Rural: The Lives of the Working Class Countryside

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A wonderful book, beautifully conceived … So immediate and clearly seen, so gracefully and gently written … It is such a valuable thing’Adam Nicolson, author of Life Between the Tides -

The publisher’s blurb describes this as “ a book for anyone who loves and longs for the countryside, whose family owes something to a bygone trade, or who is interested in the future of rural Britain.” Many of us love the countryside but with 82.9% of England’s population, 83% of Scotland and around 80% of Wales (2019) living in urban areas, Britons may seem more detached than ever from rural life. Those of us with UK ancestors are likely to have at least some forebears living in the countryside in the first half of the 19th century, if not later. And with debates about fuel and food dominating recent headlines, awareness of our rural economies, communities and environment urgently needs to improve. I am really not convinced that creating two-tier housing markets where “locals” (however this might be defined) are privileged is the answer (Guernsey is a well known example of this). As the article notes, there is always a sharp edge where a very small difference in circumstances (being pregnant vs actually having a child) can result in a drastically different outcome.There is much I recognise. The privilege of living on a grand country estate; of coming home through magnificent gated entrances, and the discomfort of having ‘a boot in both fields’ and a kind of class ambiguity: ‘to fit in with the workers, but also the owner.’ Every village used to have a vicar. Now we see the vicar once every 9 weeks as he has 9 village churches to get round. Smith said: “I am so delighted that William Collins is publishing Rural. I was really keen to tell not just my own family’s story but those of other families too who, like us, grew up in rural areas in tied housing—homes that weren’t their own. And some tenants lose the house they may have lived in all their lives (as did my family (farmers)) but that is because things change and life moves on. It is sad but nobody has a right to be a hansom cab maker or artist at some one else’s expense.

Whilst I’m sure we can all sympathise with people facing no-fault evictions, I don’t see that this is uniquely a rural issue. Does anyone have a right to continue to live in the area where they grew up if it is now beyong their means ? And should they ? If so, how much is the rest of society prepared to pay to subsidise this privilege ?

And it is a Conservative government that is the main culprit in this; it should argue for the beautiful benefits of the free market, but no, it must make things worse by its leaden handed and ill informed interference.

The book is better read not as as a single, tidy argument but as a series of interconnected essays linked by Smith’s journey around the country. She was pregnant for much of the journey, and she details how that, and having to manage a family, affected her research. Some readers will find this intrudes on the main narrative, but she is making the point that if you are not well off, and your circumstances are challenging, then a sense of a family connection to a place can feel like the most important thing you have, and have to give. How we manage people’s competing claims to ownership of places is one of the great questions for the world in the 21st century. As Rural shows, the British countryside is a good example of how not to do it. The second thing I enjoyed, was the travelogue, the way it evoked clear memories of my own childhood in rural Scotland and national parks in the North of England. Although I lived in the city of Edinburgh, many weekends and all school holidays were spent in the countryside where we were given immense freedom. A little too much sometimes. My brother, sister and I had the bright idea of excavating a cave inside the hay bales then lighting our den with a paraffin lamp. Fortunately, the furious farmer found us before we incinerated ourselves. And yet again, to write about housing with no reference to economics or supply and demand is fundamentally ignorant and can only lead to “solutions” that do not work: A vital, questing book about the often misunderstood past, hard present-day, and possible futures of rural life in the UK" With Smith’s own family history at its heart, Rural explores the working-class countryside and what we lose when we can’t or won’t hear its stories. She introduces us to some of these stories via people working in coal, wood, food, development and other rural industries.

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jun/19/rural-the-lives-of-the-working-class-countryside-by-rebecca-smith-review For hundreds of years, if you worked in the countryside, you were usually given a “tied” house to live in. Villages used to have a house for the doctor, the teacher, the policeman, and so on. Foresters were provided with cottages in far-flung, newly-planted forests. Cotton mills, which were first built in the depths of the countryside so that they could take advantage of the waterfalls to power their factories, provided dorm-like accommodation for their workers (who were mainly orphans: children were cheaper to employ). Slate, coal, copper and tin mining all provided rows and rows of badly insulated houses. Too often, the lives of rural people have been overlooked or else romanticised, especially by writers. Not here. With uncommon insight, Rebecca Smith shows the hardship and precarity of rural life, alongside its rewards. She weaves family and social history, and shows how the inequalities and injustices of the past are still playing out across the land today. Warm, astute and sincere, Rural shows the British countryside as it truly is and always has been: a peopled place" Take a Look at Our Summary of November Highlights, Whether You're Looking for the Latest Releases or Gift Inspiration

The village green has had goal posts for probably 100 yrs but the last game was probably played by local kids a good 20 years ago. Rural is hybrid biography and exploration of Britain's most lucrative rural working-class industries over the centuries through to present day, how exactly these fit into the British cultural landscape and the type of people who underpin them. As someone who grew up in a small town in Northumberland and who remains there to this day - albeit after a detour through a variety of more heavily populated areas such as Newcastle - this book sounded appealing to me, and as other country bumpkins will know, living your formative years in a rural location makes it difficult to ever live, or more importantly be happy, in a city. Interspersing her own family history between chapters dedicated to Land; Wood; Coal; Water; Food; Slate; Textiles; Tourism; Development; Business; and Our Land, Smith explores each industry from its inception and early days and its evolution through to today. Living in rural areas means being surrounded by natural beauty, but for many it also demands hard work, precarity, fewer opportunities and – increasingly – being pushed out of the place your family might have called home for generations. In Rural, Rebecca Smith brings together the reasons we all love nature with the histories of life in its midst, and a prescient look at the dynamics for rural areas today. Why are our farmers struggling to make a profit on a pint of milk? What has Airbnb done to small communities in places like the Lake District? Rural explores the diverse lives and industries entangled in the natural landscape and how they’ve changed. It’s a personal and insightful read for anyone who wants to get under the skin of Britain’s green and pleasant land. Rural tenderly reveals the precarious lives that underpin the beauty and the wealth of our countryside. Essential reading for lovers of the land and its people’Katherine May, author of Wintering -

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In her prologue Smith says she isn’t trying to provide an exhaustive account of the rural working class, but at times her selection does feel random and uneven. Her definition of “working class” is very much her own, based not on economics but on being connected to the landscape through work. This leads her to some odd choices of subject, notably tenant farmers rather than any farm labourers, who surely shaped more of the countryside than any other group of workers. It’s true that social class can work differently in rural areas – Marx himself decided that both the peasantry and the farmers were incapable of acting as classes, and felt they should just move into cities to join the struggle. But it is hard to grasp how certain topics – raves in a slate mine, for example – exemplify a distinct, contemporary rural working-class culture. It would have been interesting to hear her views on how and why they do.