> So it was necessary to take people's land away from them because > they couldn't be trusted to use it properly themselves? Not quite. The primary reason for the enclosures (reason rather than effect) was to control the movement of livestock in order to pursue a policy of selective breeding and improvement of the stock. This could not be done where all animals had access to common grazing. In any event, the peasants (not a term typically used of the English agricultural smallholders) did not own the land outright; they enjoyed only the rights to graze. The enclosures COULD have been organised on the basis of, say, agricultural co-operatives, rather than on confiscation, but, as far as I am aware, there was no initiative for this among the peasantry in this country at the time. > Stalin himself couldn't have put it better. The giant agricultural co-operatives of the Stalinist era do not seem to have been generally successful (although, perhaps, they might have been here, had someone promoted the idea). Ron S