The Countryside Alliance, which was founded five years ago, includes among its leaders prominent businessman-farmer Robin Hanbury-Tenison, Gerald Grosvenor--the Duke of Westminster and reportedly the richest private landowner in the United Kingdom--and Hugh van Cutsem, a Norfolk landowner. A demonstration called by the organization in March 1998 attracted 250,000 people to the capital.

Heir to the British throne Charles Windsor identified with the march, declaring that farmers were more discriminated against than Blacks and gays. On the demonstration itself were Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith and Deborah Vivien, who is known as the Duchess of Devonshire, the largest landowner in the Peak District and "one of Britain’s leading aristocrats," according to The Times.

The reactionary character of the action and the pro-Conservative Party stance of many of its leaders were expressed in placards declaring that Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, British Labour Party prime minister Anthony Blair, and Iraq president Saddam Hussein "are all dictators against country people." Other signs read, "Blair kills more farmers than Mugabe" and "Vote Labour--for the release of IRA terrorists, paedophiles and for the jailing of country folk."

On instructions from march stewards, participants fell silent as they passed the Whitehall Cenotaph--erected as a memorial to Britain’s imperialist wars--in order to "respect the dead."

Alliance leaders welcomed to the action a contingent of wealthy white landowners from Zimbabwe, where the government has recently taken steps against the domination of landownership by such layers.  
 
Organized under ‘rural heritage’ guise
The march organizers built participation in the demonstration through an appeal to "country folk" of all classes, from agricultural laborers, to working farmers, to superrich landowners. Under the guise of protecting the rural "way of life," they sought to defend the privileges of the wealthy people for which the alliance speaks. This attempt to draw working people into a common front with their exploiters against alleged mutual enemies in the towns was reflected in placards that read "Urban Ignorance Destroys Rural Heritage."

"I believe with passion in the right of the rural minority to pursue its way of life in peace," said alliance supporter Sir Peter de la Billiere, who served as head of the British armed forces in the 1990–91 Gulf War.

Right-wing commentators in the big-business press echoed those themes in the days following the march. Charles Moore, the editor of the right-wing Daily Telegraph, wrote, "in that still large part of British culture that has any link with rural life, hunting is firmly ingrained. If you are part of that culture... your prejudice--your cultural DNA--is invincibly on their side." Writing in The Times, William Rees Mogg declared that "modern urban culture is too greedy."

Many exploited farmers who have been hit hard by a massive decline in their incomes joined the march, alongside workers from rural areas, middle-class layers and some students. Farmers For Action, an organization that has led recent blockades of dairies to press its fight for higher milkfat prices, marched with a coffin to symbolize the crisis facing dairy farmers.

Sue Flowers, a dairy farmer from the Peak District, said she was marching "firstly for farming and secondly in defense of hunting, which is necessary for vermin control." Flowers had recently joined 35 other people in a blockade of Wiseman’s dairies (milk processing plants) in Manchester to try to force the company to lift prices to farmers. Over the past nine months several major dairies have slashed their payouts.

A recent National Farmers’ Union survey of a range of farms found that the average farmer’s annual income was just £10,000 (£1 = US$1.55).

"The recent 2p a liter increase that we received is an insult and does not make up for what we have lost," Flowers said. "We need to keep on fighting." Farmers For Action organized a one-day strike of farmers in August, and has threatened to escalate this action throughout the autumn and winter period.

Alison and Caroline Branfoot, beef farmers from the New Forest, told the Militant about the devastating impact on farmers’ livelihoods of government regulations aimed at preventing the spread of foot and mouth disease. "Herds were locked down--even ones not infected--and there was no support from the government," Alison said. "Farmers watched their livestock being eradicated and suicides among farmers have increased."

In opposition to the government’s policy of mass slaughtering and compensating only farmers who directly lost cattle, Alison asserted that the government should have "ring-vaccinated herds," an approach that seeks to target and quarantine infected animals.  
 
 
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