The new enclosure: the appropriation of public land in neoliberal Britain

Since Margaret Thatcher took power in 1979, and hidden from the public eye, about 10% of the entire British land mass has passed from public to private hands.

Forest land, defence land, health service land and above all else local authority land - for farming and school sports, for recreation and housing - has been sold off en masse.

Why? How? And with what social, economic and political consequences? 'The New Enclosure' provides the first ever study of this profoundly significant phenomenon, situating it as a centrepiece of neoliberalism in Britain and as a successor programme to the original 18th-century enclosures.