Is there hope for the West Country? Political sentiment amongst rural voters.
| Author | Baker, Tabitha A. |
| Position | FOOD AND FARMING |
The rural-urban divide is defining politics worldwide. In Britain, this was clearly visible in the 2016 EU referendum, as well as the 2019 and 2017 general elections. (i) In rural areas in Europe and the United States, social attitudes and political behaviour are influenced by a spatial dimension that relates to underlying socio-demographic and economic features. (2) In the UK, researchers have argued that towns and villages 'serve only as satellites to urban centres where economic activity is concentrated'; while towns are left 'high and dry', experiencing disconnect and loss of human and economic capital. (3) Yet, these are places where people feel they belong; they are filled with meaning, embedded in a depth of history and collective experiences that serve as pillars of identity, shaping people's experiences of the world and structuring political perspectives, attitudes and behaviour.
Global economic development has created uneven growth and a divide in job prospects between those who have access to high-skilled jobs and those who do not. (4) The English countryside, so often depicted romantically, is marked by the uncomfortable truths of rural poverty, declining public infrastructure, and a combination of low incomes and higher living costs, as well as the lowest levels of social mobility. (5) The steady decline of social and civic assets, such as the community centres, post offices, leisure centres, independent businesses and small farms that prop up rural economies, has caused rural communities to collapse into insecurity, political disillusionment and cynicism. This has arguably led these areas to revolt against the status quo at the ballot box; populist support is often territorially based, and it exists in these less dynamic areas. There has been a rebellion against the feeling of being forgotten and left behind. (6) Many rural communities lack access to stable employment, opportunities for mobility, investment in the community, and diversity in the economy and social services. As increasingly socially and spatially isolated places, they are vulnerable to nationalist populist political ideas.
Many of the studies on UK deprivation, particularly recently, focus on juxtaposing cosmopolitan areas with places 'left behind' by economic globalisation. As argued in the 2018 Southern Policy Centre (SPC) report, these geographically-centred explanations of economic decline draw attention mainly to areas that have suffered large-scale and rapid economic decline, such as the North of England, Wales and the East coast of England. (7) Meanwhile, individual experiences of deprivation and inequality in the South have been politically neglected and hidden amongst narratives that generalise the South as affluent and upwardly mobile. (8)
In contrast, my research aims to provide understandings of citizens' experiences in rural areas in the South West of England, and to allow a more nuanced insight into the ways that macro-level patterns and trends take shape and play out on the ground. It draws on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' 2021 Statistical Digest of Rural England; the 2018 Fabian policy report 'Labour Country'; and the Southern Policy Centre's 2018 report 'Making Ends Meet'; and combines findings from these with primary research data from qualitative interviews with residents in rural South West England.
The research
During spring and summer 2020, as part of my doctoral research, I spoke to residents of rural areas in the South West of England about their political and social attitudes. The twenty-nine participants ranged from nineteen to seventy-eight years old. The majority had voted Leave in the EU referendum, and the sample was more or less an even split across the left-right axis. All participants resided in either an isolated dwelling, a village, or a small town, in the South West counties of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall.
As somebody who grew up in social housing in a rural Dorset village, I felt it important to give voice to those whose experiences are often hidden or generalised amongst larger statistical data. It is not hard to find research that oversimplifies, and generalises rural voters as backward-looking and closed-minded without taking into account deprivation and class-based injustices. Through analysing the interview data using a thematic analysis to identify repeated patterns, my aim was to further understanding of political thought and sentiment at a rural level, and to provide a space where such sentiments can be understood with nuance and attention to the wider forces at play. Many of the themes participants discussed related to localised issues, political discontent and disillusionment, and feelings of a distinct rural-urban divide. Feelings expressed ranged from hopelessness, frustration, fear, disappointment and betrayal to passion, solidarity and pride in the West Country. While we cannot make over-arching generalisations from this data, it does, I believe, suggest ways that political parties might begin to engage and mobilise rural voters.
Remoteness and inaccessibility
Discontent and resentment characterised the political sentiments of many of the interviewees, often related to economic concerns such as poor infrastructure, lack of funding for basic necessities and limited investment. Travel and transport was a dominant issue across all participants, as might be expected; statistics show that people living in rural settlements have poor access to key services such as hospitals, GP surgeries, schools, shops and centres of employment. In 2018-2019, people living in the most rural areas travelled almost twice as far per year as those residing in urban areas, mainly in cars, because of a lack of public transport. (9) The impacts of this situation can best be understood through individual stories and experiences.
Celia, a sixty-nine-year-old woman who resided on a Romani traveller site in rural Somerset, told me how, if it wasn't for her car, she would be in 'serious trouble', as she lives over two miles from the local village. She explained that it had been left up to local volunteers to run a taxi service for those that live on the outskirts to take them into the nearest village and town to access services. Evidently, without these volunteer services, the older and young populations are particularly at risk of severe isolation. The lack of transport for those in villages had a profound effect on Samantha, a twenty-nine-year-old woman residing in a rural village in Devon with two young children. She told me that her car had been in the garage getting fixed for the week, which meant she hadn't been able to leave...
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