Defending the Commons

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

  Recently I came across a small piece in the newspaper highlighting the “50,000 miles of `lost` paths” in England and Wales:

                “thousands of volunteers compared Ordnance Survey maps with historical maps and found 49,138 miles of “missing” paths left off official maps drawn up in the 1950s. They must be claimed for inclusion in OS maps by 2026 or they will vanish from record.”

          Normally I might have shrugged and thought `that`s a shame`, but it so happened that I was reading Guy Standing`s Plunder of the Commons at the time so my reaction was….well …. more robust. Professor Standing`s book  demonstrates how it is possible for footpaths to go “missing”, but it covers much much more than that.

          In essence it describes how our “Common Wealth”, has been chipped away at over centuries and in this case Common Wealth refers to a lot more than footpaths. It includes:

          “…all our shared natural resources – including the land, the forests, the moors and parks, the water, the minerals, the air – and all the social, civic and cultural institutions that our ancestors have bequeathed to us…..(plus)… the knowledge that we possess as society.”

          Standing argues that commodification, privatization, centralization and standardization have weakened and undermined all of these. Often this has been done so stealthily that resisting and restoring these commons once they are lost is extremely difficult if not nigh on impossible. 

          The chapter on the Knowledge Commons comes towards the end of the book, by which time Standing has covered the Natural Commons, the Social Commons, the Civil Commons and the Cultural Commons, analysing in each case what has been lost and the implications for society.

And he starts the book by pointing to a document which was created to defend and protect the Common Wealth but which has since fallen into obscurity, despite being on the British statute books longer than any other piece of legislation.

          The Charter of the Forest was sealed at the same time as the Magna Carter and, Standing says, “at the time of its sealing was regarded as equally fundamental”. In fact so important was it considered to be that “all churches in England were required to read it out in its entirety on four public occasions each year”.

          There were seventeen articles in the original charter which spoke to the “rights of commoners to use and manage common resources”. Professor Standing demonstrates in some detail how these rights have been systematically abused by “monarchs, elites and governments” and perhaps most importantly how any sense of collective responsibility has simultaneously been eroded, for the Charter was as much about taking responsibility for each other and future generations as it was about rights.

          He proposes an updated Charter which would “revive the ethos” of the original, bring it up to date and go some way towards helping “reduce inequality and strengthen citizenship.”

          It is the difference between having permission to use all our common resources as opposed to the right to access them. And alongside the rights comes the responsibility of “stewarding” those resources to ensure they are available in perpetuity.  In other words, it is about the kind of society which nurtures and sustains rather than divides and exploits.

 A vital read. If nothing else it might give pause for thought as you trudge along your favourite footpath.