Everything from poetry, hymns, fairs and even coach parties of retirees all celebrate the UK’s rural idyll.
Our national history and brand are tied with images of ploughed fields, tweed jackets, dozing spaniels in country pubs and old maidens on bicycles cycling through the mist to Evensong. There’s even a magazine that for generations has celebrated country life.
Yet the peace is now being shattered by protests, including tractors descending on parliament, and police forces are warning of serious crimes enabled by technology.
The pleasant pastures alluded to in the hymn Jerusalem are boiling with anger.
Victoria Vyvyan, president of the Country Land and Business Association, which represents 28,000 rural businesses and landowners, is on record as saying that rural voters feel “disconnected from central government”.
What’s stirred the ire in our sleepy hamlets?
Cash cropped
Anger runs deep, starting with the custodians of the countryside. Incomes for farmers to produce food sustainably and protect the environment are falling, campaigners say.
The Environmental Land Management scheme is supposed to support land not being used for agriculture and counter loss of EU funding.
But data from the National Farmers’ Union shows that its members lost on average about 37% of support payments in 2023 and could lose half their income this year. Delays in launching the ELM funding means farms are limited in their ability to recoup lost income.
Among its other concerns, the NFU is raising the plight of tenant farmers, who, for generations, have lived at the will of powerful landowners.
Deputy president David Exwood says: “Just like all other sectors, tenant farmers across the country are feeling the squeeze; the cumulative loss of direct payments over the past four years and the slow transition to the ELM scheme, together with high input costs, have created real cashflow issues.
“However, as tenants, we don’t often have the financial capital to pivot to embrace new opportunities in the same way as non-tenant farmers, which leaves us particularly vulnerable.”

But there are deeper concerns over the Agriculture Bill, which sets the replacement for EU farming subsidies lost by Brexit.
The independent group Save British Farming was created in response to a perceived silence from Westminster. It organised the tractor protest into Westminster earlier this year.
Chair Liz Webster tells PF that they are “a bunch of farmers who’ve had enough”.
Gazumped growers
Trouble has been brewing since the 1960s – and Webster blames the last prime minister with significant farming interests, Lord Alec Douglas-Home.
He abolished resale price maintenance in 1964, which allowed producers to dictate the price at which their goods could be sold by retailers. Today, the policy, which was a factor in his election defeat, means that supermarkets can set the prices of food, irrespective of costs.
“They’re using the free market to gazump growers. It’s brutal,” she says. “You can’t keep hammering down the price of production.”
The state of roads and drains is another area of contention. According to research by Rural England, countryside businesses were twice as likely as urban firms to rate their transport infrastructure as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’, with almost 60% having the same perceptions of public transport, compared with 21% of urban firms.
Webster backs the findings: “Just look at Germany’s infrastructure. We go through fads; politicians saying ‘let’s look at Denmark, let’s look at Singapore’. Nothing gets done from beginning to end. The boil that is HS2 is a good example.”
More demonstrations are planned. Webster says: “We’re not going away.”
Off grid
The other big issue is energy – many rural homes still rely on oil storage, and costs have been crippling.
Jonathan Werran, chief executive of the Localis think-tank, explains: “Geography is the principal reason why many domestic and commercial properties will be off the gas grid, with a higher percentage of households in rural areas generally off the grid than in urban areas. While low-carbon options are cheaper in the long run, they have high up-front costs that many rural households are unable to afford.
“Many off-grid properties are not uniform in design and idiosyncratic in character. They are often a lot older and poorly insulated. These issues are exacerbated by the current cost-of-living crisis and the associated rise in energy prices.”
Crime spree
Being cut off has another disadvantage – vulnerability to crime. Police forces are facing a myriad of offences, including hare coursing, satellite navigation system theft from tractors and modern slavery.
A survey by the Countryside Alliance found that nearly six out of 10 people do not believe rural policing has improved since the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners.
“Rural crime is one of those issues that is high on the agenda of those who live and work in the countryside yet fails to make traction in the corridors of power,” it says.
It wants dedicated rural crime teams set up as a solution. One of the best already operating belongs to Suffolk Constabulary.
Sgt Chris Green, its lead for rural and wildlife crime, says offending is real and evolving, thanks to web technology.
