MIDDLELAND AND OTHER REMOTE LANDS

MIDDLELAND - Dispatches from the Borders by Rory Stewart

Several weeks ago I finished reading Rory Stewart’s book Middleland, here I compare some of his writing and thoughts and opinions and compare them to my own writing, thoughts and opinions.

“Such remoteness is not necessarily physical remoteness, but rather social, economic and temporal remoteness.” – these are my words when writing about urban bias in my book Marsh Fen and Town- South Lincolnshire and Beyond. To this I would add cultural remoteness and I guess Rory Stewart would possibly agree.

Writing is a self-indulgent process of getting your thoughts, words and stories onto paper and it is a big ask to get people to read what you have written. On this point Mr. Stewart has the edge on me in that he is known to the public and of interest to that same public. Of this I am envious, but this is my favourite book of his because it looks at many of the issues that are of importance to me.

Middleland is a collection of newspaper pieces, with some background  that Rory wrote for the Cumberland and Westmorland Herald in his constituency between 2009 and 2019. In that sense it has similarity to my blogging under the title Farmers Friend – www.farmersfriendlincs.com that I started out of my desire to help rural people and share my advice, views and opinions and ultimately serialised my first book to see if there was enough interest before self-publishing. We both hold a passion for certain rural areas and the people living in them, in his case Cumbria and his old constituency of Penrith and the Border, and in my case South Holland, the Fens, Lincolnshire and Northumberland. Indeed it is my guess that the North Northumberland constituency that I currently live in with Labour’s David Smith as M.P. is possibly the second-largest parliamentary constituency by area, whereas Penrith and the Border was the largest by area.

I smile when I re-read reviews of Rory’s book Middleland as I wonder if the reviewers actually read it, or if they did, did they digest and think about what they were reading? But then, perhaps, a book is like a painting, each viewer takes from it a different aspect of the art. For me it was an easy read in that the nature of the essays were that it was broken up into bite sized pieces. These had been re-ordered into a loose structure of form and points to make. Perhaps the first point is made in its title, “Middleland” which can have many meanings with perhaps the most obvious is it being a borderland between England and Scotland, indeed his constituency was the only one with “border” in its title.  It is interesting to me that the “Scottish Borders” as a tourist area, are frequently referred to, but not the “English Borders”. More likely in England you have reference to Cumbria, the Lake District and Northumberland.

In such a way the Penrith and Border constituency, Cumbria and Northumberland are ‘Middlelands’, but are also frequently forgotten lands. They are not quite Scotland, and far enough from London to be of little or no concern to Parliament except for occasional political platitudes to keep the Northern constituents quiet.

I was walking through Amble in Northumberland in February when I commented about how cold it was to an old lady. She remarked that they talked of snow. I joked that it was possibly just London as they make a fuss over a few flakes down South and it’s hard to tell the forecasts as they don’t seem to cover our area. At this point she launched into a tirade about how Northumberland doesn’t exist to many with coverage going up to Yorkshire and Manchester “..and they know little of what’s North of Manchester util you get to Scotland, although they might mention Newcastle occasionally, but that’s only when it’s football day.” This is in fact true, especially of the BBC regional TV coverage. When I set up my TV on BBC iPlayer I entered my new post code NE65 from the old PE11. This had the effect that when I watched the news, after the national news they switched to a blank screen with writing saying there was no coverage for my region. If I changed it back to PE11 I got Look North with Peter Levy, which I have retained. However, it is fair to say that my old home of Spalding was right on the bottom of the Look North area and that received little coverage. Indeed, I describe in my book Marsh Fen and Town how South Holland was a borderland  for TV coverage and this is true of Northumberland too. Indeed, local radio cuts have reduced media coverage in broadcast radio by sharing resources – this can see presenters sharing broadcasts to cover Cumbria and Northumberland – two distinct areas totally different in identity and character. Similarly in Lincolnshire it is often heaped in with the Midlands – a rural County lumped in with larger industrial towns and cities with a totally different identity and character.

That Cumbria is a forgotten land up North somewhere is true, but this applies to a wider ignorance of the rural once you get North of Peterborough. Its telling that when my daughter studied psychology at the University of East Anglia in Cambridge many of her fellow students viewed her as being “from the North” as she came from Spalding, not far from Peterborough. Similarly I had a colleague in the late 1980’s  move from London to Spalding to work and she thought, “Great, I will be able to pop over the border to Scotland for a day trip at the weekend,” only to be disappointed  by the long distances through Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland that she never knew existed. Indeed, whilst writing this I have just seen the quiz show Tipping Point where the contestants playing the game in a Bristol studio though Gateshead was on the South bank of the Thames. I once sent a question to The Rest is Politics podcast asking where they thought “ the North” began. Alistair Campbell’s reasonable response was about Sheffield. For me, I would put a line across roughly at Leeming Bar Services on the A1, or should I call it “The Great North Road”. I rather enjoy the fact it is not “The Great South Road”!

