I do hope that Pat Glass forgives me for the title to this post. They are by far the hardest parts to write. Anyway, three cheers for Pat Glass, for taking on the Government’s failure to create the promised Supermarkets Ombudsman. Beyond that, we need 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, and in either case accompanied by strict regulation to ensure that the costs were not passed on to suppliers, workers, consumers, communities or the environment.
There is the most pressing need to revive the movement 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 obtained, and who continue to defend, rural amenities such as schools, medical facilities, Post Offices, and so on. Those who opposed the destruction of the national rail and bus networks, and who continue to demand that those services be reinstated. 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.
Farm labourers, smallholders, crofters and others organised in order to secure radical reforms. County divisions predominated among safe Labour seats when such first became identifiable in the 1920s, while the Labour Party and the urban working class remained profoundly wary of each other throughout the period that both could realistically be said to exist at all, with several cities proving far less receptive to Labour than much of the nearby countryside. Working farmers sat as Labour MPs between the Wars and subsequently. The Attlee Government created the Green Belt and the National Parks. Real agriculture is the mainstay of strong communities, environmental responsibility and animal welfare (leading to safe, healthy and inexpensive food) as against “factory farming”, and it is 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.
The President of the Countryside Alliance is a Labour peer, Baroness Mallalieu, and its Chairman is a Labour MP, Kate Hoey. For at least three consecutive General Elections until 2010, few or no Conservative MPs were returned by the hunting heartlands of Wales, Yorkshire, the Midlands, Devon and Cornwall. The present Coalition means, either that Labour is now the only electoral option for the age-old rural Radicalism of the West Country and Hampshire, and for the combination of that with Unionism (or, at least, with a strong suspicion of rule from the Scottish Central Belt or from South Wales) in the North and South of Scotland and in Mid Wales, or else that the Labour Party now demands to be replaced with something that can indeed meet this profoundly pressing and electorally opportune need.
She says she finds it as difficult as everyone else to keep up with the volume of material that you produce. But she is an avid reader of it like everyone else, and as you know an avid follower of your Twitter feed with its many links to this site.
ReplyDeleteThe papers say that 12 public houses are closing in this country every day. Why doesn't the government ban supermarkets from selling alcohol and instruct the breweries to supply it to public houses on the same terms as the supermarkets. If alcohol-related problems are causing so much grief in the community and in our hospitals then restrict its sale to official licensed premises - (NOT supermarkets). Pubs could then return to off-sales which would boost their finances and may just stop the rot.
ReplyDeleteIf Pat Glass is an avid reader of this blog then may I suggest that she pursues this suggestion.
I take it that this beautiful little gem is extracted from the book. Are you having a launch party, and if so are you inviting all of the rest of the Parish Council plus partners? One of them is of course married to Pat.
ReplyDeleteProbably all of them are avid readers here when they can keep up with your sheer energy, and as you know the same goes for Pat, also known to retweet your material. Everyone wishes you would come back to the party, and stuff like this is the reason why.
At the same time, no one blames you for having grown sick of being kept down and held back all those years. But local government reorganisation has taken care of a lot of that and the advent of Ed Miliband, aided and abetted by the parliamentary boundary review, is taking care of most of the rest.
Insights as brilliant as the ones in this post make your mind too important to be kept off its only practical political vehicle. Pat thinks so. All those of your old Derwentside and CLP mates and mentors who are still active think so. Even Hilary thinks so. Fleming might not, but he is not paid to think.
You have a duty to the causes that we are all fighting for. Get back on board. Your community, your country and your party (yes your party) need you.
A launch party? Hardly...
ReplyDeleteI want to echo Anon. This post is one of the huge number that show how important you could and should be as both an ideologue and strategist.
ReplyDeleteIf you were living anywhere else, you would have rejoined by now. If you had been living anywhere else by the time you left, you might never have do so, because without ageing souls who knew you as a child and used local politics as their pension scheme, and without a bitter, overambitious contemporary who wanted you out of the way, your remarkable abilities would have been recognised and used properly.
Rebuilding Labour's rural roots and extending them into historically Liberal areas are among the dozens of ways in which you have a vital contribution to make. Please come home so you can make it. It is your duty.