Countryside excluded from 'one nation' world
There will be many Western Morning News readers who remember July 10, 1997, very well. My experience would have been fairly typical.
I had organised for someone to look after the farm for the day and very early in the morning met a few friends at Thelbridge Cross in Devon, where a coach from Chumleigh stopped to pick us up. We did one more pick-up in Nomansland, heading on the long road to London.
We were not off to a cricket match, or a day of culture in London's museums and galleries, we were going to something none of us had experienced before: a political demonstration.
Three on the bus had never even been to London before. As we reached Bristol and turned right along the M4 we all started to understand that something very special was happening. Our coach was not, shall we say, in the prime of youth. It chugged along the inside lane at not much more than 50mph and from behind us came coach after coach filled with people not unlike us who recognised the "Taw Vale Beagles" banner hanging across our back window and waved their own banners as they overtook.
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Hunts from Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, South Wales, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and many other counties were on the march and we knew that on other motorways thousands of others would be heading into London from different parts of the country.
Our destination was Hyde Park and after a short walk from our designated parking spot we reached the edge of the park.
The two memories that remain with me most clearly were the huge barrage balloons, one for each county, which flew above the rally, and the moment when we joined the back of the crowd and realised that there were not just a few people between us and the stage but a sea, hundreds of yards and thousands of people deep.
The impact of that demonstration on politicians and the media was profound, but I think its impact on us was even greater. Coming from rural communities, many of them isolated and tiny, it is very easy to become defeatist about the dominance of the urban, sometimes unthinking, majority. How can the few of us in our village in Devon, Cornwall, West Wales or Northumbria ever challenge the millions who pack into the towns and cities of Britain? What July 10, 1997, showed us was that we were not alone, that there were tens, even hundreds, of thousands like us and that together we could make people stop and think.
We came again in 2000 and marched past Westminster, a quarter of a million strong and then, in 2002, by which time I was working for the Countryside Alliance, an extraordinary 407,000 people marched for Liberty and Livelihood in the biggest civil liberties demonstration in British history. I am absolutely convinced that the solidarity and confidence those demonstrations brought to the countryside have played a vital part in helping rural people through 15 years of extraordinary social change, intermittent crises and the symbolic assault on our way of life that was the Hunting Act.
That is why the words of Shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh brought me up short when I read them last week. Ms Creagh said that those demonstrations were "a kind of luxury protest, to talk about what you do at the weekend". It is bad enough that she obviously feels it is acceptable to dismiss any demonstration with which she does not agree, but the presumption that our protest was just something we did so we could chat about it later is simply offensive. Imagine the reaction if a politician had described the demonstration against the Iraq war as a "luxury protest for the chattering classes".
What makes those comments even more extraordinary is the commitment Labour leader Ed Miliband has made to "One Nation" politics. Mr Miliband has talked about bringing the country together and never accepting "nasty, divisive politics". Yet his shadow cabinet colleague does not seem far removed from the Labour MP who admitted the Hunting Act was about "class war" just after it was passed.
Labour won 100 rural seats in 1997 nearly all of which have since reverted back to the Lib Dems and Conservatives and in 2010 Labour won just 18 per cent of the vote in the 150 or so most rural constituencies. Labour will not win a majority without returning MPs for rural constituencies which is something the party clearly understands.
Yet words and deeds remain very far apart: rural protests are dismissed as luxuries and every rural issue from badgers to horse meat are played out for party political gain. The countryside wants to be part of one nation yet, again and again, Labour politicians play politics with rural issues. The question for Ms Creagh and Mr Miliband is whether their "one nation" includes the countryside because at present we feel excluded from their world.
