Catalogue Number
NMLH.2024.62
Object Name
poster
Title
'The Free Land of Albion - A Map of Land Justice in England. www.landjustice.uk'
Place
England
People
Land Justice Network UK, Three Acres and A Cow, Land In Our Names (LION)
Description
A black and white poster titled 'The Free Land of Albion - A Map of Land Justice in England'. Different areas of the poster show people exploring different environments, from rural woodlands on the left to urban housing on the top right and farmland on the bottom right. Each area is titled with signs explaining what rights or demands they represent: 'Right to Roam', 'Community Right to Buy', 'Make property ownership transparent', 'Reform farm subsidies', 'Prohibit land banking', 'Tenants' Rights', 'End empty homes', and 'Land and tax'.
This poster is the unfolded centre of the Land Justice Network publication 'Towards A Manifesto For Land Reform in Britain'. This publication explains the current unequal system of land distribution in the UK, where the majority of land is not accessible to the public, as it is owned by a small number of members of the aristocracy. Over 1 million acres of England are owned by 24 aristocrats, with no public right of way on this land, which includes some of England's natural beauty spots. Issues of lost public land in towns and cities are also discussed, as austerity in the 2010s led to many councils selling off parks and playing fields to balance their books. The manifesto also explores their proposed 'radical changes' to give the public more rights to use land in the UK, such as the right to roam, and the right to find out who owns land in the UK. These are what the Land Justice Network calls 'The Key Issues' shown in the poster, and made up the centre points of the People's Land
Policy the group generated.
The Land Justice Network was a non-hierarchical network of groups and individuals who worked to 'raise awareness of land as a common issue underpinning many struggles and injustices, and to turn this awareness into action that will challenge and change the status quo'. The group is now mostly dormant, but many of the groups involved are still active, such as Land In Our Names (LION) a BPOC (Black and People Of Colour) grassroots collective calling for unequal land and food access to be addressed as a form of racial justice, and Three Acres and a Cow, a travelling performance collective which teaches the people's history of English land use, nationalism and colonialism through folk song based performance art.
Multimedia
