The Struggle for the Land
Far from the bucolic picture of Arcadian bliss, of paternalistic big farmers and contented farm workers, the history of the countryside, and the struggle of classes in that countryside, is far, different.
When a poll tax (!) was introduced in 1381 to pay for the Hundred Years War with France, this acted as a spark to light the tinder of rural unrest. All taxes would be passed down to and be paid by those who toiled in the fields, and this was fully understood by them. 5,000 men armed themselves and attacked the King's tax collector in Brentwood, Essex. This inspired other uprisings throughout Essex and Kent.
Yeoman veterans of the war joined with the serfs. Wat Tyler, one of these ex-soldiers and an eloquent orator, was elected commander-in-chief in Kent. Capturing Canterbury, the movement liberated John Ball from prison. This wandering priest had been touring the country for 20 years preaching radical doctrines of levelling and the land to be shared in common. He was reported by the chronicler Walsingham to have preached: "Once the great ones had been cut off, men would all enjoy equal freedom, rank, and power, and share all things in common".
The peasants marched on London from both Kent and Essex. On the way they opened prisons and burnt records, some particularly hated lords and officials being killed. The original calls for the abolition of the old bonds, the right to commute services to rent, and all the other restrictions , began to escalate into an idea that the whole land owning class could be toppled. Unfortunately, through trickery and the lack of maturity of the movement, the uprising was crushed and its leading lights, including Tyler, Ball and Jack Straw, with 110 others were slaughtered. The promises of the King (to abolish serfdom, all feudal duties, the removal of all restrictions on freedom of labour and trade and a general amnesty for the rebels) were revoked. The last of the rebels were hunted down in East Anglia.
Uprising
Though the uprising had failed, the discontent continued, with serfs doing their feudal duties reluctantly, forcing the landowners to change over to rent from the serfs for cultivating their strips, using this rent to hire "free" labour.
With the relaxation of the forest laws in the mid 1300s, the rural poor began to drive their cattle into the deer parks and to take timber from the forests, and to poach, by stealth and by night. People began to squat in the forests and clear areas for agriculture. By the 17th century, these squatter communities, outside the dominion of the lords, had increased drastically. There 'masterless' men and women congregated, many driven out of their houses on the landowners' estates.
Unrest continued to simmer in the countryside. During the Jack Cade revolt against Henry VI in 1450, levelling elements met in the woods outside Hastings led by a carpenter, John Clipsham, demanding that all goods and the land be held in common.
Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries there were hundreds of revolts against enclosure. In May 1607, for example, there was a month of widespread and continuous rioting in Northamptonshire where enclosure had been carried out on a massive basis. The landowners as lord lieutenants of the counties raised their own armies and put down the rebellion and many insurgents were executed. Despite this, disturbances continued in neighbouring counties.
In general, actions against the enclosures were on a guerrilla level, wildcat and uncoordinated. Fences and hedges, symbolising enclosure were broken down by the rural labourers in many areas over the course of 200 years.
The Civil War meant that the Parliament of Cromwell was dominated by landowners and this increased the rate of enclosure and the war of the landowners against the rural poor and landless. At the same time, this period of ferment also threw up new radical ideas.
A small group of unemployed labourers and landless farm workers gathered at St.George's Hill near Walton-on-Thames in Surrey in 1649. and began to cultivate the common land. Notable among them were Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard, who had been active as a Leveller in the Army. This group, known as the Diggers or True Levellers, issued a call for the people to have access to the forests and common lands. Harassment from the local landlords forced them to move to another site, and continued attacks resulted in their settlement being destroyed. Other Digger settlements sprung up throughout the south-east and midland counties.
Winstanley, the Diggers' chief theorist, argued against the whole idea of private property. He attacked the notion that the landowners had a right to the land and declared that they had stolen it from the mass of the population.
Poaching
The Diggers thought they could bring about a revolution and communism of the land through peaceful reasoning. The repression unleashed against them broke them up and by 1660 all radical publications were banned. In 1662 the Justices of the Peace were allowed powers to stop migration, effectively sabotaging the setting up of new Digger settlements.
The war of the landowners against the rural poor continued into the next century. Equally, defiance of enclosure continued, in small ways with the gathering of firewood, and in large-scale poaching and attacks on the landowners' property.
In the 1720s gangs of men with their faces blacked up invaded deer parks in the Home Counties, in particular the Royal forests. The death penalty was brought in to deal with the 'Blacks' and 16 were hanged in the next 2 years. Two gamekeepers were shot dead by the Blacks. Many Blacks died in prison, and many others were transported and about 40 became outlaws.
The Duke of Newcastle's steward wrote in 1763 (in Sussex) that: " I have got a list of about 10 poor wretches chiefly women and children that have been pilfering the woods this cold weather and intend having them all before a magistrate at the first proper opportunity and if I can prevail upon the justices to act as they ought shall get them whipped". Four months later another "stealer" of wood had his house torn down by the steward!
