When Landowners and Land Seekers Make Love, Not War

Briony Greenhill

Here is my chapter for Dark Mountain Issue 25, all about Land.

Reproduced with their permission. Thank you Dark Mountain!

Evening falls on the city

And so much we’ve been living for.

Where will we all go?

The trains so crowded as we fight in this world

Trapped in money, and the concrete

And the love.

The children

So clearly speak to us:

‘This world as it is cannot go on

Or we will soon have nothing.’

O You skylark, you lapwing, turtle dove

How will I write my name in the Book of Life?

I am an adult at this time

I fly, I drive, I live in this paradigm

Things are breaking down. What’s breaking through?

Are you telling me

That our cities and farms have just grown so big, so vast

There is no room any more for the wildlife?

For the cuckoo, the wild cat for the beaver and salmon

all the beauty

All of that magnificence

Our concrete is just kind of

eating it up.

What if that whole design was ripe for change?

Is there something

We are wanting

From another time, another place

Another way?

All this land of England

Stretching out as far as the eye can see

The beautiful, beautiful green.

And the money, and the title, and the inheritance

family to lovely family

all the culture that surrounds the ownership of the land

The farming with those great big tractors,

run on petrol that’s doing us all in.

Then the ways of regeneration

Hands in the soil

So many more of us, in the dirt

making food, making life, making love

Making rain, making tribe, making hearth

making a future where we might survive,

with one or two million other species.

We other one another on the whole, don’t we?

‘We the 99 and you and 1%’

‘we the 1% and you the 99’…

But what do we have left if we so divide ourselves

And our love of a hedgerow and a good red wine

Dancing into the night and the warmth of a fire

The trust of honesty, the warmth of love

The feel of healthy leaves between the finger and the thumb.

It’s more change than we have maybe ever seen

It’s more change than we have maybe ever known,

either way

Towards lots more death

or lots more life.

– Forward to the Land

Hello. I’m a singer, improviser and lyricist. I’m also a political thinker, with an initial career that involved writing think-pieces for government and business strategy units in London, before music took me over. I have a young baby now, and with him came a new body of musical work I’m calling Symbiocene Mama. In pregnancy I walked, then hobbled, with Nick Hayes’ Book of Trespass playing in my earphones, then nursed for hours with Dougald Hine’s new book At Work in the Ruins on my lap beside the suckling baby Robin.

So when I sat at the piano to play and sing, what tumbled out were my thoughts and values about land and justice, flushed fully with this mother’s love, and what it is to me to bring a child into this country, culture and world at this time. Here, dear reader, I will share some lyrics from Symbiocene Mama, and also write to you straight about how we might move towards changing how we share the land in this country of Britain. It’s time to share it more equally, I believe, and steward it more regeneratively. So how might we get there from here?

Some initial thoughts follow. I look forward to the expanding conversation. Here we go.

When William the Conqueror brutally vanquished England in 1066, he did something that all previous invaders had never thought of: he declared all the land his personal property. He carved up the country and handed chunks of it to his most helpful warriors, and made himself King of the lot. He created titles such as ‘lord’ or ‘baron’, which were attached to the ownership of pieces of land, transmitted through inheritance. And so it became that the British monarchy, and about 1% of the population, today own about 70% of the land of Britain, rendering us among the most unequal countries in the world in terms of land ownership, second only to Brazil.

Land. The earth. The magnificent, spinning, inventive, fecund, genius, orbiting, cosmically related earth, hugging us to her, incessantly, by the force of her gravity. Waters. Food. Plants. Trees. Compost. Regeneration. Home.

Land is life. Land is the source, and the re-source, of so much potential for action. For dwelling. For eating. For fuel. If you impose a private ownership model on it — which is a political, cultural choice — you can create scarcity, make it an asset, increase the financial value of that asset. Land is a primary source of economic and political power. If you own land, you can earn rent. You can borrow money more easily. You can accrue wealth. You can take risks. You can give your children a privileged education. Those children can go on to take privileged positions in society, and make decisions that perpetuate this shape of things.

We now have a growing, thriving, powerful right-to-roam movement in the UK. Thank you to those people. And my heart longs for more than the right to roam. I want the right to dwell. The right to make village. The right to farm, regeneratively, and in community. For our children to roam in packs, far from roads, but — for the younger ones — not too far from homes. For our loneliness and whatever particular cocktail of minor to major addictions we each personally fashion to cope with the harsh vibration of modernity, to melt away into a warm embrace of land-based, intergenerational community. Into village. Into tribe, and hearth, and land, and home.

We need, I believe, to go forward to the land. ‘The future is intergenerational land-based communities,’ agreed the mayor, the vicar and a regenerative planning consultant at a local COP26 solidarity event a couple of years back. So many people I know are longing for access to land to create that regenerative agriculture project, this village, that singing place, this retreat centre, this place to circle up and plant oak groves as our sacred sites and pray together outside around fires once again.

