A Countryside for All

A Countryside for All

And in not too long, we'll. Start letting people in. How many have we got in the waiting list? Do you know Tracy?I believe people are entering straight away.OK, great. Thank you for joining us. We'll start the seminar in a couple of minutes time. Just when we've given everybody a chance to get in from the waiting. Room which for some reason seems to be going quite slowly this evening. But if you were hoping to join a countryside for all an English countryside for all, you're in the right webinar at least. Right, well, good evening we'll make a start and I'm sure there'll be a few more to join us as we get underway. I'm John Denham. I'm the director of the Center for English Identity and Politics at Southampton University, and I'll be hosting this evening's event, which is an English countryside for all couple of housekeeping. Points that I will. Repeat I I expect a couple of times one is everybody is muted, but you can take part in the discussion through the chat function and also particularly if you have questions for the panel later through the Q&A. If you go into the Q&A, you should be able to see other people's questions and. Like them, if they're ones that seem particularly important to you. And finally we will be recording the session and making the video available in in due course. So the background to this evening's discussion is that. Idealised conceptions of Rural England have been central to ideas of Englishness itself for a very long time, and we've got three excellent speakers to talk to us this evening. Tabby Baker from Bournemouth University. Cavita Meyer from UCL and Kate Swade from shared. Assets just to to set the background to this. These idealized. Ideas of Englishness are very, very powerful. I'm going to choose one example, which is from the Tory leader Stanley Baldwin Baldwin, which is now 100 years old, but sort of sums up one element of it. He said the Sands of England, the tinkle of hammer on Anvil in the country, Smithy the Corncrake on a Dewey morning. The sound of the side against the wet stone and the sight of a plough team coming over the brow of a hill. The sight that has been in England since England was a land and may be seen in England long after the empire for centuries. The one eternal sight of England. You can still find those ideas around today, others who've written about England talk about it as something under threat from the forces of modernisation and others, as something that's been taken away from us that we must win back. So it's timeless, or it must be protected or it? Must be recovered. In popular culture today, the popularity of writers like James Redbank and Reigner win. Television programmes like countries file even dare we say Jeremy Clarkson, the detectorists perhaps, and certainly Downton Abbey for an overwhelmingly urban nation. We spend a lot of time looking at images of Rural England and it's the contrast between those ideas and the reality of Rural England that we're going to explore. Tonight, but the truth is, of course, that the rural. It'll was always a myth, a myth. I'm grateful to a local Winchester historian. I'm speaking from Winchester Edward Fennell, who started a new blog which starts 200 years ago and in the last few months of 1822 were a series of events that marked a turbulent decade. 5 minutes from me is the site of the Black Swan. Where the Yeomanry of Hampshire had met in the autumn of 1822 to demand action to protect property. Given the agricultural district. Yes, and around the same time in the same hotel, the Black Swan William Cobbett raged against church tithes whose effect on wages left labourers as walking skeletons. Those tensions gave rise over the next 10 years to the Captain Swing riots in which machinery, agricultural machinery and property was destroyed. An echo of the earlier industrial Luddites. The immediate cause was agricultural depression, but a secondary factor was changes in land ownership. Common lands had been enclosed increasingly over the last 50 years. But also estates, once owned by a paternalistic aristocracy, were bought by a nouveau riche who had little sense of obligation and those new riches had come almost overwhelmingly from the expanding empire and the transatlantic slave trade and Cobbett's own radical empathy for the English poor didn't stop him expressing racist. Views about black people and Jews. So 200 years ago, class race and ownership were shaping the English countryside and they're there today, so. As I say, our three speakers and I'll take them in this order. Tabby Baker, Kavita Meyer and Kate Swain will take different aspects of this and open up the discussion for the rest of us so Tabby can I go to you first, please?Yeah hi, I'm just going to share my screen. Can everyone see that?Yeah, OK.Great so I'm. I'm a Tabitha so I am a lecturer in politics at Bournemouth University and my research is very much kind of focused on national identity, but I'm also interested in rural voters so a lot of my research in the past has taken place in the South West of England in rural areas. And my perspective kind of comes from political psychology and I really look at the kind of affective dimensions to national identity. So I'm going to. Start with with my well with this kind of short presentation, I'm going to start with speaking on austerity and you know, local councils. Then I'll move on to speaking a bit about the rural urban divide and what. That means politically. And then I'll go on to talk about national identity, and I'll draw upon some of my research. Speaking of English, identifying. Voters in the rural SW. So firstly, just to kind of set a kind of foregrounds. Of you know that what we're seeing at the moment of local councils, particularly in rural areas, many of us will know that a lot of the social infrastructure that local authorities have been providing has kind of been demolished by austerity. So a vast amount of the functions of the state. Are not being fulfilled on that local level, and this is particularly in England because we don't. You know England is more you know has that the will of central government kind of being unchecked because there is no kind of devolved administration that you might see in Wales and Scotland and and because Councils have very little political ownership of the cuts they make, they're very often. Seen as a consequence of central government decisions, so these normal kind of mechanisms for accountability just don't operate in the same way. Because, you know, one of you know. And area votes out one party out of their council seat and another one in it ultimately doesn't make a lot of difference because the party that is control in control will you know. And and I believe face the same economic situation and have as little kind of influence in you know, reducing services and making decisions about that. And this lack of accountability from a local level and the kind of disillusionment that comes from that with local and national politics has severe consequences. I feel for the way that people engage with politics. My concern lies in these kind of geographically very much centred explanations of economic decline that we see in England, and we see it drawn. You know we see attention mainly drawn to areas that have suffered really kind of large scale rapid economic declines. So places that I've seen you know, heavy deindustrialization Such as in. The North Wales East Coast of England. Meanwhile, these very individualized experiences of deprivation and inequality in the South do get very much kind of politically neglected and very much hidden amongst narratives. That kind of generalised the self as being upwardly mobile, you know affluent. So when we have. Research that might oversimplifies you, know rural. Writers, we see how you know the the accounts of deprivation and class based