It can be hard to stay motivated as a Labour Party in a Conservative Parliamentary stronghold like Derbyshire Dales. We have and likely will always have, a Conservative MP, we lost the County Council to the Conservatives in 2015 and members come and go. But, the pandemic has proven how important our rural areas…
This weekend will be the first ‘first weekend of September’ in many years when I will not be in the pretty Norfolk village of Burston. This important date in the calendar for those of us in the Labour and trade union movement in East Anglia, counters the idea that our radical past was only based…
The last few months have been particularly difficult for rural communities as they have for the rest of the country. Obviously COVID has hit rural areas particularly hard but the issue has been made worse by this Government's pursuit of a free trade deal with the US whatever the dire consequences. This has caused consternation…
As we all know the National Policy Forum (NPF) is a key element of Labour’s policy making process and we would encourage every coastal and rural CLP to make a submission to the current consultations, deadline 30th June, even if it is simply to say: ‘Dear NPF, please don’t forget more people live in rural England than…
The current pandemic has affected people’s lives and livelihoods in a way that, rare for a natural disaster in this country, has been felt in every part of the UK. Having experienced the horrors of Foot and Mouth Disease at the turn of the millennium, rural communities have seen something similar to the current lockdown…
Britain’s towns had a higher profile at this year's Labour Party Conference than they have ever had. In addition to both Labour: COAST&COUNTRY (LCC) fringes, they were on the agenda of a Fabian fringe, a CPRE/Hastoe event, as well as other sessions where Lisa Nandy MP among others had an opportunity to speak up for…
All too often when policy makers consider the countryside they think of chocolate box images of the rural idyll. These assumptions, however, mask a nuanced reality in which rural areas are much more vibrant and dynamic than many imagine but also suffer far greater deprivation and poverty too. No more is this the case than…
Amongst Labour’s impressive gains in last June’s general election were a number of rural and coastal constituencies. David Drew re-took Stroud and is now serving as a Shadow DEFRA Minister, and my good friend Tonia Antoniazzi won the Gower constituency back for Labour. Not only does this bring us closer to delivering a Labour government…
Having lived for much of my life in the Forest of Dean, a glorious forest and a group of small communities between the Severn and the Wye, I’m all too aware of the problems, and in some cases the opportunities, that present themselves on the issue of rural housing. As in most rural areas, we…
Despite the idyllic postcard look and feel to Powys, if you scratch the surface there is real poverty and deprivation – sometimes disguised by our rolling hillsides. The Independent-run council has happily allowed more than 1000 of its workers to scrape by on poverty pay for years, but since Labour increased its numbers in the…
