The wages of Oikism

The marketing message for The Weekend Wanderers Spring Rally is very simple. It effectively says look at the history of the area on Wikipedia- lots of good pickings!. The business model is simple too: 300 people @ £58 each adds up to £16,800. Plus rental from any dealers or traders. Plus lots of other rallies per month. Plus a Joining Fee of £20 and an Annual Membership fee of £15 x the number of members (unknown, but it’s now “the largest club in the UK” and has been going for 26 years!) Imagine!

But it’s not the wages that matter (although they must add up to a massive annual amount), it’s the lack of proper rules. Like so many clubs they say they “actively encourage” recording with PAS but the pont is: it’s not mandatory. There’s a likely reason: making it compulsory would hit ticket sales. But here’s a thought: isn’t it a universal rule of rallies (and wider society) that if you don’t impose compulsory rules at rallies (or laws in countries) you get oikism in the gap?

As the largest club in the UK, Weekend Wanderers must be providing the biggest gap of all. We’ll be happy to review our accusation that they’re involved in highly lucrative and damaging oikism the moment they make best practice at their rallies compulsory. But we won’t hold our breath. Plus…..

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Latest, 10 April: “many Dutch detectorists are returning this year, they had a good time last year and are bringing more friends.” Oh great. How many of those are coming and where are their local FLOs, to whom they’ll be reporting all their finds? For how much longer will Britain be made a laughing stock in the thinking rest of the world by commercial companies selling tickets to deplete it’s heritage knowledge? As Paul Barford has recently pointed out, the damnable thing that lies behind the hypocritical preening of the likes of Weekend Wanderers is that “Artefact hunting is not about ‘finding’, it is about taking away”. Let them find a less damaging means to earn money.

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More Heritage Journal views on artefact collecting

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