It's Not the Economy Stupid - It's the Land

Our ancestors fought over the land because they knew that those who controlled the land controlled everything on it. I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that we should see things much more differently now. The industry, which for a time replaced the land, as our main source of income, is gone, sold, and the democracy for which our more recent predecessors fought, in order to secure a fairer sort of society, we now see undermined by financial manoeuvrings.

For an example of how I see it, I heard something on the news, in the latter half of the year, about the technocrat, whom the 'troika' had sent to displace the elected Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou. He talked of selling off Greek assets. Things like real estate, amongst other irreplaceable national treasures, are now up for auction, to address the dreaded deficit. I had an ominous sense of history repeating itself. Yet the pundits and politicos, who disseminate the conventional wisdom, seem to see little wrong with that choice of option. It came to us with a matter-of-fact like air of inevitability, as a fait-accompli duly deserving the feckless Greeks and any others who dared to follow their example.

I don't think we should see money as the crux of the matter. Money, to me, is merely a human device and a 'means to an end' as the saying goes - but you can't eat money. However, if inflation gets bad enough, we might be able to accumulate enough of it in its material form to build our houses - using it in wads, as a temporary form of building bricks. We’d do well to make sure however, that the foundations are sounder than that of the Ponzi scheme we call our economic system.

Yet, for humans, as with all species, the fundamental requirements for health and happiness are an adequacy of food and shelter. We humans are (we believe) more aware, than other species, of impending doom, which isn't necessarily a good thing, especially if it's inevitable. I sometimes wonder how aware we are though, when we let paid flunkies set the agenda, rather than involve ourselves much more proactively in shaping our own destiny, as past generations did, to this generation’s benefit.

This New Year, I'm thinking once again of dispossession, and how the dispossessors achieve it. I often think of my late father-in-law's heritage, his personal experiences - and cats. Going back a little further, I think of my own heritage as a descendent of the McBain Clan of the Scottish Highlands and I think of the Highland Clearances. I think of all the indigenous peoples of the World, who’ve suffered dispossession of their lands by the various devices and ploys and left vulnerable to the vagaries of circumstance. I think of dispossession, past and present, by deception, violence and by corrupt officials, riding roughshod over centuries-old traditions and by the passing of laws that favour the paymasters of the lawmakers - and I see worrying parallels lurking ominously within the crevices of today's so called economic crisis, and in the tactics I’ve seen used against peaceful protesters.

Anyway, I don’t call it an economic crisis. If anything, it's a democratic crisis - a crisis of self-determination. More fundamentally, it’s about how we can secure food and shelter on a planet, which, thus far in history, has always managed to supply life’s necessities in abundance for all. The fact that we humans are unable to distribute it fairly is another matter. Anything that diminishes democracy and hence our ability to secure sufficient food and shelter of our own volition is much more dangerous to us than the collapse of an exclusive club for a few megalomaniacs who seek to establish themselves as owners of the planet. We need permission to grow food on land that legally belongs to someone else, as we also need permission to demonstrate or assemble on a pavement or sidewalk that belongs to a church or a bank. We know that now, regardless of what it says in any constitution.

The upshot of 2011, for the Greek people is diminishing sovereignty - and more ominously, another nail in the coffin for the means by which they can autonomously provide themselves with food and shelter. It seems now that any post-industrialised nation-state that collapses economically will have diminishing means to cooperate nationally, to provide fair sustenance for all, as evermore of the land, which yields the true wealth, becomes the property of the World’s billionaires in their fortified tax havens. ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’ Yet when do we hear that aspect of the situation bandied around by the mainstream media?

One of the last conversations I had with my late father-in-law was about cats. "We used to kill them." He said, typically unaffected. He was a laconic man, who never saw much need to defend his opinion verbally. Once he'd spoken, that was it. The expression, 'strike first and ask questions later' would well describe his style. Yet, by this time, he'd mellowed a bit, and on this occasion, he was willing to expand - seeing me bridle at the thought and knowing, how much I like cats. "They used to steal the rabbits out the traps." He explained matter-of-factly. "We had to kill them, or we'd starve."

