The question of land...

As we've written before, until we resolve the question of who owns the land, we'll never be able to properly fulfil our dreams and ideals. Throughout history, there have been valiant attempts to resolve that question and return vast tracts of land back to the commons where they rightly belong. It's in the spirit of inspiring people to keep on trying until we win that we present these brief thoughts:

Land and Freedom

One of the oldest anarchist slogans was “Land and Freedom.” You don’t hear it much anymore these days, but this battle cry was used most fervently in the revolutionary movements in Mexico, Spain, Russia, and Manchuria. In the second case, the workers of Spain who spoke of “Tierra y Libertad” were often fresh arrivals to the city who still remembered the feudal existence they had left behind in the countryside. In Russia and Manchuria, the revolutionaries who linked those two concepts, land and freedom, were largely peasants..Without land there is no freedom.

The Diggers

On this day, 1 April 1649, a farmer and writer called Gerrard Winstanley along with a small group of 30 to 40 men and women occupied St. George's Hill, Watton, Surrey, England and began tilling the land collectively. Over the coming months, numerous local people would join them and for the movement which became known as the Diggers.

Winstanley was a Protestant who began to write pamphlets criticising the church which held that "god is in the heavens above the skies". Instead he argued that god was "the spirit within you". In a pamphlet published in January 1649 he wrote: "In the beginning of time God made the earth. Not one word was spoken at the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule over another, but selfish imaginations did set up one man to teach and rule over another."

The politics of the Diggers were a form of proto-communist anarchism, advocating direct action, common ownership and the dissolution of hierarchy.

For this and hundreds of other stories, get a copy of this book: Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion.

This project ticks a number of our boxes:)

We Are Avon

We Are Avon is an emerging web of active producers, farms, organizations and diverse communities collaborating to build better local food systems for all.

This is a grassroots movement to provide healthy and affordable food resilience for this region whilst also regenerating the communities, lands and waters of the Avon catchment area.

Anchoring food and land as powerful frames for reconnecting people to place, this project aims to re-identify humans as regenerators and solutionists to the climate and nature crisis we collectively face.

This is an interesting project that ticks a number of our boxes. What really grabbed our attention was a) the desire to decentralise and localise food production in the Avon region - something that's very dear to our hearts - and b) the desire to clean up the waters of the Avon and her tributaries. On that basis alone, we've given this project an entry in The Directory.