More outrageous behaviour from the charity trustees, apparently determined to exploit every opportunity to remove the old guard and destroy everything they've accomplished. Timeline since the 'resistance festival' back in September:
26 August Resistance Festival begins and the whole event runs smoothly and is a fantastic success under difficult conditions and with no support from the Trustees, only their attempts to prevent and derail the event
3 September Resistance Festival comes to a fitting finale with beautiful music and fun for all
6 September We learn in an email from the Co-op’s accountant that earlier in the year she was approached by a former community and co-op member, who had resigned from the co-op, but whose name had not yet been removed from the register at Companies House. He informed her that the Trustees had asked him to tell her to dissolve the worker’s co-operative. The accountant pointed out to him that she had no power to do this, since it had to be done by a General Meeting of the Partnership.
13 September Jared Hills, Groundskeeper and Community Member, is fired by Trustees by way of a legal letter from Foster and Coleman, for ‘gross misconduct’.
Legal letters also sent to Jasmine Hills, Head Gardiner, and Jon Hill, farm assistant, for the purposes of eviction. The three individuals each contested the orders with several clear reasons.
14 September Someone gets access to the Company’s House website and lists Jared and Jasmine Hills as having resigned from the Wyld Workers Coop, on 31 August, even though they did no such thing. They also reinstate as members a couple who recently resigned and who made it clear to the trustees that they did not want to be reinstated as Coop members. We are currently trying to find out who made these unauthorised changes to the list, which contravene the rules of the Co-op concerning the admission and resignation of members. The Co-op’s accountant, who has the password for altering the listings, refuses to divulge who authorised her to make the change.
11 October Jared, Jasmine and Jon, each receive replies from their responses to the Trustees solicitors, Foster and Coleman. They are all given a week to leave MWC, or there shall be a claim issued in the County Court, under CPR 55, to evict these 3 people as trespassers. All three of these individuals respond, with their clear reasoning why they see these eviction orders as invalid.
11 October Without any warning or consultation, Trustees change the Charity’s Articles of Association on the Company House website. They take the Articles of a London-based Community Interest Company called Public Voice CIC, make a few small changes, and paste it in to replace the previous Articles. Funnily enough, one of the Directors of Public Voice is Laura Guest who is also the main Trustee driving all the changes at Monkton Wyld Court.
Among other things, there are changes to the objects of the Charity, which for many years have been to promote education in sustainability and to maintain the listed buildings. Now the Charity’s objects include the promotion of “commerce, art, science, education, religion, charity or any profession, and to promote any social, political or sporting activity and anything incidental or conducive to the above objects”. Just about anything in fact. There are also changes making it easier to pay Trustees for their services and to sell off the charity to something other than another charity. A complaint to the Charity Commission has been made by former Trustees and community members.
13 October Jon Hill receives a letter from the Trustees, via Foster and Coleman, ordering a caravan to be removed from MWC. They give under three days for this to be done, threatening to send in Bailiffs if not. They add that they shall seek full costs from Jon via the courts.
17 October Jasmine and Jared both receive responses to their letters from Foster and Coleman, saying that they have no authority to remain at MWC. Foster and Coleman continue by saying they shall be issuing the Trustees claim in the county court to evict Jared and Jasmine as trespassers under CPR 55 without further notice.
19 October Bailiffs arrive on the farm at MWC, to issue notice on the caravan.
25 October The Trustees announce they are expropriating the Community’s shared car. The Trustees have never driven this vehicle nor have they paid a penny towards its upkeep. Unfortunately, the name of the logbook, dating from the days when there was no dispute between the charity and the community, is Monkton Wyld School, meaning that the Trustees can mask what is basically theft as “claiming ownership”. This mirrors exactly the way the Trustees have expropriated the entire charity and its community.
28 October Since the Charity is now too understaffed to harvest apples and make juice as usual, expelled members of the community have undertaken the job, washing up the empty bottles and pressing apples from a neighbouring orchard. Whereupon the Trustees write to Jon Hill demanding £600 in payment for the bottles. Actually the bottles are worth £340 and Jon has already arranged with the kitchen to offset this against money owed to him and Jared for supply of batteries to the charity, and back pay. Although this is explained to the Trustees, they nevertheless call in the police who as of 7 November are conducting an investigation.