injustices aren't really considered so much. And when I spoke to voters in rural SW England and many of the themes that participants spoke about really related to these localised issues, they you know talked about political discontent. They expressed disillusionment at point disenfranchisement. They felt a real distinct rural urban divide, and some of their feelings expressed from you know, hopelessness, frustration, dear disappointment, and in some cases, betrayal. Now the rural. Urban divide is not something that's unique to Britain. It's something that's defining politics, you know, worldwide. But this is clearly visible in the UK in you know the 20172019 general elections. It was visible in the 2016 EU referendum. Ultimately political behaviour in rural areas is very much being influenced by more of a spatial dimension that is relating to the more. And of sociodemographic and economic features. Other researchers, have, you know, looked at this and argued that towns and villages you know serve only quote as satellites to where economic activity is more concentrated in cities. Yet these towns and rural villages. You know are experiencing this level of disconnect and loss of economic capital, but it's important to pay attention to because. You know these are places where people feel that they belong. They're filled with meaning. They're they're embedded in a kind of depth of history and collective experiences, and they serve as pillars of identity, ultimately shaping people's experiences of the world, structure and political perspectives, attitudes and behaviour. With the English countryside as John touched on, is often depicted very romantically, but rather it's, you know, marked by some really uncomfortable truths about rural poverty, declining public infrastructure. And a combination of some of the lowest incomes and higher living costs, as well as some of the lowest levels of social mobility. So this steady decline of you know, going back to austerity, you know the kind of social and civic assets such as community centres, post offices, leisure centres and the independent. Businesses that you know, and small farms that prop up rural economies have caused rural communities to collapse into insecurity and political disillusionment and cynicism. And we could argue that this has in some areas, and particularly over the last decade, LED some areas to revolt against the status quo at the ballot box. So as we saw with Brexit you know this populist populist support has been more territorially based. But again this isn't unique to England. This is something that also. Exists in, you know, across the Atlantic and in Europe? So what we might assume is that in this last decade there has been sentiment to kind of rebel against this feeling of political alienation. We know that many rural communities lack this access to stable employment opportunities for mobility investment in the Community and also diversity in. The economy and social services, and as increasingly socially culturally and spatially isolated places, we might argue that some of these areas are more vulnerable to more exclusionary ideas surrounding identity. So thinking about the kind of frame of of today's panel of national identity of Englishness, you know my position is that national identity is something really important to pay attention to? Because ultimately, functions, as you know, a a very central mode of identity. And it's a kind of baseline of our political justification. The nation or national identity often lies at the foundation of solidarity. It represents one of the strongest motives behind the large majority of political mobilisation and action. It's an important you know factor in political well-being. You know we must have this kind of vested interests of those around us. National identity you know, helps cohesiveness it functions as a source of pride. This collectivism, you know. Just it helps keep things like the NHS going. You know, having that togetherness and you know, paying taxes that that kind of vested interest in in each other. So when I spoke to participants in the South West of England and these rural areas, a lot of the definitions of Englishness kind of rested upon quite weak definitions of, you know where, instead of defining what Englishness is, it was more defined by what it is not, along with some kind of more sporadic frames of culture. You know EUR 96 and so on, but some of these things really lack distinctiveness and Britishness, as well as some of the cultural frames that participants were referring to were in fact British and English. Across the interviews, our participants definitions and explorations were also quite reactive. They seemed to be driven by a kind of resentment, you know, and this backlash was very much kind of rooted and victimhood. Sometimes there were feelings of resentment towards the perceived asymmetry of devolution. And that gave way to a sense of loss and in reaction we might argue a more kind of strongly identification process of you know, identifying of English identity. And some there's some participants you know expressed sentiment in favour of further devolution in the UK, to allow England to self govern and restore their sense of Englishness. That also went further to regional devolution as well, particularly in some areas of the SW. I had one participant tell me he wanted a wall to. Be built from. You know from the Somerset border all the way down to you know, Bournemouth, so some strong kind of visual imagery there. But the aspiration on on on the part of my English identifying participants to identify as English, regardless of the more kind of negative feeling. Things is kind of linked to this kind of wish for the nation to provide, you know, a sense of belonging I think, and for a form of Englishness that has kind of concrete values of its own that is separate from British national identity. Some of my participants they rejected Britishness because of it's kind of very imperial. Roots and so look to Englishness as more you know something that could provide something alternative. Ultimately, I, I mean, I know that John has written in the past on, you know, being in favour of a kind of progressive form of Englishness that is separate from Britishness and and you know, there's a possibility that to to do this it could mitigate some of the more harmful expressions of Englishness that does rely on. A relationship with another. But ultimately I think this is a really you know, interesting topic to be bringing up at this time. I seem to every time we have some kind of event or I'm speaking at an event I reflects on how kind of significant this political moment is, and that hasn't really stopped since 2016. So yeah, I was. I will. Finish that, but yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing seeing you know the other hearing from the other speakers.Great, thank you very much indeed. Tabitha, that's a a really good scene. Setting piece and lots of stimulating questions coming out of that. These two people on the call do use the chat function or the Q&A function. If you got issues you'd like to raise, that'd be very helpful. Thank you very much. I'm going to move straight on now. To to give it to Maya, who's going to look at issues of race and the countryside. So kavita.OK, I'm just going to share my screen. OK so I am divito Maya. I am a lecturer at UCLA political science and I've actually also just started a research fellowship at the Gender Institute in Royal Holloway. So I'm actually coming to the end of my position at UCL and moving institutions. So in answer to the question of can there be an English countryside for all the way I approach this question is I really start to think. Felt the way that. The way that people personally experience the countryside, like when we go from urban spaces out into the nature and out into the landscape, or