Press release - immediate 7-12-2017
Former General Secretary of Labour Party praises food and farming book
“This is a serious and convincing analysis - and prognosis - in these difficult post Brexit days.” Lord Larry Whitty, Labour Party general secretary 1985-1994
Launched on 16 October, Unite member Charlie Clutterbuck’s book BITTERSWEET BREXIT: the future of food, farming, land and labour has been widely welcomed.
With every part of the food chain set to be affected by the UK’s decision to exit the EU, BITTER- SWEET BREXIT seeks converts for a radical new vision for food and farming. This consists of switching the current £3billion in common agricultural policy subsidies away from large landown- ers into labour, thus creating highly skilled apprenticeship programmes in order to make agriculture and farming, which has an ageing workforce, attractive to young people.
At a time when the government has put forward a woefully misguided Post Brexit agricultural ex- port plan, BITTERSWEET BREXIT aims to transform farming by concentrating on producing more food at home and reducing the current $33 billion gap between exports and imports.
Clutterbuck has been speaking at a series of meetings in the last few weeks. His appearance this week at Bradford Trades Union Council (BTUC) attracted its largest attendance in recent times. The BTUC secretary Mike Quiggin said afterwards: “Charlie explained that Brexit would lead to a bigger change to agriculture than anything since the abolition of Corn Laws in the nineteenth century.....the media are obsessed with the detail of the EU negotiations but we wanted to give space to debate about the way we want to the country to change for the better. Charlie was ideal for this.”
Dan Crossley, the executive director of the Food Ethics Council, a charity that provides independent advice on the ethics of food and farming and aims to create a food system that is fair and healthy for people, animals and the environment also praised Clutterbuck’s book: “It is very well written, very accessible and covers lots of hugely important issues.”
Lord Larry Whitty was the Labour Party general secretary between 1985-1994. He is a member of the Lords EU Select Committee. He regards BITTERSWEET BREXIT as a “serious and convincing analysis and prognosis - in these difficult post Brexit days. It brings in the key issues that most commentators ignore – the impact on labour (in this case already exploited food sector workers); the distributional aspects; and the sustainability and nutritional dimensions.”
Chapter 1 of BITTERSWEET BREXIT can be downloaded at https://issuu.com/plutopress/docs/ clutterbuck_issuu
A regularly updated website with new developments on the book is at:-www.bittersweetbrexit.co.uk
For more details contact Mark Metcalf. 07392 852561 mcmetcalf@icloud.com @markmetcalf07
@clutterbuckcha1
To order copies of the book from Pluto Press go to:- https://www.plutobooks.com/ 9780745337708/bittersweet-brexit/
