Popular phrases like “growing your own” and “living the good life” can define a range of motivations for allotment plot-holding; amongst them, planetary salvation, personal conviviality and opportunities for belonging to what the sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) called moral communities. Given the importance of these communities to conservative thought – in Burke’s concept of the little platoon, Oakshott’s civil association, and Roger Scruton’s oikophilia – it struck me that plot-holding might be a useful measure of the public’s taste for belonging to moral communities in their environmentally-aware form.
Until recently, up until the early-noughties, many allotment sites had run to waste and become threatened by the spectre, real or otherwise of their seizure for property development by hard-pressed local authorities; a matter of “use them or lose them”. Getting stung by forests of nettles and injured by rusty corrugated tin lying in wait to open veins, was a faith which until recently, only the most zealous plot holders were willing to keep. These stalwarts would have been retired working class men, looking for some peace during long-dreamt-of retirements, and perhaps, in the absence of anything else to do, continuing “work by other means”. But the conservative notion of stewardship involving nurturing land ready for passing on to the next generation did not play played any meaningful role in their vegetable-growing activities. If so, lengthening waiting lists during the past ten to fifteen years, might be a cause for conservatives to celebrate.
According to Campbell and Campbell (2013) by the mid-19th century land was being allocated to the labouring poor to grow crops for their personal consumption and, sometimes, even their very survival. Legislation in 1908, 1919, 1922, and most significantly in the Allotments Act of 1925 put these allocations on a permanent footing in law. In the 1940’s the “Dig for Victory” campaign raised demand further and by the 1950’s, total UK allotment plot numbers stood at 1.5million; an all-time recorded high. The turn to more consumerist concerns among the increasingly affluent working class of the post-war period – DIY, participation in sports the growth in hobbies, – meant that throughout the 1960’s this figure declined until the mid-1970’s when the economic disaster of the Heath government, the “three-day week”, and the popularity of the TV series “The Good Life” pushed-up demand again.
In spite of this gentle renaissance, by 1970 the number of plots in the UK had fallen to 533,000, by 2013 to 152,000 since when it hasn’t shifted that much. According to a recent report in The Guardian, because since 2013 UK plot size had on average halved, by 2021 the number of plots (at 330,000 by topographic calculation) remained unchanged. So, the historical trend in allotment numbers is clear; compared to the high point of the 1950’s, when judged by topography only 10 per cent survive. It seems that allotment-based opportunities for stewardship have been largely ignored.
The numbers of applicants waiting for a plot looks different. For the 533,000 available plots in 1970 there were 6,000 (probably elderly working-class male) applicants on the waiting list, compared to the 78,000 waiting for a plot of the 152,000 available in 2013 and 100,000 waiting (for one of 330,000 smaller plots) in 2021. The long-range trend of those waiting to dig is upwards, showing perhaps, a new demography of inclusive (female, young, immigrant etc) plot-holding beyond the old working-class model.
Quantities don’t tell the whole story, because my evidence is largely anecdotal: I have two plots, one in a working-class area of London, and another in a middle-class area to which I’ve recently moved. When measured by the qualities of potholder behaviour around conservation, there is less activity about stewardship in these, environmentally-aware times.
In Roger Scruton’s Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet (2012), stewardship is defined as an effort to oversee and care for the physical environment by taking responsibility for it in the longterm and not disturbing the homeostasis of its fundamental natural structure. Short term improvements to soil productivity include the use of pesticides and herbicides at the expense of long-term sustainability; mercilessly pulling-up “weeds” – docks, nettles, etc. – which provide essential energy and roosting resources for the early development and viability of many insects. The careless felling of trees and bushes deny roosts and food for birds. Scattering slug pellets to save crops decimates hedgehogs and birds who are slugs’ natural predators. Over-clearing ground damages its use to fauna who might prosper from it.
Stewardship is a moral question and allotment associations are moral communities not because of the way we treat the earth either recklessly or sentimentally but because of the way we treat it to guarantee our longest-term survival. Humanity must damage the earth, but by no more than is absolutely necessary to ensure, as Scruton says, the maximum “delay” to its exhaustion. Allotment associations should try to delay this inevitable process.
Despite the optimism about plot-holding in TV gardening programming and weekend colour supplements, the picture is grim. However on my old site, recent developments have been encouraging, occupancy is now almost 100 per cent ; and at our annual show, an award for biodiversity is now well established. Work is well advanced on the reinstatement of mixed hedgerows, more ponds are slowly appearing, and we now have a beekeeper on site. There are similar developments on my new site too. However shops on both sites remain pharmacies of bug sprays, pellets, herbicides, powders and soil treatments, much of it packaged in what Scruton calls “eternal rubbish” – plastic. On my old site water is criminally wasted by selfishness and the unnecessary use of sprinkler devices. Few plots are ever allowed to lie fallow, bonfires are banned so viruses proliferate while carbon racks up in council rubbish tips. Peat composts are still used while manure of unknown provenance continues to be dumped onto the soil.
On both sites the abuse of the soil is more than matched by the sheer ugliness of the surroundings. Impromptu sheds, polytunnels and miscellaneous structures overflown by manifold national flags shredded by wind and rain, are compounded by the horror of beer tins, yoghurt pots and lemonade bottles alongside, carelessly discarded plastic bags Heath Robinson compost heaps and rotting carpets. If, as conservatives believe, beauty is a value in itself and another good reason to make stewardship worth the effort, if my experience is repeated elsewhere, things are looking bleak.
If despite the opportunity for conservative-style stewardship which “growing one’s own” offers them, the inner-city and middle-class plot-holders I’m familiar with both refuse to take it, then the prognosis for designating allotment societies “moral communities” or “little platoons” is probably more a triumph of hope over experience. Perhaps things are different further afield in the shires.
