I
lived in Britain for 11 years in two different periods, the first in North
Kensington not far from the slums, the second among the nobs of South
Kensington, and one of the reasons that British life never really appealed to
me was my knowledge that the whole goddammed place was owned and operated by
the aristocracy.
That may be a slight exaggeration,
but the fact is that one thing that always stuck in my craw was the
unchallenged position at the head of society of this network of nobs whose
wealth came from their ownership of much of the land, usually granted to them
by some king or other centuries before, and whose leadership, of the British
Empire no less, was guaranteed by their
having passed through a tight network of privately-run schools from which they
graduated into directorships of the major businesses, and, in politics, into
the House of Commons, the House of Lords, or the governing Cabinet. (This
unsavoury system still exists, right into the present day, in spite of all
efforts to change it by various Labour governments. Half of all the Prime
Ministers of Britain since the Second World War have attended private schools.)
I was brought up in a nation of small
towns that had traditionally emphasised the welfare of all its people, so I really
didn’t take kindly to the many areas of British life in which most people still
lived in overcrowded, ugly conditions that were a hangover from the days of
Imperial grandeur based on the Industrial Revolution, while the top dogs lived
in glorious luxury. (It is worth mentioning, as has only recently been revealed
by assiduous researchers, that the
wealth behind the Industrial Revolution came largely from the huge reparations paid to
the slave-owners when slavery was abolished: a typically British action,
that the reparations did not go to the
slaves, but to their owners, who included many of the noble families of
Britain.)
This question of the ownership of the
land of Britain has not been much written about in England itself, but, as with
most subjects, the facts could be discovered with a bit of an effort. When I
took up my post as correspondent for The
Montreal Star in London, I had already, during my previous four years in
Britain, had a peek into this world of landlord and tenant when I had worked
for a small weekly newspaper in Coventry, where one of my duties was to write a
column called Our Farmer Friends that
involved my visiting local farmers and
interviewing them as to their operations.
I discovered to my great surprise that almost all the farmers around us
in Warwickshire were tenants to some overweening landlord, who not only owned
most of the land, but also many of the villages, including the houses in which
people were mere long-term tenants.
So, when I returned in the 1960s as a
reporter, and was confronted with writing
about life in the nation’s capital --- I have never complained about this
arduous task, because I soon found that
if one couldn't find something to write about in London every day of the week,
there must be something wrong with one’s perception of what is interesting
---- I made it my business to
investigate this nexus of landlord and tenant and how it affected the city’s
life.
The reason I have now returned to
this subject is that according to the newspapers, a report has recently been
issued covering the remarkable subject of ownership of the land in Britain, and
showing figures that, sixty years after I wrote my pieces, seem hardly to have
changed at all. According to Guy Shrubsole, author of the book quoted, Who
Owns England? half of England is owned by 25,000 landowners, mostly of the
aristocracy, who make up one per cent of the population.
His figures suggest that 30 per cent
of the land of England is still owned by the aristocracy and gentry, 18 per
cent by corporations, 17 by oligarchs and city bankers, only 8.5 per cent by
the public sector, five per cent by homeowners, 1.4 per cent by the Crown and
royal family, 2 per cent by charitable conservationists, and 0.5 per cent by
the Church of England. This is a portrait of a country that would appear to be
totally ingrown on itself, and perhaps explains the sclerotic performance of
their elected representatives as they struggle to free themselves from the
domination of those distrusted foreigners on the other side of the English
channel.
This comes as no surprise to me, I
have to confess. I discovered in the early 1960s, for example, that the London
squares, with which the great capital city is dotted, were mostly owned by the
Duke of Westminster, who appeared to own about half or more of the land in
London. Surprisingly, some of these squares, I can remember Grosvenor Square,
for example, although in a posh semi-residential district, and Leicester
Square, right in the heart of business London, had been opened to the public
during the post-war years when the English electorate, that thought it had been
fighting to create a better life, did try, through the medium of their Labour
government, to bring in some
ameliorative and democratic measures that would equalize daily life.
The ancient custom was that these
squares belonged to the landowner of the houses around the square, and
occupancy of these houses entitled the tenant to a key for entrance to the
square, which was reserved to this specialized use. I discovered that landowners,
faced with this movement to open the squares to public use, had fought a
doughty battle, and in many cases had won. Not many had been opened: most, for
example Eaton Square, in the heart of Belgravia, was never opened. Even today,
as a search on Wikipedia reveals, some of the squares are identified as ranking
among the favourite places of the upper class, note being made of one square
that was founded in 1685, and is
surrounded by houses valued at up
to $40 million, a figure that answers questions as to why they were never opened:
money talks, especially in a traditionally conservative country like Britain.
Central London is almost dominated by
its magnificent, extremely large parks, which all began as Royal hunting territories, and to which public access
was granted following use being made of them by the public. This, persistent
public use, has been a standard for the opening of public recreational spaces:
for example, the Inns of Court in London are small parks to which public access
was granted after generations of the public having made use of them.
Incidentally, a few years ago we had
an issue in Ottawa over public use of a large park, namely the grounds of the
residence of the Governor-General, which has been open to public use ---- for
example, for playing cricket --- since even before Canada was founded. One Governor-General, Jean Sauve, who took
office in 1984, suddenly announced that the public was henceforth banned from
entering the grounds. Outraged, I wrote an article for The Ottawa Citizen in which I accused Mme. Sauve of being the most
reactionary Royal personnage in relation to open space since Henry VIII! That did not seem to bother the lady, who continued
to ban public use so long as she was in office. (An exception was made for the
cricketers, who continued to play every weekend, and, to my disgust, never
raised a squeak of protest.) When her successor Ray Hnatyshyn
re-opened the grounds to the public, a small group of us, about 25 protesters,
bought a bottle of champagne and marched on to the ground where we rather
self-consciously toasted his decision. A rare victory lap, as it were.
No comments:
Post a Comment