Every Little Helps

From the dairy farms of Britain to the Commonwealth, mostly Commonwealth Realm, banana plantations of the Windward Islands, there have long been calls for an ombudsman for British supermarkets. Well, that would be a start.

It is very high time to make the supermarkets fund investment in agriculture and small business, determined in close consultation with the National Farmers’ Union and the Federation of Small Businesses, by means of a windfall tax, to be followed if necessary by a permanently higher flat rate of corporation tax.

In either case, there must be strict regulation to ensure that the costs of this are not passed on to suppliers, workers, consumers, communities or the environment. By, for example, a Supermarkets Ombudsman. So, where and when would this position be advertised, and how and by whom would the eventual appointment be made?

In any case, the last time that the party now proposing this new office was in government, it was horrendous for agriculture, and for the countryside in general. In its post-Thatcher form, how could it not have been then, and how could it not be now?

Instead, we need MPs in the tradition of those who have resisted enclosure, clearances, exorbitant rents, absentee landlordism, and a whole host of other abuses of the rural population down to the present day. Of those who organised farm labourers, smallholders, crofters and others in order to secure radical reforms. Of those who obtained, and who continue to defend, rural amenities such as schools, medical facilities, Post Offices, and so on.

MPs in the tradition of the county divisions that predominated among safe Labour seats when such first became identifiable in the 1920s. Of the working farmers who sat as Labour MPs between the Wars and subsequently. Of the Attlee Government’s creation of the Green Belt and the National Parks. Of those who opposed the destruction of the national rail and bus networks, and who continue to demand that those services be restored.

MPs in the tradition of those who have seen, and who still see, real agriculture as the mainstay of strong communities, environmental responsibility and animal welfare (leading to safe, healthy and inexpensive food) as against “factory farming”, and as a clear example of the importance of central and local government action in safeguarding and delivering social, cultural, political and environmental goods against the ravages of the “free” market.

MPs in the tradition of those who have fought, and who continue to fight, for affordable housing in the countryside, and for planning laws and procedures that take proper account of rural needs. Of those who object in principle to government without the clear electoral mandate of rural as well as of urban and suburban areas. Of those who have been and who are concerned that any electoral reform be sensitive to the need for effective rural representation.

MPs who are concerned that any new or reformed second chamber be equally representative of each of the 99 units that are the English ceremonial counties, the Scottish lieutenancy areas, the Welsh preserved counties, and the Northern Irish counties, and reflect the diversity of political opinion within each of them.

MPs in the tradition of Distributism and the related tendencies.

And MPs who are conservationist rather than environmentalist.