7 Comments
by OutofTownie
Tuesday, March 19 2013, 10:29AM
“Ok, well I look forward to seeing these MP's declare their devotion to hunting 'loud and proud' in all of the headlines come the next elections to make sure nobody in their constituencies is left in any doubt. It'll make a change from the usual mealy-mouthed responses and demonstrate just how confident they are that this stance in not a vote loser after all. Let's make sure the nationals run the headlines too and we can monitor the impact on tourism. A campaign with posters of the MP's backed by stags being hounded to exhaustion should have them flocking in don't you think?”
by charliejacoby
Monday, March 18 2013, 11:36AM
“Yup - that's about right. Taunton's anti-hunting MP Jackie Ballard was ousted in 2001 after a huge pro-hunting turnout. I met the current LibDem MP, Jeremy Browne, on a Countryside Alliance protest in London. In Tiverton & Honiton, many thought Angela Browning would lose her seat in 2005 to LibDem David Nation but she played the pro-hunting card days before the election and that seemed to swing it. And current T&H MP Neil Parish is fiercely pro-hunting. They're loud and proud!”
by OutofTownie
Monday, March 18 2013, 10:56AM
“So charliejacoby, are we meant to believe that your MP struts around at election time making it crystal clear to all of the constituents that he is an avid hunt supporter? I think not. He's most likely to follow the pattern of other hunt supporters and try to keep his connections with the hunting set as quiet as possible until after the event because there's no bigger turn off these days than association with blood sports - as I'm sure David Cameron and his hunting chums in govt now understand.”
by charliejacoby
Monday, March 18 2013, 6:26AM
“Hunting is the political test where I live, on the border of the Taunton and Tiverton constituencies. The ban hardened attitudes and you don't get elected as MP here unless you support hunting.”
by twotonethomas
Sunday, March 17 2013, 2:35PM
“Couldn't agree more OutofTownie.
I've lived in a rural market town all my life surrounded by 4 hunts, yet whenever I went to sabotage a hunt, I was branded 'an ignorant townie', often by people who lived within yards of me!!!!”
by avantguarddog
Sunday, March 17 2013, 1:42PM
“If you think you're speaking for the entire English rural community, you are quite clearly living in a middle class fantasy land. Most people who live in rural areas are NOT landowners, and are not, and never will be, involved in hunting culture. I know from experience that Northumberland and County Durham is filled with isolated rural and semi-rural working class communities, once involved with heavy industry, who were plunged into unemployment and often poverty in the 1980s and 90s with the decline of those industries.
There are even more recent examples, such as the closure of the Alcan aluminium smelter in South East Northumberland, leaving 600 Northumbrians unemployed. Do you really think that, regardless as to whether they care about animal rights, communities like that are really bothered about the hunting ban being lifted? They live in the real world, not some pastoral fantasy, and they have rising fuel prices, a decline in both private and public sector employment and public service cuts to worry about. The countryside is NOT just for the wealthy, and NOT just for landowners and farmers. If you honestly believe that there is still a clear rural/urban split in this country then I'm afraid to say that you are living in the 1950s. The only people who actively advocate animal cruelty are farmers and landowners. The rest of the population, whether urban, suburban, semi-rural or rural, are either indifferent to or strongly against unnecessary animal cruelty, as shown not only by the majority of the English population's continued opposition to hunting, but also to the outcry at the entirely political badger cull.
This is NOT the pampered urban masses against the rural realists. It is an increasingly compassionate, progressive population against deluded traditionalist landowners who think they can do whatever they like with OUR wildlife.”
by OutofTownie
Sunday, March 17 2013, 11:46AM
“It's not the countryside that is excluded from the 'one nation world' - it is those factions who are prepared to inflict unnecessary suffering on our wild animals by hounding them to death for the sake of amusement that are excluded and this is reflected, quite rightly, in the law of our land.
The Labour party went to the 1997 general election & those in between trumpeting their intention to ban hunting with dogs, a law which was finally enacted in 2005, and the electorate showed their support for this move and gave them the mandate by electing them with a majority every time.
I'm still waiting for the day when hunt supporters stop trying to hide behind the words 'countryside' or 'farmers' or 'rural'. Speak for yourselves and your hunting chums but don't smear the rest of us with your bloody brush.”