What if half a country was owned by less than 1 percent of its people, most of whom were in possession of that land thanks to hereditary privilege and a family history of violence and dispossession?
Imagine no further: welcome to 21st century England, where the heirs of a feudal elite – in league with a slew of corporations and billionaires – control around 50 percent of our green and pleasant land.
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Writer, YouTuber and activist Kerr Rawden is on a mission to change this – to democratise land ownership through an arcane and little known process that could potentially see thousands of acres effectively returned to normal people. It all started when he made a claim on a three-acre plot near his home in Somerset, where he’s since installed a beehive and begun building a cabin and a fishery as he seeks to legally assume control of the land.
While 15 percent of English and Welsh land is unregistered but ultimately owned mostly by the Church, the Crown or the aristocracy, according to the Land Registry, thousands of other properties and their accompanying lands are abandoned and disused. I spoke to Kerr about all that, as well as his new book, How to Get Land For Free: the Comprehensive Guide.
VICE: So, how did you get into assuming your own land?
Kerr Rawden: I’ve been aware of adverse possession laws – often derogatively called squatter’s rights – for years, but recently I wanted to get some land for myself. With land and house prices through the roof nowadays, making it almost impossible for most young or less well-off people to get on the ladder, I looked into it and figured out a way to be able to claim some for myself.
How exactly can people claim a bit of England for themselves?
First of all, one must be in exclusive physical possession of the land, and act in the manner of an owner, fencing it off and using it for a specific purpose. One must also occupy the land without an owner’s permission – although I encourage and teach people to find land which is effectively unowned, as I believe it to be more ethical than claiming land that has an owner.
Once you have the land, you have to use it. You can’t just claim it and leave it abandoned. You don’t necessarily have to live on it, but you could grow crops, build a shelter or simply show you’re taking care of the land. You later may need to provide evidence of what you are doing with it – so keep your receipts if you spend any money. Personally, I immediately put a beehive on mine and later cleared a bunch of trees which had fallen down during a storm. After some time, I started building a fishery and a cabin.
Then what?
Once you’ve been in adverse possession of the land for a period of ten years, you can submit an application, which – if accepted – means the land gets put in your name legally, after a grace period of two years. You don’t need to wait a decade before you can start using it or even renting it out. You can use it and even make money off it from day one.
And how did you come across your plot?
I was quite vocal about it, and told people that I was looking for a piece of land not owned by a specific person. There’s different ways of doing it. Obviously you can put a claim on land that is owned by someone, but I don’t think that’s ethical. I mean, you could argue if they’re destroying the land then it could be, but taking land from your neighbours is certainly unethical. So I was looking for something owned by the Crown that remained unregistered, or somewhere whose owners had died without any descendants. If someone dies without descendants, their estate technically goes to the Crown anyway, which is crazy.
A farmer tipped me off about a piece of disused land in a mostly wooded area on a slope that had been owned by a couple who died decades ago without a next of kin, with their cottage having completely fallen apart. I did some checks on it, found out it was unregistered and basically un-owned, and put my claim onto it.
Then you decided to write a book explaining how to do it?
I documented the process by making a YouTube video about it, which went viral, with more than 400,000 views. I had hundreds of people messaging me asking for more information. These laws have countless clauses and can be quite complex, so due to the interest and demand for more information I condensed tons of legal papers and government documents into a book about it, to serve as a comprehensive guide on the subject.
What do the neighbours think of it all?
Well, this farmer I’ve known for quite a while, he’s the main neighbour. There are a few others, some of whom I have met. They have all actually been quite supportive and happy with it. The land isn’t suitable for farming on a large enough scale for them to want it anyway.
What’s the goal?
Land inequality, to this horrendous extent, must be contested when it comes from a history of bloodshed, particularly as the divide between the rich and the poor becomes greater every year. So I think adverse possession is a great way for the people in this country to claim back some of the land that was essentially stolen from them centuries ago.
Obviously people have long squatted abandoned buildings, mostly in cities, usually temporarily before moving on. But what I’m trying to do is to teach people how they can claim effectively unowned land as their own and legally get it in their name so they can use it, live on it, develop it, grow food on it – whatever they want – for the rest of their lives.
Sounds pretty radical.
Well, humans have a fundamental desire for freedom and sovereignty: this can be achieved by simply being able to grow your own food and live off the land sustainably and self-sufficiently. Dozens of people have already reached out to me saying they have gone ahead and placed a claim on various pieces of land, though they have a bit of a wait to see if it can become truly theirs. But if they’ve followed my guide, they should be successful.
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