The red light which shone fleetingly over frost-white fields in
South Norfolk when farmer John Hill scraped into Parlia- ment by a handful of votes has been flashing more persistently this week at Westminster. At the Central Hall the National Farmers' Union has been in congress. Central Hall is, or ought to be, near enough to Abbey House for the Conservative Central Office to sit up and take notice of what has been happening there. The farmers, in accents varying from the nice precisions of the older universities through the musical lamen- tations of the Welsh in agony, to the blunt, clipped syllables of the far North—for they are a heterogeneous body these days with their club ties—expressed the gravest dissatisfaction with the Government's alleged failure to live up to the expectations of the Agriculture Act. With the lesson of an uncomfort- ably reduced majority in South Norfolk. this week's oratory at Central Hall must be regarded as a note of warning. It is true that the move for a direct vote of `No confidence' was dropped after the Chancellor's speech at the Union's dinner when he staked his political future on a fair deal for agriculture. His persuasive sincerity has certainly minimised the danger of embarrassing abstentions from rural polls when the election comes. But there may be some comfort in the apparent deter- mination of the Labour Party to commit political suicide in the farming constituencies. Little as farmers may like the effects of their new-found freedoms, they must be aware that before the Labour Government went out of office. Any doubts they may have had on that score might have been resolved by the document on agricultural marketing so painstakingly pro- duced by Transport House at the beginning of the South Nor- folk campaign. When its initial phosphorescence had worn away, even Labour speakers perceived it to be a very dubious piece of wet fish from which they withdrew in evident alarm. But the Government can scarcely hope for such a gift-horse the next time the rural vote is tested.
Previous page