Which is hard to do when our land is owned by a small number of people born into a system that makes them keep hold of it through the power of inheritance, title and intergenerational obligation. If it were a song, it would be a very old song, in a minor key, that we’re still singing in rather dreary tones: a song composed centuries ago by empire, by colonisation of these lands. By violence.

As we go forwards through Robin’s lifetime, from 2023 to what, 2110? I’d love us to compose a better song, together. Something altogether more uplifting. Shall we?

In the relationship between landowners and land-seekers in Britain, we have had two eras, and we are now, I hope, at the threshold of a third.

One: War

Tribes fought for land. Foreign invaders got their swords out and nicked it off them. William the C said it was all his, and gave some to his mates. They became lords, and made everyone else serfs; feudalism was born. Peasant uprisings spattered the subsequent centuries, which usually ended in some hangings and the status quo continuing. As time went on, the Enclosures began — and grew, and grew, and grew. The Industrial Revolution kicked us out of rural, agrarian village life, off the land and into the cities, and forced us to turn to wage labour.

Two: Standoff

We stopped killing each other. And pretty much stopped talking to each other too. The conversation went quiet. We got on with our urban, money-centric lives and did our best. Land seekers stopped seeking land. ‘So hurt,’ says George Monbiot, ‘we don’t go there any more. Not even in our minds.’

The average ultra-rich person gives just £240 a year to charity. Cath Dovey of the Beacon Collaborative, a philanthropy organisation trying to change that, told the Financial Times that the culture clash between potential givers and recipients is ‘like putting landed gentry in front of a bunch of Guardian readers. It’s not a comfortable place for them to be.’

Nick Hayes, whose work has helped to ignite the right to roam movement, went to visit MP and land owner Richard Benyon. When Nick politely began to make his way through his list of carefully prepared questions, Benyon left his own office. Refusing to discuss the topics, he walked — ‘ran, actually,’ Nick later said — away.

Standoff.

Three: Make Love Not War

When we want change and we’re up against power, it’s easy to think of it in terms of war.

I’m tired of war. I believe it’s time for love to lead.

A politics of war privileges our own group among any number of ‘others’, and is willing to use violence to maintain that privilege; to serve the needs of our group. It’s a mentality of taking. I’ll take what I want, and if you try to stop me, I’ll kill you (or, if I’m in power, I’ll mobilise the authority of the state against you). It’s the power-over paradigm, that I believe we’re ready to grow out of.

A politics of love, by contrast, is a politics which seeks to be in service to all of life. I matter, you matter. I want well for myself, I want well for you. I will share with you. I will consider your needs and rights alongside my own. It’s a power-with paradigm. I am safe if we are all safe. When we all see justice, we all see peace. We could go further, to the Lakota (Native American) phrase Aho Mitakuye Oyasin — which could be translated as, ‘hello to all my relations (human and more than human) no one more important than the other.’

A politics of love, applied to the transition to a more just land distribution, would see both sides — landowners and land seekers — acting and communicating in new ways.

‘There’s a growing movement of progressive landowners who believe that, for whatever reason, they don’t want to continue this cycle and pass it down to the next generation,’ leadership & change mentor Kanada Gorla explained to me, as she described the pressure to ‘not lose the estate’ that inherited landowners can often feel under pressure from their families and ancestral lineages; pressure that is perhaps woven into the very identities of those who inherit land.

She’s helping the Hardwick Estate in south Oxfordshire as they transfer ownership of the land into a community-led charitable trust. The move is driven by ‘the children’ of the family — younger adults who want to be part of a different story — and blessed by their baby-boomer father. ‘This means that the 900-acre estate will be protected in perpetuity (as much as this is possible given English law) in the service of the soils, waters, air, biodiversity, and the human community of residents, land workers and artisans who live and work there,’ she says.

She’s also helping Lulu Guinness, a Cumbrian landowner, to entrust her estate to a Community Interest Company (CIC) dedicated to regenerative land use, a small residential community, and the Children’s Forest, an international tree planting project involving children.

‘I want to play a beneficial role, Lulu told me, ‘for humans to be a beneficial species, and to be a good ancestor. I really want to feel that my grandchildren and my descendants can feel proud of me, and not hoarding everything and being like Gollum and saying, ‘it’s all mine!’’

Lulu points out that she and her descendants are in a position of abundance and don’t need financial income from the use or sale of the land. I’m guessing this is true for the Hardwick Estate also. So this avenue is landowners in a position of abundance, transitioning the models of ownership and use of the land they steward.

There’s also the potential for government action. Scotland recently celebrated its 100th year of community land ownership. Land ownership reform is a government aim, as they recognised that they too had among the greatest concentration of land ownership in the world. So they set up the Scottish Land Commission, and wrote laws like the Community Right to Buy, whereby if land or a property comes on the market and a community wants it, they get first refusal. In the UK we in theory have the Community Right to Build — but its scope in practice is limited. We also have the Biodynamic Land Trust that buys land as an intermediary for regenerative land users while they figure the money out.