when we kind of have those contrasting experiences or even just want to experience like the beauty of nature. And experience the rural. In its contemporary formations. Those experiences are themselves mediated through collective imagination, layers of historical and cultural meaning. So even when we think of ourselves experiencing directly the countryside and Nat. Sure, we're actually already inhabiting these kind of collective stories that have come down to us through history, and which have been layered and kind of rewritten over and over again through time. And they have very strong kind of connotations of power and inequality and broader political structures already embedded in them. So in my own research I approached this from an understanding that we need to denaturalize our understanding of what we think of as the countryside and the kind of distinctions between the urban and the rural. Well, we need to think of these spaces instead of not having come down to us as kind of natural and unmediated, but very heavily overwritten with narratives of class, race and gender and inequality that shape how we experience them and also how different groups of people experience them. And I think that in sort of recent years, the fact that there has been such a strong public backlash against project. Facts or narrative representations that aim to center black and brown racialized others in the rural. It's kind of suggestive of the way that public imaginations are the the public imagination or public understanding of the rule is very, very heavily racialized. There are entrenched understandings of race, gender and class. Already there. So here I'm thinking about the national the National Trust Project, which links colonial history, stately homes and tries to uncover the history of enslaved people and their involvement in stately homes, but also in the way that sort of commerce and trade kind of shape. The fact that. And shape the kind of wealth and content of these houses, as well as the landscapes in terms of the kind of plants and the flora that's in the lands. Right and also there was a 2012 2020 sorry Country file episode that I wrote about in the renewal article on race and morality, where the naturalist, the black naturalist brain field was talking about experiences of racism in the British countryside. And there was such a huge backlash to that. Which obviously sparked off something in the public imagination. So really, the presence or relative absence of people of colour in the countryside is a product of the history of England and Britain and of the post colonial racial dynamics of the British Empire. That's really my main point here. And so, in my own research. Just to introduce that. So I've approached studying the rural through my research on contemporary paganism and the goddess movement, which is a bit of an unusual route. It kind of combines the study of contemporary spirituality and religion and society with the idea of the rural and understanding how these movements are linked to reality and. Understandings of nature in the countryside. So I've really come across like two kind of intertwined narratives here, which I'm going to outline. One of these is that. The countryside is seen as a place of conservative white flight. It's very much contrasted with urban spaces, which are seen as kind of messy and noisy and sort of urban, modern and postmodern. In response to the idea of the countryside as being a place where the past has a special meaning. There's a link to history and tradition in various ways. One of these kind of narratives of tradition has to do with the English country garden and the way that it's associated with like landscape, stately homes, and even the contemporary middle class country garden or the suburban country garden. Even that's kind of mirrored or modelled on this kind of idea of the country estate and it's landscaping. And it's linked to ideas of cultivation of progress of civility. Nation's kind of the mastering of a primitive and wild nature by the English rational man in the colonial era. And of course, this narrative completely conceals the labour history, which we've just heard about in the previous presentation, as well as the histories of slavery, plantation economies and colonisation, which have produced this idea of morality. One of the examples of this kind of primitive reality was the way that it was transplanted from the kind of successful cultivation of the English countryside onto, colonised and so-called primitive populations. So there was a colonial era trope about Africa being the dark continent. Populated by a kind of childlike and primitive race which needed to be civilized and cultivated by English colonizers. Or alternatively, they were kind of seen as noble savages in need of protection and in need of rescuing by sort of white, British, or English people who were opposing slavery and the kind of violence done to them. And you can see these kind of narratives in literature like the heart of darkness by Joseph Conrad, and other things from the 19th century. So these narratives are spatial as well as temporal. They involve narratives of modernity and progress from a primitive path towards a kind of rational, technologically advanced urban future, which in the colonial era was was projected onto kind of the colonized populations of the global cell, but also. There is another narrative which kind of sees these as also present in the English countryside specifically. So in the romantic gaze post, industrial Britain was seen as having lost touch with its rural wilderness and its English community traditions. So colonised the racialised peoples were seen as retaining links to these to their own so-called primitive traditions and heritage, but urban industrial Englishmen were seen as having. You know lost touch with this kind of golden age in favour of rational technocratic progress. Which cut them off from the kind of. Rural paradise And then within sort of like eco feminist Earth based spirituality movements and contemporary paganism. This idea of a kind of primitive lost past is kind of being. Inspiration is being taken from kind of colonized. The idea of the colonized in terms of reclaiming a white indigeneity so that Britain or English people need to reclaim their own lost past and kind of reclaim. An in English indigeneity. Modelled on colonized indigeneity, which kind of reconnects contemporary English people to the lost Golden Age they had lost through modernity. Colonization and technocratic progress. And an example of this is the painting that I've. Got here, which I hope you can see it's the Druids bringing in the mistletoe. It's an 1890 painting by George Henry and Edward Hornell, where the image of the Druids, which are a kind. Supposedly an ancient British cult of like nature loving priests or people who are living kind of close to nature and close to the land. But this was modelled on photographs of Native Americans. So the idea of Druids as being indigenous people was a trope that came up in the. Romantic era and it's something that you can currently find in contemporary Pagan spiritualities. And also I think what we need to think about here is the way that Englishness is a very contested space. It's a very political space. It doesn't currently have one fixed meaning like there are multiple contestations happening. So historically, the idea of England was kind of subsumed by the British Empire, so it became a kind of synaptically for Britain and its kind of cultural exports. And it also became associated more with rural and than the urban. Through this idea of the rural as being a particular repository of Englishness and of English identity in the lost past, whether that's in terms of it's more kind of civilised, cultivated trope, or it's kind of more romantic, primitive and wild trope, both things are present