Essay

Comment

Economics

Sustainability

18 November 2024

8 min read

Raiding the fields, lessons from history

A tax raid on farmers is raising more trouble than revenue.

Theodore Brun

Theodore is author of the historical fiction series The Wanderer Chronicles. He previously studied Dark Age archaeology at Cambridge, and afterwards worked in international law.

A soot stained burnt-out harvester sits in a recently harvested field.

A burnt-out harvester, Lonesome Farm, Oxfordshire.

Nick Jones.

“Better red than expert.”

That was one of the slogans touted through the national propaganda channels in the early days of the People’s Republic of China shortly after Chairman Mao came to power. In other words, professionalism should be subordinated to politics.

It seems a pretty accurate description of the current UK government’s own attitude to farming in the light of their controversial inheritance tax raid on the nation’s farmers. Prior to last month’s budget, Agricultural Property Relief meant that farmers could expect to hand all qualifying agricultural assets on to the next generation without lobbing their children the simultaneous hospital pass of a whopping great tax bill. It was this inheritance tax relief and this alone that allowed every typical asset-rich/cash-poor farming business to survive as a going concern from one generation to the next.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves, perhaps applying her “better red than expert” thinking, identified this as a tax loophole that needed to be closed. She says it is costing taxpayers £1billion a year - which, when you think about it, is like a man who’s just cornered you in a dark alley saying you are costing him and his mates £100 by keeping those two shiny fifty pound notes in your own pocket.

Farmers will now be expected to cough up 20 per cent of the value of their agricultural property into the national coffers with every passing generation. It doesn’t take an expert mathematician to realise such an erosion of capital needed to pay these bills will render many farming businesses untenable, particularly given that farming relies heavily on economies of scale. This represents a torpedo strike on the farming industry which will sink a very large number of people, not just so-called Barley Barons.

No matter that the uptick of increased annual tax take from this measure will barely be enough to cover a day and a half of the NHS spend. Nor that while the government claims that, with a threshold of £1million before inheritance tax applies, 72 per cent of “farms” will not be affected (their definition including small parcels of land, and so-called toy farms which make no pretence to be food-producing businesses), the National Farmers Union says the true figure is closer to the inverse of that.

John McTernan, a former aide to Tony Blair and supporter of current PM Keir Starmer, didn’t help cool tempers with his revealing comment that farming was an industry which the UK could do without. “Labour can do to farmers what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners,” he said. Starmer was quick to distance himself from these incendiary remarks.

But as farmers would no doubt appreciate, what looks and smells like horse manure, probably is horse manure. And these measures are what they look like: an outright attack on the farming community, and more widely the ancillary rural economy which farming supports. The average farmer would be forgiven for thinking this feels far more ideological than fiscal in its aims.

That is why this week will see the largest rural protest in Westminster since the Countryside Alliance march in 2002. Farmers will converge on the Houses of Parliament to ask the government to reconsider such a direct attack on the food security of this country.

Given this fraught situation, are there any lessons to be learned from the past?

You have to wonder whether arguably the most left-wing government this country has ever seen is taking ideological plays out of the history book. Such tax raids on farmers' fields are nothing new. From ancient biblical times even to the last one hundred years, the consequences effect much more than the economy, they reach even to the soul of nations.

If farmers as a community stand in the way, what is the objective that lies beyond them, which the new utopians hope to attain?

In 1920s Russia, the Bolsheviks specifically targeted a class of landed smallholders known as the Kulaks.

The Kulaks were relatively prosperous, independent farmers, who faced severe repression during the 1920s and 1930s under Stalin's Soviet government. Originally benefiting from land reforms after the Russian Revolution, they were seen by Stalin as a threat to his goal of collectivizing agriculture. By labelling the Kulaks as "class enemies" of the working class, Stalin launched a campaign to liquidate them as a class around 1929, aimed at confiscating their land and redistributing it to state-owned collective farms.

The Soviet government seized Kulak farms, livestock, and tools, often forcibly relocating families to remote regions or sending them to labour camps where many perished due to harsh conditions. This campaign fuelled widespread suffering, triggering famine, especially in Ukraine, where it contributed to the devastating Holodomor. By the early 1930s, the Kulak class was effectively destroyed, resulting in millions of deaths and lasting trauma across the Soviet countryside.

Or how about China?

During China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), smallholders and farmers faced severe disruption as the government under Mao Zedong sought to enforce collectivization and reshape rural life. Although China had already implemented collectivization during the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution intensified the suppression of individual farming and private land ownership, pushing for even greater alignment with socialist ideology. Farmers were forced into collective communes where land, equipment, and resources were shared, and individual autonomy was abolished.

