As Nick Brown may discover, it's an ill epidemic that blows no one any good
BRUCE ANDERSON
The Countryside Alliance does not make mistakes. On Monday morning, when it announced the postponement of the March 18 grand remonstrance, there was dismay among those who had been trying to decide which old friends they would march with and lunch with. Within hours, that postponement seemed inevitable. If it had been delayed much beyond Monday, the Countryside Alliance would have been criticised for irresponsibility in planning a mass breach of quarantine restrictions. As it was, the CA seemed high-minded and self-sacrificing.
Unlike the government. It would have been easy for ministers to announce that this was not the right moment to discuss a ban on fox-hunting, especially as the Bill has no chance of becoming law in this Parliament. Today, the countryside is illuminated, but not with joyous beacons. The ghastly animal pyres give forth their stench, black smoke and hideous glare. This is surely a moment to put the fox-hunting ban to one side.
Not as far as Labour backbenchers are concerned. They were already unhappy, because of Mr Blair's successful visit to Washington. To most of them, George Bush is the devil incarnate; national missile defence, a dangerous fantasy. In their view, it is bad enough that President Bush should be pressing ahead to annul the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty which was signed by President Nixon, and which even President Reagan was unable to repudiate. They find it horrifying that the new President should do so with our Premier's quasi-support. So in party management terms, this was not the best moment for the government's business managers to tell the troops to forget about hunting for the duration. But the government's crassly insensitive timing on hunting will have compensated for any momentum which the CA had lost through the march's postponement.
The broader political consequences are less clear. Last week, the momentum of gossip in Westminster was building up behind an April 5 election, though Gordon Brown was unhappy. He wants to give the voters time to applaud next week's Budget, so that no one will be in any doubt as to who really won the election. But everything is now much more confused. Still, it is an ill epidemic which blows no one any good, and in this case the beneficiary is the Agriculture Minister, Nick Brown. At the beginning of the Parliament, Mr Brown was Chief Whip, a more important job in real terms, if not in official ones. He was then demoted to the Cabinet, for being an over-enthusiastic supporter of Gordon Brown and for co-operating in a biography of the Chancellor. It caused the trouble which culminated in Alastair Campbell denying that he had described the Chancellor as 'psychologically flawed'. After that, Nick Brown's share price languished. It was assumed that even if he survived until the election, he would be a victim of the first reshuffle of the second term. That is no longer so certain. For a start, and assuming a May election, it would be odd to change ministers in mid-crisis, given that the man in post appears to have a safe pair of hands. Mr Blair is planning several promotions, so he will need to sack some other Cabinet ministers as well as Chris Smith, but they may not include Mr Brown.
Admittedly, Nick Brown had an easier ride than his Tory predecessors did over 13SE. We now have a blame culture in which the concept of Acts of God seems hopelessly out of date, so everyone was looking for someone to castigate. Greedy farmers were the favoured candidates in one quarter, Euro-bureaucrats in another. But the reality appears to be more complex; it is harder to apportion blame. As with last time, when infected food from Argentina led to the outbreak, the most likely cause was the import of food from non-EU countries with lax and corruptible foodhygiene regimes. There is a strong argument that the Common Agricultural Policy mulcts European taxpayers in order to exclude developing countries from the EU's agricultural market There is also a need for agricultural hygiene.
That said, we and the EU have been guilty of imposing absurd and unnecessary restrictions. The closure of small slaughterhouses was a scandal (I suppose everyone has taken to calling them 'abattoirs' because most of our fellow-subjects can only approach their food through euphemisms). The more local the slaughterhouse, the kinder for its victims. Even those of us who enjoy eating the endproduct will feel a pang when we see a lorryload of lambs setting off — like Iambs to the slaughter. Their faces are pressed to the gaps between the planking, and they are not happy faces. Lambs may be stupid creatures, but there are limits. As they start on their final journey, they seem to know that no good will come of this.
So let us make the journey as brief as possible, and not only in the victims' interest. If there is infection, there will be less risk of it being disseminated. It appears as if almost everyone is now agreed on the need to bring back the small slaughterhouse, so that there will be no more need for 'convoys of suffocating flesh', in Roger Scruton's phrase.
But localised, humane slaughtering is only part of the answer. Over the past two generations, British agriculture has been radically reshaped, by war, subsidies and science. War was the first factor. Anyone deploring setaside, quotas and other elaborate, expensive ways of paying farmers to limit their output ought to remember that 60 years ago we were unable to feed ourselves. Though it does seem unlikely that any future conflict would include an updated equivalent of the U-boat blockade, food is a basic strategic resource. Hence the postwar regime of farmprice support.
The arguments in favour of that go back to Joseph: build up food mountains during the seven fat years, and subsidise farmers' incomes during the seven lean ones. But there had been a change since Joseph's day. Thanks to the scientists, the lean years had almost been abolished. With fertilisers, it was possible to achieve unprecedented yields, on land which would previously have been regarded as marginal.
So farmers flourished. But in the countryside, cultural change is slow: one of its delights. Even in the good years, and although the Range-Rover crop never seemed to fail, farmers could not throw off the primaeval habit of complaining. The contrast between their disgruntled demeanour and their grunfied way of life was noted. It led to envy and resentment, while there was also an ideological assault, on two fronts. Environmentalists accused farmers of ravishing the countryside in pursuit of profit; free rnarketeers accused farmers of ravishing the public purse. ditto.
Both charges were unfair. Whatever their anoraked, polytechnicoid, class-warring enemies may allege, most farmers understand the environment and care about it. Equally, farmers have been obliged to take their decisions on the basis of regulations and subsidies; they cannot be blamed for complying.
What is needed now is not partial criticisms or ad hockery. It is time for a Royal Commission; an intellectual forum in which every aspect of British agriculture can be discussed. British agriculture was already in crisis before the outbreak of foot-andmouth; such crises require hard thinking and longterm solutions.
Previous page