there. Both things stand in contrast to the kind of multiracial urban metropole. Not interestingly, I mean. This link between Englishness and whiteness has been very strong to the point that young BME people or people of colour and this also includes me, have been less likely to identify with Englishness but more with Britishness because there is this link between Englishness and whiteness. And speaking from my own experience, it was I kind of grew up with the idea that the call oneself. English was to kind of. Erase the history of migration that shaped my identity and my family and also the kind of histories of racism that have shaped my parents experience or my family's experience in coming to Britain. So Englishness was kind of a no go area in terms. Of claiming an identity. And British identity linked to that more often being a site of anti racist activism. So you see people talking about Black Britishness and British S asianness? And within, you know, feminist histories like Black, British feminism, but you don't really see Englishness as being a site of anti racist activism. And anti racist mobilization to the same extent, except more recently. So there was a. An example from a couple of years ago where David Lammy was on an LBC radio show where someone called in and told him that he couldn't be English because he was Afro Caribbean. And he said, well, no. Actually, why can't I be English? And it's a moment like that when English and it comes out of actually there. Is this contestation around Englishness as we need to reclaim it as a kind of anti racist. Place that incorporates the lived experiences and the histories of people of. Color in Britain. There's a recent Guardian article from 2019 that suggests that English identity for most people, it's no longer types of colour, so people. See, people don't see any reason why BME or people of colour can't claim. An English identity. But then there are also notions around cultural Englishness that need to be unpacked within that, because there is some notion that the claim in English identity. There are significant cultural markers and also some notion of what it means to contribute to English society and pay taxes within England, which excludes perhaps migrated populations. So English is a very Englishness is a very contested space that's tied to the history of the British Empire. Yeah, I won't read out this whole quote, but this is a very famous quote by the Black British cultural theorist Stuart Hall, where he uses sugar, one of the key imports of the British Empire from the colonized bases as a kind of snack key of the kind of entanglements of politics the politics of race within the empire. So he says I am the sweet tooth, the sugar plantations that have rotted generations of English children's teeth. And then he also says, you know, what does anyone in the world know about an English identity, except that they can't get through the day without a? Cup of tea. And he points out that there is no English history without that other history. So English history and English is of Englishness are very much tied to the history of the British Empire and what we understand of as the British Empire. And it's racial entanglements It's an answer to the question that can there be an? English countryside for all. I think and any answer to this question really has to be strongly tied to how the thinking about how the English nation is imagined whenever we talk about Englishness, we are in some way tapping into these narratives of the English nation as a repository of a pre modern and pre colonial past. Or as it's kind of flip side, can we try to reclaim it as a postcolonial product for the politics of empire in a way that includes people of colour? And any notion of Englishness as a kind of national identity always risks creating new others. So if we create a new English identity, who are as others and all those others racialized. We need to link the colonial history of the countryside to how English identity is shaped in the present. I don't think we can get away from that, and you notion of Englishness has to incorporate colonial history. And also we need to be aware of the kind of folkloric romantic tendency to kind of want to use Englishness to reclaim a white selfhood, which would only be pre kind of redeploy and reproduce the same colonial dynamics. And here I thought this was an interesting. This image was an interesting. Kind of example of. Contemporary disputes or contestations about what it means to be English, that there was a football fan on the news media. And of course he was trying to contest the idea of football fans as being kind of, you know, racist hooligans, and he said, well, actually send George's Palestinian. And he was shouting free Palestine with the English. Cross St. George on his face I thought that was hugely. Interesting, but I think it's probably too early to say whether this represents a larger trend or whether it's a transient moment. But moments like this are quite interesting in terms of the possibilities of rewriting Englishness and what it could mean going forward. See, I think I have more questions than answers really, but I hope that was interesting and thinking about the discussion.That that was that was also tremendous tremendous gavita. Thank you so much already. A lot to get our teeth into, but there's more because we're now going to go to Kate to talk about the third leg of our discussion tonight, which is land and ownership in the countryside, Kate.Amazing, uh, let me just share my screen. Well, that's two big acts and and two really interesting and like intersecting topics and yet. As John says. I've been asked to talk. About land ownership and what I'm going. To try and do is. Kind of frame. What we mean by ownership a bit and think about how. Well my point, my main point which is remember one thing here is that if we're going to really reimagine the countryside and I think to make it to really create a countryside for all. Like it is a lot of that is going to be about reimagining what we mean when we think about who owns the countryside because. I feel like we have a countryside that really isn't for everybody. It is mostly for land owners. The UK as a whole and England are. We have a deeply concentrated system of land owners. It's more extreme. In rural areas, and there's actually very poor data. On it for various reasons. We have The way in which the the system of land ownership and Tabitha touched on this and John touched on this a bit in. Terms of the kind. Of history of. The enclosures, the dispossession of people from the Commons, the the ways in which. Power has been built in both this country in the country as a whole and in the countryside. In particular is really at the root. Of a lot of. Current historical and current inequality and that statistic at the. Top half of England is long owned by less than one. Percent of the population. It's really. A deeply unequal context that we're in. What do we really mean when we say ownership? It's it seems like a very simple thing on the first glance. You know I own this pen. I can do things with this pen. I can give it to people when you start to talk about land and property though. Actually what you're really talking about is a bundle of different rights that taken together, add up to what we call tenure, which might be. The leasehold that you have or a freehold. Property or a? The right to rent the flat so those rights include things like the right to rights to quiet enjoyment of your property, the right to build a house as granted by by the planning system, potentially the right to destroy what's on your land, the right to gather. The fruits of the land. So to harvest. And to scrump apples or to harvest harvest fruits. Or there is no kind of one thing that adds up to ownership. It's just like. A bundle of things. Something that's