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Full Page Photo COMMUNES��f GREEN VISION Counterculture, Lifestyle and the New Age DAVID PEPPER Communes and the Green Vision provides a dramatic insight into the ideas and ideals of the members of twelve communes in England. Scotland and Wales. In a series of in­ depth interviews with over eighty members of communes set up in the wake of the environmental concerns of the seventies, David Pepper has tested one of the principal beliefs of the green movement today � that communal lifestyles and small-scale organisation will be central to the socially JUSt and envjronmen�lIy sustainable society of the future. Commune members from widely differing backgrounds talk about their hopes and fears for the future, the obstacles.they face in living a greener lifestyle, and the impact of the ecological crisis. The issues they face reflect the problems confronting society at large, and the author assesses the potential of communes as forerunners of a green society in the light of a number of key questions that of us must answer, all including those of us committed to eI\vitonmental reform. Such questions include whether it is a higher priority to change society's values or to change the economic system, and whether individual reform of one's own lifestyle is more important than collective action. Pepper goes beyond the immediate ideas and David activities of the communes and their members to describe a range of green perspectives and ideologies - induding liberal, socialist and anarchist - as well as the ideas and philosophy of the New Age movement. David Pepper is Principal ucturer in Geography at Oxford Polytechnic. His previous books include ROO/Jo/Modem Environmentalism (Croom Helm. 1984). GeogTl1phy o/Peau and War (edited with AlanJenkins, Blackwell, 1985), and Nue/ear Power in CnsiJ (edited with Andrew Blowers, Croom Helm, 1987). Cover iliwtral;On by �J.Ho "",,,th ISBN ' · 85425-051- 5 Thi. book il primed 00 rocyded p�p<"r £8.99 �\"% GREEN PRIN T 9 COMMUNES AND THE David Pepper is principal lecturer in geography at Oxford Poly­ technic. Details of his other books appear on the back cover. GREEN VISION Nickie flallam is part-time lecturer in geography at Oxford Poly­ technic, a post-graduate student at the School of Peace Studies, Counterculture, Lifestyle Bradford University, and a fonner member of the New University Project. and the New Age David Pepper Ba$ed on re�arch the aUlhor and Nickie HaUam by '"�\"ij� ,;;.. GREEP R I N NT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First published in 199 1 by Guen Print an imprint of The Merlin Press I am indebted to Peter de la Cour, lecturer and fonner communard Malden Road, London 10 NW5JHR who has now gone on to found the Green College, for spending many hours in conversation about this project and helping me to get David Pepper © it into shape. The research was made possible by a grant from The right of David Pepper to be identifiedas aumor ofmis work has been assened Oxford Polytechnic. I would also like to acknowledge with gratitude in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. the help and advice ofOennis Hardy, Frank Webster,john Gold,Jon in a . publication be reproduced, st�ud All rights reselVed No pan ofmis may Carpenter, Penny Bardsley, Andrew rugby,Peter Harper and Fiona any fonn or by any meanSelec �mc, .. utrieval s""tem or transmitted, in ,- , . Or Ou,el"Wlse, without me pnor pennlsslon Hay, and of course the communards themselves. They constandy mechanical, photocopymg, reconI' 109 .L · in writing ofme publisher. received both Nickie Hallam and myself into their homes with kindness, hospitality and humour, sparing us the worst excesses of ISBN I 85425 0515 that well-known communes phenomenon of 'visitor alienation'. 12 J 4 5 6 78 910:: 99 98 9796 95 94 9392 91 Their friendliness constituted a danger to academic disinterested_ ness, which I hope I have guarded sufficiendy against in the writing PhotOlypesctby Computerset, H:umondswonh, Middlesex and analysis of the interviews.Conversely, I hope I have not gone too Primed in England by BiddIes Ltd., Guildford, Su rrey on recycled paper far the other way in overscepticism, and that the need to be critical has not obliterated my underlying admiration and support for this way of living. As this book was written, so many Western political commentators and journalists were telling us that 'communism is dead'. This book shows that, even in this country, truecommune-ism is alive and - occasionally at least - kicking. Contents Any utopia should have to allow Jor the dosest possible contact List of tables and abbreviations used viii between people alld the livillg earth. The seco"d elemem would be Introduction harkillg back to a popular tlteme ill mallY socialist utopias. That is 1 the 1I0tioll oj decetllralisalioll towards some killd oj comnllltlitariall CHAPTER 1 $ociety ill which people getlUinely do have tlte responsibility as well The Environmentally Sound Society as tlte right to put imo practice their own views itt rlleir own 7 commtmiry as to how they call best effect... the goals we [greens 1 CHAPTER Z },ave. I don't rllink YOIl can t/lvisage a gret/l world which iSIl't Communes, Utopias and Green Principles decentralised at one level a"d illtemariona/ised at tlte other level. 