There are so many models, Kanada explained to me. Some land is gifted, some bought. Land can be removed from private ownership and put into community ownership models such as a trust, charity or CIC; with intentions for the spirit of land stewardship enshrined. There are co-ops, and partnerships such as Bowden Pillars Future, near where I live in Devon, where community members have come together with Devon Wildlife Trust and a local regenerative farm to buy land for the farm, wild land, and a regenerative settlement.

It would be a good political economy masters or PhD project to systematically compare different models. Asset lock or growth with the market? Founders’ values fixed into the project enabling or constraining its healthy evolution? Many, many questions. I conceive of a model I call a Generationally Circulating Ownership Model — a GCom, whereby the land of a village is owned in shares. Members would buy up shares during a working life, and sell them off to the next generation in retirement, creating a land-based pension scheme; better than a PLC pension scheme, I would argue.

But I haven’t yet got any land to try it out on.

What might it take, interpersonally, to move beyond standoff?

‘One of the things I’ve noticed in the negotiations between the owner and the seeker,’ says Kanada, ‘whether it’s in a business or a land-based situation is that the attitude of ‘us and them’ is very damaging. The history that we carry — the hurt, the defensiveness — we have to drop that. We have to see that there is only an ‘us’, and learn together how to negotiate a new relationship. None of us chose to be in this situation, this is something that everyone has inherited. How do we collectively, collaboratively make this transition?’

A shift from standoff to relating positively and collaboratively on a new ground of shared trust: perhaps some people can just decide to do that, and off we go. But may it take more. More hearing each other. More conscious repair work. Acknowledging and reflecting the hurt, the fears, the deep intergenerational themes that still move us when we look under the lid. Deconstructing our judgments is profound work. Moving from an unconscious, punitive conflict model — war or standoff — to a conscious, restorative approach can involve deciding that it matters enough to walk together through the ‘darkness’ of difficult feelings and communication into the ‘light’ of safety, welcome, and collaboration. Walking together on new ground, new skin, the scars fading gradually away.

David Bavin is an ecologist who frequently works at the fault lines between different human communities around ecological issues, such as those who do and do not want the lynx reintroduced in Scotland, and the conflict between the re-wilding movement in Wales and the traditional Welsh sheep farmers. We talked about this on a summer walk among Dartmoor’s tors, baby Robin strapped to my front.

‘Until there’s more security through a sense of a social contract and community cohesion and resilience — rather than security coming from personal wealth and assets — that’s going to be hard to shift, because you’re going to want to hold onto your assets, especially when we’ve got this narrative of great change and climate doom; people are going to double down on what they’ve got,’ said David.

‘So we need to change the currency by which people value what they have and what we feel is resilient and secure, so that it’s more about social cohesion rather than about having capital. Actually you’ll be more secure if you share that capital, and you create a sense of mutual reliability between people. A network, a solid web, rather than a brittle sheet, which is just your current situation really. A brittle sheet can be precarious and frightening; one may fear the marauding hordes coming for your land and burning down your castle, so to speak. It’s like a pane of glass rather than a fly’s eye; a robust structure. Through a fly’s eye — a multiplicity of windows — it’s a compound eye with many many lenses; seeing plurality.’

How might we meet each other?

I’m a land seeker. How can I meet landowners who are open to relinquishing some of the land in their charge, if it’s going to be put to regenerative use? Can we have land-seekers and landowners dating nights? Are intergenerational mistrust and hurt in the way of our connecting? How can we heal from this and hear each other? A truth and reconciliation commission?

‘Is it conceivable there is a nectar we could put in the joint between us?’

I know a nectar: it’s called singing. David Bavin and I are dreaming into a series of singing workshops called Landowners and Land Seekers Sing. If we’re going to make love not war, we need forums where we can connect, in conscious, safe, healing-oriented ways. Can there be some kind of team that helps us bridge our gap, and work together in service to all of life?

Anyone want a project?

O the forces old still shape our world

and projects grow that try to change them

They face opposition in the courts and the planning

and the markets and the money and the exchanges

We still fight on battle lines round power over

the design of our ways and our ages

You come to me with your dream

And it’s so hard to make it.

I myself carry a dream and I’ve almost forgotten

It’s so hard to make it.

Many centuries or millennia have we organised

around the same battle lines

The cult of exclusion or the way of the many.

Is it conceivable there is a nectar we could

put in the joint between us?

There’s been fighting before on battle lines

breaking rules trespassing making fires and

fuck you I will rebel and cross their lines,

and now people are dying.

“So hurt we don’t go there any more

Not even in our minds.”

How can you justify having five football fields

of your own land

when people are hurting to eat?

We sit beside in the same nation

with such different baskets

You are feeling scared maybe

’cause you know when there’s a revolution

it’s your head that will be on the line

My friend, I don’t want to see your head roll

But would you come together with us

and redesign the basis

Of how we share this land in our country?

Re-design

the basis

Of how we share the land

in our country?

Could you trust me?

Could I trust you?

Could I love you?

Could you love me?

– How we Share the Land in our Country