"To show this reconciliation was not a mere formality, a few years after, when my eldest son left Oxford, he gave him an appointment; and so ended an agitation which originated in weakness but ended in victory.
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London Daily News — 28 March 1887
Buckmaster fulminates against the transfer of the Common from the existing body of elected Conservators to the Metropolitan Board of Works.
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WANDSWORTH COMMON.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY NEWS
An effort is to be made to transfer Wandsworth Common from a body of Conservators elected by the ratepayers to the Metropolitan Board. To this transfer I feel it my duty to give a most determined resistance. The Metropolitan Board has failed to justify the expectations which were formed of it, and instead of its powers and jurisdiction being increased, ought rather, in the interest of the ratepayers, to be diminished. It has created a debt of nearly £30,000,000, is practically irresponsible, and, if allowed to go on, will in time become another City Corporation.
In our greatest need and difficulty we went as humble deputations, almost on our knees, beseeching the Board to help us in our efforts to save the common from a besieging army of speculating builders and land-grabbers, but the Board never gave us the smallest help: it did everything to obstruct a private Bill which, in spite of the Board, was at last carried, and secured free and open for ever what now remains of Wandsworth Common.
The Board never it paid a single farthing in compensation for extinguished se rights, but proposed selling certain portions of the common in the event of their taking it to pay for the cost of management.
What security have we that in this attractive idea to over-burdened ratepayers will not be revived ?
The cry for handing over the common without any conditions comes not so much from persons who are liable for direct rates, but from the compounding interest which has pauperised the parish and is now the controlling influence in all parochial government. A person living in a house 1 rented at £30 a year pays one shilling towards the maintenance of the common.
Ought we to alienate for ever 150 acres of land under the delusion that by so doing we shall reduce the local rate? When the transfer is made we shall lose all control over the common, but local rates and four shillings a week for a room will remain.
The large public companies in the parishes of Battersea and Wandsworth have never, so far as I know, complained of the Wandsworth-common rate. The pretence of reducing local burdens is, to my mind, the feeblest and flimsiest of arguments and comes for the most part from some who were not in the parish when the struggle was going on and from others who neither took any part in it nor gave a sixpence towards preserving the common.
When the transfer is made the Metropolitan Board, in these days of sacred compensation, will no doubt be moved to refund all our subscriptions, pay our lawyers' bills, indemnify me for writs, and perhaps make some acknowledgment for years of anxious labour and agitation. If in the coming elections our five men are defeated, what security have we that the present action against the Patriotic Commissioners will be prosecuted. Will it not be compromised or, as one vestryman said, "squared."
To the non-parochial mind such language may appear mysterious. But it has its significance. Portions of Wandsworth Common have often been squared, and when what remains is gone we shall have parted with the last remnant of local government. The halfpenny rate will have disappeared in that ever-swelling stream which floats out of the pockets of the ratepayers nearly six millions a year.
We shall have lost everything and gained nothing. If your space permitted, I could expose the fallacy of the figures and estimates which have been used to delude the ratepayers.It is not entirely a question of figures, and to me the decision of the ratepayers is personally of no consequence, but to the children and young men in this growing amd populous district it is a matter of supreme importance.
If the same regulations obtain on Wandsworth Common as apply to Clapham Common, games will be almost impossible, "All persons playing or preparing to play football, cricket, or other games within forty yards of any footpath or road are liable to a penalty of five pounds," it will be difficult to find space on Wandsworth Common not within forty yards of a footpath or road. Rounders, base ball, bat and trap, games as old as cricket, will be forbidden, or practised under irksome regulations and rules by which thousands of children will be deprived of that pure, innocent pleasure which these games afford.
Yours obediently,
J.C. BUCKMASTER
[BNA: London Daily News, 28 March 1887 ]