kind of quite current is also the right to walk across or the right to exclude people from the land and say, you know one of the debates that is very alive at the moment is around the right to roam. We have a very, very limited right to walk over land that we don't own in this country, and there's a lot of people working to try and them. Try and remedy that, but they sense that. Ownership is not one thing, and it's this bundle of rights, and I suppose very interested in how you can unbundle and then rebundled those rights in ways that might build more towards justice. This is the the fact that we have this system though then has this huge impact on the way we think about land and the countryside by. By kind of. Association and this book. Andrew Linklater's book is this a magisterial overview of the different ways that have evolved in the globally of owning. That, but I think this thing of. The way we own and think about ownership and the fact that we are all living in this private property society. Has a huge impact on the way we. Look at ourselves. And the way we look at the world. Which really links to is kind of an underpinning thing in this idea of narratives, and of how we. Both how we think and how things are talked about in popular culture and in the media, but also what seems to be possible in a culture. We did some work a couple of years ago looking at. The narratives that are present in. In media and kind of in like yeah so popular culture around the way we talk about land. I think they're linking back to some of what Kavita was saying. Actually, there's. There's a lot here, which actually when you look at the way we think about land, we thought things fall into this binary. Why the land is there as something that needs to be defended or it's a resource that can be exploited, but almost always people are portrayed as a danger to. Land in one way or another. It really. This binary view that then manages to put sort. Of paint any. Any proposals for change as either being like deeply destabilising and about mob rule, Jeremy Jeremy Corbyn's gonna come and take your garden off you or sort of hippie utopia. Idealistic fringe never gonna happen. Isn't it nice to be able to think about these things? I think this is something about. Land and the way we think about it being so deeply rooted. In our culture, and that then really closing down the options that we see when we touch start to think about change. How and? Again, this is another one of my other favorite books that I'm just going to quote at you, but I think these two quotes are one kind of recognizing that actually the way we currently can see of land ownership and the way we currently organize the land system, which is based on hierarchy. It's based on exclusion. It's based on this sense that you can turn. The kind of real, muddy, tangible land that is outside in your garden into property that is then an abstract commodity that can be traded and that you can buy and sell without Heather having separate on it. That can. That is so then deeply entwined with the way the economy works with how people, how the security that people can have or not. Have in terms of their lives. It's an absolutely unsustainable system. But this second question that she asks here of recognizing that we. Like the answer to that is, they're not to get rid of all connection to place. We are like rooted. Place based beings and we have. We need to have ways of organizing and kind of as she said, potentially holding in common or holding individually our connections to places. And so if that's not private property ownership, what might it be? So I'm a non exec director at shared assets which is a think and do tank which is all about reimagining. The land system. We do a. Huge variety of different things, but all of them are around practical projects that are about building new types of relationships between people and land. We work with land owners, communities, researchers, activists. We do lots of research. We also do consultancy work. We convene spaces to bring people together. We support community groups doing brilliant things, and there's a small selection of them here. There are lots of examples out there in the world of people organizing. Around land and owning and sharing land in ways that kind of sidestep or bypass some of this. Some of the downsides of the private property system and start to genuinely create spaces that are for everyone. And I won't run through all of these. Now, but there are. There are lots of good examples out. There and I guess. Yeah we have. Also been doing a really interesting project over the past three years, called Realization, which has been exploring. Lots and lots of these similar issues like England is not the only country or the UK is not the only place with concentrated land ownership and the ageing farming population and all sorts of there. There's lots of common issues across. Through it and I just want to put a small plug, I'll put the the link in the chat after this for this event that if anyone's keen on a another evening, zoom about rural regeneration and rural futures tomorrow we are going to be holding a. Exciting event and sort of sharing. Some of the findings from that research project and building up to creating zene. The other. Another kind of. Key important point here in harking back to Tabitha's Tabitha's. Presentation it feels like local authorities are often a really underlooked. Player in under looked up player in rural areas and actually seeing that local authorities potentially hold a really important key to creating a countryside for all. Many local authorities still own council farms. And are kind of relatively significant land owners in rural areas. But also they are regulators. They can act as facilitators, they can really start to convene and. They have some of that power despite being decimated by authority. Some of that power to really shift the conversation around ownership in a local area and act as very proactive public land owners rather than buying into the logic of the private market. So a lot of our work is about building towards what we, what we and many other people call land justice. And I suppose just some a little seed of this reframing of what? Ownership might mean. Is starting to think about what would it mean if we thought about everybody belonging to the land rather than the land belonging to individual people? What kind of new framings and new ideas would that mean? Some of the pathways towards doing that involve, yeah, reimagining the way we think about the bundle of rights that make up ownership. Supporting local authorities. Supporting some of the many community LED land projects in rural areas and and just to sort of note and again pulling off from David's presentation about the. The kind of colonial roots of a lot of what has happened in the countryside and a lot of the the way the modern countryside is actually opening up conversations about what would what, what reparations are needed for that, and what what would. How could we talk about creating? And new sense of what English is. This is through some acknowledgement of the harms of the past. A tiny plug for anybody who is really interested in farming and getting onto the land. We're actually running a new entrant support scheme for the government and there's applications open for that at the moment. So if anyone needs any farming training, check us out on Twitter. I'll put the link in the chat as well and. That is me. Thank you.That's great, thank you very much Kate. When when we were chatting before we started the discussion, Kate asked me what a successful webinar would look like, and I said if we come away with ideas about what we do in practice to change things, we'd be getting somewhere. So I've had three contributions now and I think we've now got at least three things on our Agenda 1. Political