In pursuit of a rural heritage

WHY should normal law-abiding people have to march in London on September 22? The countryside is in danger of being lost off the Blair bandwagon - or war wagon - while all his forces (MPs) are in the main from urban areas. The vote that he has is minimal in the sticks, we don't add up to much, and so what if we were run into the ground.

All the Prime Minister wants is for the countryside to become some sort of cleansed playground or theme park, but who will service the hordes who come to visit and step out of their four-wheel drives covered in stick-on mud? As farmers we are asked to diversify into new ventures, and there are grants available, but the problem is they are locked in a safe with the key wrapped in red tape. And, in any case, who will look after the farm while the farmer is at the farmers' market?

Some facts for anyone who doubts that the countryside way of life is under threat:

* The price of a pint of milk used to be the same as a pint of beer. A pint of milk now is just over 40p and beer now on average £2 a pint. Farmers get 14p per litre, the same as they got 25 years ago.

l Fifteen years ago, malting barley was nearly £150 per tonne. Today, it is not much more than £70, taking no account of inflation and the rise in costs.

* Feed barley in the early 1960s was £50 a tonne, the same price as today.

l Lamb prices are a bit better than last year, about £45 a lamb, but last year lambs were £25, the same price as 35 years ago.

Farming is on the floor, farmers are in a stampede to get out, there is no confidence in the future. Will a son or daughter work the long hours for the same money as their parents got 25 years earlier? I doubt it. At one time, it was a family disgrace if the son and heir did not follow in the wellies of their father. Now most farmers are fervently hoping that their offspring find another career path.

What is left in the sticks that have been cleansed by Blair and co? The shop has shut, the post office gone, the pub where locals used to meet is either a swanky restaurant or has been converted into an expensive house. Where is the bus that used to go into town twice a day? The garage that sold petrol has closed, the school shut and the land sold off for housing.

The picture may be gloomy, but people will cry that it's nothing compared with the problems of the cities. I take the point, but urban areas do not have a monopoly on malaise.

One problem is the dormitory culture, where people leave the city for the rural paradise. They don't use the local shops, their children go to school in town, the pub is only for when city types put on that Christmas sweater with the rural look, the petrol is cheaper at the big supermarkets, and sometimes their contribution is merely to complain about the noise of tractors, the smell of the silage, the mud on the road.

Below the surface of our still beautiful countryside something is gnawing away at the vitals of rural life. It is not in itself poverty, because our picturesque landscape and its superficial affluence has always masked pockets of serious deprivation in many communities, and still does so. But there is a deeper malaise affecting the whole spectrum of rural society. The very social and economic foundations of rural life are disintegrating. Across the board, basic services and amenities are disappearing altogether or retreating back into the nearest large towns, denuding the countryside of the social and commercial infrastructure which makes real local communities possible. And this is leading to even greater deprivation, cheek-by-jowl with ever greater affluence: social inequality is on the rise in the countryside.

What makes the infrastructure problem worse is the crisis in transport. A car in the countryside is not a luxury but a necessity. Unless you have a car, and the money to fill its petrol tank, it can be a struggle to get access to basic services - and even to find and hold down a job.

A recent study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation showed that the key cause of social exclusion and unemployment in the countryside, especially amongst the elderly and the young, was the lack of access to transport. By the Government's own admission, 58 per cent of rural households do not have access to a regular bus service and 75 per cent of rural parishes have no daily bus service at all.

For rural people who increasingly have to rely on cars, they are having to travel ever further and their fuel costs rise steadily - many are now forced to spend 20 per cent of their disposable income on car fuel. Yet because local independent petrol stations have been decimated by the decision of the supermarkets to build forecourts in many of their major stores, it is now more expensive even to get to a petrol station to fill up.

It is a similar story with health, social services and education in rural areas. Centering specialist care around major urban hospitals may make sense to NHS accountants but it makes access to adequate care a massive issue for those living in more remote areas.

Village post offices may not be a life and death issue like hospitals, but they do provide many of the most basic services rural people need as well as providing a valuable social hub. Over 4,000 have closed in the countryside in the last ten years and the closures continue despite a Government requirement on the Post Office to prevent any "avoidable" closures of rural post offices. Post Office services become ever more important now the major banks are pulling out of the countryside. Yet another 4,000 are set to close in the next five years.

Meanwhile, village shops, pubs and even churches - those mainstays of village life - are closing down at an increasing rate. There may now well be fewer rural pubs than at any time since the Domesday book. The 'second-homer' syndrome, which is pushing up property prices and pushing out indigenous working rural families, is also hitting incomes for those pubs still struggling on. Most of these rely on local year-round trade and yet too many homes are now unoccupied for much of the year. This, combined with the property price hike, has understandable made selling-up increasingly tempting for hard-up country landlords. But every pub closure is another nail in the coffin of real rural communities.

All of which is leading to a countryside in danger of getting seriously out of kilter, where the living standards of its inhabitants are increasingly polarised, where real communities are replaced by rural dormitories for urban professionals, where the traditional ways of life that safeguard our countryside are crowded out by an invasion of suburban values and lifestyles.

No wonder that rural people feel beleaguered and disenfranchised. While economic failure must be one of the major causes of the high rate of rural suicides, the social isolation felt by farmers and others is undoubtedly a contributory factor.

What is the answer Mr Blair? Or will it be that there will be no farmers left and we rely on imports? Or is it that he really wants to ban fox hunting? If we do go to war with Iraq, and Tony's backbenchers start playing up, will fox hunting be the bone he can throw to keep them on his side? A ban on hunting will have little to do with cruelty, the well-being of foxes or the rural economy, and everything to do with the Labour Party's own finances. Labour is deeply in debt, and the animal rights lobby has lots of cash, and nor will banning hunting lose them much sleep, or votes.

This is why if you want a strong rural economy, a living and working countryside, somewhere to visit that is not just a theme park but actually has rural people living and working there, Sunday's march is important.

We may be only ten per cent of the vote and of that ten per cent just half are country born and bred, but remember we all were rural once, we all hunted and gathered. That is why I will be marching in London, for my rural heritage, culture, livelihood and liberty.