The commons of South London (2005)

Book Review from the May 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Down With The Fences: Battles for the Commons in South London. 36 pages, ú2; Past Tense Publications, c/o 56 Crampton St, London SE14, November 2004.

“The law condemns the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common

But lets the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from the goose.”

Most of the text of Down With The Fences was the basis of a talk given to the South London Radical History Group. Many of the open spaces in London – commons, woods, greens and parks – exist because they were preserved from development by collective action: by rioting, tearing down .

According to the pamphlet, between the 16th and 19th centuries, much of the open land, commons or woods south of the River Thames in London was enclosed for development, usually by rich landowners, or sold off for house building. Despite its name, the common land was rarely if ever actually land held in common. It was almost always land owned by the Lord of the Manor, on which over time local people had come to exercise some rights. But these rights often had no legal weight; they were just part of an unwritten social contract.

Of the “commoners”, the pamphlet notes that some of them “could become wealthy individuals themselves. Thus later struggles sometimes developed into struggles between different local rich persons. Gradually as capitalism developed, slowly replacing a society of complex vertical social obligations and customs with one based entirely on profit, the impetus was on for landowners to replace traditional land use with intensive agriculture. This demanded the clearing of woodland and the exclusion of the poor from the commons.”

This process did not take place without massive upheavals. The enclosures increased resistance. The pamphlet describes the wave of rebellion for Sydenham Common, and the conflict on Westward Common in Barnes. Richmond Park, Streatham Common, Woolwich Common and South Lambeth Common are also mentioned. As late as the 1860s, there were struggles over access to Wimbledon Common.

By the l850s, reformers were articulating the need for urban parks, to “relieve the stress and overcrowding of the city for the millions (of workers) packed into built-up areas”. It was also hoped that by converting some open spaces and commons into landscaped parks, they would be made respectable “for the aspiring working classes”. For example, “In South London, Battersea Fields, until the 19th century a place of bawdy working class recreation, including animal fairs, stalls, drinking, etc. became Battersea Park. Local vicar Reverend Fallon proposed building of the modern park to encourage the poor to reform and ‘become orderly’. As part of the process in 1852 all persons ‘trespassing’ on the park with animals or barrows were ordered to be nicked.”

Stockwell Green was used for local recreation, often rowdy, until a local toff bought it and built railings round it. Wandsworth Common, as part of the wastes of the Manor of Battersea and Wandsworth, was largely enclosed and reduced in size, and split in three by the new railway lines the 1840s. The pamphlet mentions numerous other open spaces, commons and parks in southern London, and the various battles and conflicts over their ownership and access. It notes, however, that the struggles described in South London were not unique. Through the 16th to the 19th centuries there were thousands of local battles against the enclosure and development of open spaces. And although not mentioned in the pamphlet, it should be noted here that in a socialist society all the land, and not just commons or parks, would be the common possession of society as a whole.

Peter E. Newell