representation of people living in rural areas, it's narratives and histories of Rural England. And thirdly, how we think about our relationship with the land. So that's three small topics to get through in the discussion we've got now and and please do. Can I encourage people to put questions into the Q&A? And I'll also try and keep an eye eye on the chat as well to see if there's. Some questions there, but. Just to pick up a couple of points straight. What's quite interesting in the ideas of contested Englishness that both Tabitha and Kavita talked about is, I suppose, to you first. Tabitha in the conversations and the research you've got. How open do you think the rural working class voters that you talked to are to this more diverse idea of Englishness, which? You know is undoubtedly coming into the national conversation later in the day. That's partly because British multiculturalism, of course, was set up as an antagonistic thing, contrasted with Englishness, and that is now behind us. But do you? Do you think this there's an openness to that discussion? Or are we actually in a situation which is really quite? Difficult where those ideas are likely to be resisted by the people that you've been talking to.Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I think it's generational. I would say, well, it certainly was across my participants that I spoke to. The older participants did tend to be more, you know, have more resistance and did kind of echo these narratives that we've seen on the far right in terms of Englishness very exclusionary. Very kind of, you know Englishness is. A kind of. Birthright you know, or something that's inherited, whereas younger participants tended to be a. Lot more open, a lot more. You know, and these these were, you know, people who I think because the time that I was interviewing people was during the COVID lockdown. So you know, I feel like Englishness and English identity really got thrown into the spotlight because of the, you know, Black Lives Matter movement so. You know some of the reactions from my participants were quite reactionary because of the perceived threat that they felt from statues local to them, such as Edward Colston and Baden Powell. You know, I don't know that. Heightened some of it. But it did, you know, make me think. Is is a progressive kind of idea? Is it gonna land with people that are so invested in? Some of the. You know, kind of mythology of of Britain's past or England's past. But yeah, going back to your question, I think it was interesting to see Gareth Southgate. Kind of open letter. He did as dear England and I also thought it was interesting. That it is left up to people outside of politics to define Englishness as well. You know why, you know. Why did it take? You know that to kind of try and redefine Englishness? I know Sadiq Khan does make you know the effort every St. George's Day. He will release something, but I think looking at Gareth. Of Gates kind of open letter he wrote, does offer some hope, but I don't know if there's a lot you know of anything out there that has looked at whether that landed with anyone? Was it landed with you, know the younger working class you know, rural populations?You need to you. You've written in the past about. People are not white, not feeling welcome in the English countryside, not feeling part of it. To what extent is that? Partly about the narratives that you've been talking about tonight, quite rightly, and to to what extent is that actually just in practice not feeling part of it? And I suppose thirdly. Are there people now, as it were, demanding the right for this countryside to belong to them, and not just to wait to feel that they've got permission to to to enjoy it as much? As everybody else does.Just realized I was muted. Sorry, start with the 1st 2:00 so I think the narratives and the personal experiences of I guess racialization or racism in the countryside are very closely linked. So I mean, speaking from my own research experience, my own interest in this started when I was sort of experiencing these things first hand as a researcher doing sort of field work in some sets in sort of the countercultural area around Glastonbury, and a lot of that was kind of surprising in the sense that people would often. Say things or ask things that I kind of thought were, you know, way behind us. The kind of cultural politics of what it means to be British today. So you know, like we recently we had that kind of very public moment in Buckingham Palace, where the activists from just to space with us. Where are you from? That kind of thing happened quite a lot in the Somerset, much more so than it did. In London and people. So when I would say I was from London, people wouldn't take that as the kind of answer that they would accept. It was like no where really, so their image of Britishness or Englishness didn't incorporate sort of urban people of color. And that was interesting to me. And I, I think, like uncovering those like why those experiences or kind of ideas about British languages came from led me to thinking about the narratives and the way those narratives shape personal experience. So I think the lack of welcome is also about, you know, direct experiences that people have had. Although it's not always, it's not all the time, but it's definitely there and how those are. You know how those are kind of produced by our historical narratives of Britishness, collectively and the kind of entanglements and power struggles there? I've forgotten what was the other.One you asked it was it was really. About whether there are people in non white communities asserting their right to be there. I mean I'm the one of the stories I've always thrown in. This discussion is Benny Rothman who led the mass trespass on Kinders Gate in the 1920s or early 1930s. Was the Jewish son of east European. Migrants to Manchester. And yet he ended up leading the mass movement essentially helped contribute to national parks and all the rest of. It as sort of saying we have the right to be here and I just wondered is there a Benny Rothman or Rothmans emerging amongst minority communities who are saying, well, we're not actually going to wait to be given permission for this to. Belong to us.So I did it. There might be sort of more recent examples of activism, I'm not sure, but I think there are definitely examples of people of colour claiming their right to rule spaces, like in that country file episode and also through the Colonial Countryside Project where people are, you know, especially young people are wanting to be involved in rural spaces and get involved in diversity projects. So there are definitely. Attempts to kind of reverse this kind of. Of Englishness as the repository. Like all the countryside, is the repository of Englishness, but not no. I don't think it's happening as much as we might expect, and as much as we might kind of wish for, and I think that's also interesting. There's there's still a lot of resistance around this, and I think part of that is kind of about this manufactured culture. The idea that whenever people assert anti racist narratives and say, well, no, we need to do this because the countryside has been linked to whiteness and forms of racism. There's such an enormous public backlash that it's actually having a dampening effect.That that's really interesting because I at the last point to you, then I will go back to the others, but I was wondering how do we assess the row about the National Trust? Because there's the sort of cup, half empty would be you try and do something like this and be open about history and there's a big cultural war attack. On the other hand, the National Trust members rejected. In their through their democratic processes, the idea that they shouldn't have this history, which you could say the cup half empty, says, well, actually this