Like Cumbria, the Fens were in many ways a forgotten land, thinly populated until the agricultural revolution and drainage saw eventual growth. I describe in my writings the political, social and geographical isolation of the Fens, and how, despite improved transport, this continues. Cumbria is the same, except that the physical distance  is further from London and the transport services and roads are possibly worse, although this is open to debate.

In his book, Rory describes a unification with Europe through the Roman Empire from Syria through to Brampton in Cumbria. This is the vision of a well-travelled cosmopolitan with a classical education, and, to my eyes, seems a fanciful vision of history through the eyes of a Europhile. If I compare the Fens around South Lincolnshire there was considerable  Roman activity, but it did not bear the same stamps of identity in the Fens compared to say Lincoln or Hadrian’s Wall with salt pans and the Carr Dyke being the most notable workings that largely blended into the environments of the fens and marshes.

Rory comments on the liveliness and richness of the British identity, whilst I believe this is true as a land of immigrants I do feel he misses a point, that is the glue of English culture. Sadly incurrent times this glue is increasingly being denied to the detriment of us all.

So few people realise that the landscapes of our English countryside were shaped by industries such as tin, lead and coal mines, slate quarries, let alone forestry and agriculture. Rory observes these industries , something the Fenlands avoided, and their subsequent closures over time seeing a depopulation of his constituency as it deindustrialised. In contrast the food and farming industry in the Fens saw massive growth and didn’t see vast areas lose human presence.

I recognise his description of DEFRA’s “maze of top-down management to the extreme.” Indeed, every farmer I know will recognise this as they see alien policies take shape reliant upon flawed information, reasoning or ideologies.

In my writing I make the point of the Fens needing socially sustainable policies and that man should be seen as part of the environment. I feel up to the 1980’s many environmentalists recognised this. Sadly nowadays, the environmental movement are, in my opinion, full of extremists with no regard for social or economic sustainability with a gentrified view of the place of man, especially farmers, in the British countryside. Rory Stewart is a bit gentler in his view stating, “We need policies for who we are not for what other people like us to be.”

In my writing I am very negative towards the biases of urban incomers in the Fens and the effect of their pressure upon local decisions. Too often I see them disregarding established local knowledge and practises. However, Rory makes the point that local resistance can be a type of “unpaid due diligence in effect pointing out environmental and community costs to planners.” I feel in the Fens my view still stands, but acknowledge that when incomers and existing locals unite in a common cause his point rings true.

Rory values the identity of constituency, with geology and history reinforcing this local identity. My old constituency of South Holland was particularly of such a nature. It is notable that the last three Tory MPs for South Holland did not fit the mould of the typical Conservative MP of recent years  and two of them were opposed to the European project. One of the difficulties with such constituencies as Penrith and the Border and South Holland is  that they often get joined together with other areas to which they have little in common. In the case of South Holland this was particularly true of their European constituency of East Midlands. It is not just in politics that such identities get diluted, in my book I describe how this is true of radio and television broadcast media and even the regions that large companies allocate  in their management and sales structures.

The identity of constituency and its ability to be independent with a chosen local representative is important. This is perhaps a significant factor in my personal opposition to proportional representation as it creates power of appointment in parties rather than the voter to the extent of excluding independent candidates.  Now I am the first to recognise that parties “parachute” in candidates, after all Liz Truss had very little in common with her Norfolk constituency and similarly Tony Blair in Darlington, but the constituent voters still have the power to resist this at the ballot box as we have seen with Jeremy Corbyn retaining his seat in Parliament regardless of his membership of the Labour Party. As I write the Welsh Assembly currently has a proportional representation system that is entirely controlled by political parties and has become neither democratic or representative in my humble opinion. It also has to be recognised that once elected a constituency MP represents his constituents regardless of whether they voted for him or not – something that is considerably diluted under proportional representation.

Some of Rory’s Middleland articles are simple accounts of family events. When he describes how his sister, who has Downs syndrome, “made Christmas” I can fully understand this. My niece on my wife’s side of the family has Downs and there is rarely a family event, birthdays, Christmas, weddings and even funerals that has not been made lighter by her presence and strength of character.

