800th Anniversary of the Charter of the Forest

[alanjjohnstone]

On the 800th Anniversary of the Charter of the Forest

Compared with the ballyhoo over the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, that declaration of rights for nobles, the Charter of the Forest is almost forgotten.

Our blog did do a post on it a few years ago

https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-carta-de-foresta.html

This forum mentioned it previously 

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/comments/hype-and-hypocrisy-%E2%80%93-magna-carta

This article, however, has appeared on Counterpunch by Peter Linebaugh 

Quote:

“It will be noticed how the word ‘common’ and its derivatives … appear and re-appear like a theme throughout the centuries,” wrote Edgell Rickword in 

The Handbook of Freedom,“It was for the once vast common lands that the peasants took up arms; it was as the ‘true commons’ that they spoke of themselves when they assembled, and it was the aspiration of men not corrupted by petty proprietorship ‘that all things should be common.’”

 

William Blake said that “the whole duty of man is art and all things common.”

 

Shelley wrote “the rights of man are liberty and an equal participation of the commonage of nature.”

 

William Morris saying “the rights of nature therefore and the wealth used for the production of further wealth, the plant and stock in short, should be communized.”

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