At the same time, the notion of recreating the common access to wealth fed into the concept of the ‘commonwealth’ that animated the thought of Robert Kett, Gerrard Winstanley, the Levellers, the Diggers and the Ranters.
Having failed to prevent the legal privatisation of resources completed by the Inclosure Acts, subsequent efforts turned to developing intentional communities defined by common control or ownership of assets, notably land, such as Owenite models, Feargus O'Connor’s Chartist National Land Company and most successfully, the Co-operative Retail movement and Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities.
The progressive benevolence of bureaucratic policymaking was met by a criticism of an over-mighty state which paid no attention to the particularities of communities, and drove a diverse range of protests against roadbuilding and slum clearance.
The Plunkett Foundation have overseen the development of a range of rural retail outlets, predominantly shops and pubs, owned by their members, with successful trading performance.
In 2014, the UK’s Big Lottery Fund agreed to endow Power to Change, a new charitable trust to support the growth and development of community enterprise.