Plight of tenant farmers is history repeating itself - Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Ted Raine, Skelton, York.

It is surprising how, if not in the particular, certainly in principle - or lack of if - history repeats itself. Either legally or not, the enforcement of land enclosure and annexation: summary ‘change of use’ and simply seizure of ‘commons’, has plagued rural England for centuries.

The results for those placed lower in the country’s hierarchical population have been devastating: no land, no income, no home.

Tenants who had perhaps formed the backbone of local communities, saw their ploughing plots turned over to increasingly profitable sheep farming by the big landowners.

Thousands of acres went that way, particularly in the Midlands. And, apparently, this quite arbitrary type of claim and enforcement continues today.

I lived in the Malton area for some years, and quickly came to understand its key societal structure; inherited position and wealth; ownership and influence. These emanate into and tend to dominate most aspects of everyday life.

This background should maybe give a clue to my feelings over the Sturdy farmland affair. To my mind a considered casuistry motivates the move to annex the Sturdy land on the grounds it will assist the national solar power scheme.

Here, surely, there is too much to lose in principle from creating a dangerous precedent through a dismissive attitude to a family’s complete disruption and uncertain future.

Simply put, the whole Sturdy farming family situation can be seen as a case of the usual sweeping amorality of big business: profits subverting probity.