Guy Shrubsole - Who Owns England?

"Who owns England?" is a very good question, and a surprisingly difficult one to answer. That's not to say that various people haven't tried. One of the fascinating things about Guy Shrubsole's book is the discussion of the various historical attempts to understand precisely the question of ownership - from the post-Norman Conquest Domesday book to more recent studies. The roots of contemporary land ownership frequently do stretch all the way back to William the Conqueror. In fact Shrubsole gives a telling quote from one of the numerous Duke of Westminsters who, when asked how "young entrepreneurs" could be successful today answered, presumably not entirely tongue in cheek, "Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror".

Today the aristocracy's persistence is traced out in part by land ownership. In 1873 just 4217 peers owned 18 million acres of England, about 50 percent of the country. Never mind the 1 percent, these people were the 0.01 percent. Trying to understand how much of England is owned by the aristocracy today is difficult. Shrubsole concludes that a third of land is owned by the wealthy descendants of William's friends (or those that bought into their class later). Despite some attempts to blunt their wealth, and a few donations of land (often for tax reasons), aristocratic landowners continue to get huge incomes from their ownership, often from land subsidies. It becomes even more obscene when you learn of the vast acreage of land used for grouse, undermining vital biodiversity for a bloodsport enjoyed by a tiny minority. It cannot continue. Shrubsole argues that the aristocracy must become "active stewards, nursing our land back to health... a reformed system of farm subsidies would provide a spur to this, but it will also require the aristocracy's active participation. Will they rise to such a challenge?" I'm doubtful that they can, and tend to think we need a much more radical challenge to their ownership.

However it isn't enough to reduce landownership to the remnants of feudal rule. Who owns land today is the result of enormous changes that have taken place over the centuries linked closely to wider political and social transformations. The land owned by the Church of England or the Crown has been dramatically altered over the years by events like the Reformation and the Civil War. But it's perhaps the development of capitalism which has had the most impact. As I've written elsewhere, this was not simply about ownership but also how land was used and understood. In this, the people who almost always lost out were those who worked the land. As E P Thompson wrote in The Making of the English Working Class about the development of capitalism and its transformation of the rural economy:

In village after village, enclosure destroyed the scratch-as-scratch-can subsistence economy of the poor. The cottager without legal proof of rights was rarely compensated. The cottager who was able to establish his claim was left with a parcel of land inadequate for subsistence and a disproportionate share of the very high enclosure cost. Enclosure, (when all the sophistication are allowed for) was a plain enough case of class robbery, played according to fair rules of property and law laid down by a parliament of property-owners and lawyers.

Shrubsole notes that in 1600 about 30 percent of land was in common. While there was widespread resistance, much of this was lost and never recovered. Today it, and the rest of the country, is owned by the Church, big landowners, massive corporations and various other institutions such as the military. Some of the figures that Shrubsole gives us are extraordinary and give a real insight into wider social issues in the UK.

Private companies own, for instance, about a fifth of the country's land. In doing so, major landowners like supermarkets have transformed our towns and cities in their own image. Often this is for short-term profit, and very rarely is it about providing services. As Shrubsole notes, "Consultants Molior have estimated that between 25 percent and 45 percent of sites with planning permission in London are owned by companies that have never built a house." In other words, ownership has become a method of making money through speculation. It is a situation that cannot continue and Shrubsole is absolutely right to argue:

Remembering that today we are landless because the commons were taken from us doesn't mean we should be looking to return to some sort of rural Arcadia, where we all live by toiling in the fields. A modern movement for English land reform is about solving the housing crisis, rewilding our landscapes and reconnecting ourselves to the food we eat. It's about both rural and urban land and about sharing the wealth that comes from owning land.

By coincidence the day that I write this review is the same day that UK Labour published its proposals for land reform. Guy Shrubsole and others have been part of drafting that, and this book sets out many of those ideas behind those policies. Few who care about the environment and ending social inequality will disagree with proposals to end privatisation of publicly owned land, abolishing "the last vestiges of feudalism in our system of land ownership" and, in particular, ending the madness of subsidies based on land ownership. I am also firmly in agreement that a proper "right to roam" must come as part of giving access back to the wider population. But I am more cynical about whether this legislation can happen with out a major fight.

As I read Who Owns England? I found myself identifying even more than usual with those revolutionaries who advocated the revolutionary seizure of land - its nationalisation - for use by all. The aristocracy has proved adept at fighting to maintain its possessions, and modern corporations are no different in that regard, and I wonder to what extent we'll really be able to reform away the inequalities that Shrubsole so ably describes.

This is a really important book. Many on the left, from Karl Marx onward have sought to understand how capitalism developed and what this meant for the land and its people. But who came to own the land as a result of that process has profound consequences for people today. Guy Shrubsole's book is written with humour and anger and offers a viable alternative. It is an essential read and I highly recommend it.

Related Reviews

Clutterbuck - Bittersweet Brexit: The Future of Food, Farming, Land and Labour
Howkins - The Death of Rural England
Holt-Giménez - A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism
Magdoff & Tokar - Agriculture and Food in Crisis
Mazoyer & Roudart - A History of World Agriculture
Linklater - Owning the Earth

Penny McCall Howard - Environment, Labour & Capitalism at Sea: 'Working the Ground' in Scotland

Working at sea in the fishing industry is 115 time more dangerous than the UK average. It' i a startling statistic, that is usually explained by the idea that the sea is "dangerous". But Penny McCall Howard's important book is a detailed examination of why this is an incorrect explanation. More than that, it is a brilliant anthropological study of the lives of those on the west coast of Scotland who making a living from the sea. Howard shows how human labour is part of shaping an ecology which is far wider than just the "prawn monoculture" they fish.

Many of the classic works of anthropology are written by observers who maximise their distance from their subject. In his classic studies of the Nuer people of Southern Sudan, E.E.Evans-Pritchard wrote detailed accounts of his subject's lives, but always remained an observer. Howard too is an outsider, but she doesn't remain aloof from the fisher communities that she is writing about. An accomplished sailor she works with the men (they are all men), joining their small fishing boats or working on trawlers. As such, this is an intimate account of labour at sea, and how it is shaped by wider environment and economy. Howard explains her framework:

I focus on people's labour as what ties environments, people and tools together as they work to make dishing grounds productive. I take a phenomenological approach that focuses on people's experience of their own labour, including the results of that labour, and the aspirations and hopes that they pour into it. As a result, this book challenges the popular conception of the sea as a hostile wilderness...I explore the more complicated reasons why human-environmental relations at sea are fraught with ruptures, tensions and contradictions, tragedy, unfulfilled hope and even desperation.

Howard says that in the communities she studied, fishers feel in "a state of siege".  One fisher told her that "if you are trawler-man you think everyone is out to get you". This should be of no surprise - one of the consequence of heightened environmental awareness in the general population is an understanding that we are facing a biodiversity crisis and this is commonly understood to be particularly an issue for sea-life. Indeed the week I write this review the Guardian carries an article by George Monbiot which has the unfortunate headline "Stop eating fish. It’s the only way to save the life in our seas". It's hard to see any of those who Howard writes about here as seeing this as anything else as an assault on their livelihoods.

Howard begins with the nature of labour at sea, tracing it's impact on the environment, the process of shaping the "grounds" themselves and how wider, social relations, transform that experience. In one anecdote, she notes how an experienced fisher complains about having to go to the toilet at sea in a bucket, while the owner has spent tens of thousands on new navigation equipment to improve his chance at a profit.

All workers become intimate with their environments - whether it is a computer network, a phone call centre, the fields an agricultural workers frequents or fishers who "work the ground". The word "ground" is important. Howard says that she has noted more than 80 uses of the word - which means far more than, say, the sea-bed. Instead "what linked these places was the productive labour that took place in them. The ground was a place that afforded fishermen better catches and where they found their work to be productive. The affordances of grounds were not static and they were historically inextricably connected to the labour expended there."

