The English Country Worker As British Countryman And As British Worker

Charlie Marks writes:

Almost one million households in rural England live in poverty, a study says. The report, by the government’s rural advocate, says many people in the countryside have prosperous lifestyles.

But the picture is “not so rosy” for more than 928,000 households with incomes below the official poverty line of £16,492, Stuart Burgess adds.

Dr Burgess, who heads the Commission for Rural Communities, said the priorities for rural communities were providing more affordable housing, strengthening the economy of rural areas and supporting voluntary and community work.

One of his recommendations is to promote community land trusts, which ensure properties are affordable for rural workers and do not become second homes.

He told BBC News: “No government, whichever colour of the day, is going to interfere dramatically into the market economy. But what we can do is mitigate the problem.” [Emphasis added]

Quite so. And it is of course an historical aberration that the English countryside, once a most fertile seedbed of radicalism, has been ceded to a party wedded (aberrantly in terms of its own history) to an ideology wholly at odds with rural interests.

I know of nowhere else (including Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland) where anything comparable is the case. And I really do mean nowhere: the self-styled Democratic Socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders, sits as an Independent for Vermont, a state so rural that he previously sat for its single at-large district in the House of Representatives.

But Charlie goes on:

It seems Dr Burgess suffers from an impoverished imagination. An English parliament at the very least would be prompted to deal with this problem: I can imagine limits on second home ownership accompanied by an expansion of council housing.

Why? I'd like to see these things, too. But I don't see why an English Parliament would be particularly likely to deliver them, especially considering that England is, overall, less rural than Scotland or Wales, at least.