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by Gary J
The reason why the British do not like the CAP, whatever benefits it may bring to the 2% or so of the UK population involved in farming, has deep roots in British history.
Political power was once concentrated in the land owning aristocracy. Together with their relatives and dependents in the House of Commons, the peers normally made sure their interests were well protected. The Napoleonic Wars were a boom time for the British nobility. The war guaranteed high grain prices. The rents the aristocrats could extract from their tenant farmers were correspondingly high. The poor, who paid the high prices for bread, had no political power. Parliament, dominated by the aristocracy and the gentry, saw no need to intervene. After the war, with a depression reducing bread prices, landowners were in trouble. They used their political power to pass the Corn Law. This placed a floor on prices. The nobility benefited but the general public were forced to pay more than the market price. Continued after the fold.
The decade after 1815 was an uneasy time in Britain. Tory governments responded to popular agitation for reform by coercive measures.
By 1830 the Whigs returned to power for the first time in decades. The Whigs themselves were a close knit group of very wealthy landowners but they had a traditional if uneasy alliance with urban middle class Radicals. The Whig government embarked on a great struggle for Parliamentary reform. This resulted in the Great Reform Act of 1832. The middle classes were enfranchised and the first systematic redistribution of Parliamentary seats in British history (apart from some abortive experiments by Cromwell in the 17th century) eliminated the worst abuses of the ancien regime. The reformed political system was more responsive to the general public and urban interests than the old system had been. By the 1840's the agitation of the Anti Corn Law League and a growing belief in Free Trade, had major effects on politics. The Conservative Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, became convinced that it was right to repeal the Corn Law, despite the opposition of most of his own supporters. The Prime Minister was able to carry repeal but at the cost of breaking up his own party. The Whigs and Radicals had come to be referred to as Liberals. The followers of Peel, almost everyone in the Tory ranks who had experience of government, came to be called Liberal Conservatives. Eventually, after Peel's death, the remaining Peelite Liberal Conservatives, joined with the Whigs and Radicals, to formally establish the Liberal Party. W.E. Gladstone, in effect Peel's political heir, came to play a leading role in the new party for the second half of the 19th century. One of the major tenets of Liberalism was support for Free Trade. During the 1850's the protectionist forces in the Conservative Party lost out. Free Trade became Victorian political orthodoxy. The popular appeal of cheap food was increased by the gradual decline in the power and wealth of the landowners as the 19th and 20th centuries progressed. Technological changes, with improved ships and the introduction of refrigeration, made it cheaper to import food than to grow it at home. The political importance of agricultural interests continued to decline. In the early 20th Century a new Tariff Reform controversy broke out in the ranks of the Conservatives and their Liberal Unionist allies. The Tory leader of the day, A.J. Balfour, was not a protectionist by conviction. However he did not want to split his party as badly as Peel had done, so he compromised. Tory free traders were silenced or driven out of the party. Winston Churchill was the most notable example of the latter group. In 1923 Stanley Baldwin called an election seeking a mandate to introduce Tariff Reform. The Liberal Party reunited for its last great campaign in defence of free trade. The threat of more expensive food played a major part in the campaign. The Conservatives lost the 1923 election and free trade continued until the Great Depression struck. In 1932 the Conservative dominated National Coalition government entered into the Ottawa Accords, which marked the end of Free Trade as British national policy. The Liberal ministers in the government resigned in protest. It was no accident that it was also the National government which began to introduce programs to subsidise farmers. Despite the change in official policy the general public continued to prefer cheap, imported food (mostly from the British Empire) to more highly subsidised domestic production. When it was proposed that the UK join the European Economic Community, I do not believe that any prominent British leader regarded the CAP as a good thing. The pro-Europeans were prepared to tolerate it, as part of the price of joining, but were always anxious to promote reforms. The anti-Europeans always regarded the CAP and dearer food, as one of the strongest arguments against joining. The position today remains unchanged and arguments that British farmers get more benefit from the CAP than French ones will have no impact on the urban dominated British public and political class. The bottom line is we want the cheapest possible food and we do not care who supplies it to us. |
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Why do the British prefer cheap food to rich farmers? | 29 comments (29 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Why do the British prefer cheap food to rich farmers? | 29 comments (29 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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