Troubled heartland of Thatcherism

Press, 26 February 1987, Page 13

Troubled heartland of Thatcherism

The English countryside is about to experience the greatest change in its physical • appearance since the large-scale introduction of industrialised farming after the Second World War. LAURENCE MARKS reports.

The old alliance between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s governing Conservative Party and Britain’s farming community has been shattered. The Agriculture Secretary, Michael Jopling, was loudly jeered at and called upon to resign when he tried to explain a radical shift in Government

policy on the countryside to a conference of the National Farmers’ Union. Now there is dark talk of the effect this may have on the Conservative vote in rural constituencies at the approaching General Election. . The reason for the shift is Europe’s chronic over-production of food. the early 1980 s,

European Community Policy was to maximise food production by supporting crop prices and sub- * sidising the cultivation of marginal land. Farmers prospered; land values soared, creating many millionaires. Ancient English hedgerows, woodlands, and marshes were obliterated, and large tracts of countryside began to look (to English people, at least) like the American prairies. This policy ignored the technological advances that have multiplied the yield of agricultural land. Across the continent, the notorious grain mountains grew higher and higher. Scarred by memories of war, Europe was behaving like a person who, rescued from starvation, can never again that there

will be enough to eat In France and Germany, with their small family farms, it made political sense. In Britain, where sometimes impoverished urban consumers were subsidising well-to-do owners and managers of capital-intensive agribusiness, it was plainly nonsensical. The challenge came from three directions: opposition parties representing city-dwellers; conservationists lobbying against the destruction of the traditional landscape and its ecology; and the Treasury, worried about public spending. At first, Jopling believed he could solve the problems by holding down crop prices. This cut farm incomes and landvalues, leaving many fanners burdened with debt btaw the / ■

Government has decided on a more radical measure: to take million acres out of production in the next 10 years, encouraging forestry, small-scale industrial enterprises, and recreational facilities in place of vast wheat fields. The intimate character of the English countryside will begin to be reasserted. The new policy makes sense but has pleased no-one. Farmers fear that their economically protected and politcally favoured industry will be sharply reduced in wealth and influence. Land values are unlikely to recover. Conservationists fear that the relaxation of land-use controls in the countryside will cause further ecological damage. In particular, conifer plantations

widely unpopular in regions where the natural woodlands are deciduous. Worst of all, home-buyers in outer surburbia and rural districts fear an invasion by speculative builders. Most of these home-owners 'vote Conservative. In recent years they have been assiduously : courted by the middle-of-the-road Alliance parties (Liberals and Social Democrats). Jopling has promised that the Green Belt — protected areas around the large cities that are off-limits to property developers •— will remain sacrosanct But the heartlands of Thatcherism are deeply troubled. Copyright-London Observer Service.