No doubt Donald Trump would call it communist, but one solution to unfair land ownership is to divide up land. This is to move on from feudal land rules, which still exist. For example, one of England’s biggest landowners by far is King Charles III (Prince William now owns a good portion of Dartmoor, and has been criticised by wildlife campaigners by only giving over ‘small potatoes’ amounts for rewilding, keeping the rest for himself, at a time when more land is needed to restore endangered wildlife habitats).
An interesting village is Laxton (Nottinghamshire), one of just a few left to practice open field strip farming, which divides parcels of land between villagers (a bit like a community shop, so everyone gets access to equal share of food). Unlike today when a tiny majority of people own our land.
Open field strip farming used to be the norm 1000 years ago, yet this village is one of the few still using it. The system is mostly used for farming, which of course back in the day was the trade of most people. Care must be taken (for instance, to ensure diseased plants and animals don’t end up on neighbouring farms). But if done well, it’s a great way for small independent farmers to empower themselves against huge landowners.
Today, the biggest landowners are the big companies or corporations: the government, the Crown Estate, the Monarchy, the National Trust and RSPB. The Duke of Westminster also owns a huge portion of land, much of which he rents out for friends to go on shooting parties. Aristocrats own almost a third of our farmland. Scotland’s biggest holder of land is a Danish billionaire who runs a clothing chain and is the largest shareholder of fashion store ASOS.
A Few People Own Most of England’s Land
Nearly all land in England is owned by just a few people. The royal family owns around 250,000 acres (outside 600,000 acres of crown estate) with environmentalist Guy Shrubsole saying if this was the same for everyone, England would be owned by just 250 people.
Guy’s book Who Owns England? is a fabulous read, where he makes use of digital mapping and the Freedom of Information Act to find how England’s elite have for too long built walls, buried surveys and sheltered land behind offshore shell companies. This has resulted in tightly-guarded country estates, ecologically-ravaged grouse moors and empty Mayfair mansions, which in some cases has eroded our democracy.
Most of Belgravia (and around half of neighbouring Mayfair, the most expensive property on the Monopoly board) is owned by the Duke of Westminster. The previous Duke of Westminster went to court in the famous ‘Westminster vs Westminster’ case, when he was told to legally sell 750,000 properties to leaseholders at a fair price, due to long-term tenancy. He resigned from the Conservative party in protest, despite owning up to 300 acres of exclusive London districts with an estimated worth of 3.5 billion pounds.
Since his death, the empire has now transferred to the very young shoulders of his son, who despite being born with ‘the longest silver spoon anyone could have’ is at least using some of his wealth to help the less fortunate in society. However there are calls for him to ban hunting on estates he owns (one creature was actually killed in someone’s garden, after the hunt pursued it onto private land).
Should Golf Courses Share Land With Others?
Golf courses tend to be very well-maintained and none of us want louts coming in and dropping litter etc. But there is a huge disparity here. England has around 25% of all Europe’s golf courses (usually over several acres). And no we don’t have to build houses on them (we can build cheap and naturally insulated new eco homes on existing disused land).
Higher income groups have access to nature at beach houses, lake cabins, golf courses or large gardens. For the poor, the alternative to television for leisure time is public space. For this reason, parks in particular are evidence of true democracy at work. Enrique Peñalosa (former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia)
Half the London golf courses are owned by councils or The Crown Estate. Together they make up 131 courses covering 11,000 acres that is the second largest amount of green space in London after parks and public gardens. Nationwide, golf courses make up 10 times more land area than allotments, with around a sixth of them in the London area. Together that’s half the land area of the National Trust. This leads him to ask why all those golf clubs are sitting there, while people are craving for space to walk themselves, their children and dogs – and the NHS savings would be enormous, by creating walkable communities.
London’s Beckenham Place Park is the first former golf course to be turned into a public park by Lewisham Council. It has a 5km walking/cycle track, wildflower meadows, ancient oaks, luxury lawns and even a swimming lake. People enjoy woodland walks and picnics, children play football and visitors sip wine at the nearby mansion cafe. Just 9 miles from Trafalgar Square, this is set on the site of a former golf course (of 100 years) that was closed in 2016. At 86 hectares, it’s now one of the largest public parks in London.
Whenever we take a family walk to a nearby golf course, we follow a dirt trail around the perimeter, the only area in which us non-golfing ‘commonfolk’ are allowed. We circle toward home (the view obscured by an ugly chainlink fence) there is a distinct sense of exclusion. That privilege is reserved for the golfers – unsurprisingly mostly middle-aged older white men. We never see more than a dozen of them at a time. That so much land is reserved for so few people incenses my daughter. It’s not fair. She’s going to write a letter to the mayor, she says. I feel the same way I do, when I walk through First Class on an airplane. Kerala Taylor
