08/08/2025
On this day, 8 August 1845, UK Parliament passed an enclosure act, taking away common land, and appointing enclosure commissioners who could enclose more land without submitting a request to Parliament.
On this day, 8 August 1845, UK Parliament passed an enclosure act, taking away common land, and appointing enclosure commissioners who could enclose more land without submitting a request to Parliament.
From the 17th to 20th centuries, the British government passed over 5,000 enclosure acts, enclosing 6.8 million acres of common land, which the public previously had rights to use.
Often military force was used to crush anyone who resisted. In his work, Capital, Karl Marx explained:
"The proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands of feudal retainers and by the forcible expropriation of the people from the soil, this 'free' proletariat could not possibly be absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown upon the world. On the other hand, these men, suddenly dragged from their wonted mode of life, could not as suddenly adapt themselves to the discipline of their new condition. They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances. The fathers of the present working class were chastised for their enforced transformation into vagabonds and paupers."
From the 16th century onwards, laws were introduced across Europe declaring "vagabondage" a crime, to be punished with brutal torture and ex*****on. Thus, the vast majority of people were forced into wage work, at low wages.
The enclosures were a vital part of the development of capitalism, as they created a whole class of landless people who had no way of surviving other than selling their labour power - the working class, or proletariat.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10768/enclosure-commissioners-introduced
Pictured: a map just of the locations of Parliamentary enclosures, not including additional ones by commissioners, nor their full land area
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