Soiled: We need to talk about Angela

TetleysTLDR: The Summary

Labour, once the party of the working class, is now signing off the destruction of allotments: vital green spaces literally deep rooted in working-class history.  They are doing it for short-term profit and developer gain.  Angela Rayner, despite her well dined out on working-class image, has approved at least eight allotment sell-offs, symbolising Labour’s betrayal of its roots.  These won't be the last.  Allotments aren’t just soil, they're community, survival, and dignity.  This is a new kind of enclosure, a quiet class war where land is taken from the poor and handed to the rich.  Labour isn't fixing Tory policy, they’re advancing it. It’s a state-sanctioned theft of common ground, and working-class communities must not forget who did it.

TetleysTLDR: The article

There was a time when Labour claimed to be the party of the working class. Of dignity, of solidarity, of the basic right to live. Now? It's the party of accelerated enclosure, of asset-stripping, and of flogging the family silver to developers. Angela Rayner, yes, that Angela Rayner: the one who talks a good game about her working-class roots is personally presiding over the death of a centuries-old social contract: the right of ordinary people to grow their own food.  Eight allotment sites approved for disposal so far and these won't be the last.  The Allotments Society has issued a statement claiming that procedural rules have been followed, what it hasn't said is that this is clearly a pilot scheme to test the water.  Green sanctuaries torn from the hands of working-class communities under Rayner’s own ministerial signature.  Welcome to Labour in power: the redistribution of land, peace and access: upwards.  A state-sanctioned robbery to prop up a system that has already taken everything else.  This isn’t just about a few potato patches.  This is about the slow, systematic dismantling of communal resilience.  It’s Robin Hood in reverse: steal from the poor, give to the landlords.

_{A brief history of subsistence and resistance} 

Allotments came out of the Enclosure Acts and industrialisation, when common land was stolen from the people and handed to the gentry.  As poor subsistence farmers, smallholders and victims of the clearances in Scotland were pushed into towns, often starving and landless, allotments were the state's brief handout, a controlled concession.  Plots of land were made available, mostly to men, so that they could grow food to supplement meagre wages, especially during times of economic hardship and war.  But over time, they became something more radical: a form of independence from the system, a space for dignity, community, and self-reliance.  

By the early 20th century, the right to an allotment became enshrined in law. The Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1908, followed by wartime legislation, recognised that land should not just be the preserve of the rich. The wartime Dig for Victory campaign wasn’t just propaganda, it was powered by the allotment movement.  Even into the 1970s and 1980s, amid economic decline, allotments remained a lifeline for many working-class families. They are embedded in working-class culture, just as much as union banners or chip shops.

_{The social contract: burned} 

Allotments weren’t some quaint Victorian leftover. They were fought for and won.  They were compensation for the land thefts of enclosure and the brutal displacement of the working poor. They were part of a deal: you may not own land, but you will have some right to it.  A place to grow, to rest, to survive.  Local councils, especially in industrial towns and inner cities, recognised this. They enabled the poor to feed themselves. They gave over unused, often toxic land and said: here, take this, plant life in it.  It was solidarity in soil form.  Now, those very councils are being instructed, yes, instructed!  by a fucking Labour deputy PM to sell these spaces off to plug the gaps left by austerity, because Westminster won’t fund local services, they’re selling green lungs to the highest bidder.  That’s not policy, it’s moral vandalism.

Let me give you an example of something that is close to me.  The village of Eston in North Yorkshire. At the foot of the Cleveland Hills are Eston allotments.  They were provided by Eston Urban District Council over a century ago.   Men whose blood and sweat gave the world the iron that built it. The allotments in Eston are far more than patches of soil, they were lifelines for the Ironstone miners and their families, who lived tough, grinding lives in cramped terraced housing with barely enough wages to get by.  In a community built on backbreaking labour and constant economic insecurity, these plots offered not just food, but freedom.  Miners would head to their allotments after gruelling shifts underground, finding peace in the rhythm of planting, tending, and harvesting.  The fresh produce they grew supplemented thin diets and kept families fed through hard winters, while the open air and quiet space provided a rare balm for the body and mind. These communal plots became hubs of solidarity, where knowledge was shared, tools were lent, and dignity was defended.  In a system that gave them so little, the people of Eston carved out something that was truly their own.

Now multiply this by every ironstone village.  The same can be said in all the other iron pit villages by their respective councils and Parishes, Loftus, Skinningrove, Guisborough, Brotton, Lingdale.  Now multiply that further to every pit village, every steelwork terraced community, every dockyard port and every mill and factory town and the social value of these allotments is simply incalculable.  Fast forward to today and in areas where these industries used to be the only thing that remains is the poverty.  The allotments go some way to easing this.  To take them away is short sited, cruel and beggars belief that it should be the fucking Labour Party that's doing it. 

_{The quiet theft of common ground}

We are witnessing the beginnings of a new wave of enclosure, but this time with glossy brochures and planning consultants instead of muskets and fences.  Allotments are being sold off for housing that’s never truly affordable.  For short-term capital receipts that vanish into the financial black hole of underfunded local authorities.  It’s not housing the poor, it’s housing investment portfolios.  The message from Rayner’s office is clear: if you can’t pay, you don’t deserve access to land. The working class? You had your patch of soil. Now hand it over. Fuck you, the market wants it back.