predominantly English white middle class organization may be more open to learning about history than we'd we'd thought or feared. I don't know how how you assess that.I think there are ongoing struggles and I I think it's you know it's important that we, I guess. Promote and kind of publicize and you know talk about these ongoing struggles and could not be not be silenced or not. Be quieted by the backlash.Yeah, OK, thank you now Kate. Can I come back come to you and then I'll go on some of the questions from others. I really just wanted to ask. And this idea of yours. This is my language, not yours, but the idea we think of land as something which is in at least in stewardship, if not held in private property. Can we bring that to bear on some of the really practical issues that Tabitha raised the current rows about planning policy? The desperate shortage of housing in SW England and many other rural areas does this way of thinking about land. Give us new solutions or different approaches to tackling those sorts of issues.Yes, yes, I think it does and. Just before I jump into that, just. A couple of them. In terms of people thinking. Like communities of color thinking, I'd like sort of reclaiming their.Sort of.Place in the countryside with a. Couple of people. That are on my radar. That might be worth mentioning is we've done a lot of work with Lion, which sounds the land in our names, and that's a black LED that collected that's all about reconnecting and black. And people of color. Empties with land and they've been doing some really interesting. Work kind of bringing people together and sort of organizing get visits out into the countryside. Trying to acquire land. And and there's also quite a few routes like Muslim hikers and black girls hike and kind of organize and hiking groups that I know lots. I know people are kind of quite connected to and excited about, but there's probably still a very small drop in the ocean. And in terms of. Yeah, this way of viewing around dealing with sort of a lot of these crises, I think. There's a big the the the. Question of housing. I'm not a housing expert, but I know that you know one of the big challenges around. Housing is how many empty homes? There are for us are. And this. Sense, and I saw there's kind of a question in the chat about. Yeah, should are we going to need lots of rural land for house building and. Possibly, yes, we may well, but I think there's something about recognizing. Well, a number of things a lot. That I think in. England there is more land used for golf courses than for housing at the moment. Like we're not a very very over developed country. And I think there's part of this. This idea of playing into this. Narrative of we're. A full island. We've got no more room. We can't, we can't. We can't possibly welcome any. Any immigrants, because we've got. Like you know, we must put the barriers up is actually very much just playing into a narrative and not necessarily looking. At the facts. I do think if you had a much more stewardship based approach and yeah, coming back to Tabitha's thing about that local democracy devolution. People actually being able to have a practical say over. How their communities should be? When you have processes that are genuinely meaningful, people are generally quite pragmatic. The problem is that when people get really cynical and disenfranchised, and probably quite rightly so, is when they're asked questions that. And never get followed through on or they yeah, the the the ways they have of having a say like voting in your local council elections don't actually really have any. Impact on local local situation, so I think you've got to think about it. It's not just sort of swapping out ownership for stewardship, but it's actually about re retooling local democracy altogether and maybe thinking much more about citizen assemblies. Thinking much more about, you know, bringing people into real decisions. Making capabilities. Yeah, the the world of like community land trusts where a community holds lands together, but people then own their individual houses and that could that model works for you know. Uh, renewable energy generation for workspace. It's not just for housing, but this thing of finding mechanisms that separate. The ownership of the land and the kind of holding of. That's the stewarding of that land in the long term versus the kind of activity that happens on top of the land. Whether that's farming or housing or renewable energy where? You may well want lots of individual private enterprise and people having their own houses. It's not about sort of making everything necessarily community owned, but yeah, I think there's a lot of potential there, but it's not an easy like for like slot, and it does require looking at the whole system, not just like that one bit of it.OK, thank you. I'll come back to you another Tabitha. When you were talking to people about housing and your conversations. Was it was? It largely in terms of complaints about shortage or. Did people have? A strong view about what should be done in order to solve the problems.Yeah, there was some kind of solid ideas about that. So on one side it related to second home ownership and the Southwest is hit particularly hard by that, and I think. That added to the kind of growing resentment towards people from London towards people in cities because they were people were starting to notice that they had new neighbours who could work from home, but, you know, take the salary from London but live, you know, in the Cotswolds, or you know, in Devon and Cornwall. And there's that element to it, that that people. Are living in. Flat buildings of Airbnb empty flats. They that there's that. Lack of community. The There's so many kind of dominant effects of of the second home ownership, and the Airbnb kind of industry, but as well as that, particularly amongst younger, the younger participants that I spoke to there was this real kind of sentiment that in order to progress or get further or be able to buy. A house, or, you know? Secure any kind of land. It would involve moving away from a rural area so you know migrating to the city and kind of leaving behind. You know their. Their communities, their families. Which was which. A lot, you know, a lot of the younger participants. They didn't. They don't want to. They wanted to be able to, you know, live in, you know, have families and these these. Really, you know important places to them. You know their homes but. You know there was a an element of OK? Well I have to leave to do that. You know I can't. This kind of isn't for me. It's yeah. The older generation had this, but it's not something that we have. So there's a generational divide in that as well. But yeah, I would say that the the emphasis was on second home ownership, particularly for. My group of participants I spoke to in the South West.OK, thank you very much. Indeed, can I just? There's a question here. I think we've covered one from Danny Habel, at least at to some extent about land ownership and meeting property demands. Denny's also has a question though about whether. This is perhaps about to cavita whether things will change because as. What we regard as immigrant groups, but increasingly second third 4th generation move out of the cities into more rural areas is is that of its own going to change the dynamics of the issues we've been talking about and one either for caffita or or perhaps for for Kate Cathy Elliott's question about whether actually we can do more. To promote much more direct access, not just to leisure facilities in in rural areas, but getting people of colour into agriculture, for example. So kavita. That's that first question. Do you get a sense that there's a? There's an underlying demographic change which is going to change some of our debates, or is that still far too slow? And