Rayner's war on allotments is slowly killing Britain's beauty

Telegraph

4 days ago

It's a sign of our creeping decrepitude that my wife and I enjoy spending our Sunday afternoons going to charity garden openings. Usually these are in the grounds of country houses but this summer's star opening of the season was unquestionably hosted by the Dalbeattie Community Allotments Association. I have long been fascinated by allotments. Glimpsed from train windows they offer a window into a Britain that is, as John Major once said 'still the country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers', himself pulling from George Orwell's evocative image of 'old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist'.
Dalbeattie's allotments did not disappoint. The gardens themselves waxed with competitive marrow growing, stellar displays of annuals and characterful greenhouses and 'man cave' sheds. The chatter of sparrows in the perimeter hedge and an aerial display of swifts up above spoke eloquently of its support for local biodiversity.
But most of all it was the people that made a powerful impression on us. Happy, healthy people bound in friendship. People whose existence in small flats in the town might otherwise be grey and dismal, but for whom instead life on the allotment appeared to be like one long Jubilee street party. Knowledgeable gardeners, people not at the mercy of the supermarkets for whom self-sufficiency is a way of life. We came away humbled by their green fingers and determined to try harder in our veg patch.
So shame on Angela Rayner for giving councils flexibility to sell off allotments to raise money for day-to-day expenditure. We all know the country is bust and local authorities are being starved of cash. But we can all also point to wasteful quangos that could be axed, unnecessary diversity, equity and inclusion jobsworths that could be removed from the government payroll, benefits cheats that could be cut off, bungs-to-the-rich charities like the RSPB that could be stopped, rather than selling off the family silver embodied in the nation's precious few green spaces.
First they came for the playing fields, then they gobbled up the allotments. It betrays a metropolitan disdain for people who get their hands dirty growing vegetables. Society will be all the poorer for the loss of these green spaces that provide solace to so many people, particularly the elderly. It is also morally wrong, if not technically illegal in many cases because they are not rightfully theirs to sell. Most allotments that are now in public ownership actually started life through land being gifted by philanthropists to provide amenity and healthy food for local people. They should not be for politicians to dispose of as they please. I hope there will be legal challenges on these grounds.
There was a time when Labour politicians were grounded by being smallholders and allotmenteers themselves – think Nye Bevan with his pigs or Jeremy Corbyn with his vegetables. Anyone with a genuine concern for the have-nots should fiercely oppose this sell-off.
This daft policy exposes the moral bankruptcy and soullessness at the heart of the Starmer project. I can just about get my head around the socialist impulse to exterminate kulaks like me, via the obnoxious family farm tax, though the toxic side effects are already evident and history will judge them harshly for it. But going after the allotment holders? Seriously?