The desertion of towns is a common feature between Cumbria and Lincolnshire, and perhaps most rural areas. The reasons behind this are many, but a key factor is the failure to retain or increase foot fall. In my writings you see the decline of livestock markets, street markets, family shops and retailers. You see the pursuit of largeness  and out of town shopping. In both Cumbria and Northumberland gentrification is a considerable factor – both these areas are affected by migration of people mostly northward. South Lincolnshire has experienced such a migration, but on top of this has been added massive migration into the area from Europe over the last thirty years. Cumbria and Northumberland experienced deindustrialisation, in contrast South Lincolnshire has seen industrial growth, albeit the food, farming and horticultural industries. But the desertion of towns has seen an influx of low quality retail outlets with the sale of illegal and counterfeit goods including food, vapes, tobacco and drugs at epidemic proportions – this issue I perceive as being less common in Cumbria and Northumberland.

Rory is a large supporter of community action, but for this to happen requires community leadership. I have visited Alston in Cumbria, possibly the highest town in England, and certainly very remote. It is a model of community success with a community run road-gritter, ambulance, cinema and railway to name but a few of the projects. But here is a key thing, success requires leadership. In Spalding blind following of Conservative Party loyalty often retained bad people and excluded good. In my writing about South Lincolnshire I describe how good leadership ensured roads, water, drainage, gas and power were all made available very , very quickly to enable Spalding to benefit from a sugar beet factory. I also show how good leadership obtained and retained the cattle market in Spalding and kept the bulb and produce auction once these closed. Sadly leadership became an old boys club in Spalding that failed to drive and retain an active town centre of quality.

I find it interesting that in February 2011 Rory finds himself defending Cumbrian action against the London School of Economics. I have followed two Universities and their inputs and papers about agriculture, land use and rural issues; the LSE and Newcastle University. Both have vast amounts of freely available published studies and papers. However, I feel that the LSE material frequently follows left  wing socialist, communist and Marxist trains of thought and reasoning. However, not exclusively, I have read some LSE papers that are not dissimilar to some of the national socialist writings and speeches of the late Oswald Mosely. I do not regard this institution or its ideas as particularly negative in itself, but I do regard its influence on government  policy as being a clear and present danger to the established economic and social structures of the countryside. I know many will disagree, but I do believe LSE academics have been a key influence behind fiscal and rural policy of the current Labour government with total and utter disregard to the balance of winners and losers. Equally, I can find papers from the LSE that possibly influenced the prior Conservative administration. In contrast I perceive the papers I read from Newcastle University as more in touch with the social and economic needs of those already living and working in the countryside, a more practical approach alongside their academic reasoning and arguments.

Rory writes well about the death of Marie Calvin, a war journalist that achieved much through the art of listening. The attributes he praises are similar to those I perceive in him.

As we move through his articles Rory considers our perceptions of politicians. In Marsh Fen and Town I consider how South Holland was suffering from under-investment in infrastructure and services that did not match its growth in population. This I attribute it to being a Tory stronghold. Under Conservative governments they felt no need to appease the region  due to its massive Conservative voting majority. Under Labour governments there was little to be gained in votes in investing in the region. Whilst  Sir John Hayes to this day maintains a strong majority as a Conservative MP, I wonder, looking at nearby Richard Tice in Boston, whether this is likely for his ultimate successor.

The defence of Newton Rigg Agricultural College was an issue I particularly felt needed support. Land-based colleges are increasingly  being diluted in many ways. One of the insidious methods is the taking over by a larger regional land college, in the case of Newton Rigg this was taken over by Askham Bryan College that ultimately closed it down in July 2021 whilst quite happy to receive the value of its assets, many of which had been originally donated to benefit the training of the local population near Penrith. In my opinion the taking over of Lincoln Agricultural College posed a similar but different risk as preference to the Yorkshire site for courses was perceived. However, 2020 saw improved investment on the Riseholme Lincoln cattle farming facilities and the 500 acre farm at Riseholme still functions. However, there is a perception that the balance of courses has swayed towards increased academic paperwork in preference to practical skills. When I have spoken to lecturers about this they admit that there is a change but perceive that this is necessary for modern farming. However, you do see another aspect of the dilution of agricultural land-based colleges as they have over many years taken on other educational areas. In Norfolk one of these is the development of a highly successful public services training for such roles as the police, prison service and armed services. These have been developed alongside existing agricultural roles and can be seen as adding to the security of the land-based college, but equally they can be viewed as diluting the function of a land based college into another role. The importance of land-based colleges cannot be understated as we have become too reliant upon imported skills to the detriment of developing our own local populations in agriculture and food processing.

