in, let alone live from. Yet people will always reach to be free, even a little freedom at great price. After reading this you may come to see a new and better direction in which to reach for that freedom, not by denying others their right to be, but by actively reclaiming your own.

Asked to name the most overpopulated countries in the world, most people would probably come up with a list of places like India, the Phillipines, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, maybe even Brazil. These countries are surely teeming over with people, so much so that there isn’t enough room for everybody to get a decent living, every one of them crammed to the borders with poor and starving millions. Most would be rather surprised to find that the facts flatly contradict this impression.

Holland for instance is the most heavily populated country in Europe, with an average density of 1.84 people per acre, which is the same as an area of 1,423 square yards (a plot 37.5 yds {34.25 m} square) for each man, woman, child and baby living in Holland today. This is quite a bit more than most of them own at the moment!

Yet Brazil, home of decimated rainforests, shanty towns the size of major European cities, some of the poorest people on Earth in their teeming millions, an apparent glimpse of our possible future – has a population density of only 0.08 people per acre, giving plots of more than 817,960 square yards, nearly a square kilometre for each individual, or areas of 676 acres for the `average’ two-parent, two child family – more than enough to live on by most peoples standards. After all in Holland, squeezed into their paltry 0.294 of an acre, or one and half acres for the family, they seem to do a lot better than the Brazilians, in a lot less space.

Indeed by looking at the figures in the table above, you can see there is absolutely no correlation between population density and wealth per capita, with Hong Kong, home of some of the worlds most expensive real estate, and many powerful worldwide companies, far outstripping the rest of the world when it comes to overpopulation – yet you don’t see people cramming the borders trying to escape – in fact you see precisely the opposite, with boat people trying to smuggle themselves in, seeking a better life!

Here in Britain, we have an average population density nearly half that of Holland at 0.98 people per acre (5000 plus square yards each), almost identical to the 0.99 people per acre living in the Phillipines, home of Marcos, the shoes etc. another “poor, crowded” country. And yet even a densely populated island like Britain is nowhere near as crowded as you might be led to believe. And led is the operative word here. Ask who is leading who to believe such a blatantly flawed view of reality, and also why, the answers are interesting!

Where else do you have a right to be if not in the land you are born into? Where has that land gone when so many people must live like vermin in a cage, scurrying under the nearest piece of corrugated iron sheeting because they have nowhere else to go, no place to call their own, no right to be. Who denies them that right? It must surely follow as a simple matter of logic, that if there is enough space, enough land for everyone to live on their own private estates, and yet most people own not even one handful of earth, with many of the rest owning no more than their own homes, the king-size share of every land must belong to the remaining few. The table above shows the current distribution of land ownership in various countries – notice how little this changes between “rich” and “poor” countries.

Whoever owns the rest, and whatever gives them the power to force everybody else to the edge, and yet further, even completely off the land altogether, is responsible for the totally disproportionate distribution of land seen in every country today. The illusion of overpopulation as commonly perceived is the experience of living in the crowded fringes which border the great estates of the wealthy and privileged Great Dictators, whose fences encompass all as far as the eye can see, and beyond, closing off the land, shutting us out from our inheritance, our god-given right to be, here on planet Earth.

Of course if our Great Dictator were foolish enough to herd his entire population into even such a well-appointed preserve as the 62 mile wide city outlined earlier, it would be his undoing, for then the people would readily perceive the true scale of the deal, having given up 5000 square yards of their own, for a room and a half share in a small house in the neighbourhood. Something would need to be done! An intelligent dictator would thinly spread people all over the place, to avoid too great an impression of emptiness, but still cram most of them into towns and cities, to make sure all this talk about overpopulation is taken seriously. So everybody looks the other way for an answer, and with differing degrees of reluctance agree to curb the prodigious breeding rates of the poor and undesirable in as humane a way as possible, but do it, and as a matter of urgency. Encourage everyone to agonise over the moral dilemmas this creates, or try not to think about it too much, but above all don’t bother looking back over the fence.

That great fence marching across history, the land, every government and every attempt to ameliorate the injustice of our extremely unequal share in the gifts of creation, in denial of our common inheritance. We are each born to an ample share of this planet; whose air we breathe, whose water we drink and runs in our veins, whose food fills our tables, whose plants and minerals make our built environment, our possessions and the very fabric of our lives. We are woven from this planet, because without the planet we are nothing. And when all the pieces of the planet are owned, we are owned.

We have a window of opportunity to soften the coming storm by utilising the ease and power of our current technology to create a landscape independent of world gambling markets, artificially inflated housing costs and most of all servitude to trickster banks with their wholly imaginary money that so effectively enslaves so many today. But you will have to fight for what you believe.

