Our Long and Lively Tradition
Our rich tradition
Today we strive for community ownership of land and buildings; for community-led enterprise where profits are re-invested for common good; and for self-determining communities, of a size and structure capable of generating social capital and enhancing quality of life.
All of this has deep roots in our past.Core elements of our vision, with variations due to language and circumstance, are found generation after generation in England, all the way back to the fourteenth century.
Dispossessed communities have returned continually to these simple but profound ideas, as the means of overcoming poverty, achieving social justice, and creating a better way of life
In their time many of the pioneers of community enterprise were regarded as eccentric, even mad.Only now is it possible to see that they were the ones with insight, acting with vision and courage.
What we are doing today emerges from a long, lively and rich tradition.Knowing this, we are the stronger for it.
Steve Wyler
Director
Development Trusts Association
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Picture gallery
Robert Kett under the Oak of Reformation
Mousehold Heath by John Crome
Mousehold Heath by John Sell Cotman
Trade tokens of Thomas Spence
Portrait of Thomas Spence
William Blake’s ‘London’
Portrait of Feargus O’Connor
Chartist cottages
Robert Owen’s labour note
First reference to social enterprise
Sources
The following works are especially recommended; I have drawn on them extensively.
W H G Armytage, Heavens Below: Utopian Experiments in England 1560-1960, 1961
Ian Campbell Bradley, Enlightened Entrepreneurs, 1987
Chris Coates, Utopia Britannica, 2001
Alice Mary Hadfield, The Chartist Land Company, 1970, reprinted 2000
Dennis Hardy, Alternative Communities in Nineteenth Century England,1979
Dennis Hardy, Community Experiments 1900-1945, 2000
George Jacob Holyoake, History of Co-operation, 1875, rev 1905
Marion Shoard, This Land is Our Land: The Struggle for Britain’s Countryside,1987
Barbara Taylor, Eve and the New Jerusalem: Socialism and feminism in the nineteenth century, 1983
Internet resources:
Spartacus www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk
Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org
Both provide excellent introductions to many of the topics I have investigated.
Acknowledgements
My research was undertaken in Summer 2007.I would like to express gratitude to the DTA Board for allowing me to take a sabbatical and to DTA staff who covered so ably in my absence.
Thanks also to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for financial assistance, encouragement and a warm welcome in York.On my travels I was grateful to Westray Development Trust and Halifax Opportunities Trust for their hospitality.
Without exception everyone I have spoken about the research has offered encouragement and provided insight – thank you to all, and do please continue to provide advice and ideas.
