I am not an out and out statist but we have to beware of attacking the state and what it provides when the only althernative being pushed by politicians and corporate media is control and interferance from big business which has no socila accountability whatsoever. For example I am for more community involvment in taking over schools that are deemed “unsustainable” but we cannot have a free for all where in Gateshead students are taught that the earth is less than seven thousand years old!

Well, this is a nice measured article, unlike the usual maledictory, spite-filled things you get on LC. But as regards traditional v modern windmills (wind turbines) look at a Constable, or any of the Norfolk school of painters – windmills, though present, are pretty sparse. Moreover, they are made of naturally weathering materials, and are not 150 metres high!

Trofim: the point about Constable and co is a good one. Why are windmills so sparse in English landscape art even though they once were so common across the landscape? If you know an art expert to ask…

“tilt at windmills: Fig. to fight battles with imaginary enemies; to fight against unimportant enemies or issues. (As with the fictional character, Don Quixote, who attacked windmills.) Aren’t you too smart to go around tilting at windmills? I’m not going to fight this issue. I’ve wasted too much of my life tilting at windmills.”

At the risk of invoking trofim’s wrath, am I the only one who thinks that however great it is to have more windmills, and however welcome community involvement in such projects is, it’s important not to get too carried away by the bucolic vision of a windmill for every village?

It’s quite true that a Minstry for Windmills de nos jours may not be appropriate, and certain things are certainly best handled using this sort of community involvement; let’s just not get too enamoured of the Big Society implications and give ammunition to the right.

I can see it now: “No, really..those Windmill Preservation chaps…marvelous….so keen..they’re just the chaps to run the local hospital..:

Whilst this is an interesting article there is another ‘side’ to the ‘windmill story’ – so the author should be a little bit careful when using the windmill as a metaphor for community solidarity. No doubt many will think fondly about the miller as the kind of nice, cosy character – Windy Miller – as portrayed in Camberwick Green and Chigley in the 1960s children’s programmes. But in reality the miller was usually one of the richer members of a Victorian village and could charge poorer members what he wanted to mill their produce etc. My great, great, great grandfather was one such miller and was from well off yeoman stock [oh the shame of having such bourgeois ancestors!] Being a younger son I presume his father could afford to pay an apprenticeship premium for him to learn the milling trade and then once that was done he moved on to his own mill. The inventory of his mill when he sold and moved on to another in the early years of the 19th century is very revealing, amongst the items was a ‘child’s chair’ – indicitive of higher status than the villagers who probably only had stools for adults if they were lucky.

Whilst this is an interesting article there is another ‘side’ to the ‘windmill story’ – so the author should be a little bit careful when using the windmill as a metaphor for community solidarity. No doubt many will think fondly about the miller as the kind of nice, cosy character – Windy Miller – as portrayed in Camberwick Green and Chigley in the 1960s children’s programmes. But in reality the miller was usually one of the richer members of a Victorian village and could charge poorer members what he wanted to mill their produce etc. My great, great, great grandfather was one such miller and was from well off yeoman stock [oh the shame of having such bourgeois ancestors!] Being a younger son I presume his father could afford to pay an apprenticeship premium for him to learn the milling trade and then once that was done he moved on to his own mill. The inventory of his mill when he sold and moved on to another in the early years of the 19th century is very revealing, amongst the items was a ‘child’s chair’ – indicitive of higher status than the villagers who probably only had stools for adults if they were lucky!

Elizannie: I’ll see your Victorian age and raise you Medieval… During their original spread back then, windmills were a form of social levelling, because they took the ability to generate power away from those who then controlled it and spread it much more widely. All relative of course, because societies were still very unequal, but the way in which windmills by turns were anti-establishment or part of the establishment mirrors wider economic changes.

I don’t think anybody really doubts that civil society can do many things, do them well, and sometimes even better than the state or the market. Doubt creeps in when we apply that at will to all areas. Of course hospitals, schools, housing, and so on have previously been provided in some way by civil society, outside of the state and the market. But could they be provided in the way we expect?

