13 Jan 2011

A lovely tree is just lumber for Nick Clegg


Government plans are appalling. In the same way the International Monetary Fund has insisted that to pay debt countries in the south of the globe have had to sell assets and turn rainforests into logged cash cows, our government is selling everything it can lay its hands on. Britain is for bond traders and other species of finance capitalist.

Resistance is absolutely vital. And there is a rich socialist tradition of support for forests. One of Karl Marx's very first pieces of political journalism was on the law against theft from the woods.

German landowners fenced off the forests and changed the law so that even picking up fallen wood was classed as theft. Peasants were criminalised as a result of the enclosure of the forests.

Today's situation is not so different. Marx would have been just as appalled by the commercial monopolisation of forests which should be enjoyed by all in Britain.

Thatcher tried to sell our forests but public disgust forced the "Iron Lady" to reverse her plans.

We can and must stop the current neoliberal government from destroying them.

Let's think of our children and our children's children instead of the profits enjoyed by corporations.

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