Crucially, she continues, "fishermen re-shaped the affordances of grounds through their work and developed new tools in order to further develop the affordances of grounds." It brought to mind Marx's statement that "Labour is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature".

Howard shows how fishers have a complex relationship with the grounds they work. To understand their labour as simply bringing fish on-board a ship in a net is to misunderstand the intimate relationship with the sea. This is not a romanticised view of life on-board ships, rather its the way that years of experience allow the fishers to develop very clear understanding of the sea, its tides, its depth and the seabed. Using this information (often obtained through careful watching of equipment screens, but also through feeling the vibrations of the boat and its equipment) workers are able to make decisions about how, where and when to fish. Some areas might bring a bigger catch, but be risky for expensive equipment, other places might bring smaller fish in bigger quantities which require more labour to prepare. All of these decisions take place in the context of the wider, capitalist, market which might mean a fish that was extremely valuable one week is almost worthless the next. Grounds then, "are places where affordances are intentionally developed in particular social and economic context, and through often improvised actions with particular conditions of satisfaction."

Howard draws on the work of environmental geographer Neil Smith who argued that humans "create nature". Howard shows how fisher's labour transforms the environment. For instance, she quotes one fisher saying "if you come across a piece of ground with a lot of skate, first you have to fish them off, and that's when you will find you start to get a good fishing of prawns." Howard continues: "Trawler skippers saw themselves as intervening in ecosystems to make them more productive of the prawns or crabs they fished for."

Thus those critics who might simply see the fishing industry as exploiting a pristine environment are incorrect. Fishers are part and parcel of shaping the ecology that they labour in. In fact, fishers almost always see their labour as making a positive contribution. That is not to suggest that the consequences might not be destructive, but to show how the actual catching of prawns is the result of wider social interactions. This was drawn out for me by Howard's discussion of the working practice of the skippers of the boats she worked on. They would often keep up a constant radio and 'phone chatter with other skippers, sharing information with others. So the work was intensely co-operative - a "community of practice" as Howard puts it. But skippers could also conceal and hide information. They might be fearful that someone else would undermine their catch at the market, or get fish that they might want. So wider capitalist social relations shape the relations between the working boats and their crew. Something also seen in Howard's brilliant discussion of technology - as alluded to earlier, technology at sea is usually about maximising profits, not improving the lives of those who work there. I don't have space to draw this out further, but Howard's conclusion is important. Technology, she explains, arises out of and then shapes, the industry:

The effects of technologies must be examine din the context of the transformation of sea creatures into valuable commodities with a variable price in faraway markets, and the alienation of fishing crew from any ownership relation with a boat and from the sea as a source of reliable livelihood.

This is also true of the relations between workers. Technology allows the better exploitation of the environment. But it also means that the job becomes more deskilled, and boat owners can employ cheaper labour. The final chapters of the book look at what this has meant for communities and crew, particularly through the hiring of immigrant workers on very low wages. Class differences have, as Howard is careful to emphasise, always existed in the fishing industry. So the system of shares that determines pay rates on many boats doesn't arise out of some historical communal system, but out of a system of multiple ownership of boats. Today that means that crew will often receive low pay for long hard work, and sometimes get nothing if the trip itself is not profitable. It is a system open to exploitation, but one where it is difficult for workers to organise collectively.

This returns me to my starting point. The horrifically high level of deaths and injury in the fishing industry is not the result of accidents. It is a consequence of the job "as currently organised" where boat owners cut corners on maintenance and safety to maximise profits, or crew must risk going to sea in a extreme conditions in order to make enough money to pay rent or loans. Returning to the work of Neil Smith, Howard shows how the "ideology of nature" means that the natural world is seen as outside the lived reality of people - something to be used and exploited. But capitalism makes the sea more dangerous for workers. As Howard points out the idea of a "hostile and dangerous sea naturalises the deaths of those working on it, no matter what the real cause." Deaths are seen as a result of the sea itself, not the system that exploits those who work it in the quest for profits.

Howard's book is a remarkable piece of work. It's a first rate piece of Marxist anthropology that puts human labour at the centre of a discussion about ecology. It shows how the biodiversity crisis in the oceans is related to wider social relations, and emphasises again how the fight to prevent environmental destruction requires challenging the priorities of the system - not just changes to our diet. For radical environmentalists and Marxist ecologists this should be a required read, and I'm pleased to see that a cheap paperback is to be published soon.

Related Reviews

Smith - Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space
Carson - Under the Sea Wind
Clare - Down to the Sea in Ships
Rediker - Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Lymbery - Dead Zone: Where the Wild Things Were

Okbazghi Yohannes - The Biofuels Deception

On March 15 2019 up to 1.5 million students walked out of class to demand action in the face of looming environmental catastrophe. In the UK one of the most popular slogans was "System Change not Climate Change" reflecting the protesters' feelings that capitalism and its politicians had failed them. As Marxist writers like John Bellamy Foster and Ian Angus have shown, capitalism is at heart, a system that puts the accumulation of wealth above the general interests of people and planet. In the face of this, the capitalists have to find alternative ways of continuing to make their profits and, one of these is the use of biofuels.

Biofuels have been marketed by multinationals, governments and corporate think-tanks as a green way of producing energy. Because they are plants, the argument goes, they are effectively carbon neutral, sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and then releasing the same amount back when they are burnt. Biofuels could produce electricity, propel cars and aeroplanes and essentially continue to allow the system to do what it has always done, without the climate catastrophe.

However, in this closely argued book, Okbazghi Yohannes argues that it is a desire to continue the system of accumulation that lies behind the drive for biofuels, not an interest in saving the planet from catastrophe. Yohannes explains:

The underlying motivation of those who call for biofuels is not to solve energy and food shortages or reduce climate change. Rather, the goal is to resolve the anarchy of agricultural production in the Global North, brought about by the green revolution and the consequence transformation of agriculture into a food-manufacturing system during the second half of the twentieth century - a transformation made possible by integration with the petroleum industry.

The Green Revolution produced a surplus of grain for the agricultural and grain trading corporations and it was these, rather than the oil companies that initially pushed the idea of biofuels. Yohannes continues by arguing that the contemporary capitalist state has become a proponent for biofuels through the influence of the food and fossil fuel multinationals. Both the US and the EU, together with other international organisations are pushing biofuels as a solution to climate and food scarcity, and encouraging policies that will facilitate further production of these crops.

The problem is, as the majority of Yohannes books is devoted to explaining, that biofuels are not a solution to hunger, environmental disaster or anything else. In fact they are likely to make these things worse. In part, the issue is the limitation of bourgeois economics:

The call by ecological economists to redesign capitalism in such ways as to establish a thermodynamic balance between what is bio-physically possible and what is ethically, socially and psychically desirable smacks of romantic petty-bourgeois utopianism.

The other issue is simple physics. Growing the quantities of biofuels that are needed to generate the energy and food suggested by their proponents would require enormous deforestation, vast quantities of water and, because the production, processing and transport of biofuels uses lots of energy, contributes significant amounts of carbon to the atmosphere. To take just one of numerous statistical examples, Yohannes points out that:

even after biofuel producers devoted 20 percent of the 2006 [US] corn harvest to ethanol production, it displaced only 3 percent of gasoline consumption. If the entire annual corn grown on 90 million acres is converted to ethanol fuels, the country may be able to displace only 12 percent of its annual gasoline consumption.

Yohannes reports one study as showing that one gallon of [biofuel[ ethanol needs 129,600 BTU of energy to produce, but only has an energy value of 76,000 BTU, so we are effectively wasting energy to produce energy. There are similar shocking statistics about water use, deforestation and environmental destruction associated with biofuel production.

No one could read this book and believe that biofuels are the solution to any of the social problems we face. But Yohannes doesn't simply argue against the biofuel strategy, he also argues for an alternative. It involves a recognition that the biofuel strategy arises out of a need for capitalism to greenwash its continued accumulation of wealth. This has partly been done by the covering up of the impact of biofuel production, for instance, in the aftermath of the food crisis of 2008, George Bush's administration suppressed a World Bank report that "showed the link between the food crisis and ethanol production".