Many were publicly humiliated, re-educated, or sent to labor camps. In addition, the chaos of the period meant that agricultural expertise was disregarded, as revolutionary fervour prioritized political ideology over practical farming knowledge. The mismanagement of agriculture, paired with forced collectivization, led to poor yields and food shortages, further destabilizing rural areas and causing hardship for millions of farmers and their families.

None of this is very encouraging for farmers in twenty-first century Britain. Especially when one considers how ideologically-driven Keir Starmer truly is, if his contributions to back issues of the magazine “Socialist Alternatives” in the early 1990s are any indication.

But if the socialist goals of the twentieth century were collectivisation and the social engineering of class warfare, what could they be today? If farmers as a community stand in the way, what is the objective that lies beyond them, which the new utopians hope to attain?

Again, it doesn’t take an “expert” to hazard a guess. Ambitious government plans to iron-clad the countryside in solar panels and wind turbine farms in a drive towards net zero will be made considerably easier once the current landowners are forced to flood the market with cheap land in order to service a hefty inheritance tax bill. All to save us from imminent environmental Armageddon.

As they listen to what farmers have to say this week, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves might do well to reflect on the fate of Jezebel and her king.

This is a narrative that some can at least imagine. But perhaps that is straying too far into what most would consider conspiracy theory at this point, so let’s back up a little.

All the same, when a wrong of this magnitude is done to a particular group of people - especially one made up of some of the most dependable, uncomplaining, and hard-working members of society, it seems reasonable to ask the question: Cui bono? Who benefits from this wrong?

For the answer to that, we shall have to wait and see how it unfolds.

But in the meantime, it is worth considering a perspective from even deeper in the past. A perspective on the “good” that comes from the ownership and stewardship of the land, especially land seen as a family or tribe or nation’s inheritance. With powerful stories set amid ancient fields the Bible has much to say on the matter.

In a sense the whole of the Old Testament is concerned with this question. God gives Adam and Eve land to steward and cultivate. And then expels them from it as a consequence of their sin. From Abraham until Israel’s exile, the story of God’s chosen people is profoundly linked to a promised land which is first placed in their hands as a blessing and means of sustenance and support - of life itself. An inheritance to be preciously held, stewarded, and passed on from generation to generation. And yet which is taken away again by the hand of God’s judgement when Israel turns away from its Lord and Sustainer.

But consider just one story for a moment: that of the humble farmer Naboth and his little vineyard, described in the first book of Kings. This provides an eerily close analogy to the UK government and its current land grab. It is both powerful and chilling.

One day the state, in the form of King Ahab, decides it would rather like Naboth’s vineyard for itself. Ahab offers Naboth money for it. Naboth refuses, saying, “The Lord forbid I should give you my inheritance.” Ahab - “vexed and sullen” - rages in frustration, until his wife Jezebel concocts a far more cunning scheme to get him that land, involving lies, slander and ultimately murder. There’s a twist in the tail, though. Once Ahab has what he wants, God sends his prophet Elijah to denounce his wrongdoing and warn him of his (rather grisly) coming fate.

For those with half an eye on the unseen as well as the seen in this country, the introduction of this family farm tax at this time may come as no surprise. Many in the church have perceived the “spirit of Jezebel” as ascendant on a number of cultural fronts at this moment in our history.

For Israel, the reign of Jezebel was a dark and uncertain time. And for farmers protesting on Tuesday, they may feel this is no less a dark and uncertain time.

As they listen to what farmers have to say this week, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves might do well to reflect on the fate of Jezebel and her king.

And for their part, farmers might reflect on the blessing of the inheritance they have received; and what, like Israel before them, they may have done - or not done - in the eyes of God, to jeopardize their chance to pass it on.

After all, at this point in the story, it’s not too late for either side in these farm wars to turn back.

Article

Comment

Community

Politics

8 November 2024

10 min read

How to respond when politicians talk about “our way of life”

Alasdair MacIntyre’s thinking helps us understand what we share across society.

Joel Pierce

Joel Pierce is the administrator of Christ's College, University of Aberdeen. He has recently published his first book.

Four men in suits, sit next to each other smiling, in the House of Commons.

Reform MPs in the House of Commons.

House of Commons, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia.

What is “our way of life”? It’s a phrase which slides easily into the rhetoric of politicians of every stripe. It’s what the Reform Party says is threatened by multiculturalism, but what do they mean by it? What kind of politics is sustained by talk of “our way of life” and is there a better way of thinking about such politics?