The story of windmills is illustrative here too. Look at this list of windmills in Lincolnshire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_windmills_in_Lincolnshire. Exactly 100 windmills are listed as having existed at some point. Over half have been demolished. Most of the remainder are in an incomplete state, lacking significant parts of their structure as windmills, even though they may be in use for another purpose. I count about 10 (with one more in progress) that are in complete working order. So, the “Big Society” saved 11% of windmills. That’s great, it really is, and I won’t knock it for what it is. But it’s not wholly convincing for every service, how could it be?

Now, nobody is going to suggest that hospitals are run by volunteers, and many schools already have a fair degree of civic engagement. We’re really talking about moving the line of how much we think society can (and should) do. Maybe public libraries and frontdesk police services are a decent place for this to happen? I don’t know, I’m not well informed enough in those areas to judge, but I know that it has to be pull and not push. Simply dumping the whole lot onto a community might result in all but 11% disappearing, whereas letting it grow organically, allowing a community to take on what it can, might result in them relieving the state of 11% of the burden. That would be a great result, and no doubt strengthen society even.

But the same situation applies here as it does to “cutting waste”: you only count it once it’s happened, and putting a number up at the beginning is a surefire way to fail. I do believe the current government wants to encourage civil society to grow; I don’t believe they have any intention other than to cut what they want, regardless of how much the “Big Society” can actually cope with.

Sorry about my duplicate posting – modern technology versus windpower means that today my pc has either spat out messages twice or not at all – thus I have been off air most of the afternoon! What you say about medieval times is interesting Martin but of course as most of the land was in the hands of the upper classes the social levelling you mention was not as wide spread as you imply. And of course the population ‘explosion’ was most noticable in the Victorian era and thus the status of the miller became more obvious. Tenant farmers were not only at the mercy of their landlord regarding rents but the miller also.

How odd that one small case study on windmills can actually – via a couple of anecdotal observations – become a way forward for the UK (or should I say England?).

PS – on the topic of horizontal axis windmills being English see http://www.telosnet.com/wind/early.html and similar.

“An early twentieth century style of municipal socialism that would have nationalised derelict windmills and put them under a command and control structure reporting to the Minister of State for Windmills ”

Er.. isn’t that the exact opposite of the meaning of ‘municipal’. The early socialist councils didn’t argue for state nationalisation in any case.

There are, of course, a number of examples of community owned power-generating windmills, on a not dissimilar model.

Equally, I find the examples of ultralocal media born out of community triggered broadband projects interesting as longer term examples; there seem to be dozens of these – examples up here in Derbyshire are Wirksworth and Hayfield.

Municipalisation; – a dirty word since the Thatcherite free privateers set about selling off the family silver. They dismiss the social advantages that municipalisation gave us, such as Council Housing and social -need-led water supplies etc, and grabbed the assets, wrung the profits from them and not infrequently sold them off for a quick bonanza to Foreign interests for whom the local consumers mattered not a damn. In Norfolk we have a glut of derelict windmills – we also have a man-made dearth of railways, thanks to Beeching and his short-sighted Tory accountancy axe. Almost none of the old M&GN railway lines exist now. What a social and environmental asset they would have been to us country folk sixty years on. Sir John Betjeman was once derided for suggesting that the British railway networks should be regarded as working museums of industrial utility, architectural beauty and heritage, (those lovely old stations), and preserved rather than ruthlessly be made economically ‘viable’ (profitable) to meet short term free market/ balance sheet criteria that still holds sway. Markets didn’t think so, and politicians of the time had no such aesthetic-allied-to-functional vision or courage – the road lobby won out and as a result we are the poorer and the more environmentally challenged – with a bleak energy / transport future to look forward to. It doesn’t have to be like this. You can keep Big Society clap-trap / smoke and mirrors – it means very little – what we need to do is to look back and take in the lessons of – yes indeed – the Co–operative Societies. Lets look at what value really means in a holistic – popular – life enhancing – communal sense and in doing so be brave enough to embrace the challenges that will bring about the resurrection of what used to meant by society and community – community that involved, included and encouraged everyone – except the marauding ‘sell-everything-off’ hyenas – to be part of it. An impossible dream? What’s impossible about it? We might get our lovely old windmills back and then, as good old Sir John said in a poem” . . .steam trains will return.” Tomorrow belongs to everyone – how sweet life could be – if we wanted it and not red braces and pinstripe suits.