But the state itself is not neutral, it exists, as Yohannes reminds us, to facilitate the accumulation of wealth, and he argues we are seeing a "transformation of the state as a geo-economic agent in the service of the bioproduct industrial complex and the transition to a post-petroleum bioeconomy". I'm not one hundred percent convinced that this is a global phenomena as I think the state is primarily concerned with making sure that the fossil fuel corporations can continue and that biofuels are a part of doing this, but I do agree that increasingly biofuels are seen as a key component for certain nation states and multinationals in terms of future accumulation.

This would be interesting enough, if Yohannes left it there. But the final chapter is devoted to showing how a rational, sustainable agriculture could develop. This, he argues, requires the direct producers taking control of the food system. Problems of hunger, environmental disaster and water shortages are the direct result of the insanity of production under capitalism. The alternative is the "masses of peasants and workers, who together must then begin to create a sustainable world". It's a vision of change that fits well with the demands of the school students.

Okbazghi Yohannes book contains a wealth of statistical data and information. At times this is a little overwhelming, but so is the environmental disaster we face. The information it contains makes a powerful argument, not just against biofuels, but for a new post-capitalist world. The task is for us to get there.

Related Reviews

Huber - Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom and the Force of Capital
Foster - The Ecological Revolution
Malm - Fossil Capital
Burkett - Marx and Nature
Klare - Blood and Oil
Nikiforuk - Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
Heinberg - Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils our Future
Angus - Facing the Anthropocene

Victor Wallis - Red-Green Revolution: The Politics & Technology of Ecosocialism

The scale of environmental crisis is absolutely terrifying. So I was very pleased to read Victor Wallis' new book Red-Green Revolution which aims to both explain capitalism and environmental destruction and offer a clear strategy for building a movement to challenge both. Wallis takes up this point early on:

To puncture the resulting sense of helplessness, we need an approach that is at once immediate (short-term) and comprehensive (long-term). A comprehensive approach is a radical one. It embraces every aspect of reality. Without such a panoramic sweep, we cannot even begin to counter the multifold scale on which the threats to life present themselves - whether in the form of war, hunger, pollution, illness, repression, insecurity or insanity.

Wallis uses the term ecosocialism to argue for a "synthesis of ecology with socialism". But, and its an important but, he doesn't argue that socialism (or indeed Marxism) has never had an ecological component. He notes the work of writers like John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett who have drawn out an ecological core to Karl Marx's work and shows how other revolutionary thinkers and activists have also understood the destructive dynamic at the heart of capitalism; and the potential for socialism to resolve the contradiction of a society dependent on the natural world that simultaneously destroys it.

Wallis argues then, that there must be a multi fold strategy. The first stage is exposing the limitations of capitalism. Too many proffered solutions to environmental crisis are based on making capitalism better, or greener. But simultaneously Wallis argues we must put forward alternative models:

Token green measures may bring some relief, but they fail to challenge the power that keeps the toxic practices going. How can people be persuaded to target that power and build a political force capable of supplanting it?.. It entails on the one hand exploring the sometimes indirect arguments whereby the green-capitalist... approach is upheld. On the other hand, it requires attention to positive models, both actual and potential, of societies, movements, institutions, or even individuals that embody a cooperative rather than an aggressive/competitive approach to work and life.

Returning to this theme, Wallis notes that Marx understood that a future, sustainable socialist world, would be one based on democratically organising and controlling the means of production. He notes though that we should not ignore the reality that not all socialist approaches (or societies that described themselves as socialist) have behaved like this. Wallis emphases the limitations of what he calls "first-epoch" socialism, the Soviet Union and Chinese society for instance, and argues that "the notion of workers' control offers, from within socialist thought, the basis for a thoroughgoing ecologically-oriented critique of the legacy of first-epoch socialist regimes."

With this in mind I was enormously pleased to see Wallis defend and promote the concept of "planning" as part of his solution. Wallis makes it clear that he doesn't mean the top-down planning of the Soviet variety, but a bottom up approach that involves mass involvement. If we, as socialists, are to offer concrete solutions and strategies one of the most powerful tools we have is a vision of how a sustainable world can work - and the idea of democratically planning production is one that is unique to the revolutionary tradition. Simultaneously it allows us to show how the great wealth we are capable of producing can be used in a sustainable and equitable way. Too few socialists (eco or otherwise) put this forward and I think it an essential argument for our alternative.

Wallis also discusses technology with this same approach. Technology he argues, is not neutral within society, but is determined by the dominant political and class dynamics. Thus technological solutions to environmental destruction serve the interests of those whose wealth and power implements them - which can in turn exacerbate the wider problem. Socialist technology must be marked by a "commitment to social equality and to ecological health" - it should also be democratically controlled, and the result of democratic decision making in contrast to the way that capitalists simply deploy new technologies to make profits.

I do have two slight linked disagreements with the book. The first is about context, and doesn't really undermine Wallis' wider argument. Among his criticisms of first-period socialism lies an argument that the ecological limitations of those societies arose because they favoured taking and maintaining state power, over the "transforming production relations". I am not sure I entirely agree with this. In the case of Russia in the aftermath of 1917 I think the problem was far more that the devastation of the working class core to the revolution in Civil War and famine destroyed the basis for real workers control. The failure of the German Revolution in turn left Russia isolated and encouraged an inward turn; the development of a bureaucratic class and finally the rise of Stalin's counter-revolutionary interests.

Secondly, I thought that while Wallis was excellent on showing how building a revolutionary ecologically aware socialist movement required strategies for the here and now, as well as a longer term goal, I felt that he missed out having a serious discussion on the nature of the capitalist state and the way it would organise to protect and defend its own interests. Here I think we still have much to learn from Lenin and his understanding of how revolutionary movements can simultaneously smash the capitalist state and create the basis for a new, workers' state.

But these are not points of departure they are places to begin a debate. All in all I found Red-Green Revolution a deeply stimulating read, that tackled important issues without simply regurgitating tired old formulae - the chapter on intersectionality and class was particularly good in this respect. I'd recommend Victor Wallis' book both to environmental activists who want to better understand revolutionary socialist ideas and other, longer standing socialists who want to think through how to engage with the growing ecological movements.

Related Reviews

Angus - Facing the Anthropocene
Angus - A Redder Shade of Green
Foster - Marx's Ecology
Saito - Karl Marx's Eco-socialism
Choonara & Kimber - Arguments for Revolution
Luxemburg - Reform or Revolution

Joyce D'Silva & Carol McKenna (eds) - Farming, Food and Nature: Respecting Animals, People and the Environment

This is a serious attempt to find an alternative to the industrialised farming that is so destructive to the environment, animals and humans. However any radicalism is blunted by the failure of any of the authors to address how to challenge the way that capitalism shapes agriculture through its quest for profits.

I am preparing a detailed review of this book for another journal, when that is published I shall link it here.

Hannah Holleman - Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics & the Injustice of 'Green' Capitalism

The "Dust Bowl" of the 1930s was an iconic moment in American history. As a result of what one historian called "the inevitable outcome of a culture that deliberately, self-consciously, set itself [the] task of dominating and exploiting the land for all it was worth" tens of thousands of people fled their homes, usually losing their entire livelihoods in the process. Images of dried out landscapes, dead crops and enormous dust storms that blanket the area in a fine dirt are memorials to the greatest environmental disaster in United States history.

Today scientists are revisiting the 1930s Dust Bowl to try and understand its causes and what events might teach us about 21st century environmental crisis. Hannah Holleman writes that there are "clear parallels between the social and ecological crises of the 1930s and those we confront today".

But, as Hannah Holleman explains in this excellent new book, the traditional view of the Dust Bowl as America's greatest ecological crisis is only part of the story. In this telling, the Dust Bowl came out of nowhere, and was eventually fixed by benevolent government investment. Attractive though this might seem, what is missing is the context - the colonial expansion of white Europeans into the American West and the displacement and massacre of the indigenous peoples and capitalist agriculture that, in its drive for profits, destroyed the very basis of farming - the soil, and its workers. Sadly too many people, scientists and radicals included, believe the myth.