5 November A comprehensive complaint is delivered to the Charity Commission signed by the six expelled residents and supported by five former Trustees. The complaint, which is 22,000 words long, plus 45 appendices, includes an account of what has taken place over the last seven months, and explanation of how this has harmed the charity. Watch this space.
11 November Xanthe P, who worked hard to look after the house after Sophie resigned in August, is ordered to leave by the the Trustees. Xanthe made a huge effort to try to mediate the dispute. Nevertheless, the Trustees fired her because “your support for people on site, who are actively causing harm to the Monkton Wyld Charity, is causing even more tension and disruption. You appear to share their attitude of hostility towards Stephen Williams.”
14 November Nine days after receiving the complaint, the Charity Commission informs us that they are not going to do anything. On 20 November they confirm this in an email, stating only that “we must advise that they are not matters that we can become involved in”. In response to our appeal against this verdict, they responded on 5 December : “we are not able to become involved in matters that relate to trustee decision making, where trustees are acting within their powers in the administration of a charity.”
23 November Police arrive at Monkton Wyld Court and arrest Simon Fairlie for “stealing” the community car. For nearly 14 years this car (originally a Peugeot and now a Honda 4WD) has been shared by members of the Community. Among other things it is necessary for servicing the farm. Simon is currently the main driver and has paid over £1500 in the last 30 months to maintain the vehicle. However the log book states that the registered keeper is Monkton Wyld School, and on this basis the Trustees managed to convince the Police that they are the owners — even though they have never used the car, nor spent a penny on its maintenance. Simon was held for 9 hours and then released on bail without charge.
1 December Environmental Health Officers arrive on site and tell us that we can no longer sell dairy produce to anyone, or give it away, until we obtain “approval”. We are therefore feeding it to our pigs. This is because we are no longer supplying Monkton Wyld Court and as a result the subsistence status that we formerly enjoyed no longer applies, and we enter into a new regulatory regime. We are currently applying for approval.
8 December Trustees order a locksmith to attend to install locks on some areas of The Court. A security guard is also hired for the day by the Trustees. Both individuals say they cannot proceed in this action as it is a civil matter, without the authorisation of the courts. The locksmith duly leaves the premises.
Later, Stephen Williams and a Trustee begin removing our campaign signs and banner and damaging them, watched by the security guard. The police are called and ultimately they recover the signs and banner. The incident is currently under police investigation.
4 – 5 January 2024 Massive support from attendees at the Oxford Real Farming Conference –
7 February The police inform us that they are going to charge Simon Fairlie with taking a vehicle without consent, under Section 12 of the Theft Act. Fairlie responds to the police “I find this very odd since I am part owner and main driver of the community car, I am currently responsible for its maintenance and I have recently paid over £500 to keep it on the road. Meanwhile the trustees who have made this accusation have no use for the vehicle. Their only motive is harassment. The vehicle has remained standing in the same place since before Christmas. With all due respect, I would have thought this dispute was a civil matter.”
10 February Malcolm Ramsay, an independent jurist, submits a further reasoned request to the Charity Commission to review their original decision. In it he notes that in an earlier communication he had asked the Commission’s case officer “if she recognised that trustees taking a decision for improper reasons constituted misconduct; her response was that, unless a decision was outside the trustees’ powers, the Commission could not intervene. I would expect the courts to find such a narrow definition of misconduct totally unacceptable . . . No reasons were provided explaining why the trustees’ behaviour – which would not be considered acceptable in any other sphere – was considered a legitimate exercise of their powers.”
16 February The trustees write to Jasmine telling her she will be reported to the police for theft if she sells any of the vegetables she has grown in the walled garden. They also write to Simon saying “clearly, the milk from two cows is far in excess of the dairy required for your personal use, or for swill for pigs. Will you please therefore inform us of your plans to stop dairy production, and removing the cows from our site.”
19 February Jon Hill, farm assistant, is served with court papers to appear at Yeovil County Court on 18th April. He has been charged with trespass and anti-social behaviour.
