Introduction

Shortly before the 1997 general election, Tony Blair and New Labour embarked on a conspicuous effort to woo wavering rural voters. As Blair's biographer, John Rentoul, observed, he “tried to pitch his tent wide enough to take in most of the countryside, being filmed before the election in green wellingtons, not knowing whether to pat a calf, and giving a transparent interview to Country Life. ‘I wouldn't live in a big city if I could help it [Blair told the magazine]. I would live in the country. I was brought up there, really’” (Rentoul, 2001, p 422). Whatever the veracity of this claim (Rentoul points out that Blair's upbringing was overwhelmingly urban), it indicated the need of New Labour to challenge the Conservatives’ dominance of the rural and semi-rural constituencies of ‘Middle England’ if it was to secure a majority in the House of Commons.

In electoral terms, New Labour's ‘big tent’ strategy was to prove to be an unprecedented success. Whilst the precise number of rural constituencies gained by Labour in the 1997 election is a matter of some conjecture, depending on the definition of ‘rural’ used (Ward, 2002; Woods, 2002), the election of Labour MPs for seats such as North Norfolk, Falmouth and Camborne, Forest of Dean, Shrewsbury, and Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber reflected a considerable incursion into the British countryside. Even the most restrictive definitions of rural constituencies suggest that around 15-25 such seats fell to Labour in 1997; the Rural Group of Labour MPs, meanwhile, claimed to have 180 members from rural and semi-rural constituencies (Woods, 2002).

However, New Labour was soon to discover that governing rural Britain was more complicated than selecting the right colour of waterproof boots or learning basic animal husbandry. Not even three months into Blair's administration, Hyde Park was filled with 120,000 demonstrators gathered for a ‘Countryside Rally’, designed to articulate a range of rural discontentment, but primarily motivated by the perceived threat of a free vote on a ban on hunting promised in Labour's election manifesto. Five months later, falling farm-gate prices and the lingering impact of the export ban on British beef introduced during the BSE crisis of 1996 prompted farmers in North Wales to mount an impromptu blockade of Holyhead Docks (Woods, 2005).