Holleman emphasises that the Dust Bowl did not come from nowhere. For decades before scientists, farmers, governments and politicians understood desertification as a global problem. The "new imperialism" of the 1800s and early 1900s, was "violently transform[ing] societies and the land, entrenching the ecological rift of capitalism on a global scale and the related patterns of unequal ecological exchange that persist to this day."

The British Empire was the best, but far from the only example of this. In 1914, a British government committee on South Africa noted a "general consciousness of the gravity of the problems presented by soil erosion in almost every country where recent settlement or the growth of the population had led to an intensification of agriculture." [my emphasis]. Writing about Ceylon, another official pointed out that the removal of the forest to create space for tea, meant "little or no provision was made at the time to retain in situ the fine soil of the original forest... the loss of soil has been enormous". The capitalist agriculture imposed on the world (and the American West) stripped nutrients from the soil, removed natural barriers against erosion and destroyed farming practises that replenished the earth.

The transformation of global agriculture in the interests of capitalism in Europe (and later in the US) created the first global ecological crisis. Holleman quotes Fred Magdoff who writes, "more and more of the world was drawn upon as primary producers for the industrialised nations." Traditional agriculture, industry and society was destroyed in the pursuit of food and resources for the capitalist world; and the populations were displaced, impoverished and when they resisted, killed. Holleman continues:

International commentators wrote of North America's wasteful exploitation of the land and compared it to similar problematic practises in Europe, Britain, their colonies, and elsewhere. Westward expansion of the erosion problem in North America was made possible by government policy, financing from the imperial urban centres, technological change and military conquest.

Underpinning this was a racist ideology that saw those of white European descent as having a historic civilising mission. Theodore Roosevelt, US President from 1901 to 1909 and a man who would go on to play a significant role in early conservationism, wrote in 1869, "The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drove the savage from the land lays all civilised mankind under a debt."

Picture from Monthly Review article by Hannah Holleman
"No Empires, No Dustbowls"

This "'white man's burden' version of environmentalism" dominated the response to the Dust Bowl. As Holleman points out, it prevented "the possibility of change of the kind and on the scale necessary". In echoes of contemporary neo-liberal politicians, emergency relief was condemned. President Hoover argued that the "federal government should not be required to provide anything or intervene to ease the people's suffering". President Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932 offering assistance to the distressed regions, but the New Deal was based on protecting the status quo - it discriminated against black people, protected the profits of big business and did nothing to challenge agricultural practices that had caused the Dust Bowl in the first place.

In 2013 a UN FAO study on the state of global soils concluded that "the over-whelming conclusion... is that the majority of the world's soils are in only fair, poor, or very poor condition." Today's solutions are much the same as the US government offered in the aftermath of the Dust Bowl - technology, neo-liberal loans and an intensification of agriculture. In this context, Holleman argues, simply arguing for a new New Deal, is not enough. US radicals who do so ignore the wider context to ecological crisis - a racialised capitalism that destroys people and land in the interests of profit. Instead, what we need is a new, radical social environmentalism that breaks from the interests of the one percent. As Holleman writes:

The Dust Bowl did not arise because there was a lack of awareness of the issue or the technical means to address it. Like dust-bowlification today, the ultimate source of the crisis was social, not technological, thus requiring massive social change to address.

Healing the metabolic rift in the 21st century requires a new, revolutionary environmentalism. This must be informed by a clear knowledge of what took place in the past, and Hannah Holleman's wonderful new book is exactly the sort of historical analysis we need. Everyone who cares about the agriculture, the environment and social-injustice should read it.

Related Reviews

Clutterbuck - Bittersweet Brexit
James C. Scott - Against the Grain
Holt-Giménez - A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism
GRAIN - The Great Climate Robbery
Magdoff & Tokar - Agriculture and Food in Crisis
Angus - Facing the Anthropocene
Beckert - Empire of Cotton

James Rebanks - The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District

James Rebanks' book is a remarkable study of agricultural life in the Lake District in the North West of England. This is no romantic view of a countryside that is idyllic and constantly summer. Rather this is a warts and all account, that emphasises the hard work, the financial hardships (individual poverty) and the struggle to keep going. I've always through that workers describing their own work are often far more eloquent than they are given credit for, and this is no exception. Its a beautifully written book and the author is not afraid of showing his own limitations, together with his successes. Most of all however, this book challenges those who see the countryside as a place to escape the towns and cities that is unchanged from a distant past. Instead Rebanks shows how the countryside has been transformed, shaped and managed by generation after generation of farming communities.

One of the themes that I've tried to draw out in my own writings on the countryside is precisely this sense of the landscape as resulting out of millenia of human labour, and indeed class struggle. Rebanks himself speculates comments sheep farming in the region would have had many similarities to contemporary Lake District farming.

But another aspect to farming that I've always been struck by is its inherently collective nature. Rebank's book begins with a description of the gathering of sheep from the fells. It requires coordination on many levels - the organisation of the different farmers who come together to bring the animals off the unfenced common land; co-ordination between shepherd and dog and finally co-ordination with nearby communities when sheep become mixed together. This account of sheep gathering on "the greatest concentration of common land in Western Europe" left me near breathless in its description of the joint work of Shepherd and sheepdog. But I was also taken aback by the sense of a community collectively working - an individual shepherd simply couldn't survive here.

This community stretches back into time and Rebanks is very aware of his own position. He writes, rather movingly:

There is a thrill in the timelessness up there... I have always liked the feeling of carrying on something bigger than me, something that stretches back through other hands and other eyes into the depths of time... I am only one of the current grazers on our fell (and one of the smaller and more recently established ones at that), a small link in a very long chain. Perhaps, in a hundred years' time, no one will care that I owned the sheep that grazed part of these mountains. They won't know my name. But that doesn't matter. if they stand on that fell and do the stings we do, they will owe me a tiny unspoken debt for once keeping part of it going, just as I owe all those that came before a debt for getting it this far.

Rebanks highlights the continuity with the past that shapes the hillsides he works and continues to make and remark the artificial landscape, but on a smaller scale he shows through his relationships with his grandfather, father and children a different continuity here. These personal sections are part and parcel of Rebanks' relationship with the land, the community and the farm and they are difficult to read in places, as all honest accounts of family are, but they also tell the tale of how farming communities and farmers have survived and struggled over the centuries. The same communities meet at the same fairs as their ancestors did centuries before. Old men can remember the genetic origins of sheep going back decades, and their knowledge is crucial to 21st century farming.

There is continuity, but there is also change. Rebanks herds sheep with 4x4 vehicles and waterproof clothing that must have transformed the experience of shepherding in the depths of winter. But shepherding still has to be done in the winter, and no technology has yet been invented that can protect a sheep and its lamb in all situations - there will always have to be men and women who go out to find lost herds and rescue newborn animals.

James Rebanks begins his book with his frustrations at those who don't understand the Lake District like he and his family do. Those tourists and poets who simply see beauty or relaxation. By the end of it he understands their point of view too, but wants to make them understand what the Lake District and agricultural communities are - living, developing and growing parts of society that play a crucial role in our economy and have deep historical roots. I am glad that his book has become a surprise bestseller, because it will contribute enormously to an understanding of British farming that can only bear fruit for the future.

Related ReviewsArch - From Ploughtail to Parliament
Clutterbuck - Bittersweet Brexit: The Future of Food, Farming, Land and Labour
Howkins - The Death of Rural England
Hasback - A History of the English Agricultural Labourer
Whitlock - Peasant's Heritage

Joseph Arch - From Ploughtail to Parliament: An Autobiography

Autobiographies are strange texts. As an account of the author's own life they are supposed to be an accurate description of what took place, but they are really the account that the author would like to pass on to posterity. Joseph Arch's account of his life as an agricultural labourer, then trade unionist and finally MP is fascinating for its detail. But it is also of interest for what has been left out, or downplayed. As such I highly recommend it is read in conjunction with Pamela Horn's biography and commentary by Alun Howkins. While self-serving in places it is an very interesting insight into the ideas and activities that dominated rural trade unionism in the 1870s by someone who was at the heart of that struggle.

