RETURN OF THE HUNTER GATHERERS
David Lovibond on how the rural poor
are going back to ancient ways of ekeing out a living
IN his diary entry for 30 July 1990, Alan Clark complains of a parish councillor's 'fat wife' stealing firewood from the hedgerows. Things have not changed much in the past 10 years; indeed, the situation is far worse than Alan Clark imagined. All over rural England the poor are taking cabbages from the fields at night, chasing sheep all day for a bag of groceries, tending gardens for a lift into town on market day. While Tony Blair wags his Methodistical finger at the coun- tryside and tells everyone how lucky they are to live there, the rural poor turn quietly to the oldest system of all — hunting and gathering.
England's 38 rural community councils, one for each shire county, acknowledge the limited appeal of their formal initia- tives to tackle rural deprivation — for example, free access to the Internet — and quote with unofficial pride some of the ways in which country people are respond- ing to personal exigency. In Sussex, for example, the local development council tells the story of 'Jean', a divorced mother of three children (all under ten) who lives in a village council house near Chichester. After harvest this year, as every year, she will trundle an old pram into the newly reaped fields and gather the ears of corn spilt by the combine. 'We keep chickens at home. It costs me nothing to feed them and I sell most of the eggs at the gate. There's always a day or two before they plough the field and between us we can fill the pram right up five or six times.'
In winter Jean, who owes money to mail-order catalogues and the utilities, takes her battered black pram and scours local woodlands for fallen timber. I've a wood-burning stove and we can heat water to keep the house warm from what we col- lect round and about. I take a rope and maybe a saw in the pram; sometimes a tree or branch needs a bit of help, but no one seems to mind.'
In the downland villages above Andover, Hampshire, the rural poor have found a hard way to make ends meet. 'The farmers here say that the fields grow stones and they're just happy if we get rid of them now and again.' Barry, 51, is a 'stone-pick- er'. He collects flint nodules from the upland fields and sells them on to the building trade. He used to work in a local brewery but has been living on benefits since losing his job more than two years ago. 'You used to get a price for copper from wire, or for scrap, but it's not worth the carrying now. There's more money in flints.' Barry and two friends gather their stony crop after the spring and autumn drilling. 'It's no good if it's raining, though. Your boots ball up with mud and it's hard to pull the stones up. We use a sled to cart them to the field edge and collect the flints in one go with the pick-up. In a good dry spell we can take maybe five loads down in a week — and that's £100 each.'
In Nottinghamshire the closure of more than two dozen pits in 20 years has eco- nomically debilitated the country's colliery villages and led to some unorthodox self- help strategies. 'There's a whole lot of ille- gality in this type of community,' says Bob Middleton of Nottinghamshire Rural Development Council. `Everything from car-boot sales to hare-coursing — a bit like Robin Hood country, which is what we are, of course.'
`Fred', 36, a part-time cleaner from Wor- sopvale, near Mansfield, is an unlikely can- didate for Mr Hood's band of merry men. `Potatoes are best, or carrots. We go out at night round Newark and fill the car from the fields, perhaps do three or four runs to the same place. I bag up what I need for myself and sell the rest in the pubs at 20p a pound. On average we make about £35 each for the night.' Fred's vegetable raids are not without danger: 'We've been shot at with salt pellets — they sting but they don't really cut you up.'
Describing himself as dyslexic and 'not very clever', Fred brings hard work and ingenuity to his scams. Apart from poach- ing trout from private rivers and 'recover- ing' coal from old rail wagons, selling the bounty for cash, he offers his services for payment in kind. 'I worked for two days digging out footings for this bloke and he fitted me a bathroom suite. If you want anything like that, you do odd jobs: I paint- ed someone's house and they gave me a carpet for the lounge. I got the television and video that way, helping a bloke assem- ble aerials. It's very common in our village — my neighbour works the fields in the daytime and delivers pizzas at night, cash in hand.' Fred has been caught twice by the DSS and prosecuted, but says he cannot afford to be concerned. 'It's not a question of being worried. I can choose to starve or to survive.'
Even in my own corner of apparently well-heeled Wiltshire, rudimentary subsis- tence systems are in place. In my village pub, the King's Arms in All Cannings, Tony and Mick are celebrated local heroes. Tony is a trapper. A security guard by day, at nights and weekends he and his friend Mick, a redundant dairyman, are up on the downs taking roe deer with a .22 rifle, or trapping rabbits. 'I net the holes first and put the ferret in,' says Tony. 'Sometimes he'll catch them and that's that, or he'll chase them into the net. We can get 75 pence each for them at the butcher's, or swap them at the pub for beer.'
In a neighbouring village, unemployed ex-pub landlady Judy Burrell gives talks on antiques to the Women's Institute and Tory women's groups at £10 a time. She also teaches piano, makes cricket teas, caters at local point-to-points and looks after housebound pensioners. When Miss Burrell ran her pub she paid her staff with cheese and doesn't feel the slightest qualm at supplementing her benefit income with earnings in cash and kind.
`I was in the Wrens. I've always worked but when you're over 50 you might as well give up. I get £79 a week from the state, but my car is on its last legs and the nearest food shop is a £5-return bus ride away. It gets so cold here in the winter; sometimes it takes £20 a week just to warm the cot- tage. I couldn't manage without my bits of jobs. It's my form of begging, I suppose.'
Previous page
