RURAL: The Lives of the Working Class Countryside - book review

RURAL: The Lives of the Working Class Countryside

 William Collins Books

Rebecca Smith’s work for BBC Radio for over a decade included researching titles for Radio 4’s Book of the Week series and it is surely only matter of time before listeners will get to hear extracts of this engaging book by the daughter of a forester on the Graythwaite Estate on Ullswater that has been owned by the Sandys family for over 500 years. The aristocracy and gentry, many of whom have family links to slavery,  still own 30 per cent of England today and the imbalance is even worse in Scotland where Smith now resides.

Smith loved living amidst the iconic landscapes and wildlife of the Lake District. But she was fully aware that whilst, like many working class people in rural industries, her families “lives ran parallel” to those of the ancient landowners their “worlds were very different”.

In RURAL, Smith sets out to highlight, a “part of society that” aside from a magazine such as LANDWORKER “has been largely forgotten”. Drawing on her childhood memories, I enjoyed Smith’s highly revealing historical account of the countryside and, aside from my belief she should have spoken to, at least, one UNITE workplace rep from a rural setting (1) , her interviews with contemporary rural working class people. 

The rural occupations explored by Smith include working on the land as a forester, mining – which includes tales of its dangers– textiles, which replaced weavers, that enjoyed a good living in their day, with child labour and the rigorous discipline of the clock, tenant farming, tourism, with 16 million visiting the Lake District annually, slate and food production.

Construction also features prominently. In 1939 there were, following the 1936 Housing Act that gave local councils the chance to subsidise building agricultural cottages for labourers, 159,000 council houses for people working in rural industries in England. Today, there an increasing number of houses being built in semi-rural areas.  More are needed.

In her book, Smith rightly stresses how the countryside is still today a “working environment” but warns that many of today’s rural jobs are often precarious and highly vulnerable, especially, as is so for many migrant workers, when accommodation is tied into the contract.

There are though also larger businesses which, although Smith does not mention it, are places of trade union activity include the long established Sullom Voe oil terminal on Shetland, Sellafield on the Cumbrian coast and the planned Sutherland space port. Balancing environmental concerns with providing jobs is always going to be tricky. Some rural communities have, of course, inspired by the first island community buyout on the Isle of Eigg in 1997, sought to overcome these problems by taking advantage of opportunities to buy the lands on which they live. Just under 3 per cent of Scotland’s land is under community ownership and whilst ‘community buyouts’ in England have largely been for smaller businesses such as pubs that are 500 community land trusts currently that have built over 1,000 homes.

1.     I am also confused as to how the book manages to miss the importance of the Tolpuddle Martyrs or such as Joseph Arch.