As we approach the centenary of Arch's death it is worth reflecting on the sweep of his life. He was born in 1826 in the village of Barford, and the early chapters of his autobiography are fascinating for their detail of the lives of agricultural labourers. Life for the Arch family, as for almost every labourer, was marked by dire poverty. Arch's family were slightly better off as they owned the freehold to their cottage as a result of his Grandfather saving £30 over many years in an old sock. Most labourers did not have this security and risked losing their homes if they challenged the farmer or landowner. This was to give Arch enormous security in later life as he became a thorn in the local establishment's side and then a leading trade unionist.

Arch's early memories contain a great deal of class difference and struggle. He remembers peering through a crack in the Church door to see his father waiting for Communion in a separate queue to the local gentry and farmers who get seen first. At school his poor clothes are a source of conflict, “sons of the wheelwrights, the master tailor and the tradesmen… peacocky youngsters would cheek the lads in smock-frocks and many a stand-up fight we used to have – regular pitched battles of smock-frock against cloth-coat they were, in which smock-frock held his own right well.”

His mother challenges the parson's wife who wants to impose a particular haircut on Arch's sisters - and they never receive charity again from the vicarage. More seriously Arch's father refuses to sign a pro-Corn Law petition got up by the farmers and is out of work for 18 weeks.

Arch's family was not unusual, and it is no wonder that in the late 1860s and early 1870s trade unionism begins to take off in a serious way in the English countryside. Arch by that point is a skilled worker and preacher for the Primitive Methodists, he is also a strong supporter of the Liberal Party and he is called upon to help set up a local trade union by workers in the nearby village of Wellsbourne in Warwickshire. Once convinced that this is a real attempt, Arch takes to this with enormous enthusiasm and the union rapidly grows in strength.

Reading the autobiography you get the impression that Arch was the only driver of the union. Other biographies and histories show that actually there were numbers of unions being setup at the same time, and many of these merged to form a national union (though significant sections did not). Arch speaks in hundreds of villages building the union and driving it forward, but so do many others. A great weakness of the book is that neglects what is taking place in the world beyond Arch's immediate influence. A second weakness is that Arch is utterly unable to acknowledge mistakes or defeats. The union strike wave that takes place in the 1870s after the union is founded is defeated by a lock-out in the Eastern Counties. The union, and Arch, take a pretty miserable attitude to the final outcome but this is omitted from Arch's account.

In his introduction to my edition, Alun Howkins points out that Arch is also selective about who appears in his book and also doesn't go into the detail of the major rows that took place. Nor does he acknowledge that the union he put so much energy into declines and collapses in the 1880s. The book was published before Arch's parliamentary career was over, but it is selective about his time in Parliament - in fact it was a tremendously difficult time for him. Arch rarely spoke in Parliament and didn't speak at all for the last 6 years! But Arch still portrays himself as a major fighter for the labourers cause.

From other sources one gets the impression that Arch the MP was completely out of his depth. The first agricultural labourer in Parliament was cut off from his base and support and surrounded by wealth and privileged. In fact Arch clearly loved the company of the famous - he was enormously enamoured of Gladstone, and because his constituency covered the Norfolk estates of Sandringham he vowed to be an MP for labourers and the Prince of Wales.

Arch was a contradictory figure in many ways. A brilliant trade unionist but at times he was also remarkably conservative, but then could be very radical - supporting Home Rule and opposing British colonialism in South Africa and Afghanistan. He hated the ideas of socialism, preferring to imagine a countryside free of class conflict where everyone had their place, but the labourers had a decent wage and a small amount of land. But nonetheless for thousands of agricultural labourers and their families Arch helped them have a sense of a better world. The victories won by the union were significant, if not long lasting, but they proved that agricultural workers could organise and could win. And for all his faults Joseph Arch never gave up his belief in the power of organised workers - and nor should we.

Related Reviews

Horn - Joseph Arch
Groves - Sharpen the Sickle!
Marlow - The Tolpuddle Martyrs
Jeffery - The Village in Revolt
Howkins - The Death of Rural England

James S. Donnelly, Jr - Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821-1824

When I wrote 'Kill All the Gentlemen' I felt obliged to apologise in the introduction for my neglect of the similar radical history of rural Wales and Scotland - that was out of necessity for the book would simply have been too long. I also failed to discuss Ireland in any detail. There the parallels with English rural history are not as simple, but nonetheless, as this important account shows there are similarities but also major differences.

Donnelly is discussing a relatively narrow period of agrarian rebellion, barely three years, but to understand it he has to locate it in the context of Ireland's wider rural history and in particular it's nature as a British colony. This fundamentally shaped the country's agriculture. British landlords (usually absentee) delegated the collection of rents and management of estates to a lower grouping of middlemen. They also were ruthless at using their legal powers to evict and punish those who failed to pay rents (in cash or kind). In addition the country operated with a dated system of tithes that heavily punished all levels of the agricultural population and, finally, the Westminster government used sectarian politics to keep down the majority Catholic population. Life, even when yields were high and prices good, was one of appalling poverty for the mass of the population.

Economic crisis in the 1820s triggered the Rockite rebellion. But the rebellion itself, argues Donnelly, was shaped by a number of other factors that have been neglected by other historians. It isn't enough to simply locate the uprisings in the context of economics, they have to be understood through the prism of sectarian politics and the influence of millennialism. These millennial ideas

assisted in integrating within the same movement Catholics whose material interests frequently clashed, namely landless labourers and cottiers on the one had and the larger farmers on the other. Acceptance of the prophesied ruin of Protestantism was concentrated among the lowest strata of Catholic rural society, but many middling and some substantial farmers also gave credence to this millennial vision.

At times Donnelly emphasises that the Rockite movement was, to some extent, a cross-class alliance. But much of the book shows that this was a mass movement of the poorest. Time and again, the most radical, the most active and the most punished of those who rebelled came from the lowest orders. And while sectarianism played a major part in the struggle, there were some incidents when Catholic landowners were targeted by the rebels. Again, this should not surprise us. The millennial ideas that spread like wildfire through the rural population originated with the writings of Signor Pastorini (a pseudonym for Charles Walmesley) but they fit with a situation in which Protestantism could legitimately be seen as the religion of the ruling and oppressive class. Indeed, when the British sent troops to put down the rebels, they were

commonly cavalry units drawn from England and Scotland; they marched to Protestant churches in the south and southwest, helping to fill edifices long mostly bereft of parishioners and reminding the Rockites that the troops had come to serve the interests of a Protestant church and state bent on the oppression (economic, political, and religious) of Irish Catholics.

Millennial ideas could co-exist with everyday demands. Donnelly quotes one prisoner's testimony that "talked of Pastorini and said that next year would be a year of war. He talked of many other things and said that the price of labour was too low."

The troops were needed because the Rockite rebellion was a mass movement of extreme violence. Incendiarism, assault, murder and robbery were all weapons used by the rebels against their enemies. Particularly at the start of the outbreak the rebels led assaults of homes and sometimes police stations to capture weapons. Short of ammunition they would attack churches for the lead on the roof as material for bullets. Often these attacks were mass affairs involving hundreds of attackers. While the movement used terrorism, it was not a minority affair.

Much of Donnelly's book explores the various tactics of the Rockites. Many of these have parallels with agrarian disturbances in England - the posting of warning notices, the pseudonym of Captain Rock disguising the real names, the firing of buildings and assaults on individuals. There are even, though Donnelly doesn't make the connection himself, examples of what EP Thompson called the Moral Economy. But the truth was that these events were far more violent than comparable events in England. I do not recall one mention of rural rebels in England destroying a Church for instance. Donnelly points out though that this was less about sectarianism and more about "more immediate grievances and mundane objectives" such as lead from the roofs. Incendiarism took place on an enormous scale, over a prolonged period, and the murder (and occasional rape) of enemies was also unprecedented.

