Sharpen The Tools

The designation of the South Downs as a National Park, a most uncapitalist concept, calls to my mind the fact that until the First World War, the English countryside was a hotbed of Radicalism. One of the greatest failings of the emerging Labour Party was to turn those areas blue by default while leaving their Scottish equivalents to the Liberals and making possible, by sheer negligence, the emergence of Plaid Cymru in the rural North Wales that remains a centre of agitation for social justice and, until that party most disappointing voted for the war on Libya, for peace.

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.

And roll on electoral reform.