“Thieves with mobile phones are using search engine maps to gain detailed surveillance of areas. They’re looking for outbuildings with secluded sight-lines and identifying tractors with GPS systems,” he says. “Technology that works for us can also work against us.”
Geography and culture also influence regional offending. The terrain in Yorkshire and the dominance of sheep farming means that quad bike thefts are a significant problem there.
Illegal hunt activity is being driven by live betting, broadcast on the web by organised hare coursing gangs. Cambridgeshire, because of its flatter ground, is the centre for offending, and Suffolk is used to train the animals.
“There’s big money with those dogs,” warns Green. “It’s also a cultural thing that’s been passed down through generations of people.”
The seven-force response, Operation Galileo, has led to innovations. By using the HOLMES police database, those arrested can now be charged with offences that take place in another county.
“We also have the power now to charge all the kennel costs for seized dogs back to the offender. And they are considerable,” Green says.
It’s relatively early, but the number of incidents are starting to fall. The increasing number of cheaper CCTV cameras – and more people working from home – is also helping.
But technology will only help improve farm security if the broadband connection is good enough.
The same Rural England research found that a third of rural enterprises in the North East, South West and West Midlands, compared with a fifth of urban firms, judged their broadband quality to be ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’. It also assumed that the reality is far worse, because people have given up raising concerns.
In its defence, the government is investing £5bn in Project Gigabit, a national infrastructure programme to ensure that hard-to-reach areas are first in line for a broadband connection. As part of it, up to £210m in vouchers is available to give people in eligible rural areas immediate financial help.
Village people
Financial hardship is also increasing, especially among young people. The chocolate box cottages, beloved of tourists and city escapees, now have a hefty price tag – and that’s brought a dramatic rise in rural renting over the past decade, according to County Councils Network.
Research published in March shows that the number of households in private and social rent has increased by over half a million during the past decade, outpacing the increase in renting in London and the country’s other major cities.
The average price is now more than £309,000 – which is 11.1 times higher than average annual wages.
Cllr Richard Clewer, CCN housing spokesperson, says: “It is widely accepted that the housing crisis is one that is worsening, with rising unaffordability locking hundreds of thousands out of getting onto the property ladder.
“This growing unaffordability impacts on council services too, tipping more people onto local authority housing waiting lists, into homelessness, and into temporary accommodation where costs are increasingly becoming exorbitant.”
Burning issue
In Scotland, there is uproar over plans by its government to ban woodburning stoves in all new properties and conversions after 1 April 2024.
Consumer Scotland reported that 96% of consumers in remote rural areas have experienced a power cut in the past two years. Just 18% of countryside dwellings are on the gas grid.
The Countryside Alliance says: “We do not dispute that something needs to be done for Scotland to reach their net-zero targets by 2045, but the Heat in Buildings framework needs further careful consideration to be able to help deliver these targets. There has been a failure to consider all the unintended consequences of this new legislation.”
Brussels sprouts
It’s not just a UK problem. There have been protests across Europe, including a 900-strong tractor blockade in Brussels, over the EU’s Green Deal plans. Farmers there say new rules on pesticide, deforestation and livestock emissions cannot be met while prices are kept low.
So, what’s the countryside’s core problem?
Webster says: “The UK has always worshipped ‘big is beautiful’ [but] it’s the small businesses that are the backbone of the country. They have been trashed.”
She argues that complacency has allowed a policy of relying on imported food while reducing trade with our nearest nation and believing that a ‘Blitz spirit’ would see agriculture through. This has been driven by MPs in constituencies who are “stuck in a bygone era of empire”.
“There is something sadistic at the heart of the English political mindset. And all this came together with Brexit,” she claims.
Green shoots
But the gloom isn’t fatal, and the problem-solving skills honed in paddocks and parishes haven’t ceased.
Sgt Green says a change of perspective would help. He doesn’t see a rural Britain under attack. “The countryside isn’t the war zone it’s made out to be,” he says.
Meanwhile, Webster wants the rest of the country to literally get off the fence.
e“We need a plan for the whole country that everyone can contribute to,” she says.
“There is an anti-politics sentiment at the heart of Britain. You ‘don’t get involved in politics’. But everything comes back to politics. We’ve got a top-down system that’s failing at every level. It’s got to change, and people need to get involved with changing it.”