‘Radical Protest in the Nineteenth Century’ is a video podcast series by History Hub, Royal Holloway, University of London

“How to enact honourable harvest and cooperate – all these are skills that in capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy, we don’t have that many opportunities to practise. We need to relearn them and work together on this.”

These are the words of Clem Sandison, co-facilitator of online group, ‘Regenerative Women on the Land’ and co-founder of Alexandra Park Food Forest in Glasgow. Here she’s quoted in “Celebrating regenerative women on the land” by Becky Blench.

But how did we get into this situation in the first place? This post takes a deep (but fast!) dive into the origins of civil society activism and social movements working on food, farming and land in contemporary Britain – looking to history for answers.

Protest, unrest, and resistance

Access to land has always been bound up with power.

In Britain, the historical record of protest about access to land for food and subsistence dates back to (at least) the anti-feudal struggles and the peasant revolts of the 14th and 15th centuries.

More recently, the neo-colonial interventions of Britain in the economies of African, Asian, and South American countries – through which peasant farmers were enrolled into global food supply chains under extremely unfavourable conditions – led to another round of intense mobilisation, although the activism and unrest has taken place largely beyond British borders.

‘The Washing Line of History’ created for stage show, ‘Three Acres and a Cow’, depicting a potted history of land rights and protest in England using folk song and story. Image credit: Robin Grey/Three Acres and a Cow.

Strategies of domination

Throughout the transition to capitalism in Britain, new strategies of domination and oppression of the masses by those in power gave rise to periods of intense agitation.

The enclosures of the commons, the persecution of the Heretics, the incarceration of the poor within workhouses and sanatoria, the enslavement of colonised peoples within mines and plantations, and the violent subjugation of women’s bodies through the witch hunts were all reciprocated with protest, resistance, and significant bloodshed (see Resources 2 and 3 at post end).

These oppressive regimes had two very far-reaching outcomes that fundamentally transformed people’s relationships with the land. They alienated people from the land that they relied on for sustenance, and made them dependent on waged work or forced labour to feed themselves.

In doing so, they turned peasant farmers into a source of waged labour, the poor into a source of forced labour, indigenous people into enslaved labour, and women into domestic and reproductive labour. All played a role in the creation of our globalised capitalist food systems.

For women, this revolved around the reproduction and maintenance of the workforce through performing wifehood and motherhood.

Social reform and rural revolt

In the centuries between these early-modern uprisings and the anti-globalisation protests of the 1980s and 1990s, Britain saw the rise of numerous social reform movements concerning the urban working classes, communism, colonialism, slavery, the monarchy, the electoral system, women’s rights, and suffrage (among others).

In historical accounts of this period – which are dominated by the industrial revolution – rural revolt and the transformation of the British countryside often take a backseat. However, the 19th century saw several uprisings of radical rural protest over access to land and means of subsistence, including the Spa Fields Riots, the Swing Riots, and the Pentrich Uprising, all of which were violently suppressed by the government of the time.

Environmental concerns for a more civil society

As the concerns of the 19th century gave way to those of the 20th, agitation about food and land drifted further into the background, with the world wars, post-war economic revival, and international development coming to predominate popular histories of this era.

However, during this time the environmental movement slowly gathered force, rising up and branching out from its roots in 19th century Romanticism to manifest in a diversity of forms that have crossed traditional political lines, ranging from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

Social privilege and environmental protection

In terms of practical activism related to food, land and ecology, the movement’s front runners, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the Soil Association, continue to shape the landscape of civil society organisations and networks that work in this space today. As well as maintaining their positions as major players, their essentially protective orientation towards the natural environment pervades British environmental consciousness.

Moreover, the founding of these two organisations by women of wealthy middle- and upper-class standing – Emily Williamson and Lady Eve Balfour – speaks volumes about the environmental movement’s mix of progressive and conservative values… they are firmly rooted in social privilege and philanthropy.

Eve Shepherd’s statue of Emily Williamson depicts the RSPB founder watching a bird take flight. Image credit: Huckleberry Films.

New movements and counter-movements

The current landscape of food, land and ecological justice movements in the UK reflects the values, norms and transformations of wider society that have dominated in the latter part of the 20th century and the early 21st century. In this period, neo-liberalism, globalisation, and consumerism have overlain our longer history of colonisation, industrialisation, and development, sparking new movements and counter-movements.

In contrast to the radical protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s, which emphasised communalism and separatism from mainstream culture and politics, the 1990s to 2000s saw a more reformist approach take hold, with partnerships being built between highly professionalised civil society organisations, the state, and the market. During these times, the role of the individual citizen as volunteer, campaigner and protestor became central to political mobilisation against the perceived excesses of unfair trade and industrial agricultural systems.

Disruption and uncertainty

In the Britain of the 2020s, this landscape is once again reshaping in response to another set of political, economic, and cultural events and changes that have unfolded rapidly over the past two decades. Up until the oil and commodity crisis of 2007/8, which sparked global food shortages, British policymaking on food, farming, and the environment had been gripped by the idea that participating in a largely unfettered global market for food and agricultural commodities would deliver the best outcomes for the nation.

However, coming on the back of a series of mismanaged disease outbreaks that were catastrophic for the agricultural industry (including BSE and foot and mouth), this event shook policymakers and gave life to a large coalition of organisations who were calling for a stronger, more integrated policy framework.

Since then, the departure of Britain from the European Union, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the cost of living crisis (not to mention the ongoing global recession), have collectively sent the economic and political landscape of farming and land use into a period of disruption and uncertainty.

Farmers protest along crowded road (AI Generated)

Crisis and reinvention

Nonetheless, one point of consensus seems to have united left and right, urban and rural, and farming and conversation lobbies: a new direction for policy is needed. Within the civil society space, there is also agreement that the new food, farming, and land use policy framework must address twin concerns: ensuring people’s right to food and halting the climate and biodiversity crises.

Alongside these political and economic events, a series of cultural transformations have also unfolded. The Occupy, Me Too, Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and Black Lives Matter movements have all influenced the cultural landscape, with civil society organisations and movements adapting accordingly.

One change that has been very tangible in the past decade or so is the increasing visibility of women – and, to a lesser extent, people of colour – within these organisations and movements. Whilst not all organisations are on the same path in relation to this new priority for ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’, some are actively re-configuring spaces for representation within the activist, policy, and practice landscape, especially at the grassroots level.

This aspect of the cultural landscape in contemporary Britain is a key topic to which I will return in future posts.

Resources

Silvia Federici (2021) Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Penguin Classics.

Antony R, Carroll S, Pennock CD (2020) The Cambridge World History of Violence. Cambridge University Press.

Charlie Harris and Christopher McKenna (2022) “Case Study #26 Enclosing the English Commons: Property, Productivity and the Making of Modern Capitalism”. The Global History of Capitalism project. Oxford Centre for Global History, University of Oxford.