Introduction

Over the past ten years or so, since the May 1997 general election, the Labour Party in government under Tony Blair has taken a number of controversial decisions and implemented, or otherwise avoided, measures that impact on the countryside directly and indirectly. The Blair administrations had styled themselves as a great reforming government with change, review, iteration and reorientation unfolding on many policy fronts. However, it appears that the New Labour project was as much an opportunist and pragmatic politics (Powell, 2000) as a coherent ‘third way’, as some might argue (see, for example, Giddens, 1998, 2001). If anything the New Labour project is an example of emergent ‘practice without theory’. In terms of rural policy and politics one detects that this lack of coherence may be due to a lack of confidence in addressing rural affairs and the unforeseen and often forced circumstances surrounding a number of the rural political issues that have arisen in the past decade. It also has to do with the history of, and background to, prior political projects, and in this sense reviewing Blairism necessarily entails a degree of juxtaposing with predecessor administrations that is not possible in this chapter (see Andersen and Mann, 1997; Powell, 2000). However, the focus on countryside access as a rural political issue is given some historical consideration here as well as reflecting on how the issue throws into relief (dis)continuities and motives of previous Labour governments.

The way that New Labour has moved to address rural issues and develop new institutional arrangements across the policy spectrum is perhaps notable for the level of activity and noise generated, if not necessarily for the degree of change brought about by policy or the radical nature of those policies. Labour legislative programmes over the past decade result largely from policy developed in the early 1990s, that is prior to coming to power, while others were subsequently lighted upon as iterations of existing ideas or practices implemented or suggested by other parties or interests. A further set of decisions and outcomes have been forced upon the government as the result of emerging and unforeseen circumstances, some of which are detailed in other chapters in this volume. All three sources and implementations have been played out in and upon rural areas.