Contrary to its popular cartoon image as a quaint, bucolic idyll, Britain is, and has been for some time, the most urbanised country in the world. The corollary of this is that British country folk are a minority without the political clout and voting power of the majority city-dwellers.
British governments are elected by those city-dwellers and that means that the country people are, shall we say, surplus to requirements. In most cases, this would be a blessing in disguise but, since emerging from 18 years of electoral wilderness, the re-invigorated Labour Party had dragons to slay.
The country folk are roundly loathed by most of the Labour Party who have always characterised them as ‘robber baron’ landowners, natural conservatives (in every sense of the word) and just too embarrassingly ‘British’ at a time when everyone was expected to have discarded such prehistoric notions.
Maybe Tony Blair shares those views, maybe not but what he has done is to serve up Britain’s rural communities as fresh red meat to quieten the marxist dogs in his own party. From the BSE fiasco, to the appalling incompetence and cruelty shown during the ‘Foot & Mouth’ outbreak (and which may yet prove to have been an act of sabotage), the banning of guns, the manipulation of planning laws so as to favour factory-farms (which have squeezed out the small, independent farmer) and now the proposed ban on hunting with dogs.
Five years of systematic bullying and persecution have so traduced Britain’s rural communities that some are simply no longer viable. They have paid a heavy price for being a detested minority. By degrees, their entire way of life is being abolished.
It is always difficult for a minority to fight back against a majority, especially when that majority has its hands of the levers of state power. But a promising way to begin is by (a) getting angry and (b) getting organised. Britain’s rural folk are now both and on September 22nd tens of thousands of them will take to the streets of the Capital to tell the government that they’re as mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.
This is no block of rampaging rednecks. As with most things, the lefty metropolitan bigots are quite wrong about the rural people for they are as multifaceted and diverse as any others but they have actively choosen to unite under a slogan that proclaims ‘Liberty & Livelihood’ and that should tell you everything you need to know.
I canot read that slogan without being reminded of a famous song lyric: ‘Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose’. Well, if that’s true, then ‘nothing left to lose’ is also another word for ‘freedom’.
Not to be pedantic, but isn’t Japan more urbanized than Britain?
The problem is not that there’s been an assault on farmers but that there hasn’t. Agriculture generates a tiny fraction of modern GDP yet sucks in endless billions of subsidy. Our food is expensive, third world farmers are prevented from trading their way out of poverty, our fells are blanketed not by oak trees but sheep and the farmers grow ever richer. The farmers who reject government interference in their affairs never reject the vast sums of money handed to them. Foot and mouth, BSE and the ordinary everyday agriculture welfare cost everyone else in this country. Farmers should get off the dole. We don’t support uneconomic steel works or coals mines anymore, lets stop supporting uneconomic farms. It is ludicrous that a medieval industry such as sheep farming, where wool is worth less than the costs of shearing, is maintained. We don’t subsidise oxen cart production do we? Leave the farmers alone. I agree. End all subsidies. Do you agree?
Hell yes, I agree that all subsidies should be ended and many articles on samizdata.net have said exactly that.
However that does not change the fact I also believe that country sports are a matter of civil liberties… the two are unrelated issues.
“Britain is, and has been for some time, the most urbanised country in the world.”
Oh hardly, David. Even eliminating city-states such as Singapore and Monaco, you’ve still got nations like Japan, Taiwan, and Bangladesh to consider. All of those have far less habitable open space than the UK.
Kevin
Am I right in thinking that only about 10% of Japan is habitable at all? I seem to recall reading something about Japan being 90% mountains so the bulk of the population lives on the coast.
I don’t know about Taiwan or Bangladesh but, truth be told, I am in no position to bluster as I have no hard data here. Still, if Britain is not the most urbanised country in the world then I’m willing to wager that she’s on the shortlist
This anti-rural cant that infects the Labour Party is just another manifestation of a Western culture self-hate meme that has been around for a long time.
This was addressed in a recent Weekly Standard article not yet up on the web. The article give a template of the self-hate meme in terms of European foreign policy. It can be found over on the Free Republic web site at:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/750580/posts
I think the Weekly Standard author is wrong in blaming WW1 as the starting point of this Western self-hate meme. Arguable this self-hate meme pre-dates WW1, since Marxism pre-dates WW1 and is very much built on self-hate of Western culture.
Just as the forces that caused the American Civil War and resonate in America today have roots much deeper than that war, as shown in the Kevin Phillips book “The Cousin’s War,” so does Western Self-hatred. (Phillips showed how the Revolution in Britain, the American Revolution and the American Civil War were all reflections of the same sets of “values clusters” clashing over and over.)
Europe in general and England in particular are going to have to deal with the domestic implications of this self-hate meme since America’s Federal system tends to allow the natural anti-bodies of public participation to remove the self-hating P.C. types from power when they abuse it.
The example I am thinking of here is how Britains no longer have the right of self-defense. In America, by contrast, you have “Make my day” laws passed that specifically allow and protect citizens using lethal force against violent home entry crimes and concealed carry laws for guns.
That kind of accoutability to the public is not built into European democracies and it really shows.
That kind of accoutability to the public is not built into European democracies and it really shows.
Accountability has nothing to do with it. The US is fortunate to be much less democratic, due to its more rigid constitutional system, enabling key rights to remain off-limits, at least theoretically, to democratic politics. Popular democratic ‘participation’ is exactly how the right to self-defence was lost in Britain now that the common law constitution has been allowed to decay to the point that pretty much everything is now up for grabs.
What you call “anti-democratic” Americans call “checks and balances.”
The American system is optimized to protect liberty, not provide for “efficient democratic goverment.”
A European parlimentary majority is accountable to no one until the next election or vote of no confidence.
An American Congressional majority is acccountable to the Supreme Court for issues of constitutionality, to the veto of the President, and the filibuster of the Senate minority.
And there is no way that a Federal politican can play political games that avoid or delay his next appointment with the voting public.
>Popular democratic ‘participation’ is exactly how
>the right to self-defence was lost in Britain now
>that the common law constitution has been >allowed to decay to the point that pretty much
>everything is now up for grabs.
This isn’t the case.
Your “Home Office” bureaucrats have been “Gunning” for your right to personal self-defense for over 70 years.
They have finally gotten it.
There is no equivalent to that British perminent central state in the USA because the USA is truly a federal system.
Despite the encroachment of the Federal government since the New Deal, there are still clear divisions of authority between the Federal and state governments recognized and enforced by the Supreme Court.
Compare and contrast that with the situation between the British Parliment and the British local councils.
Because American state governments have real, if limited, autonomy from the Federal sphere. America developes new elites outside its central capital that allows for a rotation of elites when the current crowd at the center gets stale and arrogant with power.
That is why Clinton knocked off Bush 41.
And America’s regular elections and term limits are also why we no longer have Clinton in power despite his demon-like campaign abilities, his corruption and his abuses of power.
That is something you cannot say for British PM Tony Blair.
If US democracy is so effective at preventing tyrannies almost a great as the UK ban on effective self defense, then how do you explain the whole raft of state and federal forfeiture laws that allows theft of American property by the state on a huge scale? Criminal convictions? Who needs convictions? RICO, brought in to fight the mafia… so why is it being used against anti-abortionists and sundry political extremists?
I thought that sort of thing was what the US consititution and democracy was supposed to prevent. It seems that is not the case.