23 February Simon is charged with taking the Community Car without consent (see above 7 Feb) and is due top appear at Weymouth magistrates court on 27th March
January 30th, 2024 The Great & The Good Simon Fairlie: Monkton Wyld Court
GOING TO SEED
The story of Simon Fairlie’s life as a rebel guru began in the early nineteen-seventies when he lost patience with his studies at Cambridge and dropped out to hitchhike to Istanbul and then to travel across India by bicycle.
His father Henry Fairlie, a well-known journalist and social critic, wanted Simon to become a mainstream journalist like himself. He had re-invented the term ‘the Establishment’ to describe the small number of people who control Britain. ‘The exercise of power in Britain cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially,’ he wrote.
Since then Simon has been engaged in a creative rebellion against the establishment and the principles that underpin it, particularly in the context of food and farming. His message is that we’ve made so many terrible mistakes, we have to go back to the traditional principles of farming and start again.
His ideas are far from outdated; eighty percent of the population of Africa are fed by small scale farmers who manage the soil, water, seeds and sunshine in the same way as they have done for millennia. The industrialisation of African agriculture as promoted by Bill Gates et al is a colonial project designed to exploit Africa’s land for cash crops, to destroy local agriculture, and to feed global corporate profits instead of people.
Simon’s 2022 autobiography, Going to Seed – A Counterculture Memoir, tells the story of a life of protests, living in communes, smallholder farming and writing, beginning with how his father’s hopes for him to follow a Fleet Street career came up against the much more attractive counterculture movement of anti-war activism, poetry, protests, music, cannabis and most importantly freedom from wage slavery – ‘a career is a headlong rush towards doom,’ Simon wrote.
COMMUNES
A year after his journey across India he and some friends decided they would try and create a land-based alternative to the increasingly competitive and consumerist culture of the early seventies, and after failing to find any affordable land in England, they were able to buy four acres in the South of France for the princely sum of £600.
“So all four of us bundled into this Ford trader van, filled it full of sacks of wheat and wheelbarrows and God knows what and we trundled off down there and started building these God awful shacks because we weren’t very good at building. It was just so easy. We weren’t very good at producing veg, but more important in terms of self-sufficiency was just having a space, being able to build your own house, your own sanitation, your own water, your own fuel from the wood and so forth. Basically being independent.”
Their electricity came from the spare battery for their Citroen 2CV that powered lights and music, and they spent 10 years living a simple independent off-grid lifestyle until they closed up the farm and headed back to England.
While doing some jail time in the nineteen eighties for squatting, his cellmate told him about some land for sale in Somerset. He and some friends raised enough to buy the land and they founded Tinkers Bubble. It’s an off-grid community that still exists today, making a living for six families from 28 acres of mixed woodland that they harvest with a steam-powered sawmill, from horse-ploughing the organic garden, pressing apple juice and fermenting cider.
“It’s the only piece of land I’ve ever seen that has nothing wrong with it, it’s got trees, its got orchards, its got grass, its got water right at the top of the hill in the centre of the property”, Simon says. The community aims to be self- sufficient, and to have a very light footprint on the Earth. The houses are built from materials that biodegrade naturally, so if the community moves away, they will be absorbed back into the soil they came from.
PROTESTS
In 1991 he joined the protests against the construction of the M3 motorway that was bulldozing through a chalk downland in Hampshire called Twyford Down, destroying a pristine landscape rich in wildlife, flora and archaeology. After a series of direct actions that included living in trees and being chained to bulldozers, a group of seven that included Simon were arrested.
In what was to precede a series of judgements where environmental protestors were forgiven because the judge agreed with their motives, the judge at their trial said, ‘Nothing is more saddening than when a judge is faced with the unenviable task of passing prison sentences on people who are fundamentally decent and motivated by a concern which to them overrides everything else.’
However, in spite of that kindly remark, and because they broke the injunction not to revisit the protest site after only two days, he sentenced them to 28 days in prison. ‘You have been quick to snatch the martyr’s crown and you may find it is uncomfortable head-gear,’ he said.
MEAT
About ten years ago the BBC were producing a programme about meat and interviewed Simon about whether consuming meat was sustainable in terms of land-use and resources. He had already published his 2010 book, Meat – A Benign Extravagance and had given this matter a lot of thought. He told the programme that if we ate meat, not from factory farms but from sustainable methods of production, in other words from outdoor pigs and chickens, and from pasture grazed cattle and sheep, everyone would be able to eat up to 100 grams per day. Five days of fact-checking research by the BBC programme makers proved him right.
