"FOR LIBERTY and Livelihood" is the populist, but telling slogan adopted by the Countryside Alliance, as a fraudulent
means of dragging thousands of rural workers into what is little more than a massive demonstration for fox-hunting and
big landowners.
The slogan - and others hinting at a courageous resistance being raised against the tyranny of an urban dictatorship - has been found on placards and banners in back lanes and field gates all over the country.
It's populist, because the reference to livelihood' suggests some sense of concern for the poor farmers caught in the current crisis as agriculture is squeezed by the giant retailers. The livelihoods that the leading echelons of the Countryside Alliance are least concerned about are those of the relatively small core of low-paid staff who feed, water and maintain their packs of ferocious dogs and costly horses, and who serve the drinks and nibbles and polish their hunting regalia.
Telling, because the call for "liberty" is not connected to the old democratic slogans of the French revolution - which also trumpeted the ideals of "Equality" and "Fraternity". Today's country landowners are not in the slightest bit interested in equality, and time and again when workers in the countryside have fought against the decimation of jobs (such as the |980s miners' strike) the landowners have demonstrated their fraternity with the Tory govemment and the ruling class, rather than their rural neighbours.
No wonder fascist and far right organisations have been keen to latch onto what is essentially a reactionary rural backlash movement in defence of fox-hunting. Far from opposing the break-up of rural communities, many of the toffs, big farmers, aristocrats, bankers and estate agents who lead the Countryside Alliance have themselves made vast fortunes selling off or renting out high-priced land and housing to wealthy "townies".
The predominance of landowners in the organisation is also confirmed by the Alliance's hostility to the Right to Roam, while insisting on the right of the hunt to roam freely in pursuit of the fox. Far from representing some ancestral "British" freedom, the central assumptions of fox hunting - that the private pleasure of the wealthy few takes precedence over the interests of the majority; and that landowners should be free to do whatever they liked on their own land - date back • to William the Conqueror and the Norman invasion.
But early hunters pursued edible deer: fox hunting with dogs is a relatively recent innovation dating back no more than 200 years. Like deer hunting, it required vast areas of land, and has always been an expensive hobby, open only to the well-to-do. The Countryside Alliance is not the voice of the rural poor or dispossessed, but a front for the leisure interests of these landed gentry and assorted business people.
Throughout England and Wales 0.28% of the population owns 64% of the land. A grand total of 189,000 people own 88% of the land in Britain (40 million acres). They receive vast subsidies, totalling €4 billion a year from the EU's Common Agnicultural Policy.
The rural workers carried along in the wave of anti-Labour and anti-urban rhetoric, and egged on by extensive and barely-critical coverage in national newspapers, national and regional radio and TV, will find little support from the Countryside Alliance in their battles to keep village schools, shops and Post Offices open or to access public transport and improved health services.
None of the Countryside Alliance leaders will fight to raise or enforce the minimum wage or other protective legislation for workers in the tourist industry, which is far and away the main employer in the rural areas. To fight for these things workers need a very different type of alliance, the Socialist Alliance, which is committed to a wider fight both against the tyranny of capital and against the reactionary power of the landowning rich.
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