Book Reviews

Divide

ECOS AUTHOR: Janet Mackinnon

ECOS EDITION: ECOS 2022

Post published online 12th October 20228th January 2024 by Beth Gerrard

12
Oct

Divide: the relationship crisis between town and country

Anna Jones

Kyle Books, London, 2022, 288 Pages

Hardback: £16.99 | ISBN: 9780857839725

Review by Janet Mackinnon

This book was long-listed for the 2022 Wainwright Prize for writing on conservation, a reflection of the subject’s enduring topicality.¹ Divide is written, however, not from a nature conservationist’s perspective but instead by someone primarily concerned about the conservation of farming as a way of life. Anna Jones grew up in a rural community on the Mid Wales borders, subsequently becoming a journalist and BBC Countryfile producer. She is a Nuffield Farming Scholarship alumnus and Divide, her first book, is partly based on research supported by the Trust. Jones now works independently and runs the communications website Just Farmers.^2,3 Countryfile presenter Adam Henson has called Divide “a brilliant call to arms for town and country to work together like never before.”

Divide covers eight chaptered themes: Home; Work; Politics; Diversity; Animals; Food; Environment; Community. In reviewing the book I look at it from the perspectives of a:

Contribution to the ongoing discourse around what David Bellamy described as “conflicts in the countryside” in an edited book of that name (fore worded by the Duke of Edinburgh) published in 2005 and subtitled “the new battle for Britain.”⁴
Work of advocacy for the role of farming in both food production and countryside conservation from someone still connected with a particular (English Borders, Welsh speaking) rural community but able to offer wider views on farming and rural life.
Reflection on what might be described as the contemporary political ecology of life in rural and urban areas mainly of England and Wales, where Jones lives, but also of the other mainly Anglophone countries which she visited as a Nuffield Scholar.⁵

Cleavages in the country(side)

Divide is a very well written book by someone who is clearly an accomplished journalist. However, as the work of a single author it inevitably lacks the broader perspectives of both Bellamy’s Conflicts in the Countryside and Michael Sissons’ 2001 A Countryside for All: The Future of Rural Britain.⁶ These edited volumes covered similar ground to Anna Jones from, like hers, a conservative-leaning position but with more specialist inputs. The earlier books also focussed on the issue of the now banned hunting with hounds against which public opinion has moved considerably since the early 2000s, with the consequence that even trail hunting is now prohibited in large parts of England and Wales, although drag hunts are still widely permitted.⁷ However, Jones steers around this conflicted territory (still very much the preserve of the Countryside Alliance), often associated with social class as well as an animal welfare objections. Although she identifies as someone from a working-class Conservative background, in many respects her pre-occupations are more New Labour, including support for continued EU membership, unlike most people from Britain’s rural communities.

For me Divide is above all else a book about cleavages experienced by Jones within her own psyche and life, local community and wider society. These cleavages are both reinforcing (for instance, those which tend to underpin the growth of so-called identity politics) and cross cutting (those which tend to cross urban-rural and other social divides).⁸ In some important respects, Divide covers similar ground to Chris Rose in What makes people tick.⁹ I do not, incidentally, agree with either analysis entirely, both having strengths and weaknesses. However, an important strength of the Divide narrative is its anecdotal exploration of the perennial angst around land ownership and stewardship heightened by increasing social inequality in Britain, particularly since the early 2000s. Jones provides a heartfelt account of her own family’s mixed fortunes in farming through the twentieth century, as well as the past and present hardships of many farmers. She also describes the difficulties of young people who seek a life on the land with limited funds in contrast to those who can afford more affluent country lifestyles either through acquired or inherited wealth. Divide is clearly written by someone deeply interested in “what make people tick.”

Farming and conservation

The relationship between farming and conservation in Britain came to the fore in the 1970s, as interest in environmental issues gathered momentum and the UK joined what was then the EC (European Communities) in 1973. A decade later, Charlie Pye-Smith and Chris Rose edited Crisis and Conservation: Conflict in the British Countryside. Reviewing this for the scientific journal Nature, Professor Gordon Conway of Imperial College wrote:

This is a book about villains. Not surprisingly, chief among them are the farmers, forestry commissioners and water-authority members, together with their allies in the research institutes and universities. Less expectedly the Conservation Movement also comes under bitter attack…characterized as “dominated by people who are themselves farmers, foresters and landowners.” ^10,11

Conway’s observations astutely characterize a certain position within the UK environmental movement. Over the past 15 years or so, the journalist and polemicist George Monbiot has increasingly occupied (even dominated) this space, particularly through his Guardian columns and latest book Regenesis, Feeding the world without devouring the planet.¹²It is also noteworthy that Monbiot was 2022 winner of the Orwell Prize for Journalism.¹³