This summer, we made an exception to the time limit rule for television in my house, mainly so that I could have the Olympics on from morning to night. It’s a habit I acquired growing up in the United States, where an obsession over the quadrennial medal count is one of the few remaining things which bridges political and regional divides. During the Cold War, the Olympics were a way for Americans to proudly affirm the superiority of our way of life over the rigid training schedules and alien ways of the rival Soviet Union.

Although my memories begin around the fall of the Berlin Wall, old habits die hard, and so the Olympics, to me, was endless coverage of plucky underdog Americans overcoming the odds to defeat the machine-like discipline of a new set of rivals–now Russia and China

I moved to Britain just before the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics at which Britain won exactly one medal. At first I was bemused by the BBC’s coverage, which, of necessity, had to focus on British Olympians with little chance of winning. I was invited to cheer on eighth or ninth place finishers who had committed their life to a craft which would never bring the rewards of lasting fame or financial security. For them the reward was the Olympics themselves, the chance to compete amongst peers, to push themselves to their highest level, enjoying their sport and their performance for what it was, not for any external reward. In the terms of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, what these Olympians displayed was dedication to the internal goods of their sport–those goods that make a particular activity worth doing for its own sake. The Olympics were not about medals for them, but about showing what could be achieved if, as Olympians must do, they made their sport their way of life, dedicating themselves to its unique forms of excellence.

Sports, for MacIntyre, are but one example of a broader category he labels ‘practices’. Although MacIntyre has a technical definition of what counts as a ‘practice’, the general idea can be conveyed through examples he gives such as farming, researching history, architecture, chess, and chemistry. Practices are human activities which are worth doing for their own sake, which require a degree of skill and excellence, and in which what counts as that skill and excellence is, in part, defined and discerned by the people who participate in the practice. This last criterion points at something important about practices for MacIntyre: they are inherently social.

This is obvious in the case of sport. For an individual athlete to compete in a race they need not just other competitors to race against, but also trainers and coaches to prepare them for it, governing bodies to organise it, and, hopefully, spectators to cheer them on. It is, perhaps, less obvious in the case of individual farmer, but even here, one has to be taught to farm and, if one is wise, continues to learn and adapt through consulting with other farmers. A different way of putting this is that practices are the kinds of things which it’s not absurd to call “a way of life”. For an Olympic curler, curling is a way of life, just as much as farming is for a farmer.

There are many ways of life, many modes of being British, as diverse as the professions, hobbies, and passions which we find to have inherent worth.

However, this seems to offer little help in defining “our way of life” if it is being used in the way our politicians like to talk about it. If there’s one thing that I learned from all those BBC features of British Olympians way back in 2010, it was that aside from geographic proximity, there was not much that their way of life had in common with mine. I may be within driving distance of the rink where Winter Olympian Eve Muirhead learned to curl, but my workdays of wrestling spreadsheets and answering emails have little in common with ones spent lifting weights, studying strategy with coaches, and perfecting the just right spin on a stone as it’s released.

And, of course that’s not just true of Olympic athletes. The investment banker who attends our church shares a way of life with his colleagues in Edinburgh, London, and Tokyo, that is completely opaque to my wife and I, immersed as we are in the worlds of ministry and academia. I glimpse some of the internal goods of the practices of our dentist watching her check my daughters’ teeth and our plumber as he fixes our leaking radiators, but their way of life, the rhythms of their days, and what gives them satisfaction in their work as they move from appointment to appointment, eludes my understanding.

Where does this leave the search for a British way of life? If practices are as important to forming us as MacIntyre thinks, then the quest for any singular British way of life will ultimately be fruitless. There are many ways of life, many modes of being British, as diverse as the professions, hobbies, and passions which we find to have inherent worth. And even this characterisation does not go quite far enough, because all of these practices have a way of bursting the boundaries of Britishness if they really are worthwhile. A century and a half ago, football, rugby, and cricket were quintessentially British sports. Now they belong to the world.

Similarly, valuing these practices well within Britain has a tendency to open us to accepting those from outside our borders who can help develop them. The best footballer in Britain is Norwegian. Many of the doctors who ensured my daughters arrived safely after complicated pregnancies were originally from India and Pakistan.

Still, one might wonder if thinking about community through the lens of practices, as MacIntyre does, is too much of a solvent. Isn’t it a way of imagining us living near each other, but not with each other; siloed in our practices, in each of our communities, not understanding what our neighbours are up to? Not necessarily. For MacIntyre, the familiarity that arise from living near someone, hearing their worries at planning permission hearings, arguing with them at the local school’s parent council meetings, organising a community fundraiser together, or, even, being part of a family with them, can help develop an understanding of the internal goods of practices which we do not take part in. I haven’t lifted a brush to paper to since my secondary school art class, but my mother-in-law’s virtuosity with acrylics has led me to acquire an increasing appreciation for painting. Part of what helps facilitate this recognition is that, as MacIntyre argues, although the internal goods and the skills required to achieve them tend to be different for each practice, the virtues which we develop while pursuing them–patience, honesty, courage, self-control–are universal. Part of what helps us recognise others’ activities as practices, as worth doing for their own sake, are the virtues we see them develop as they do them.