In 1830 country labourers rose in revolt throughout southern and eastern England. The hated threshing machines were smashed, ricks and barns were burnt down, all under the cover of darkness. Many threatening letters were sent to landowners. This movement became known as Captain Swing because of the signature on many of the letters. The revolt centred around low pay, piece work and the new technology of the threshing machines, which threw many out of work. Large crowds gathered protesting against these wrongs. In the following repression, 19 were executed and 552 transported to Australia, many others receiving prison sentences.
Solidarity of the urban workers with the rural poor was often expressed- after all, urban workers were rural workers or their descendants who had been driven from the land. In London, Thomas Spence, seen by some as an ancestor of anarchist communism, argued in the 1790s that " We must destroy not only personal and hereditary lordship, but the cause of them, which is Private Property in land". One of his disciples, Thomas Evans, at the end of the Wars wrote: "All the land, the waters, the mines, the houses, and all permanent feudal property, must be returned to the people".
The heavy repression after Captain Swing meant that never again was there to be violent uprising on a mass scale. This step back from insurrection resulted in a turn towards the creation of unions. Even these attempts were met with persecution. The attempt by farm workers to organise in Tolpuddle in Dorset in 1834 resulted in the transportation of six of them.
The radicalism of Spense and Evans had little effect on the rural poor. They had little aspiration to seize the land from the rich. They were set on gaining some concessions, and were not very successful in that. Small concessions were gained. Instead of the land being seized by them, small parcels of ground were allowed them- allotments. And this only came in 1906 after 50 years of campaigning.
Joseph Arch
In 1872 a new union was formed by agricultural workers. Under the leadership of Joseph Arch, a Warwickshire labourer, farm workers were organised all over England. Wage increases were gained in many areas.
The National Agricultural Labourers Union was short-lived. The years of bad harvest and agricultural decline reversed the gains of the union. The farmers set up a blacklist of those who were members. In 1877 the first shiploads of prairie wheat from North America put many of the labourers out of work. A disheartened Arch began to campaign for farm workers to emigrate to Australasia and the Americas, and in fact many did, further depopulating the countryside.
In Scotland those Highlanders who did not emigrate because of the Clearances settled on coastal smallholdings (crofts). The landowners put the squeeze on the crofters. The crofts were not large enough to maintain a whole family, so they were forced to work for the landowners. But there was a widespread belief that the land belonged to all. In 1881 some Skye crofters put out a petition demanding that the landowner Lord MacDonald return the land of Ben Lee to them. This was immediately rejected and the crofters started a rent strike. When a sheriff tried to serve notices on the crofters, a crowd of 150 physically attacked him and burnt the notices. The Sheriff of Inverness-shire sent 50 police to arrest the crofters. They were surrounded by local people and stoned, but the police managed to arrest 5 men regarded as ringleaders. The Highland Land League which grew out of these events rapidly gained support, and the government was forced to make some concessions like a rent tribunal and security of tenure as long as the rent was paid. Riots continued, however, because no extra land was granted to the crofters.
Rebecca Riots
In Wales in the 19th century, there was widespread destruction of enclosure fences as well as bread and corn riots. The most important of these were the Rebecca riots. From 1839 til 1844 throughout Wales hundreds of actions took place. Many toll-gates along the roads were smashed, salmon weirs were destroyed because the game laws stopped the poor taking fish from the rivers, haystacks were burnt and poorhouses attacked. 150 police and 1800 troops were sent to quell this uprising.
New disturbances erupted in the 1880s in Wales caused by tenant farmers and labourers being charged high rents by the landowners. This time though, the Welsh Land League that resulted from this crisis was thoroughly constitutional and no direct action on a large scale took place.
From time to time, the old practice of smashing down enclosure fences re-emerged. In 1908 a landowner at West Preston Manor in Sussex decided that a lane running by his property was an inconvenience and had two gates put up at each end of the lane. The local villagers destroyed the gates. Again the landowner reerected them. This time the villagers turned out in force, accompanied by the village band and broke them down again. Local postcards of the event were produced!
During the 19th century, the idea that city dwellers should enjoy the countryside spread from the professional and artisan classes to the working classes. The open countryside and clean air were a solace to many used to crowded conditions and foul air. By the 1930s this had become a massive movement, with an estimated 15,000 people from Sheffield and 15,0000 from Manchester visiting the Peak District on an average Sunday.
However, large tracts of land were cut off from the ramblers. In 1935, there were only 12 footpaths in the Peak District. The best walking land, including Kinder Scout and Bleaklow Ridge, were fenced off. Ramblers started to organise annual rallies in the Peak District. In 1932 a new organisation, the British Workers Sports Federation began to organise rambles for young people in the north. It began to organise mass trespasses. In 1932, 400 ramblers organised a mass trespass of Kinder Scout. 5 ramblers were imprisoned and in response thousands joined two more mass trespasses.
The history of the British "countryside" is a history of struggle. The mass trespasses, the militancy of farm labourers, the repression are all things that should be known and learnt from, as we once again make the land an important issue that can mobilise thousands.