The Second Time As Farce

Back comes the Child Benefit story, just as the Housing Benefit policy falls to pieces, and just as Cameron comes back from Brussels with a triumphant increase in our contributions to show for his promise of no increase in our contributions. The story is that no one is remotely surprised at the Coalition’s falling apart before our very eyes.

Meanwhile, is Labour really targeting the North of Scotland now that the Lib Dems have turned Tory? Stranger things have happened. The question is whether the organisation still purporting to be the Labour Party is capable of making this happen. We need a movement 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. Those who organised farm labourers, smallholders, crofters and others in order to secure radical reforms. Those who obtained, and who continue to defend, rural amenities such as schools, medical facilities, Post Offices, and so on. The county divisions that predominated among safe Labour seats when such first became identifiable in the 1920s. The working farmers who sat as Labour MPs between the Wars and subsequently. The Attlee Government’s creation of the Green Belt and the National Parks. And those who opposed the destruction of the national rail and bus networks, and who continue to demand that those services be restored.

We need a movement 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. 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. Those who object in principle to government without the clear electoral mandate of rural as well as of urban and suburban areas. Those who have been and who are concerned that any electoral reform be sensitive to the need for effective rural representation. Distributism and the related tendencies. And those who are conservationist rather than environmentalist.

Sharpen the tools.