Authorities were unable to do much about rebellion on this scale. The repression was brutal and extremely violent, though it failed to restrain the rebels, about 600 people were transported and 100 executed. Indeed, the rebellion itself was very successful. Rents and rent arrears were frequently reduced or annulled, evictions were reversed and so confident were the rebels that they would intimidate those who had taken up tenancies of evicted families, even up to seven years previously. Many hated landlords, their officers or their families were killed, injured or driven from the local area. Donnelly argues that longer term "Captain Rock" scared the landowners enough that they were wary of ever using mass evictions again.

This is an excellent account. It locates a few years of radical agrarian rebellion in the wider economic, political and colonial context. While there are parallels with events in England, Scotland and Wales, particularly in the practise of the Rockites, the context is quite different. These struggles did not end rural Irish poverty - but it was alleviated it somewhat though with an economic upturn the movement was to disappear. What Captain Rock shows most though, is that no matter how oppressed, downtrodden or poor people are, there is always the potential for mass rebellion, and the violence of that rebellion is proportional to the violence of the exploitation and oppression.

Related ReviewsKee - The Bold Fenian Men
Kee - The Most Distressful Country
Woodham-Smith - The Great Hunger

Charlie Clutterbuck - Bittersweet Brexit: The Future of Food, Farming, Land and Labour

Charlie Clutterbuck's new book is an important intervention into discussions about the future of the British food system. I urge everyone, whichever side of the "Brexit" debate you may find yourself, to read and digest it. Clutterbuck is a scientist and researcher with long experience of UK farming and soil science and has close links to the trade union movement. Deliberately, on the part of the author, Bittersweet Brexit is not a debate about the rights and wrongs of leaving the EU, and nor will this review be. For the record, I voted to leave the European Union (EU) in the Referendum - not because I'm opposed to immigration, or right-wing - but because I see the EU as a capitalist institution that needs to be broken up - Clutterbuck voted the other way, though I can perfectly understand his reasoning.

The argument of his book, is that Brexit offers a unique opportunity to transform British agriculture in order produce healthy, sustainable food that rewards those who work the land, and produce the food. As Clutterbuck explains while dealing with the question of the limitations of our current food system:

The contradiction... that the problem is not overpopulation, but overproduction - has still not been addressed. We need to produce 'better, healthier and greener food'. And we can. Leaving Europe may be our opportunity to do so.

He continues:

But it will be a battle. Consumers will still want cheap food. That won't stop any time soon. Yet cheap food costs the earth... We cannot rely on individual consumers to do this. If ever there was a case for state intervention, this is it... It means we have to have political answers, not individual ones, however well-meaning.

Much of the book is a clear explanation of why the food system is like it is. Clutterbuck highlights the role of the EU in this, but it is not a problem simply of the EU. British agriculture is part of a capitalist food system that is geared, not towards feeding people, but towards making profits for the food corporations, farmers and capitalist companies. Unfortunately this system only benefits the most wealthy - large landowners, big farmers and food multinationals. It does not help the workers, agricultural labourers, small-holding farmers and those who consume the food. Clutterbuck argues:

The biggest opportunity in the Brexit process is to redirect the £3bn EU CAP [Common Agricultural Policy] funding... We need to subsidise labour in the food sector to keep food prices down, which customers demand. This will fund local produce and rural communities.

He argues that the £3bn annually could give 300000 UK national farm-workers and farmers an extra £10,000 each per year. This would stimulate local economies, strengthen the position of small farmers and "attract younger workers into the sector". Clutterbuck also argues that it would "help replace migrant workers with permanent workers".

This last point needs developing. Firstly British agriculture (and other sectors of the economy) are highly dependent on immigrant, or temporary workers from other parts of the world. This is why the CBI has recently raised concerns about immigration targets after Brexit which could damage the economy further. In particular, one of the most problematic areas of British agriculture at the moment is what Clutterbuck calls "plantation farming", this is the monoculture cropping prevalent in the south-east which produces crops like fruit and is highly dependent on immigrant labour. This method of farming is highly unsustainable and relies on low-wages etc. Clutterbuck offers some suggests for the future - obviously he wants higher pay, and suggests (presumably in the case of hard Brexit that stops most immigration) that the country employs"students to pick the harvests as many people used to do."

 Open Borders

I'm not sure I agree entirely here. Firstly I think that if we are going to fight to shape agriculture after Brexit, then the union movement and the left must fight to shape the type of immigration policy that we need, and this could and should be one of open-borders that allows employers to use seasonal workers from wherever they come, and workers to work where they need to. This might even include students. But whoever they are they should be paid a proper wage with proper rights (such as holiday and sick pay). Second, I don't think we should give an inch to the right wing who want to simply argue for "British Jobs for British people". Agriculture (as with much of the British economy) has historically been highly dependent on workers from over-seas. The problem with British agriculture (and for clarity, Clutterbuck does not say this) does not come from immigration. It comes from the way that land and capital ownership is distributed. As Clutterbuck rightly highlights:

The distribution of ownership of land in the UK is more unequal than the distribution of wealth. A mere 7 per cent of the population own 84 per cent of the wealth. Of the 60 million acres in the UK, 69 per cent is owned by 0.6 per cent of the population, giving Britain the most unequal concentration of landownership in the EU, bar Spain. Half of Scotland is owned by just 432 landlords.

Some sections of British (agricultural) capitalism are, as the CBI link above shows, highly concerned about a hard-Brexit. Clutterbuck points out that in 2016 many food companies and representatives of the National Farmers Union wrote to the UK government saying:

'Migrant workers and tariff-free access to the single Market are vital for the industry... For our sector maintain tariff-free access to the EU single market is a vital priority. It is where 75 per cent of our food exports go, so all our farming and food businesses wish to achieve this outcome'.

Clutterbuck highlights the hypocrisy of this: "I heard not a tweet from any of these characters about the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB)... The same NFU and the Fresh Produce Consortium wanted to pay migrant workers only the minimum wage... Apparently it was essential to their business to pay as little as possible."

Throughout this book Clutterbuck highlights exactly how difficult leaving the EU will be in terms of the way rules and laws apply to our food system. Literally thousands of pieces of legislation will need to be re-written, re-considered, or scrapped and redrawn. This includes trade deals, health and safety legislation, rules about pesticides and additives and so on. A crucial theme of his book is which aspects should be protected, which improved and which scrapped. Readers will no doubt disagree on some, but they are all worth serious consideration. The alternative, as the author explains, will be trade deals with other countries that may well have even worse consequences for producers and consumers. One aspect that Clutterbuck does argue for is a more sustainable British food system that does not rely so heavily on imports.

As he points out, free trade does not provide food security, it only helps the profiteering multinationals and it is certainly right to think about how Britain could produce better, healthier and more varied food (Clutterbuck highlights how the present system reduces some products such as fruit and vegetables to a tiny number of varieties). But I'm wary of a strategy that calls for "a new branding of Britishness", as this approach can feed a nationalistic direction with all the dangerous potential that means in the era of Trump and the alt-right. "Buying British" won't on its own give us a sustainable food system - that will come through challenging the multinationals, the landowners, supermarket domination and the capitalist system itself.

Clutterbuck finishes the book with a series of demands that we should be fighting for, and the need for a "coalition of red and green, of unions, NGOs, to local initiatives, businesses and interested political parties, to build a new red-green food economy to challenge power bases."

For all I may have criticised some small aspects of Charlie Clutterbuck's book here, I do embrace the sense of democracy and regaining of control of agriculture that is in his conclusion. He writes that:

As both a socialist and a soil zoologist, I believe that we should get right of the magic money trees that benefit the already well off, and plant many more real trees so that everybody can benefit from their fruits., We should be growing all sorts of plants throughout the land, in ways that are not demeaning to workers but promote the pleasures of working the land and save our inheritance. This may sound idealistic, but it is also very practical. We can show what and who we want to be through food. We can do that by cutting out food speculators and investing in our land - once we have 'control over our land'.

