And on the ground, common till then and free
As air and sunlight, far across the fields
By careful survey boundaries were marked.
Ovid – Metamorphoses
Book 1. 137-9
Approx. 8 AD/CE
Trans. A D Melville 1986
Ownership of land is fundamental to all social structures. Unequal distribution of land provides owners with social and economic power. Landownership is an example of the increase of economic inequality globally over the past few decades. In England about half of the land is owned by 1 per cent of the population. Domestic property, houses and gardens, takes up only about 5% of the land.
However, landownership is a hidden political topic.
“In this case, the elephant is the room. There can be few enormous subjects more often dodged than land ownership. It is the great ignored in politics today.”
Ferdinand Mount – “That Disturbing Devil”. Review of “Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership” by Andro Linklater. London Review of Books Vol 36 No9. 8 May 2014
In the 1970s, there was political discussion and academic research on the topic in the UK, but in the following years land ownership and the redistribution of land largely disappeared from debate. However, in the past decade interest in the issue has gradually increased.
The Scottish government has been pursuing major alterations to its land laws for a couple of decades, aiming to abolish its feudal land tenure system, and it has passed a series of land reform acts, including a Community Right to Buy provision.
“Who Owns England? How We Lost Our Green & Pleasant Land & How to Take It Back”, a book by Guy Shrubsole was published in 2019. In the same year the Labour Party commissioned a report “Land for the Many: Changing the way our fundamental asset is used, owned and governed“. The Right to Roam campaign was started, and a People’s Land Policy produced. These and further recent publications and activities are listed in the references section.
Meanwhile, land remains a good investment. Smiths Gore, Property Consultants, reported in 2015 that for the UK : “…farmland’s strong rise in values ….has made land one of the best performing assets of the last five years. ….bare land values rising by 58%…” Prices fell a little after 2015 but in 2024 the property consultants company Savills report that over the past 100 years average England farmland values have returned 5.7 per cent per annum.
Land Value Taxation is a proposed annual charge based on the rental value of land, which was promoted in the 19th century by Henry George. Lloyd George and Winston Churchill tried to institute such a tax in the early 20th century, but it was defeated by the members of the House of Lords, many of whom are landowners themselves. It has been claimed that a land value tax would allow for all other taxes to be abolished. The campaign continues.