The commons are part of our culture and constitution, and in Britain have been so since the Charter of the Forest was sealed in November 1217 alongside the Magna Carta. They are separate from private property and state property. They belong to us as commoners, as citizens, equally. And they cannot be taken from us legitimately unless we give prior consent voluntarily.
They are natural resources and assets – land, water, air, forests and what lies under the ground – and they are social amenities and institutions, civic bodies and time-honoured procedures of common law, and cultural symbols and institutions. They include the accumulated knowledge and body of ideas that are intrinsically public goods. Together, they embody and give meaning to society.
Yet our commons have been plundered, illegitimately. We think of enclosure of land, notably by the Tudors and in the Victorian age. But we need to expose the systemic plunder of all forms of common that has taken place since Thatcher, and accelerated under austerity. We need a strategy to retrieve and revive them and principles of commoning, of shared activity, that have accompanied the commons over the ages. This is not just a matter of redressing injustices of ancient history, since rarely has more been done to ensure loss of our commons than by the Coalition Government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats between 2010 and 2015 and then the Tory Government since 2015. Both parties are responsible.
