Of Farmers and Markets

The present furore over the future of British agriculture, summed up by David Miliband's telling the farmers that they are pretty much not going to allowed to have one and by David Cameron's agreeing with him (of course), is simply the "free" market in action. In such a market, fully applied, there would long have been no agriculture in this country. Those who rightly joined in the Countryside March are in fact on the same side as those who defended coal, steel, ship-building, and so forth, on the entirely correct ground that economic activity must be morally subordinate to the service of social, cultural, political and environmental goods.

To believe in strong communities, in environmental responsibility, in animal welfare, and in healthy and nutritious food is not only to oppose the hunting ban (although it is certainly that), but also to support farm subsidies (though certainly not in the form of the Common Agricultral Policy), and to oppose the amoral, and thus immoral, "free" market. The sooner that we have at least one proper political formation saying all of these things and acting accordingly, the better.