Was going to write a proper article but now I'm pissed and tired so it's more vague thoughts in article forms, but the thread needs starting so this'll do to set it off.
The list of grievances of the rural working class is a long one. The decline of post offices and local shops everywhere has been well document and in the countryside the absence of reliable public transport, or even the existence of public transport, has compounded the difficulties this creates. Rising house prices in urban areas have led to a huge increase in commuters with corresponding rises in house prices which has been unmatched by rural wages. Since there are no work pensions for the farm labourers the erosion of the state pension has had particularly harsh affects in the countryside, especially when combined with the physical isolation of small villages. And there are the traditional complaints, even after advances in wages and conditions during the first half of the 90’s, farm labourers will still typically earn £10,000 a year working 12 out of 14 days. There has also been a steep and constant reduction in the number of people employed on farms over the last 50 years and with no jobs replacing them obtaining any kind of employment has been increasing tricky for those not prepared to bow to the demands of capital and ’get on their bike’.
The Countryside Alliance and it’s campaign for the continuation of fox hunting initially appear odd vehicles for the expression of these grievances. The CA is led solely by middle, if not upper class people and, despite it’s claims to stand for more than just fox hunting, it was formed in response to a possible ban on fox hunting through a merger of the British Field Sports Society, the Countryside Movement and the Countryside Business Group, all groups who existed solely to perpetuate blood sports. Fox hunting also is predominantly (although not exclusively) a middle class activity. Yet to see the Countryside Alliance and associated demonstrations solely as a middle class vehicle for a middle class pursuit would be to miss how it has responded to the more demands of the rural working class and has become a vehicle for these desires.
These issues that primarily affect the rural working class, and the culture surrounding the rural working class (that working class people can wear tweed, fish and shoot is something that the leaders of groups such as the SWP have failed to comprehend) have been ignored by the left to such an extent that the CA has been able to masquerade as the defender of these ‘rights’, whilst actually centring it’s campaign around the bosses rights. And because of the CA’s role as vehicle for these issues it is very easy to miss the significance of the increased radicalism and mobilisation of the rural working class in the same manner as much of the left dismissed the fuel protests as reactionary rubbish. But it is important, both as a sign that the political forms of the rural working class are changing to reflected how their employment relationships have changed and also because it presents an opportunity for the left (in the widest possible sense of the word) to reconnect with the rural working class and begin to respond to it’s desires rather than ignoring it’s existence entirely or dealing only with an idealised and imaginary rural working class that never has existed.
