One of the things that I have discovered since moving from inner London to a small, rural village in a quiet corner of the English shires is that much that I took for granted about politics doesn’t apply terribly well once you escape the major conurbations. You might now expect me to grumble about the unfairness of it all, and you would be right. But not for the reasons you might expect…
William Langland wrote of “a fair field, full of folk”, and whilst the modern countryside would be unrecognisable to him, he would appreciate that rural communities remain fragile things founded on interdependence and institutions. And with the changes in society, the movement of people from villages to towns, increased participation in democracy and mechanisation of farming with its consequential decline in employment significance, the prominence of rural communities in the eyes of policy makers has declined.
There are, naturally, perfectly logical explanations for this. Much of the British population live in towns and cities, in satellite communities located for their convenience to major transport routes, including most senior civil servants, lobbyists and politicians. You cannot then blame them for having a mindset that is heavily influenced by their day to day experiences. So I won’t.
The areas away from such places have a pigeon-hole in their consciousness though. Food comes from the countryside, and it’s a pretty place, so in thinking about the environment, it seems obvious to combine these things under one umbrella, especially as we now think of farmers as not only producers of food but stewards of the countryside. And there must obviously be other issues, so lumping them together under the phrase ‘rural affairs’, and adding them on the other two, you have a tidy Departmental structure.
The problem is that ‘rural affairs’ are not separate from the rest of the government agenda, they are heavily impacted by it. Take the four core elements of a thriving rural community;
• school
• pub
• shop/post office
• church
Now, I live in a village with only one of these, St Peter’s Church, pictured above, but tomorrow, I’m going to look at some of the effects of Government policy on these pillars of our small, but perfectly formed villages…
* Mark Valladares lives in a small village in mid-Suffolk called Creeting St Peter. It has nine street lights, but the one near his house hasn’t worked for nine months. That’s probably his fault, as he’s responsible for the Parish Council’s finances…
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4 Comments
There is, however, a huge difference between living in a country village with 300 people and living in a city with 300,000. Consequently, misunderstandings are likely, and should not give rise to ire. How many people do in fact live in the country as opposed to urban/suburban areas?
Creeting St. Peter in a quiet corner? are you sure? the A14 is quite noisy – but then compared to inner London …
My village doesn’t have a pub or a church, but we do regularly get visited by the RAF and XH558 is an impressive but rare sight, (especially when escorted by a Spitfire or a Display team, however 2013 is likely to be the final year for sightings of XH558 in flight …)
We also have a local hunt, who due to the recent flooding etc. have been exercising the horses up and down the road between our village and the next …
The two street lamps near our house also haven’t worked for a long time and no one is bothering to tell the Council because: we live in a village, like being able to see the night sky and like doing our “act locally” bit of the “think globally” about climate change and carbon emissions (“every little helps”)!
I look forward to reading your observations on rural affairs.
Richard,
Indeed, but we’re traditionally fairly strong in the rural counties, and whilst I’m not demanding the earth, it’s important to remember that, if policy becomes more centralised, you work against the localism that is supposedly the ‘buzzword de nos jours’. And yes, we’re a minority, but we have votes too.
Roland,
Luckily, the A14 is in a cutting near the village, so the background noise isn’t too bad, although we’ve got Apache helicopters flying into Wattisham, which are quite impressive. And you’re right about the street lights, we’ve given some thought to turning them off permanently, and encouraging people to carry torches instead. The night sky really is spectacular away from the city.
Hmm, I live in a slightly unusual village of 600 people. It has 4 pubs, a post office, a shop, two schools, three churches, two garages, a railway station and the best village hall in the county. It’s a very liberal enclave in what is supposed to be one of the most right-wing parts of the country.
Anyway, I’d like to ask if there’s a correlation between public social infrastructure and political outlook. This would explain a lot.