Taking control of the land should be a key vision for the labour and trade union movement post-Brexit. But doing that in a way that fosters internationalism, not puts up borders and keeps out migrants like the EU does is crucial. "Control over our land" should be about mass democracy - there are too many fences and barriers already to ordinary enjoying the land and working it, and longer term we need to take the land off the massive landowners so it can be used for everyone's benefit. Charlie Clutterbuck's book is an important look at the challenges we face, but one that can inspire real change as long as workers and their organisations are prepared to fight for it. I encourage people to read it.

Related Reviews
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Magdoff & Tokar - Agriculture and Food in Crisis
Howkins - The Death of Rural England
Graham-Leigh - A Diet of Austerity
Sutton - Food Worth Fighting For
GRAIN - The Great Climate Robbery
Lymbery - Farmageddon

Shaun Jeffery - The Village in Revolt: The Story of the Longest Strike in History

The story of the Burston School Strike, the "longest in history", is a seminal one for the British trade union movement. The story has often been told as one simply about two brave trade union activists, Annie and Tom Higdon who defied the local Norfolk establishment and fought for their jobs, and most importantly, their children's education.

But as Shaun Jeffery makes very clear, this struggle was in the context of much wider social and economic changes taking place. This is not to downplay the role of the Higdons however - they were principled individuals who were at the forefront of fighting against poverty, inequality and exploitation. But this brought them into conflict with their employers and the local representatives of the higher-classes.

The story of the Burston School strike begins then, not in Burston, but in Wood Dalling, Norfolk where the Higdons were previously employed. Here they came a cropper of the local employers after a series of disagreements of, what seem, relatively petty issues. Eventually dismissed and then re-employed in Burston it was immediately clear that the Higdon's would not simply agree to whatever the establishment wanted. They complained about the state of the school, light fires when not supposed to do so, and generally upset the local gentry and clergy by their non-subservience.

They were clearly adored by the children they taught. Fond memories from their students show that the Higdon's were good teachers, kind and generous. Helping the children whose clothing were inadequate, bringing gifts of sweets and toys, organising Christmas events and, most importantly, taking an interest in their general education when the dominant form of teaching was simply the rote learning of the "three Rs". I was struck that their generosity extended way beyond the village boundaries. Twice a year, for instance, Annie Higdon arranged for children from poor communities in London to visit for a holiday.

Jeffery begins with the background to Annie and Tom. Both came from poor rural communities, though Annie's family had money due to a lucky break by an ancestor. How they met we do not know, but it was clear that their politics meshed and they both had the self confidence needed to stand-up to their supposed "betters". Tom became a central figure in both villages in the growing trade union movement for agricultural workers, something that he was part of for his whole life. Annie was also a trade unionist in the teaching union, albeit it much more isolated, but her politics was nonetheless centered on trying improve to make the lives of the poorest.

When, on April 1st 1914, the two were sacked, almost every single child walked out on strike. While it's not clear if the Higdons knew of these plans, the students were clearly supported by their parents. Rapidly the strike became a cause for the wider movement, and as days spread into months, the authorities were unable to get the children to return. Eventually the union movement and the local population would come up with the cash to setup a "strike school" that taught Burston (and children from further afield) through the war and into the 1930s. Jeffery tells the fascinating story of how the strike became a cause célèbre for the wider union movement, particularly the railway workers union, who brought speakers and solidarity to the tiny village repeatedly.

The role of the railway union hints at the wider context to the strike. For it is clear from Jeffery's research that Burston was not an isolated event. In the months running up to the 1914 events there had been a rash of strikes by school students in England, and these were widely reported. Jeffery argues that these were in the context of widening class conflict and I think this is right. The run up to the First World War saw a growth in strikes, known as the Great Unrest, and children were not immune to the explosion in trade union membership and militancy. In the countryside this was tied up with the rebirth of agricultural trade unionism as the reality of rural poverty (something very clear to the Higdons) became unbearable.

A third factor was the breaking down of the old order in rural villages. In both Burston and Wood Dalling, it was clear that the local establishment was struggling to maintain its old role as total local authority. This was being challenged politically (by the emerging workers organisations and parties) and economically by the growth and development of new forms of agriculture (and other industries such as the railways). The spectacular rudeness and belligerence of the local school board (usually the local clergy and big farmers) in the face of what seem relatively benign demands from the Higdons demonstrates their firm belief in their right to govern. This could no longer hold and the rebellion (as well as other strikes etc) demonstrates this, as do the references by both the Higdons and the contemporary unions to "Junkers" in Norfolk. This refers to the landowning class in Germany and had a particular resonance in the context of the First World War.

Today the Burston strike is celebrated with an annual festival much like Tolpuddle. Shaun Jeffery has been part of making sure that takes place and helps us to remember this important struggle. His book celebrates the role of Tom and Annie, as well as the brave school students who went on strike, and their families who stood by and encouraged them in the face of the courts and the farmers. Their sacrifices should not be forgotten as they illuminate rural life in the early 20th century, and I am pleased to recommend Shaun Jeffery's excellent history which will both educate and inspire the reader.

Buy The Village in Revolt from Bookmarks, the socialist Bookshop - click here.

Related Reviews

Groves - Sharpen the Sickle
Marlow - The Tolpuddle Martyrs
Horn - Joseph Arch
Howkins - The Death of Rural England
Whitlock - Peasant's Heritage
Bell - Men and the Fields

M. Jahi Chappell - Beginning to End Hunger Food and the Environment in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Beyond

A study of attempts to deal with poverty, hunger and malnutrition in Belo Horizonte, Brazil and what this means for food poverty, sustainable farming and wider questions of food sovereignty for the majority of the city's population.

My review of this book is published in the Climate and Capitalism web-journal here.

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Wilhelm Hasbach - A History of the English Agricultural Labourer

This classic study of English agriculture was first published by the author in Germany in 1894 and translated into English in 1908, where it was reprinted several times. I read the 1920 edition which has an introduction by the famous Fabian socialist Sidney Webb reflecting the left leanings of the writer.

Hasbach's History of the English Agricultural Labourer is a fantastically detailed work. Some of it is, without doubt dated, and on occasion the constant repetition of facts, figures and dates makes it tiresome to read. But Hasbach manages to show how, within the broad sweep of historical development, the peasant and then the labourer in England's rural economies had their lives transformed. The first chapter looks at the feudal manor as an organisation unit for labour and rent. But Hasbach is only interested in these feudal arrangements for how they frame the later development of capitalist agriculture.

Hasbach repeatedly emphasises that the rural masses were very much the victims of agricultural development in England. They were pushed from their land, had their wages constantly driven down, and faced all sorts of legal restrictions on their ability to improve their lot. Enclosure, for instance, didn't simply remove people from the land, destroying their homes and communities, but those that remained found their lots immeasurably reduced.

As for the great mass of the cottagers and squatters, it is obvious that to them division meant simply that the very backbone of their economy was broken. They had few friends, and many bitter enemies, and were unable to get their case represented in Parliament. They could do nothing, and went empty away....The wastes being divided, shelter and firing were no longer to be had for nothing. Men must either pay or go without. And in very few places was any compensation paid for this loss.

Hasbach sees enclosure not as a simple change to the organisation of the countryside which brought about mass depopulation, but also a transformation in the economic relations. New forms of labour are developed (which he explores in horrific detail) such as the gang systems. This is agriculture designed to maximise profit.

Hasbach looks at how many reformers tried to understand what these changes had done to the population and how things might be improved. A whole variety of strategies were looked at - from the creation of allotments, to the recreation of rural communities. One 18th century commentator, Richard Price who regarded "the agricultural changes mainly from an ethical, social and political standpoint" and had a rather romantic view of the "earlier stages of civilisation" based on small holding farming, argued that there was a need to "drive back the inhabitants of the towns into the country. Establish some regulations for preserving the lives of infants. Discourage luxury and celibacy, and the engrossing of farms".

