Does rural Britain have to be a no go area for the left?

Every summer I like me to spend sometime visiting delightful rural spots to thank those who came before us in building our movement. I listen to fiery radical speeches of labour struggles of days gone by. I am not alone many of you will have been to places like Tolpuddle in Dorset or Burston in Norfolk home of the famous strike school or maybe to Burford in the Cotswolds to mark Levellers day.

There was a time when the left held its own in rural areas and there was the Country Standard in which to read about the struggles of working class rural dwellers and we had something to say to rural communities.

With the collapse in house prices and economic changes generating huge increases in food prices it is now time for us on the left to think again about rural life and the agricultural sector. Just because agricultural policy is the property of the European Union does not means that we have to give up thinking about what the shape and type of agriculture we should have here in the UK.

Despite being true blue on the electoral map ironically rural Britain is a bastion of the co-operative movement. The erosion of the co-operative sector in the cities has not been matched in agriculture where co-operation seems to have gone from strength to strength.

Each year Co-operatives UK publish an overview of the UK co-operative economy with a table of the UK’s top 100 co-operatives. At least half of them are agricultural co-ops.

The retail Co-op itself began farming in 1896 when it bought its first farm to grow spuds for its stores and a big expansion took place between the wars when food was scarce so it should be no surprise to find that the Co-op is the UK’s largest farmer with 70,000 acres across England and Scotland.

There are at least ten agricultural co-ops with a turn over of more than £100 million! There are some real giants like the Dairy Farmers of Britain Co-operative with two thousand farmer members turning over half a billion pounds. This in some way reflects the consolidation of the sector with the severe challenges the agricultural economy has faced over the last few years with poor prices and terrible weather that put farm incomes under massive strain.

The collapse in rural farm work has contributed to the pressure to close rural schools and post offices, although there are still around 135,000 workers employed in agriculture in the UK.

In fact the Rural and Allied Workers Trade Group of Unite continues to represent workers with the Agricultural Wages Board as well as in the growing sectors of horticulture and forestry. Many of the problems of rural work, of migrant labour and gang masters would have been familiar to Thomas Hardy and the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

There are still many opportunities for co-op’s and social enterprises to contribute to the rural economy as the Plunkett Foundation which provide seed corn finance and advice to support the start up and development of rural co-ops and social enterprises have shown. This helps the growth of small scale businesses such as community shops for example which large scale business is simply not interested in.

Successive UK Governments have followed a policy of managed decline reflecting their attitude both to the manufacturing and agricultural sectors here in Britain however with global warming affecting production the issue of food security will soon become a real one. We will face the challenge of having to put more land under cultivation, as well as issues such as that of low carbon agriculture, the hopes of organic farming, animal welfare and movement as well as the impact of climate change on soil quality.

With DEFRA seeming to believe that the UK can import huge quantities of food out of the mouths of those in the developing world for evermore. Frankly I feel the government have given too much ground to the Countryside Alliance. We have been lead on a huge wild fox chase over country sports whilst missing out on the real debate over the future of the land over which the chase takes place.

UK agriculture is a vitally important asset to our country and it needs to be expanded and developed not sentenced to lingering death under the common agricultural policy. I do not believe a one size fits all agricultural policy is appropriate in these changed circumstances and this is another vital issue that NO2EU - Yes to Democracy should be raising in the European Elections.