_{Rayner’s role in the class war}

Let’s be clear: no allotment can be sold without ministerial approval and no local authorities can make more allotments or make strategic decisions on them without the oversight of the Minister. This hamstrings local authorities.  Since Labour came to power, Rayner has quietly signed off eight separate disposals across England, in Somerset, Kent, Oxfordshire, Derbyshire and beyond.   For anyone who knows how Government works, this screams regional pilot scheme.  

The Allotments Society has issued a statement claiming that procedural rules have been followed, what it hasn't said is that this is clearly a pilot scheme played out in multiple regions to test the water and gauge the outrage.  If this isn't stopped the logical conclusion is that the same method used will be rolled out to all publicly owned allotments, covenanted land, public parks and common land 

The same Angela Rayner who posed as a working-class hero, who cosplayed as 'one of us' she’s the one giving the green light to rob the poorest of their last bit of control.  And the defence?  'Strict legal procedure has been followed'.  Bureaucratic cowardice dressed up as inevitability.  As if the law itself wasn’t a tool used to rob the working class of land in the first place.  Councils are being hung out to dry. They're forced to sell assets to survive, while central government hides behind process.  Labour could have reversed the Tory asset disposal regime. They chose not to.  Rayner could have said no. She said yes, again and again.

_{What they’re really selling}

When you sell off allotments, you’re not just selling dirt. You’re selling the peace of a retired steelworker who goes to his plot to feel useful. You’re selling the right of a young single mum to grow food for her kids when her Universal Credit doesn’t stretch. You’re selling the green space that keeps an ex-nurse sane in a crumbling mental health system. You’re selling the last bit of the common land we have left.  You’re selling hope. And the only people buying are those who already have too much.

The social contract here is simple: in exchange for being priced out of land ownership, working people were guaranteed some access to the land they helped to maintain. That’s what allotments represent, not charity, but recompense.  Not some local council perk, but a recognition that the land doesn’t belong exclusively to the landlord class.  Selling them off, to developers under the guise of 'regeneration' breaks that promise.  It’s a literal privatisation of common ground, a quiet theft of working-class inheritance to feed a housing bubble and line the pockets of developers. It erodes any remaining space that working people have carved out for themselves within an exploitative system.

• Under rules in force since 2016, councils may sell statutory allotment land, but only with ministerial approval from Rayner’s department, a power she has actively granted. The Times+15The Guardian+15ITVX+15
• Since Labour came to power, eight allotment sites across England (Somerset, Kent, Oxfordshire, etc.) have been signed off for disposal.

_{The class politics of it all}

This is class war. Pure and simple. The state is acting as the estate agent of the elite, evicting working-class communities from their last patches of land and handing them to developers.  It’s the same logic that sees parks turned into luxury flats, libraries into wine bars, and youth clubs into gated communities.  And it’s not accidental.  It’s systemic.  If you can't own property, then every inch you touch must be temporary, revocable, and ultimately monetised. The poor can’t be allowed permanence. Not even on a 10x15 patch of cabbages.

Angela Rayner, by signing off these disposals, has declared which side she’s on.  Not with the tenants of these plots. Not with the kids learning to dig and grow. Not with the elderly feeding themselves because their pensions are piss-poor.  No, she’s with the developers. With the capital flows.  With the councils forced into asset cannibalism, and happy to see the last inheritance of the working class paved over for profit.

_{Who profits from the sale?} 

Spoiler: it’s not the community. The same local authorities pleading austerity often flip these plots to developers for one-off capital receipts, which vanish into the black hole of budget deficits. The new estates are rarely social housing. They are unaffordable boxes, often sold off-plan to overseas investors.  And the community is left with nothing, no green space, no autonomy, no trust in the system.  And if you push back? You’re labelled NIMBY, selfish, backward-looking. But this isn’t about opposing progress, it’s about fighting dispossession dressed up as development.

_{A Government of landlords}

This isn’t just bad policy. It’s a symptom of Labour’s full transformation into the party of property.  Starmer’s Labour governs like a management consultancy.  It has no vision of society beyond assets, metrics, and managed decline.  And Rayner is its poster girl: working-class gloss with landlord-class politics underneath.  The working class used to fight for land. Used to dig in.  Used to dog for victory.  Now their own supposed champions in government are helping to evict them from the soil itself.

_{The core clash: principles vs practice}

_{In short:}

1. It contradicts Labour’s historical support for workers’ rights and land access, such as the legacy of allotments from socialist movements.
2. It prioritises market logic over social utility, placing speculative value over communal wellbeing.
3. It places the blame on local councils, allowing central government to backtrack on funding responsibilities.
4. It signals that even basic rights to outdoor space are negotiable, especially for poorer communities.

_{A line in the soil}

We should be raging.  Allotments are the canary in the coalmine.  If they can sell those off without resistance, nothing is safe.  Not parks.  Not libraries.  Not even your own back garden if they can find a clause.  If you care about land, about class, about food justice, about sanity in an increasingly commodified world, you should care about this.  

Angela Rayner has become the administrator of a mass transfer of working-class dignity to the asset class.  A reversal of every principle Labour was ever supposed to stand for.  It’s time to stop pretending. Labour’s in power now. This isn’t a Tory legacy. It’s their policy. Their betrayal. Their choice.   And they have chosen to stick the V's up to every community that ever supported them in the past.  And the working class should never forget it.  Because when they came for your allotment, they weren’t just stealing vegetables. They were stealing the ground beneath your feet.

Website link to petition: https://weownit.org.uk/act-now/hands-off-our-allotments

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