ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the changing relations between landowners and their tenants in Britain during the post-war period. It presents an examination of property-state relations with regard to British agricultural land. The chapter details the changes that have occurred in agricultural landownership during the twentieth century, paying particular attention to the changing nature of the landlord-tenant system of occupation. Since the nineteenth century, private property rights have become a continuous source of conflict in British society as the class interests excluded from that ownership have challenged the absolute rights to property and the wealth that accrues from them. Tenants had little power to challenge the landlords’ initiatives in serving the notice to quit, but after Miscellaneous Provisions Act of 1976, the tenant was allowed to demand that the Agricultural Land Tribunal consider whether the landlords’ claims were ‘fair and reasonable’. A tenant who was insolvent or who refused to pay rent could not mount such a challenge.