He was a keen gardener - and a poacher. He kept ferrets and Jack Russell dogs, and I don't know whether what he did was legal or not or just generally overlooked here where we live in the Scottish Borders, and where he spent much of his life. However, he knew how to get food without using money - and he never forgot it, and he kept doing it all his days - latterly as a pastime. On the other hand, his daughter and I now go to the supermarket for our food, and most of the money that we pay into the coffers of the corporation that owns it, and which owns increasingly more of, what was once local real estate, leaves the local economy. The High Street is now all but derelict. We all did that.

He was a Catholic from Northern Ireland who'd fought for his country (the UK), in WWII, and like most men and women after demob he went for a job, not least to help pay the tax bill that had awaited his return. Everything went well until the interviewer asked him which school he'd gone to as a child. He knew too well that if he'd named the Catholic school he'd attended, he hadn't a cat's chance in hell of getting the job, so he left the man's his ears ringing with profanities.

We’ve never experienced that sort of thing here, in the Borders. I often think that’s why he came to live here. He was never out of work all the time I knew him and although things have changed in Ulster since he was young, unfortunately, that didn’t happen without struggle.

Anyone who cares to, can Google these days for the historical details of Ulster and the Irish potato famines. No doubt, these affairs had much to do with the shaping of his character. Personally, I just think of the anger, and the irony of starving people harvesting food, which they couldn’t get to eat, as it was for sale - elsewhere. It seems hard to imagine the mentality of those who’d happily profit from the situation, and yet I see parallels throughout history - and today.

In 1066 William, the Conqueror invaded England, and after his victory at the Battle of Hastings, he proceeded to consolidate his power by seizing the land from the previous owners and allocating it to his Norman henchmen. As usual, in the process of dispossession, he used a variety of means, including military and legal pretext. That’s another thing that Googling can help us with, if we’re interested. However, in the Scottish Highlands, the dispossession of land took a different form, and it culminated much later.

Until the 18th Century, the land in the Highlands albeit generally of poor farming quality, belonged to the clans-people. (The word clan means children in Gaelic.) Scottish royalty, unlike their English counterparts, were not Kings or Queens of the land as such; their titles were King, or Queen of Scots. Conversely, in England the titles were King, or Queen of England - indicating ownership of the land, and everything on it. To a Highlander, this was a difficult concept, for the land in the Highlands belonged to the people. It wasn’t up to much, but up until the 1745 Rebellion, it had sustained the people of what had until then been the most populous part of the British Isles. Today, it’s by far the least populous part of the UK.

Incidentally, these Highland rebellions of the 18th Century were not, as many people perceive, between the English and Scots; they were religious conflicts, and hence about which sort of Royal dynasty should rule in the British Isles. However, the upshot was that the Highland people, whose heritage which included their right to live off the land, went back millennia - found themselves over a span of about a century and a half, the victims of what today we’d call ‘ethnic cleansing’.

Similar to now, they saw legal changes, which they had no way of influencing, disinherit and leave them destitute. They suffered sever violence from the police and those who survived it were charged with rioting when they protested about the burning of their homes and the theft of their meagre livestock and possessions. Of course, parliament and the media ignored them - and as ever, those whom their traditions required them to trust and obey most - people like their Clan chiefs and their religious leaders - sold them out for personal gain. The year 2011 has seen much of that kind of thing too.

However, the hardiness and fighting spirit of the Scottish Highlander never extinguished - for their diaspora is enormous. Some stayed on Scottish soil swelling the ranks of the Lowland towns and cities as they burgeoned with Industrial Revolution. There they fought the squalor and misery of unregulated working conditions. They organised into trade unions and struggled and won universal suffrage - which, as recent events illustrate, is always under threat, and will soon evade those who take it for granted and trade it for false forms of security like ‘homeownership’ - a concept, which I believe is devised to stimulate individualism, and dissolve democratic integrity.

Well, that's enough of my perspective for the year 2011. Democratically, I think it’s been more regressive than progressive - but my outlook isn’t all gloom and doom - for we also saw the beginning of The Occupy Movement. Maybe next year if it still exists, I’ll do a blog about that. On the other hand, whilst the internet (which has so far evaded the privatisation trap) stays available to the 99%, the Occupy Movement is writing an admirable account of its own.

Happy New Year to anyone reading, and all the best for 2012.