The ‘rural culture war’ is a myth

The issues over which we’re told we’re most divided, are often the ones on which we actually most agree.

Access to public footpaths is increasingly shut off Pic: Jon Moses

We are in the midst of a great rural culture war – or so we’re told. The story is of a rural way of life under siege from urban progressives who don’t understand the countryside, and perhaps never will. With a Labour government now in power, such claims have grown ever more histrionic.

In the past months the Spectator has warned of a “war on the countryside” (pylons; agricultural inheritance tax), the Countryside Alliance of a “toxic culture war” (laws to combat illegal fox hunting), the Telegraph of a “class war on rural Britain” (fox hunting, again). And, in a new book by former Shooting Times editor, Patrick Galbraith, Right to Roam campaigners (I’m one) who support things like enhanced rights to walk, cycle and swim, are accused of “stoking a culture war”. Their hate crimes include such malicious acts as organising peaceful demonstrations in support of wild camping. “Why rural England has a lesson to teach metropolitan types” ran the headline of the Telegraph’s review (the book’s author lives in South London).

But it’s not only the usual suspects. In late 2023, the BBC ran a five-part series called BATTLE GROUNDS: Culture Wars in the Countryside, which surveyed everything from raptor persecution on grouse moors to veganism, rewilding to the right to roam.

The episodes themselves were perfectly measured, as you would expect from the BBC, and the journalist, Anna Jones, has since been quick to highlight stories which break with culture war clichés. Still, the framing accepts something we really ought to question: that the ‘rural culture war’ actually exists.

“The more you investigate what rural Britain actually believes, the less this story of a ‘culture war’ appears to have any basis in reality.”

The claim speaks to disagreements which are absolutely real; the product of “an absolute chasm of understanding” between elements of the city and country, as Sarah Langford, the London barrister turned author and Suffolk farmer, put it to me.

Such mistrust, between what some in the rural community (often certain subsets of farming) perceive, and the values of others – be they wilders or walkers – can be bitter. But for the ‘culture war’ to exist, it must be about more than an ordinary tale of jostling interests.

It must mean something alien being imposed by fiat from the outside. And that is precisely where the concept comes unstuck. The more you investigate what rural Britain actually believes, the less this story appears to have any basis in reality.

Take rural access, or the “right to roam”, an issue with which I’m well acquainted. Polling undertaken by YouGov on Right to Roam’s behalf showed support for a ‘Scottish style’ approach to access rights (an assumption of responsible access, with exemptions where they’re justified) at 69 per cent in favour, with only 13 per cent opposed.

T he countryside does need to find better ways to communicate about the myriad environmental issues confronting it Pic: Jon Moses

Most interesting were the cross-breaks: support for the policy, sometimes branded as an urban affectation, was identical across urban and rural areas, with just a handful more opposition in the countryside. When we surveyed our supporter base we discovered, contrary to the orthodoxy that access is a townie issue, that over half of them live in rural areas. This is hardly surprising. Countryside access is an issue which affects the majority of rural people every single day.

It’s a pattern repeated across other totemic ‘culture war’ concerns. Fox hunting for instance is a subject on which the near-entirety of urban and rural Britain is, in fact, in strong agreement. YouGov’s tracker poll (“Should fox hunting remain illegal?”) has seen stable consensus since it first started the survey in 2019, with 82 per cent currently feeling it should and only 8 per cent opposed.

Dig into the cross-breaks and any claims of an urban vs rural divide over the issue quickly melt away: there’s little more than a handful of percentage points between them. Blood sports fare poorly in general: 83 per cent oppose hunting undertaken solely for recreation and only 10 per cent in favour, but with more ambivalence for practical purposes like food, conservation or controlling pests.

Whether it’s rewilding, access rights, blood sports or the cuddly end of species reintroduction, what’s especially striking is how bi-partisan the support for such ‘culture war’ issues often turn out to be.

A Reform voter is almost as likely to embrace beaver reintroduction or other rewilding initiatives, for instance, as a supporter of the Green Party. The irony of the rural culture war is that the issues over which we’re told we’re most divided, are often the issues on which we actually most agree.

Polling, of course, isn’t perfect. Numbers move depending on how you pose the question. At best it’s a partial snapshot of opinion absent of the complex trade-offs a given issue might pose, or the expertise which might indicate why even a popular idea is a bad one. Having a poll in your favour isn’t a license to drive a steamroller. And not everyone has the same skin in the game.

It’s right that the concerns of those disproportionately affected get taken seriously – provided we understand “affected” in genuinely expansive ways. The problem is that, in the countryside, the tendency can be to weigh the relevance of concerns by the power of those who hold them, not by the weight of the shared social need.

How does the countryside move forward?