Perhaps one of the key risk areas in food supply is slaughtering and abattoirs that have become fewer in number and are now at a level where there is insufficient experienced people to achieve sustainable development of future skilled slaughtermen and we are now at critical risk of having insufficient expertise and experience within the UK. I describe this risk and its history in Marsh Fen and Town.  Yet, the risk also applies to stock handling and dairy where I see heavy reliance upon migrant labour and expertise and total reliance in some tasks, most notably sheep shearing. I was not popular in a discussion with a group of farmers prior to Brexit as they all opposed it on grounds that they could not find the labour and expertise without relying upon migrants and I put it to them that they and their industry was to blame for such a predicament and an overall lack of investment in home grown skills was a nationwide problem to the point of negligence. Most agreed with me. I believe that this is now at such a crisis that it warrants two new land-based colleges to be set up in the middle of major urban areas such as Birmingham and London to attract a new supply of young urban people into food and farming roles. We need to recognise the urban bias I write about and use it to support the rural.

Rory considers the perception of politicians. I certainly think that in areas like Cumbria, South Holland and Northumberland the perception is that politics is London centric and their areas are forgotten and neglected. Indeed, it is perceived in these rural areas the politicians of all parties have been dictatorial to those working and living in rural areas in pursuit of green policies such as turbines, solar farms and rewilding with no regard to the value of people and land management that is already there. Indeed rural people are pig sick of this and the great disregard urban politicians have for them. The perception is that virtually all politicians belong to the same shithouse and voting has become irrelevant as educated, cosmopolitan, idealist urbanites seek to impose local solutions to global issues. Like Rory I feel everyone should vote as the last general election proved as we ended up with a majority Labour government elected by a very small percentage of the electorate.

I had to smile at Rory’s experience with children as he talked to them about politics with their concerns lurching from “local to global with nothing in-between”. I sometimes wonder if it is not just children that do this? I sensed his frustration with the lack of power and ability to achieve anything in government. Indeed, I recall the late Tony Benn saying in an interview  that as he left political life he particularly enjoyed participating in pressure groups as they were the genuine instruments of change where real politics was done.

Like Rory, I am a Unionist and I perhaps fear too many, especially in England, take the Union for granted. As it is I can see large differences in the border counties between England and Scotland and even between Wales and England. I remember staying in a farm-stay some years ago in Herefordshire close to the Welsh border. The owner of the farm found it frustrating that he didn’t benefit from the same grants and promotion of his holiday business as a neighbouring farmer just across the border. It frustrated him that the Welsh side benefitted and he did not, but I am sure if I spoke to people on the Welsh side of the border they would have similar grievances  about the English. Scotland is substantially different in laws and in such issues as education where the state covers Scottish residents tuition fees at University, but if you live in Berwick and attend University in Edinburgh you have to pay. This is not the treatment of a united country towards its citizens. Similarly we see different treatment of public transport and services are different. But then there are great disparities in public services throughout England. Public transport and healthcare are very, very poor in Lincolnshire compared to Northumberland.

It is telling that Rory writes before the Scottish referendum, “Even if Scotland does not separate we need to be reacquainted with each other.” I feel this need for reacquaintance is needed between London and the rest of the UK. It is a sad fact that our capital city is unaffordable to visit for many UK citizens and families. It is sad that swathes of Londoners never venture outside of the M25 into the rest of the UK whilst they are quite happy to fly abroad. London has become an “other land” for many of the country’s citizens with bad news filtering out the good of our capital. My writings about preconceptions in my book considers this.

Rory reflects on the fading of War Memorials. In Northumberland the veteran presence is so great that War Memorials are very much respected. But, if we go back to the First World War the War Memorials were not always popular with those that had lost loved ones. I have one family member who is buried in Thessalonica in a War grave, but his family were so angry at his death that they effectively disowned him and did not enter his name into the War Memorial in his home town of Spalding, however, his name does appear on several memorials in his birth county of Cambridgeshire. This is not an unusual story and I have encountered it with the families of the fallen in more recent wars.

I deem it a little sad that there is little sculpture in Penrith, Sculpture can be a wonderful way of enabling art to be accessed publicly. My adopted home town of Amble has many pieces of public sculpture much of it relating to the local bird life. Newcastle is full of wonderful sculpture in the streets and then as you pass Gateshead on the A1 I feel I am arriving home as the Angel of the North towers over the landscape. My old home town of Spalding had very little sculpture outside of the graveyard until more recent times. It was a great act to create small sculptures of only a few inches height relating to various trades and workers of Spalding’s past that are placed on atrial on building walls throughout the town centre. In more recent times a simple statue commemorating the May hiring of agricultural workers was erected in Hall Place, Spalding and this features in my book.

