Farmers’ protests over a velvety soft reduction of inheritance tax privileges may seem overblown, but there’s a kernel of something interesting there
~ Rob Ray ~
With tractors besieging Downing Street, the new and shiny (well new, anyway) protest scene of the month has been farmers, tromping about in their wellies telling off Labour for taxing them into oblivion.
Some of their case is, inevitably given their previously favoured status, finding little sympathy from the left, especially watching the likes of Priti Patel chummy up with people causing the sort of roads disruption she (and the right generally) despised when the Tories were in power. There is a sense of immense entitlement in the statement “my farm is worth £1.5 million but”, especially when, as long as you know how to follow the system, the tax itself doesn’t kick in until £2.65m, affecting just 117 farms a year — a tiny percentage of Britain’s more than 200,000.
There is a certain appeal to the heartstrings when people talk about having their lives and cultures uprooted, especially as “custodians of the land”.
The problem with this romantic argument, as any countrysider will know, is that it’s frequently bollocks. As owners of the land farmers are, all too often, less custodians than hoarders and exploiters, raging against any interference or outside enjoyment of Their Property. They’re as likely to try and seal off public access as make any effort to enable public enjoyment — there’s a reason 92% of the English countryside is barred to the rest of us.
And notwithstanding some honourable exceptions, their collective treatment of the land is hardly exemplary, as environmental journalist George Monbiot has exhaustively documented over many years. This is not a grouping that has done much to justify its self-portrayal, let alone encourage other communities’ support.
Multi-generational though some (not as many as is often portrayed) may be, the small number of highly successful farmers who might actually be caught in the tax net are also not the reincarnation of Pop and Ma Larkin, they’re running highly mechanised businesses for profit.
In fact of those protesting, it was more likely to be the kids of a wealthy businessman or celebrity abusing the previous total lack of taxation on farm inheritance who were facing a bit of a knock to their future assets. Expat James Dyson’s 36,000 acres or Jeremy Clarkson’s £12m farm for example (Nigel Farage’s £3m in holdings is not farmland but no doubt he’d define it as such in a heartbeat given half a chance).
But that’s not the whole story. If it were, the crowds wouldn’t have turned out.
The protests are, in reality, about more than just this particular tax which in the cold light is not that scary for small scale farmers — but they are absolutely primed to be suspicious, and to join whatever protest is likely to highlight their grievances.
It was not uncommon, for example, to hear a farmer being interviewed say something like “my land is worth a million but my profit is £20,000.” For anyone who’s been paying attention, this is not a new complaint. Many of them really are on wafer-thin margins. A single bad year can put everything at risk, and many children of farmers work normal jobs because the farm itself can’t sustain their labour.
So the protests are more amalgamations of views on everything from regulatory interference to loss of targeted financial support, which has simply been hung on a cause that cropped up and was getting the media attention (and also catalysed by the fact Labour is doing it, given they are generally a knee-jerk Tory cohort). The irony is, however, that they are about less than they should be. Because what they should be fighting is neoliberalism under both Labour and Tories (and Reform, if it ever gains power).
This has been part of a process of (forgive me) de-bourgeoisification that has been going on quietly for some time, with old families watching their previously powerful capital positions being eroded generation by generation. They are undercut by bigger producers and squeezed by retail middlemen until they find themselves sitting on land that is only really profitable if it’s sold, often doing most of the work themselves (the average farm employs just two people per holding).
It’s hard to feel too sorry for the great great grandkids of the people who enforced enclosure of the commons when they complain about being subjected to this ever so stressful process of being turfed off “their” land (with compensation) by bigger bastards. But the fact is their distress does not benefit us. It simply transfers control over the means of production from a mass of small fry to a few big fish, be they energy firms looking for somewhere to plonk wind turbines, asset management firms looking to park some money or giant agribusinesses dividing up the industry amongst themselves.
This is not lefties expropriating their hard-earned for the greater good, it’s a standard process of globalised capitalism that all major political parties are supportive of (or if they aren’t, face relentless disciplinary action until they become so).
So what would be a pragmatic course? Well one effort was being made, funnily enough, by members of Just Stop Oil. Writing in their newsletter earlier this week, they noted:
“We decided to join the farmer’s protest in Whitehall on Tuesday to try to open a dialogue with our farmers. Real farmers, and farm workers, not those investors who have jumped on a tax loophole and are now upset that it’s being taken away.
“We need farmers to grow our food at a price people can afford — in this and every country. But we also need them to help with nature restoration, managing water quality and looking after our natural carbon sinks, all while being ripped off by the major supermarkets and undercut by cheap imports. It’s a lot to ask for, and many farmers are upset, not by the changes to inheritance tax, but by the reduction of government support payments to help them transition towards more sustainable agriculture.
“On top of that, this year, as a result of the extreme rainfall, farmers had the worst harvest since World War II and conditions are only going to get more difficult. This is the underlying issue that we wanted to highlight — food security. In this country it’s probably the most pressing and immediate climate threat to large numbers of people, and as we know, that is not being made clear in the media.
“It was uncomfortable being there, knowing you’re in the company of Priti Patel and Reform, but we should not just cede the ground to the far-right. It’s important that people are present at these events, connecting these issues to the bigger picture.”
I have my disagreements with JSO, but I applaud both the sentiment and their earnest effort here, which frankly is very geneous given how their own disruptive actions have been treated — a degree of bitterness about the blatant hypocrisy of the political response to these go slows compared to theirs might be understandable. The small farmers of 2024 are not natural allies of the left and certainly not of the anarchists. They have a lot of straight up reactionary nonsense embedded in their subcultures.
But we may have more potential strength than we think in getting through to them. Labour and Tory have both let them down, and Farage did them no favours with Brexit. And actually there is a quiet co-operative and self-sufficiency movement in this country which has far more depth and pull than the primarily urban protest scene pays attention to.
Many farmers don’t like us, or trust our methods. It would take a step change in thinking to draw them towards a viewpoint that re-emphasises collectivity, an abandonment of the traditionalist hierarchy that has defined their lives and encouragement of direct working class re-engagement with the land. But it’s not impossible, as has been shown in fits and starts in all sorts of campaigns. Fealty to crown and country is dependent on a compact that has, manifestly, been broken for some time. And what good, after all, is there in trying to maintain a lonely, jealous, futile grip on your small slice of individual capital when you are at the mercy of greater demons?
Loyal rebels and Tories they may be today, but in terms of their material conditions, we could have something to say to the petit bourgeois of the fields.
Pic: Tractor by Rab Lawrence/CC