This sort of recognition requires familiarity, the sort I might have with my neighbours in our corner of rural Aberdeenshire, but that I am unlikely to have with fellow citizens in Cornwall, Cardiff, London, or Glasgow. How then are we to respond to national politicians talking about “our way of life”? One answer might be: with extreme scepticism. This is MacIntyre’s approach. He rejects the nation-state, which he calls “a dangerous and unmanageable institution”, as a potential channel of communal unity. Instead, he calls on us to admit that modern nation-states exist as a contradiction, being both “a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services” and yet also something treated as sacred, which we are asked, on occasion, to surrender our lives to preserve. He notes with characteristic acerbity, “it is like being asked to die for the telephone company.”

However, here I’d temper MacIntyre’s rhetoric somewhat. While my attachment to bankers in Canary Wharf is largely a happenstance of history, a contingent fact generated by long forgotten necessities of eighteenth century geopolitics, it has nevertheless resulted in both of us being issued the same passport, governed by the same tax regime, and having the same set of regulatory agencies to complain to when things go wrong. Those may be manifestations of what MacIntyre disparages as “a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services”, but they nevertheless do bind us together. As such we both have an interest in making sure this bureaucracy acts as justly as it can, not because it is the embodiment of all that is British, Britain is much too diverse and interesting to be fully embodied in our political institutions, but because we all have an interest in the institutions in which we are enmeshed, British or otherwise, being run as justly as possible.

Surely politics is all about securing as much money and resources as possible for the people most like oneself. That, it seems, is often the unstated assumption when the talk of “our way of life”

Because we find ourselves tied together by these institutions to a diverse collection of people, we have an interest in learning about those with whom we live. Even those who are far away. And to also celebrate when goods and services delivered by our institutions result in success to which we, in a remote way, have contributed. I may not share a way of life with Adam Peaty, but, thanks to the BBC, I can have a glimpse into what his way of life is and can be happy that through my taxes I have contributed, in a small way, to helping him win another medal. Since that 2010 Winter Olympics Britain has come quite a long way and there is nothing wrong with a little vicarious pride in our athlete’s accomplishments.

But I can also be proud of athletes who didn’t win. Ones like BMX rider Beth Shriever who handled her unexpected last place finish in her final with a kind of grace and maturity, the kind of virtue, which someone more dedicated to her practice than to just winning can demonstrate. It is the facilitating of this kind of moral achievement which is more valuable than any medal.

Similarly, I can rejoice when a new hospital gets built in a neglected area in London, or more council housing is supplied to people in need in Edinburgh, hopeful that these lead to my fellow citizens achieving the kind of flourishing lives they deserve. I can be angry, when I discover that the money I’ve paid towards postage has been used to prosecute innocent victims of a computer glitch, and pleased when the opening of a new rail line eases the otherwise stressful commute of tens of thousands in London. The state may be a bit like a telephone company, but a well-run utility can do a lot to supply people with the goods they need to make their lives. As long as I’m a subscriber, as long as I’m tied to people through national institutions like the state, I have a moral duty to ensure that they’re run as well as possible.

This way of thinking about politics may strike some as idealistic, the kind of view only a naive Christian ethicist could endorse. Surely politics is all about securing as much money and resources as possible for the people most like oneself. That, it seems, is often the unstated assumption when the talk of “our way of life” is deployed and why so much coalition building in our politics turns on finding a convenient other against which to define “our” similarity. Take your pick: immigrants, the EU, woke elites, the Tories, or Westminster (among a certain brand of politician here in Scotland).--. Growing up in the USA, the Soviets, and then the Chinese, and now, depending whether one lives in a Republican or Democratic district, the other political party, have served the same purpose. The problem is that we aren’t that similar, we are and always have been a diverse lot with diverse needs. Every nation is. There is no one British way of life and to allow our politicians to try to sustain the fiction that there is lets them off the hook. Solving deep seated economic and social inequality is hard. Blaming immigrants for not embracing our way of life is easy.

So, perhaps the sort of politics that I am talking about here is idealistic, nevertheless it is the only kind that can sustain a just government in the long term. Without acknowledging the importance of goods we only partly understand which are pursued by people whose ways of life are different from our own, we cannot hope to sustain the minor miracle of coordination and mutual aid that history has gifted us with in our united kingdom.