Rural renewal: a nation of communities in cities, coast and country.
| Author | Lloyd, Hywel |
There is something of a renewed interest in the rural across the nation. You can see it in the wider world: we have seen this growing interest in the broader culture, including the popularity of James Rebanks's English Pastoral (reviewed in Renewal, Vol 29 No 3) and his earlier book The Shepherd's Life, as well as Bella Bathurst's Field Work and Isabella Tree's Wilding, the story of the renewal of the Knepp Estate, in Sussex. (1)
Of course the list would be incomplete without a reference to that interesting new TV series, Clarkson's Farm! And it can be seen in political commitments by the Labour leadership at the national conference of the National Farmers Union (NFU) in 2021, as well as in the ongoing review of policies for rural England, led by Luke Pollard MP, which he also wrote about in Renewal, Vol 29 No 3. (2)
Labour: Coast & Country (LCC) has been ploughing the furrow of non-urban policy and practice across the labour movement since 2011. It was founded by a group of Labour members who had worked, and mostly still do, on the issues and opportunities facing communities of coast and country. This group collectively recognised that these communities are key to the future of the nation, yet had slipped from the attention of too much of the labour movement.
LCC was created to give those issues, people and experiences a long term home in Labour. As a co-founder I am proud to be part of getting coast and country back on the political agenda, building on my work as a Specialist Advisor (2007-1o), and my wider interest in what Great Britain could be. And as a continued part of that journey we were delighted to play a part in creating the autumn 2021 edition of Renewal--alongside guest editor Cathy Elliott--and to be reflecting on it here.
Urban understandings of the rural might contrast the speed of former with the slowness of the latter. For some, the rural is the relaxed idyll, with room to move, to stretch your legs, to look to the horizon, to grow and farm, to be a part of nature. For others, it suggests a lonely place with few opportunities. These various ways of seeing and describing the rural are fine until they lead to a lazy stereotyping of what rural is, or isn't. A concern about those stereotypes even led LCC to its name, avoiding the use of the word rural. An artificial disconnection between urban dwellers' way of seeing the countryside and the ways rural people understand themselves and their lives risks each becoming the other's bogeyman or woman; and, at the very least, poor national decisions would result from this--which would be to the detriment of us all.
The writers in the autumn 2021 edition of Renewal have taken us on a range of journeys to what might be another world for some. They also looked to our history to explore possible futures, both as a Labour Party and a nation. I've picked out some of the key themes that struck me here.
Many voters in many areas have, through habit and history, become associated with one political party or another--the 'heartlands'. Some categories of voters have been seen by Labour as 'ours', because of their history, their work or wider social narratives and analysis, such as class or values; but rural, and to some extent coastal, voters have too often been seen as other people's voters. Yet Labour has won over such voters before, and Labour must win over such voters in some numbers (and specific groups) if it is to form a future government.
We should recognise, too, that other parties have been complacent about these voter groups and communities; and that this may well be becoming an issue, not least to farmers who are seeing the impacts of recent government policies on their ways of life
While rural doesn't equal farming, farming has its own important place...
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