AND ANOTHER THING
Who will don Elijah's mantle and lead the revolt of Ruritania?
PAUL JOHNSON
If I were given the job of resurrecting the Conservative party from its smouldering ruins, I would start with the countryside. It is there, in the remoter parts of Kent and Sus- sex, in the Hampshire of chalk trout- streams, in the bosky recesses of the West Country, in Shropshire and Cheshire, in Suf- folk and Lincolnshire, 'that most brute and beastly of our shires' as Henry VIII (another persecutor of the countryside) called it, in the Pennine country and Cumbria and, God help them, among the harassed farmers of Wales and Scotland, now with local parlia- ments of professional cranks and vegetarians snapping at their heels — it is in these vast tracts of old-fashioned Ruritania that a huge quantity of combustible material, already emitting sparks, is waiting for the wind of leadership to burst into fiery flame. The ensuing conflagration could engulf the Labour government — and much else — not just in the remote future but in good time for the next general election.
The countryside is stricken, starved and angry. The middling and poorer farmers have seen their incomes reduced by half, and their lack of cash impoverishes ever-widen- ing circles of tradespeople. Lambs and calves sell for a pittance. In many parts there has been a heart-wrenching increase in farming suicides; strong men, by no means old in many cases, driven to the once unthinkable by a despairing inability to turn their count- less hours of dogged labour into a living wage. These shocking cases demoralise the rest, spreading ripples of fear through entire communities. The government — I almost said politicians generally — is hated, seen not merely as cynical and unsympathetic but as positive opponents. Tony Blair's flippant change of policy over field sports, announced casually in response to vast cash donations by the animal-rights lobby, was regarded as characteristic of Westminster morals. • There is a feeling in many villages and farms that they are under enemy occupation. Seedy-looking ministry inspectors, local authority invigilators, Brussels spies, officials from the revenue and VAT make notes and lists of names. Arrests, prosecutions follow. Sometimes the occupation takes a physical form. Parties of brutal-looking youths, heads shaven, dressed in military overalls and armed with hefty sticks, descend from unmarked white vans to attack the local hunt. In the West Country, it has become a new form of violent sport for thugs from Bristol and even Birmingham. Then there is the odd quisling farmer, made desperate by shortage of cash, who lets his fields to a pop- concert promoter, and armies of hooligans emerge from the sewers and gutters of the cities to make the rural days fetid with their filth and the nights hideous with their pande- moniac row, which can often be heard 20 miles from its epicentre.
The police do very little to protect country dwellers from such invasions. They have lost their bottle and with it the confidence of rural England. Chief constables are much more scared of anti-rural newspapers and MPs than they are of the complaints of law- abiding people who pay their salaries. One chief constable recently announced that `environmental crime' was the real challenge to his men. That is coded language for say- ing, 'We will do what the metropolitan lob- bies tell us, and to hell with the farmers.' Indeed, in the minds of many city intellectu- als, making a living out of the land is the original environmental sin. To them, farming is by its nature a criminal activity, of which field sports are merely the external, mani- festly cruel expression. So the attack on hunting with hounds, by criminalising the rural community, will merely — in the eyes of such fanatics — correct an anomaly: of course these people should be behind bars.
Shorn by New Labour of their socialism, having lost their Marxist faith, urban radicals were left only with an immense but undirect- ed hatred. It is now being focused on rural activities, which represent to them upper- class privilege, the principle of property, social obscurantism, and a way of life which ought to be consigned to 'the dustbin of his- tory'. A farmer who defends by force his much plundered home from urban vandals is, in this analysis, a brutal class-warrior, and ought to be arrested. The police seem to go along with this view.
The people of the countryside have shown, by their two great descents on London, that they can command vast numbers of activists. These mass protests were disciplined and law-abiding almost to a fault, and deeply `It's a digital clock.' impressed all decent people, including the more sensible politicians. But we live, alas, in a world where good manners and playing the game by the rules get you nowhere, and where screaming, shouting, spitting, swear- ing, snarling, causing a scene, abusing the umpire, making yourself an insupportable nuisance are more likely to carry your point. A reasoned case is not enough. Not just the threat but the actual use of violence is a bet- ter argument today. The IRA have proved, again and again, that mass murder pays in dealing with British governments. Continen- tal farmers have established direct action, including the use of force to block roads and terrify police, as the basic grammar of the Continental political language.
I detect no immediate likelihood that our rural interest intends to turn to physical protest. Their rational instinct to align them- selves with the law runs deep. But they can be provoked beyond endurance. Or, more likely, they can be ignited by an incendiary leader whose time has come. They have the means. Let us not forget they are armed, and indeed armoured, with enormous vehicles, useful for a variety of powerful purposes. They have their own cavalry. What would the weedy Westminster class-warriors think if 100,000 angry folk on horseback suddenly appeared in London streets and converged on their debating chamber? The rural inter- est has proved it can play the numbers game. So far it has played it with courtesy. But it can play it with muscle, too.
However, we all want this issue to be set- tled lawfully and constitutionally. That is why the rising rural unrest should be directed, in the first instance, to the reinvigoration of the Tory party. Toryism is its natural vernacular and instrument of expression. But, at pre- sent, the voice of the country is not heard among the Tory leadership. William Hague has surrounded himself with an impenetra- ble praetorian guard of former Labourites, homosexuals and failed journalists, whose sole aim appears to be to clone themselves to Blairism. Ann Widdecombe, the only Tory who makes a noise, has an urban bel- low. I don't recall any time in the last half- century when a cause and a party have been so obviously waiting for a leader, someone who will say unequivocally, 'The country will fight and the country will be right.' Who will play Lord Randolph Churchill's card? Who will don Elijah's mantle? All that is needed is a sufficiently bold man — or woman.
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