A free man or woman does not choose to go into debt. All enter it unwillingly, exchanging freedom for security, at the price of subservience. To labour for others on terms you would not choose for yourself, but agree to bow to, as you feel you have no other choice. We all dream of being our own masters.

It is increasingly apparent that civil disobedience is required to get this log-jam moving, and time is running out. Better a planned elective disobedience than a panic-stricken, martial law enforced compliance as food and fuel become unaffordable for increasing numbers of desperate people.

No freedom, no progress in the human condition has ever been given, it has always had to be fought for: shorter working hours, votes for women, the end of child labour, slavery, starvation amidst plenty, the list is endless. Do not imagine that reclaiming the right to live on and enrich the planet you were born to is going to be easy, or welcomed by those accustomed to living at your expense. Despite the pressing need and obvious practicality of populating our landscape with productive self-reliant citizens, we are still herded into the urban reservations created by 600 years of enclosures, in enforced dependency upon the immensely profitable system of divorcing a person from the land that feeds, shelters and warms them and making them work to pay for these essential products they can no longer create themselves. Though it can be seen everywhere, the lethal emotional and economic cost of this is still not widely appreciated.

For those who have wakened from the dream – here is a tool for coming together and building the life-rafts to help create a future that holds more promise than the current insanity. It too is a gamble. but what have you got to lose? You will find attempting to comply with various regulatory and financial rules will likely prevent your village from ever being built, cripple it or delay it for years on end, exhausting motivation amongst your membership. Much depends on the skills, adaptability and determination of the people involved. The obstacles are overwhelmingly political and personal. The true roots of community are interdependence, shared work and responsibility, all characteristics that we have almost forgotten. It is so easy today in this country to walk away from anything too challenging to resolve. This is both corrosive of community, and one way or another, a luxury we will not ‘enjoy’ much longer.

The world is finite.

It is like a house full of people living in different rooms. Each room has slightly different standards of behaviour, but the one thing they all agree on is that the house belongs to the owner.

Because this landlord gives nothing in return for his rent, and because there is nowhere else to obtain the rent-money except within the house, those living there must devise ways of obtaining more than they need for themselves, in order to meet their rent. But in a finite world, filled to capacity, one man’s surplus is anothers’ shortfall.

In such a house, only two things can give. Either your neighbours’ share must be taken, or your own furniture and fittings must be ripped up and sold to the highest bidder, regardless of your future need of them.

What a terrible place to live! An atmosphere heavy with suspicion, mutual distrust and helpless self-interest must pervade this house. The occupants of each room view their neighbours with a jaundiced eye, knowing that to display weakness will invite attack and ruin – whilst within each room, the whole process is repeated in microcosm, as all vie for a higher, more secure resting place upon a dungheap heaving with fear and misery.

When those at the top of the pile in each room are vilified by their compatriots, they turn and point to their neighbours across the landing, saying, “Look! It is their fault! If they bought more of our wonderfully cheap washing machines and stopped flooding our markets with their underpriced spin-dryers we’d all be better off!”. Or else they cry: “If you tightened your belts more and took less wages, we could make our spin-dryers even cheaper than theirs! We must be more competitive!” Identical cries can be heard in every room.

So the hard-pressed roomates mutter amongst themselves about the price of soap, and curse the dark-skinned families living in the basement, saying if they didn’t keep having so many kids, they’d have enough of their own soap and then they wouldn’t be coming up here stealing our jobs by doing the washing up for next to nothing…..

And so it goes.

Meanwhile each week the landlord, who luxuriates in a penthouse suite in the attic, sends down his agents to collect the rent due. Of course, the full force of the law makes sure any defaulters are punished, and in extreme cases, evicted, R.I.P. After all, nobody can expect to live in his house for free. But the inhabitants are way too busy struggling with their immediate problems to stop and wonder where all this rent goes, or why they should even be paying it.

They have far, far more important matters to attend to. For here is a new inflation demand from the landlord, announcing yet another rent-rise, and there is bad news from the laundry room, whose `mad dictator’ has just brutally annexed the broom-cupboard, where most of the soap in the house comes from, threatening to bring everybody’s washing machines to a standstill. The papers and the TV are full of people talking about how it is our democratic duty to liberate the broom-cupboard, how we must defend our freedom (to the death if need be), by attacking those evil madmen in the laundry room – and are we not fully justified, for what right have they to stop us earning a living and paying the rent?

And so it goes…

But when the sky darkens and the prospect is war

Wha’s given a gun and then pushed tae the fore?

Aye, an’ expected to die for the land of our birth

We who’ve never owned one handful of Earth

Wake Up!

• Agree? / Disagree?
• Astounded? / Disgusted?
• Angry? / Don’t care?

Why not head over to the Hartwood forums and have your say here?