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THE NATION: EDITORIAL/Intrusions on
- Subject: THE NATION: EDITORIAL/Intrusions on
- From: suriya@xxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 16:42:00
Editorial & Opinion
EDITORIAL/Intrusions on
country life
COUNTRY life. It is a phrase of mystic
redolence. There is a smart British
magazine of the same name that is
frequently to be encountered on the coffee
tables of the urban upwardly aspiring; the
BBC radio serial ''The Archers'', set in a
''typical'' village, has bent the ears of a vast
daily audience for decades.
The British, who began the Industrial
Revolution and have been a predominantly
urban people for over a century, remain
particularly addicted to the minutiae of the
rural scene. Nowhere else in Europe is
down-to-muck existence invested with such
glamour.
Only in this context could a parliamentary
proposal to ban fox hunting so rouse a
people. A quarter of a million marched
through central London on March 1 to
protest at this and what they saw as the
government's neglect of rural and farming
interests. The demonstration was one of the
largest London has ever seen.
Many people are appalled by the way a
band of well-off people gallop after a pack
of hounds which, should the fox be caught,
will tear it to bits until whipped off,
whereupon, should there be a first-timer in
the cavalcade, the fox's tail (its ''brush'') will
be cut off to bloody the novice's cheek. But
the ''hunt saboteurs'' who glue up car locks
while the drivers are in the saddle are a
largely urban crew.
The fox is a pest. It doesn't come into town
and worry to death more supermarket
chickens than it can eat: it has its fun in the
barnyard. If not torn up, it would be
poisoned in just as nasty a fashion.
Pivotal as it is in the iconography, the hunt
is not what last Saturday's rally was about.
The politics of the developed world are
overwhelmingly shaped by the cities, in
which most of the voters live. The city
cannot live without the countryside but looks
to foist its own values on it. And they don't
work. Bureaucracies are urban
abstractions; the country must be ready to
fill its dinner tables more practically. Well
has it been said that when there is a
blackout the countryman groans and
reaches for his candles.
Socialism has tempered all of
contemporary politics, even where its very
name is anathema, one of which, ironically,
Britain's ''New Labour'' bids fair to be. One
of the snidest affronts to a right-wing party
these days is to call it paternalistic. Caring
can go too far. In the polluted streets of the
modern city it makes perfect sense to raise
revenue by increasing the petrol tax; it is
crippling to rural areas where little or no
public transport makes private vehicles a
necessity, not a bane.
The country has always been a poorer
place to live than the town. What
compensates is living a more natural life. If
the body politic is biased too heavily
towards the town, there the country folk will
go, especially young adults who cannot buy
a first family home because affluent townies
are buying them up at silly prices as
weekend cottages. This tendency may not
take long to destroy the natural rural
communities and replace them -- food must
be grown -- by the ghastly prospect of
factory farms.
The British Labour party is split on whether
to act at all, and plans to set up a new
ministry of rural issues are being played
down. Addressed, though, the issue must
be. It happens to have surfaced first in
Britain. It will not stop there. The eyes of the
world should bore into Labour backs, but
countries do not learn by each others'
mistakes: they are too proud to admit that
they could make the same ones
themselves.
The Nation