Martin Large: Community Land Trusts, Cooperative Ways of Buying Land and Ecological Homes
Martin, jumps into the interview likening our current economic situation to a tarmac road - the ‘neo liberal’ tarmac road - that is now breaking up, as there are more and more crises - and in among all the cracks there are many kinds of green shoots coming up to form a new ‘commonwealth’ society - and this in many ways is exemplified by Lyttelton and Project Lyttelton.net.nz - where Martin was being interviewed by telephone from.
That he states this is a global phenomena that’s actually happening in so many countries as a conscious change due to discontent with the ‘monetisation’ of so much of our culture and way of life.
Martin mentions that after the two huge destructive earthquakes that hit both Christchurch and also Lyttelton - the community pulled together and they both have been able to recover remarkably well - (and still having much work to do on this) and he asks the question. Does this prefigure the challenges we face with climate destruction if we do not take timely action?
The slow moving disaster for NZ’s future - areas that are gradually being affected by rising sea levels.
The Commons
How can we live and have access to both land and a home?
Marine talks about Community Land Trusts and how they can take care of the ‘commons’ of land, water and air, but mainly land for farming and housing. Yet, we have also lost many of our connections with the ‘commons.’
The failure of Neo Liberalism
Saying that the pendulum in NZ is swinging away from Rogernomics and Ruthanasia (Slang for Two previous Ministers of Finance from the NZ Labour and National Parties that championed neo - liberalism) That we are now realising the need to re-balance our society during this present political times by inviting not only the public and private sectors but also the plural sector, the civil society sector - who he says we see for example in Project Lyttelton.
Community and Countrywide Ownership
That NZ was once a large co-operative country that had many commercial co-operatives - dairy farmers being the largest of them, but also, having huge Mutual Insurance Societies, Trust Banks up and down the country, Building Societies, Trust Hotels and Alcohol outlets - and we have basically let them slip out of NZ ownership and control since 1984, when the rightwing overseas bankers infiltrated the NZ Labour Party with the Neo liberal agenda, of self interest.
Co-operative Values
Cooperative Values of self help and self responsibility, community benefit, community participation, openness, transparency and community investment - which Martin says is a wonderful picture - why did we let all this go and why have NZers forgotten this profoundly important history? (Martin was taken back to learn of this.)
Same in the UK
He says that in the UK in the 1990’s and early 2000s, many of the building societies that were member owned and were mutuals for savings, loans and mortgages were privatised too and then they went bust! Resulting in the taxpayers shelling out a trillion pounds to support them in 2007-8.
In the UK Martin belongs to and banks with the Nationwide Building Society, and it’s still member owned which is the largest mutual still operating and it is very efficient and more effective and provide better service than the big five banks of Britain, that he terms casino banks.
Co-operative originated in UK
3 He talks about the early Co-ops in the 19th century and early 20th century in UK and the Newcastle area and spread to Australia and NZ - See Rochdale Principles.
The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, (RCEP) founded in 1844, is usually considered the first successful cooperative enterprise, used as a model for modern coops, following the 'Rochdale Principles'. A group of 28 weavers and other artisans in Rochdale, England set up the society to open their own store selling food items they could not otherwise afford. Within ten years there were over a thousand cooperative societies in the United Kingdom.
These were to counter - liberal laissez faire economic business systems of today - dog eat dog world.
Research published by the Worldwatch Institute found that in 2012 approximately one billion people in 96 countries had become members of at least one cooperative.[2] The turnover of the largest three hundred cooperatives in the world reached $2.2 trillion – which, if they were to be a country, it would make them the seventh largest.
This was one way of pushing back for the individual and those less financially advantaged … unity is strength.
Now today - how can we reinvent cooperative methods and recreate different ways of cooperating … this is what Martins sees as our...