His leading argument in the book is that farming of animals for food has become an ecological and ethical problem because we are physically and spiritually disconnected from animals and the land. Factory farming, where stressed animals are inhumanely crammed into barren unhealthy sheds, is only possible if farmers have no empathy with the animals and look on them as units of production, like car parts. The huge concentration of animals means that the waste is an environmental hazard rather than a useful fertiliser, and antibiotics are used routinely, causing incurable antibiotic-resistant diseases that pass from animals to humans.
“We all want to see an end to factory farms and to specialist dairy farms with great slurry lagoons and so forth, but by proposing veganism you’re basically throwing the baby out with the bath water because you’re losing 12,000 years of symbiotic co-evolution between humans and animals and all the other plants and birds and mammals and so forth that share a mixed farming grassland environment which is what England does best.”
He argues that because animals are part of a fertility cycle it makes agro-ecological sense to include them in a mixed farm system where fertility is produced on the farm, not bought in as artificial fertiliser. In his 2017 article ‘Could a tax on meat help us save the planet?’ Simon suggested that meat should be given luxury status like ice cream, nuts and fruit juice and charged VAT to help offset the environmental costs of meat production. Small livestock farms with an annual turnover of less than £85,000 would be exempt, which means they would have a price advantage over supermarkets for any meat they sell direct to consumers.
KICKING AGAINST THE PRICKS
The Road Protests in the nineties were in part a reaction against the brutal, authoritarian extremes of the Thatcher years that saw violent police attacks on protests, gatherings and strikes, notably the infamous assault on Travellers at Stonehenge in 1985 that ended with dozens injured and 535 arrests. Thatcher declared, in an echo of Nazi Germany, ‘we must pass a law against these people’.
The idea that an independent, off-grid lifestyle is in itself a protest against, and an alternative to, the debt slavery of late-stage capitalism is embodied in the title of Simon’s talk at the Green Gathering last summer, ‘Kicking Against the Pricks’.
“Things happened at Twyford Down and all the other road camps and what this meant was that the protest became not only a way of protesting against the issues, the bombs and the cars and so forth, it also became an experiment in different lifestyles, and that was hugely important for all the people involved. People had to learn how to cooperate, how to work together, how to cook for each other, how to organise, and in a way it became the point where the medium was the message, that actually being on site and doing all this stuff was in fact creating the alternative society, or at least an image of the alternative society, that one wanted to create.
“When you look back, towards the end of a full life, you realise you have just been treading water – fighting a rearguard action for justice and ecological modesty against the forces of corporate greed and technological rapacity, who have wealth and power on their side. But we can keep a check on these idiots, and limit or delay their excesses.”
THE LAND
For the past eighteen years, lately in partnership with Gill Barron, Simon has been the editor and publisher of the Land Magazine, ‘an occasional magazine about land rights.’
‘The Land is written by and for, people who believe that the roots of justice, freedom, social security and democracy lie, not so much in access to money, or to the ballot box, as in access to land and its resources. Editorial policy… is to campaign peacefully for access to land, its resources and the decision-making processes affecting them, for everyone, irrespective of race, creed, age or gender.’
A scroll through the Back Issues section reveals a treasure trove, a museum of wisdom and knowledge carefully curated over the years to conserve philosophical, political and practical ideas about land use and country ways through the ages. Over the years The Land has built up a library of learned, historical, campaigning, agro-ecological and sometimes whimsical articles about issues that are crucial to our lives, our relationship with the land and our future. The Land is a compendium of priceless resources that would be difficult or impossible to find anywhere else.
The striking woodcut artworks bring back to life a golden age when farming was a culture with historic traditions, not a business, when people lived in harmony with the land on mixed farms next to the villages, where horses hauled carts and ploughs, and where animals grazed and fertilised the grass in a cycle of soil nourishment that lasted year after year for centuries.