Rory and I share a common theme in our writings as we discuss the balance between environment, conservation, social, economic and traditional cultural use of land. It is an issue throughout the country. I am harder in my views than Rory in that I view the rewilding lobby as  dangerous extremists that pose a massive threat to the countryside. In my writings about Lincolnshire I quote the conservationist A.E. Smith: “There is no habitat in Lincolnshire which can truly be described as natural unless it be the sandy and muddy foreshores of the coast. Even those are affected to some extent by man’s activities.” Rory makes a similar statement, “….rewilding loses meadows, oak trees and hedgerows. Turning clocks back millennia.” “Not a gentle return to a past.” “Leaves no place for humans.”

This is why I view rewilding as dangerous extremism. I even view the argument of “nature depletion” as a truth that is flawed as an argument because it makes no acknowledgement of the positive activity of man. It is telling that rewilding arguments are only applied to rural environments. In doing so they conveniently ignore the urban and the fact it is the agricultural revolution that enabled the urban to expand. The loss of agricultural property relief on farmland has favoured charities, trusts and large corporate owners that seek to “cash in” on monetised greening to off-set other activities. Organisations like the National Trust offer ten year tenancies whilst seeking the tenants to follow commercially unviable “green” farming models. Even if the models are viable, ten years is not a sufficient time to commit to a tenant – the old Agricultural Holdings Act tenancies had their faults, but they did enable long term planning  and investment in people and infrastructure over successive generations. The loss of inheritance tax relief for many farms and businesses made inter-generational plans and investments unviable and destroyed business continuity. Near where I live in Northumberland the local wildlife trust is looking to purchase an estate in Rothbury. For me alarm bells are ringing in the way that they talk about their land management plans as if the existing tenants have been mismanaging their family farms, which from my observations, is not the case. I am also concerned that they are raising funds to buy the estate – but to run such a large estate, even with good paying tenants, requires immense working capital and I wonder how they plan to fund this? In the past I have seen wildlife trusts benefit from good management because they had experienced local farmers and land managers in their organisations. If this is true of the Northumberland trust it may be a positive experience. For me the jury is out on this and ideally I would rather see the existing tenants combine resources to buy the estate, but I am unaware of such a desire to do this in this case.

In the Fens rewilding typically takes the form of The Great Fen Project where land is reverted back to fenland. In the Wash area there have been areas of marshland farmland returned to its former state, most notably John Saul near Boston. Such projects as these and other rewilding are fine, but how do they sit with food security? Furthermore, what such projects and plans ignore is the massive investment in managing land, sometimes over hundreds of years, that is not given a value. The rewilding of this is the economic equivalent of building a tower block and then demolishing it, but is less visibly obvious as a loss of invested time, money and resources.

There is another hazard of conservation bodies and organisations, that is, their certainty of being right. This is always a danger and is in fact against the value of questions in scientific principles. But, what is worse is that nowadays it repeatedly ignores local knowledge. This is in contrast to how conservation used to be when it relied upon countrymen and respected the livings and livelihoods of rural people, but as we’ve entered the 21^st century this, in my opinion, has changed to the detriment of all parties interests. Rory does not touch on this as vociferously as myself apart from the “certainty of being right” and a clear statement that “forestry and farming sustain things beyond a monoculture”, a fact that is not generally appreciated in my opinion. Rory clearly believes that traditional farming and culture should be defended in a middle ground that is typical of his nature.

Towards the end of the book Rory refers to his father reading George Orwell’s “Road to Wigan Pier”, one of my favourite books. There are elements of Rory’s writing that like that of George Orwell’s, values lived experience that you see in his other books. Yet for me the lasting message that rings true to me in Middleland and is touched upon in my writings too is, “We risk losing our belief in a positive role for humans in our landscape.”

Finally in my thoughts about Rory Stewart I consider my writing in Marsh Fen and Town about urban bias: “The challenge for the predominantly rural Member of Parliament is to be an advocate for their rural constituents and influence his urban colleagues across parties of all political colour. The rural lobbyist needs to reach out to say the MP for the London Borough of Hackney North and Stoke Newington to get their point across and counter their natural urban bias.” This is something that I believe Rory Stewart did to the best of his ability and continues to do outside of Parliamentary politics in support of Middleland and other forgotten lands of rural Britain.

Middleland Dispatches from the Borders by Rory Stewart is available from all good book shops  ISBN 978-1-787-33624-7

Marsh Fen and Town South Lincolnshire and Beyond by Andrew Elsden is available from Amazon ISBN 979-8269986593