As noted by Adam Henson – “perhaps the best-known farmer in the UK” according to his Cotswold Farm website – there is an urgent need to find common ground, if possible, between the “Monbiots” (for whom animal farming and consumption is anathema), farmers and others interested in the future of the countryside.¹⁴Chapter 7 of Divide entitled “Environment” tackles this difficult territory in a balanced and informed way taking into account the key issues of nature conservation/restoration, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. Anna Jones emphasises many people have roots and boots in both farming and conservation, including her own sister who works for BugLife in Shropshire:

Kate talks to farmers and landowners every day… and yet the shouty, combative world she reads about in the papers, or hears on the news, bears no resemblance to what she experiences on the ground.

However, Kate also expresses “the sense of grief she feels when observing the environmental degradation of our natural landscapes.” Sister Anna has an epiphany too around “eco-grief” when in 2015 she visits an ancestral estate in Romania with, among others, the now King Charles III, whom she notes has “dedicated half a century to environmental campaigning.” On this occasion, as Charles reflects on the nature writing of traveller Robert Byron: “All those things he wrote about, so many of them have gone in Britain. But they’re here.”¹⁵Jones experiences “timelessness” in “an antiquated pastoral scene that feels viscerally familiar.” Meanwhile, the new King recently gave “warm endorsement” to “a more regenerative style of farming in the UK” ¹⁶, an enthusiasm shared by Jones:

Today’s zeitgeist is the rise of regenerative and conservation agriculture, agroecology, agroforestry, min till and zero till, (the practice of leaving the soil undisturbed which basically means no ploughing), pasture-raised, grass-fed and Pasture for Life certified livestock.

Unfortunately, Monbiot and many of his followers cannot accept this zeitgeist as reflected in a recent Guardian exchange reinforcing the divide which castigated the Soil Association, among others, for “greenwashing” on the sustainability of grass-fed livestock.^17,18

“New feudalism” and other divides

In recent years George Orwell has received increasing recognition as a writer on animals and nature, notably in the work of the US environmental and human rights activist Rebecca Solnit.^19,20Like Solnit, Anna Jones’ work skilfully combines personal memoir and social commentary. However, Jones’ very embrace of moderation also means her writing lacks a certain incisiveness compared to writers of an older generation and more intellectual bent like Solnit and, indeed, Monbiot. Divide is in some respects a very Millennial book, reflecting a certain desire to fit in rather than stand out and seeking public approval rather than disapprobation or shock. This perspective and style will work for some readers, probably including many of the people who follow Countryfile, or “Townyfile” as it is apparently known by some in rural areas. Divide was also well-received by long-time Country Life editor Clive Aslet, as offering “hope for healing the town/country breach.”²¹

Nevertheless, others may feel that Jones fails to capture some of the more visceral qualities of country life beyond the green and pleasanter areas of Middle England and the Welsh Borders. Although written by a Welsh speaker, Divide represents little of what many still experience as the neo-feudal relationship between England and Wales on issues around the historical and contemporary control of land and nature resources, including water.²²This imbalance of power between English (and international) capital and Welsh speaking communities has provoked a series of controversies, most recently concerning farm acquisitions by those seeking to capitalise on carbon offsetting schemes by planting trees.²³The politics of resentment which this has helped fuel represents part of another prevailing zeitgeist which not only crosses the divide between town and country but is genuinely transnational, as Jones observes when she visits Trump’s America.

Here, as in Britain and many other countries, social polarisation and the creation of new feudal elites, as well as the reinforcement of older versions of feudalism, have tended to create a polity of divide and rule.^24,25However, unlike the Crisis in the Countryside of 1984 it is often more difficult to identify the villains.^10,11 Indeed, to end on both pessimistic and optimistic notes; whilst the latest Conservative administration threatens to abolish the Environmental Land Management Scheme, a move apparently supported by the National Farmers’ Union leadership, this is staunchly opposed by others within the NFU. Meanwhile wealthy celebrities from sport and television like now Cotswold farmer, and neighbourhood public nuisance, Jeremy Clarkson are backing the Government. Here we see a whole new set of potential divides; but as Anna Jones has rightly shown, many old and more recent members of the farming community strive to be nature friendly stewards of the land. In later years, George Orwell opted for a form of radical conservatism, perhaps closer to the Joneses of this world than the Monbiots, in Some thoughts on the Common Toad:

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.²⁶