MONKTON WYLD COURT CASE
For the past fourteen years Simon has run the micro-dairy at Monkton Wyld Court, a charitable eco-community in Dorset where he also makes scythes, teaches scything and grows potatoes and onions as well as making cheese with the milk from two Jersey cows. The community lived in harmony, apart from ‘a few hiccups’, for all that time. That was until May last year when recently appointed trustees started to evict long-term residents based, apparently, on complaints by one person who had applied for permanent residency and was asked to wait a further three months for a decision.
Simon, along with Gill who is Co-editor of The Land, Jasmine the Head Gardener and five others have been told they must leave. The next issue of the Land Magazine is on hold until Simon and Gill can find another premises. Because of the situation, another four long term volunteers/prospective members have left voluntarily.
The situation took a farcical turn on 23 November when Police arrived and arrested Simon for ‘stealing’ the community car. Simon wrote, ‘For nearly 14 years this car (originally a Peugeot and now a Honda 4WD) has been shared by members of the Community. Among other things it is necessary for servicing the farm. Simon is currently the main driver and has paid over £1,500 in the last 30 months to maintain the vehicle. However the log book states that the registered keeper is Monkton Wyld School, and on this basis the Trustees managed to convince the Police that they are the owners — even though they have never used the car, nor spent a penny on its maintenance. Simon was held for 9 hours and then released on bail without charge.’
The eviction process continues relentlessly. On 1 December Environmental Health Officers arrived to say that Simon can no longer sell dairy produce, give it away, or supply it to the Monkton Wyld household until he obtains ‘approval’. Apparently the Trustees have disowned the dairy and told Environmental Health that the dairy operation is nothing to do with Monkton Wyld Court, so the subsistence status that allowed them to make cheese from unprocessed milk no longer applies.
It looks probable that Simon will have to leave Monkton Wyld in the coming months. Apart from the huge upheaval and having to find somewhere to move his cattle, tools, scythes and other equipment, there have been crippling legal costs in trying to defend their position. They cannot afford to take the trustees to court, so anyone who wants to help them with their legal costs, or register an interest and receive updates, or publicise this tragedy in any way, can go to Monkton Wyld Court Case for details.Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/
Thanks Der, good you can see the value in Fairlie in spite of the dairy/meat disagreement.
Difficult to see how they're going to arrive at a just outcome here. Maybe the court appearances for supposed trespass and vehicle theft will be thrown out, and I understand that the cops, while no friends to hippie types, don't appreciate being used to settle petty scores, so maybe there will be a surprise on that front. What's more concerning/shameful IMO is the way the charity commission have washed their hands of any involvement, given what a clear abuse of power has been going on with the new trustees. Fairlie is right to warn of the dangers inherent in the charity model, illustrated by this case.
Did a search of Monbiot's twitter for 'monkton' and 'fairlie' and nothing came up relating to this. He's got to be aware of it, one would think, and they seemed to be on good terms still at the latest debate despite strong disagreements, so who knows...
They use Paypal anyway who force you to join and then save your credit card details. Feck that.
I've always liked Fairlie since I've heard him talking about the Enclosures at the Big Green Gathering once. Later on he turned up at the Drax Climate Camp. At Drax he didn't say much, probably just there to learn like the rest of us.
Incidentally, Monbiot was at Drax and after one particular panel of guests finished their session he agreed, at the wishes of the crowd, to stay answering questions. He was brilliant. It went on for hours and hours.
He was a far cry then from the man who later went on to lambast Chomsky, Herman, Peterson, Pilger, Media Lens, et al.
He's still good on the environment. Maybe he should confine himself to that.
Perhaps he should stop reading his own newspaper...
Yes, subscriptions and renewals are suspended until the mess gets sorted out. Last issue, #33 came out in Autumn 2023, including a summary of what happened at Monkton. Looks like you can still buy back issues and Fairlie's books on their site: https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/shop or you can email shop@thelandmagazine.co.uk to order directly.
Have to grudgingly agree on Monbiot's talents, I always looked forward to his speeches at the climate rallies I used to go to in London back in the day. Unfortunately rhetorical skill doesn't guarantee honesty, and even in his environmental writing I've seen him misrepresent sources or only tell one side of the story when it suits him. And then there's the constant bad faith attacks and slurs against people who have a different opinion... A poisoned chalice for me.