This is an extreme approach, but it does highlight one problem of the time when discussing the conditions of the poor, one that Hasbach himself repeats, which is the lack of any believe in the poor themselves playing any role in the improvement of their situation. They are passive recipiants of government plans, or reforming strategies. As a result Hasbach also fails to highlight in detail any of the great acts of resistance by the rural communities. In fact, when he does comment on these events, it tends to be in a negative way.

The constant war which the pauper has to wage with all who em,ploy or pay him i destructive to his honest and his temper; as his subsistence does not depend on his exertions, he loses all that sweetens labour.

Later he continues

The demoralisation reached its height when labourers revenged themselves on obnoxious farmers by rick-burning. It was was not uncommon for several fires in one night to proclaim grimly and plainly to the propertied classes the destruction o the ancient concord of the village community.

But at times rick-burning etc became a genuine mass movement in the countryside that went far beyond simple revenge on obnoxious farmers, taking up questions of wages, village organisation and made attempts to democratically control aspects of peoples' lives such as by the removal of particular over-seers. This brief paragraph neglects the strikes, protests and other mass actions of the rural class struggle.

Prejudices

On occasion modern readers will smile at Hasbech's 19th century prejudices. Several times he suggests that part of the problem was that rural labourers were too ignorant to understand their position, particularly in regard to the employment of children. In others his language is very dated, as when he writes that "the prettier and livelier country girls sough situations in the towns and returned no more". But despite this, the book echoes with Hasbech's deep sympathy for the poverty and problems of the rural masses throughout history. This means that his discussions on the family wage, children employment, gang labour and the levels of wages don't ignore that behind all these things are real sufferings that he hopes can be alleviated. Thus he can write in the conclusion:

Up to the present time the two most important stages in the history of the agricultural labourer have been, first, his acquisition of personal freedom and second his severance from land and capital. The first was an historical process, desired by many but... intended by no one. The second was, on the contrary, definitely intended, end as well as means, by many people. They desired to place proletarian labouring class as the disposal of the farmer, believing that such as step was in the interest both of employers and the public.

Hasbach however, can only see the solution as being a return to some sort of closer relation between land and labourer. This means the redistribution of land and a vast increase in the numbers of small holdings. This Hasbach believes, will also bring the added benefit of strengthening protectionism against free-trade, which Hasbach saw as being a driver of the impoverishment of the rural masses.

These are conclusions that are tied up in 19th century economic debates and few will read this book to rediscover them. But Hasbach's book is a treasure trove of detail of the economic lives of the rural population of England, it never romanticises that life, even if it sometimes neglects the role of ordinary people in resisting the changes that took place.

Related Reviews

Whitlock - Peasant's HeritageHowkins - The Death of Rural England
Mazoyer & Roudart - A History of World Agriculture
Groves - Sharpen the Sickle
Hammond & Hammond - The Village Labourer
Hammond & Hammond - The Skilled Labourer
Fisher - Custom, Work and Market Capitalism

James C. Scott - Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

This fascinating new book takes a new look at an age old question of ancient history. Precisely when, where and why did early humans move from effectively nomadic existence to a sedentary one? Why did they make this transition that would lead to the first "states"? Traditionally historians argue the key issue is agriculture, and that farming led directly to sedentary life, and then to the rise of states and civilisation.

But this book by James C. Scott argues that while there is some truth to this, reality was often more complex. Of course the "neolithic revolution" was a fundamental transformation for human society. As Scott writes:

The domestication of plants as represented ultimately by fixed-field farming.. enmeshed us in an annual set of routines that organised our work life, our settlement patterns, our social structure... The harvest itself sets in train another sequence of routines: in the case of cereal crops, cutting,m bundling, threshing, gleaning, separation of straw, winnowing chaff, sieving, drying, sorting - most of which has historically been coded as women;'s work... Once Homo sapiens took that fateful step into agriculture, our species entered an austere monastery who taskmaster consists mostly of the demanding genetic clockwork of a few plants.

None of this is particularly new,  but the key question here is "why" did this happen? Scott answers this complex question with a number of points. Firstly he shows that domestication predates sedentary life. Animals and plants were used and managed even when humans were still living nomadic hunter-gatherer lives. He also points out that a transition to agriculture actually requires a lot more work from individuals.

Sometimes Scott is guilty of coming across as though he is the first author to highlight some of these things. But authors like MArshall Sahlins and Richard Lee showed in their studies of contempoary nomadic cultures that communities were well aware that agriculture requires more work per calorie. Its something I myself wrote about in Land and Labour. But Scott does well to show how blurred the distinction between nomadism, agriculture and sedetary life is.

Scott argues points to a number of societies that made the transition back to nomadic culture from sedentary society (the Dakota and Cheyenne nation of North America is a classic example though they did this when horses became available from Spanish colonists). He also argues, and I think rightly, that many early states were vulnerable because of their reliance on agriculture - and that the historical "collapse" of these societies is less the disasters that Jared Diamond has implied and more a transition back to earlier social organisation. In this context its good to see McAnany and Yoffee's book Questioning Collapse getting recognition.

Scott's book really excels when he talks about the nature of early states. I was particularly taken by his idea of "political crops" particularly wheat, barley, rice, millet and maize. These are easy to quantify, ripen at set times and the produce can be easily measured and transported (they're also relatively light for moving in bulk). Students of Karl Marx's Labour Theory of Value might be intrigued by the following example:

Units of grain served as standards of measurement and value for trade and tribute against which the value of other commodities was calculated - including labour. The daily food ration of the lowest class of labourers in Umma, Mesopotamia, was almost exactly two litres of barley measured out in the beveled bowls that are among the most ubiquitous archaeological finds.

I was less convinced of the role that Scott attributes to coercion in the early states. He writes that "when other forms of unfree labour [in addition to slavery] such as debt bondage, forced resettlement, and corvee labour, are taken into account, the importance of coerced labour for the maintenance and expansion of the grain-labour module at the core of the state is hard to deny."

Here I think Scott is slightly guilty of over-emphasising the coercive nature of the state. Writing about Mesopotamia again he says,

The dense concentration of grain and manpower on the only soils capable of sustaining them in such numbers... maximized the possibilities of appropriate, stratification, and inequality. The state form colonizes this nucleus as its productive based, scales it up, intensifies it, and occasionally it adds infrastructure... in the interest of fattening and protecting the goose that lays the golden eggs... one can think of these forms of intensification as elite niche-construction: modifying the landscape and ecology so as to enrich the productivity of its habitat.

Rightly Scott understands that the agricultural surplus is central to the functioning of the state. But to often he sees this as arising only out of coercion by the ruling classes. In other words the mass of the population don't really want to live in a "state" and have to be forced to do so. But precisely because residents would receive benefits from a state - protection from raiding, the organisation of food distribution, maintenance and building of irrigation systems etc - they might not necessarily all have to be coerced all the time. The ruling class doesn't only have a stick at its disposal, they also can dangle carrots.

That's not to say that everyone wanted to live in an unequal society. Agriculture gives human society a surplus which can lead to a class of society and the development of a state. But crucially it doesn't always. Flannery and Marcus' marvellous book The Creation of Inequality shows that early societies, both sedentary and nomadic resisted the development of inequality in numerous innovative ways. The rise of states was not inevitable, but when it did happen it eventually led to the erosion of the majority of other forms of social organisation.

All in all there is much of interest in this book, its easy to read, it made me rethink how and why the transition to agriculture takes place, and its full of fascinating details. Scott beings together a lot of material from many different sources. My slight disagreements about emphasis are not intended to prevent anyone from getting and enjoying this book.

Related Reviews

Bellwood - The First Farmers
Martin - The Death of Big Men and the Rise of the Big Shots
Flannery and Marcus - The Creation of Inequality
McAnany and Yoffee - Questioning Collapse
Childe - What Happened in History?
Harper - The Fate of Rome