Cold drizzle falling on tweed. That was the abiding image of today’s protest in Westminster which filled Whitehall with tens of thousands of indignant farmers. Just two tractors were admitted. One was parked outside Downing Street and the other stood by the women’s war memorial.
Groups of farmers clambered onto the metal flanks and took snaps of themselves. Many held home-made placards denouncing ‘farmer harmer’ Starmer and ‘Rachel Thieves’, the chancellor. Some of the more paranoid demonstrators saw Labour as a historic threat to the working class.
Everyone seemed obdurately upbeat despite the freezing rain
‘First the miners, then the farmers, next it’s you.’ The simplest signs appealed to common sense. ‘No farmers, no food, no future.’
The protest was good natured and everyone seemed obdurately upbeat despite the freezing rain. A woman from Staffordshire described Labour as a party of student activists who lack real-world experience. ‘They work in think tanks and charities and they imagine that because that I’m sitting in a field, I own a million pounds.’
The mistrust of Labour’s townie politicians is widespread. An Essex farmer told me: ‘They see it from a spreadsheet point of view. They think a farm is a sterile asset like an empty mansion or a gold watch. So, if it’s not producing anything, let’s tax it.’
There were hardly any canvassers from mainstream parties. Not a Tory in sight. Reform sent one or two activists with leaflets, and Nigel Farage made an appearance. A Sikh from Birmingham told me that tax reform was part of a global plot to transfer property from farmers to governments and to put farmland in the hands of billionaires like Bill Gates. His land-owning relatives in Punjab were victims of the same scam, he told me.
The president of the National Farmers Union, Tom Bradshaw, opened his speech by denouncing the ‘October budget.’ Those two words prompted a surge of fury that swept through the crowd. Bradshaw called Labour’s inheritance reforms ‘a tax on our children and a tax on untimely death.’ He claimed that tenant farmers are already suffering from insomnia because their futures have been thrown in doubt. He asked every protestor to keep an eye on their neighbours. ‘Pick up the phone. Have a yarn,’ he advised. ‘And write to your MP. I know you’ll laugh but they are elected to represent us.’ He finished by asking the crowd to cheer the Metropolitan police. (Muted applause). And he urged the protestors to pick up litter from the streets to preserve the good name of the agricultural community. As the crowd dispersed, volunteers collected refuse from the roadway.
What next? It was hard to find an activist with a clear plan. Everyone realises that an elected government finds it easy to ignore a mass protest. In Parliament Square, a crowd blocked the road and raised a chant calling for Starmer to quit. This small but noisy group accidentally merged with a ‘Free Palestine’ demo. One of the Palestinian demontstrators offered a piece of advice. ‘Don’t be reasonable. Nothing was ever achieved by a reasonable man. Tell that to the farmers.’
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