Opinion: The Land Use Framework should spark a ‘revolution’
© AdobeStock It’s more than 350 years since England attempted a Glorious Revolution (and that one wasn’t very successful).
It’s high time we went for it – a last-ditch attempt to regain control of arable farming before the Land Use Framework sees us lose all power to decide what we grow or where we grow it.
Every time a UK government has pushed to control farming, we’ve ultimately given in and they’ve become bolder.
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Marx suggested societies have lifecycles and stages. It begins with communism, then the leaders decide they don’t have to pay the workers and slave exploitation is born, the top brass take land and the feudal system is born.
With vast land and wealth, the leaders get richer and capitalism has its day. Finally the poor outnumber the wealthy, the “debts” of capitalism have to be paid and socialism rises.
So where are we in the UK? We obviously still have a significant feudal system in place. It’s ailing, though, and now we see the nobility selling vast tracts of land in an attempt to survive long enough to lob the estate “hot potato” to the next generation.
This will open the door for wealthy (capitalist) individuals to take land and the power that currently comes with it. But will the government “allow” this? Are we at the end of the feudal system in the countryside?
The government bringing back compulsory purchase rights last year should have sounded alarm bells, but it seemed to go by largely unnoticed as everyone frantically fought off inheritance tax (IHT).
Were we looking the wrong way? Wasn’t this a warning?
Why not use the time before harvest to challenge (or even overthrow!) the hierarchy and establish a mixed socioeconomic system
The next chapter now seems to be contained in the recently released Land Framework Directive. I would have thought landowners would be up in arms (or chopping off heads) at the release of this document and the suggestions it makes about the government’s intent for land use in the future… but no.
All seems calm. I can only assume this means landowners must be excited for the email, when it arrives, telling them what their land will now be graded as – and thus what value it has, what use it will be classified for and what they should be doing with it.
The assurances contained in this document that the government will even help by telling you how you should (must?) carry out these activities has obviously reassured landowners and that is why there has been no outcry, not even a whimper, the NFU has even been quoted as “welcoming it”.
Maybe this all seems too far-fetched? My family lost their original farm to compulsory purchase for a new town, just about in my lifetime, so it’s happened in living history. Why, then, should we discount it?
Maybe you’ll be unaffected, maybe you won’t. Maybe all your new plans for dealing with low cereal prices, unsupported farming and IHT will be for nothing, maybe they won’t.
But why not use the time before harvest – which will barely cover the cost of the fuel, labour and equipment costs anyway – to challenge (or even overthrow!) the hierarchy and establish a mixed socioeconomic system.
Our European neighbours did this throughout history and they still reap the benefits of it today – profitable farming, from favourable economic regimes, laws and the support or their citizens.
Vive la revolution!