Appeal of the Peasants- Protect the Wilderness

south west | the environment | news report Wednesday April 11, 2012 22:18 by Proud Peasant

The Wilderness Centre

Appeal of the peasants – protecting The Wilderness to ensure environmental education is based around a social and cultural ecology that understands the root cause of economic exploitation is the misappropriation of land. Through a deliberate policy of enclosure and privatisation that seeks to prevent economic self determination.
This April 17th, International Peasants Struggle day, Protect the Wilderness are joining in solidarity with the struggle for economic self determination of peasants around the world.

On the 17th of April Protect The Wilderness will have their application for appeal hearing with regard to the lawful occupation of The Wilderness Centre, in the Forest of Dean. On the 6th January Protect the Wilderness reopened the centre with the intention of disclosing a process of learning the skills and techniques required to move towards a home founded upon the principles of economic autonomy and ecological resilience. Re-appropriating the term sustainability in its full ecological sense to refer to an attitude that seeks harmony between the relation of forces upon which we depend.

This current cabinet of Gloucester county council believes it has the right to sell education resources that have been built upon over 40 years of investment. The council have forgotten that they are Trustees of the public purse. The Beneficiaries of property and capital held in trust by a county council are the people. They have no right of sale without fair and proper consultation with the Beneficiaries. This they have not done. By coming here to secure the Centre, we have continually offered them the chance to open an honest and respectful dialogue concerning these matters. They have failed to take this opportunity with the proper solicitude and humility we should expect from a public body. They have wilfully and belligerently refused all offers of mediation.

However through our honourable intention to protect the wilderness much has been revealed. Although the county council is an elected body it is also registered as a corporation- a harmless legal technicality, some would assume. Not so. We now have grave reasons to doubt such an assumption.

Gloucestershire County Councils CEO and other unelected agents within the council have active (and undeclared) interests in property development.

Should we not have a democratic process that formulates a policy of development that benefits the whole of society? How can expect a small minority of individuals to truly know what the best course of action is for a social ecology as diverse as ours?

We identify our struggle with that of peasants around the world