Today's Intellectual Diversion: Part One

To be a target for Straight Left is of course to renew one's acquaintance with it. Apart from the astonishing realisation that William Wilson is still alive, the figure of the late Joan Maynard stands out for me. Of course, I could not be further from much of what "Stalin's Granny" stood for. But she was an example of something about which I have long wondered: whatever happened to rural radicalism?

There is in Britain what might be called the Rural Myth, that the Tories have some sort of ancestral right to represent the countryside in Parliament. This is contrary to the plain facts of history. Moreover, in the "long nineteenth century" glory days of the old Liberal Party, and in the early days of the Labour Party (wholly mistakenly assumed to be or have been a purely urban phenomenon), those MPs returned by agricultural workers and smallholders, and those trade union leaders (often the same people, such as Joseph Arch) who represented those interests, were frequently more radical than their urban-based brethren in demanding democracy, liberty and social justice. In this, they fully represents the views of their constituents and members.

And such views are still widely and deeply held in rural Britain. Indeed, much of today's lack of radicalism in the face of rampant poverty, ignorance, ill health, squalor and homelessness, unemployment (however disguised), war, and anti-democratic practice is attributable to the silencing of those voices.

How much better if each of the 99 areas having a Lord Lieutenant elects six Senators and (grouped into nine elevens, depending on the relative size of the electorate) between two and ten MPs, always by means of voting for one candidate, with the requisite number declared elected at the end. This would give 594 members in each House.

A latter-day, but not Stalinist, Joan Maynard would certainly be a Senator, and quite possibly an MP, for her native North Yorkshire, instead of, as Maynard was, MP for the very different Sheffield Brightside. The voice of Arch, and at least the young Lloyd George, and the Tolpuddle Martyrs would be heard in Parliament. And Britain would be so much the better for it.