25 Jonathon Porritt, on 'Visions of Utopia' (BBC2, 'The Late Show" CHAPTER) 30 January 1990). Social Change and the Politics of Community and Communes 47 It's nice 10 talk about ecology, but to go out alld do it is difficult. Not until lots oj people do it will it befim. CHAPTER 4 Decline of Green Evangelism A communard from Monkton Wyld. 69 CHAPTER 5 I'm calling on people to be exceptiollal; to step Ollt oj their constraints How Green are the Communes? Ecological Values and alld set an example by living ill communes. They are a leadillg edge Practices 119 oj the green movement. A communard from Redfield. CHAPTER 6 Changing Society: or Being Changed? 157 CHAPTER 7 A Vanguard for EcO[opia? 199 Appendix 1 221 Appendix 2 227 References 231 Index 237 LIST OF TABLES Table Political philosophies of environmentalists 1: Table 19605 communes compared with the 19805 2: Table Society and community 3: Introduction Table The communes examined in this work 4: Table Main tenets of the Findhom consensus 5: Table Approximate ages of the interviewees 6: Table Length of time in communes The rudiments of an ecological society probably structured 7: will be Table elite? around the commune -freely created, human in scale, and intimate in 8: An Table Major training, jobs and skills before joining itsconsciously cultivated rel ationshps .. 9: i . Table Dissatisfaction as a motive for joining 10: Table Major reasons for joining 11: This is what the green anarchist Murray Bookchin (1982) thinks. Table Ideological beliefs 12: This book aims to see ifhe is correct. It reports on research done in a Tab/t What 'the environment' means 13: dozen communes in England. Scotland and Wales, which, with two TahIr Major influences 14: exceptions, were founded in the 19705- in the wake of the first wave Table Beliefs about nature 15: of mass publicity and concern about human impact on the environ­ Table Ecologically sound practices 16: ment.Extended interviews (each up to two-and-a-halfhours long) Table Summary of views on social change 17: with over eighty communards probed their belief systems, ide­ Table Attitudes to conventional politics 18: ologies and practices. Each conversation led up to the central concern of the work, the question: How important are communes in Abbreviatioll8 used leadilJg the way to a SOcially //lore jUlt and ecologically more harmonious society? CAT Centre for A1ternarive Technology (The Quarry). Powys. Why ask it? Because a vast literature has appeared since Rachel Wales Carson's Silent Spring sparked off. in 1962. the present wave of CF Canon Frome, Herefordshire environmental concern; but much of it has been about the tech­ RF Redfield. Buckinghamshire nicalities and causes of the problems - whether they exist and how MW Monkton Wyld. Dorset bad they are. Relatively little has appeared on what do, but this is LSF Lower Shaw Farm. Swindon.Wilts to undoubtedly now the most pressing topic. This book's contribution PIC People in Common. Burnley. Lanes is to examine just one option, sl!ggested by some of the more radical CRAB Crabapple, Shropshire environmentalists, whom I call 'greens' throughout the book. They LAUR Laurieston Hall. Galloway, Scotland still form a minority among people who are concerned about the LSP Lifespan. Sheffield, Yorkshire environment - no more than sixteen per cent of the Americans GLAN Glaneirw. Wales surveyed in 1980, for example. thought that 'a completely new ZAP to A Project (formerly New University Project), Z [social-economic) system is needed' to solve our environmental Handsworth. Birmingham problems (Milbrath 1984, p82). But I think it increasingly probable FIND Findhorn, Forres, Scotland that they are right, and that the reformists - the 'technocentrics', 'cornucopians' and 'environmental managers' who believe that it is largely a matter of technological and managerial adjustments to the present system (O'Riordan 1989) - are wrong. The views of the viii I INTRODUCTION COMMUNES AND TUE: GREEN YISION featured the rural communes ofRedficld,Crabapple, Canon Frome, communards reportcd here amply suggest why this should be will Glaneirw and Laurieston that fann and garden organically, the last '0. being also an education centre; thc communes of the Z to A Project When I wrotc about the issue of the environment, and what (fonnerly the New University Project, now part of Radical Routes different groups of people said about it, I concluded that one way network) and People in Common, the uman-based though rurally towards an environmentally sound and socially just society might lie located printingcooperative of Lifespan; the now suburban organic in a 'network of alternative small communities where people try farm and education centre of Lower Shaw Fann; and the Centre for consciously to live along SUfllillolj-style principles' Blueprint {for A1ternative Technology (,The Quarry1, an education and demon­ (Peppcr 1984, p224).
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