secondly, what about direct access to economic activities in the countryside?I think that process of demographic change might happen, but I think it is happening very. Slowly, and I think it's because there are so many barriers in place, so I mean. Speaking from my own knowledge of sort of migrated histories and like people of color from like South, Asian diaspora tended to kind of congregate in particular spaces because there was a sense of community and mutual help, and also economic opportunity in the cities in particular spaces. So that's why there are kind of groupings of kind of, you know, people have like. Couldn't like say Wembley and Southall versus like not in Surrey and kind of more rural spaces. I think that could change, but I think it's a big ask because there are barriers of racism and economic. Access and and I think it's. Probably starting to happen, but very slowly. I couldn't really speak on the demographic trends and kind of detail I. Haven't looked at that. I think I mean in terms of the kind of broader discourses though, and kind of broader trends. I think it's quite slow and and in terms of direct access. Again, I think there needs to be more kind of. Projects that kind of directly address what those barriers are, especially focusing on younger people who want to be involved in agricultural and rural spaces. And you know directly. Kind of encouraging people from BME communities on one side, but also not downplaying the extent of the barriers of racism and economic equality and racial inequality. That kind of prevents them from accessing those spaces and the kind of backlash they might encounter. They need to be kind of like a dual sided approach there I think.Thank you Kate. Did you have anything on the economic access side?On Cathy's question. Yeah, I think there's. One thing I think that's quite potentially interesting in that is thinking about. The Peri urban as a kind. Of stepping stone so like. We've been doing a lot of work around the potential for market, Garden cities and farming like the urban fringe, so putting trying to create really productive Greenbelt, so not just. The often it's particularly around London. The Greenbelt is kind of owned by people waiting to be able to build houses on it, and so it's it's very or not necessarily very productively used. But there's quite a lot of interest and a growing movement of people and organizations who are growing doing horticulture. So growing fruit. And vegetables commercially in the urban fringe in order to serve the the markets of the city. But that also what that offers. Is a lot of potential for training and people trying out farming and food going as a career? And then potentially being able to build up that track record build up that business and then take that step into the rural for a bigger farm or a bigger plot of land once they've already got some networks they've already got some experience, and so I think it's hard to see. Yeah, like it would be very slow. I think if we were just waiting for people to somehow like forge. Their own path into rural areas because of all of the all of the issues that have been mentioned. But the new entrant support scheme that I put the link into one of the things we're working, we're working one of the partners and that is the rubella initiative which is a black African diaspora LED organization. That's all about supporting Black LED businesses, and we're working with them to try and bring as many people of color into that cohort of trainees. It's possible and it's these are small steps. These are all small steps that they might add up into. Yeah, at beginning of that shift. And yeah, I think turning I think is absolutely crucial if we're going to reimagine If we're going to create a land system that. Truly serves our needs in the 21st. Century and beyond. It's got to be one where people have productive economic relationships with the land as well as like recreational leisure relationships with the land. And so we need to find ways of as many everyone who wants to being able to meet their needs and move into. And for me it was.Thank you, I'm not going to put a question which is what an anonymous attendee, but it's. It's a, it's a. It's a good one to all of you, which is do you believe there's space for new Englishness with ideas that both acknowledged colonial roots of the countryside, as well as incorporating the traditional romantic ideas of the rural. To which I from the chair would add. But don't we have to bring in the struggles of working class people and the rural labourers and agricultural workers over the years into our stories? So I suppose that underlying the question, I suspect, is that can we? Can we tell a story of Englishness which keeps the bits we like? But learns to tell a new history. Or do we have to tell a much more rounded history in the 1st place and possibly forego some of the things that somebody like me, is actually honestly deeply attracted to? What do we think? What are the possibilities Tabitha?Yeah, I think it's something that you know has to be addressed, not just you know. I think I think it needs to be addressed. You know, in our in our kind of education curriculum a lot as well. I wouldn't say that it's. I don't know whether the narratives can be changed by kind of influential, you know, opinion or thought leaders. I think it needs to go kind of earlier than that. I think. I think it's interesting you know to. Think about how. Englishness is or you know you know, the countryside is often, as you said, you know more of a kind of, uh, romanticized and more of a kind of middle class or upper class frame. Like you said, we we tend to not, you know, we don't. You know the kind of working. Us agricultural workers. You know fishermen and Fisher. You know people and so on don't tend to spring to mind. But it's interesting that it takes until you know you go to. Maybe you start thinking more critically about, you know identity. Once you leave kind of more tertiary education and I wonder whether there's opportunity to open these debates up more widely amongst you know. More more generally, but I don't know what the others think. I think it's a good question. Maybe I need a bit longer to think.OK devitaSo I'm I'm quite wary of. The idea that we can reclaim the kind of romantic colonial, romantic, romantic, traditional ideas of Englishness because that romantic idea of Englishness is itself a product, a product of colonial history, wherein that colonial history is kind of concealed. So I think going back to something that Tabitha said in her presentation, whenever Englishness is kind of motivated by or kind of desires. Or English is is motivated by feelings of loss. That's the thing when we're straying into dangerous territory that can kind of reproduce the same racial dynamics, and we need to counter that and think about what's behind those feelings of loss. So kind of turned towards the past and think instead about ways we can productively engage with the present and with what the future of Britain it could. Look like.Yeah, OK Kate.Yeah, I agree that. It's hard to. I think it will be very hard to move forward productively unless we do some addressing of the ways in which things have got to how they are. I think this is a moment for science fiction. Basically, I think we need some solar punk inspired. Big picture imagining about what the countryside could be, and I think actually there's a lot. There's a lot in science fiction and the kind of if anyone's not familiar with, like the kind of solar punk genre of kind of like people writing and imagining worlds, where which are very green, which are, but are very use technology. Very well that have a lot of. Spirit in them, and I think we can create a new vision of. The English countryside which has the communalism and the community spirit that people want and feel romantically attracted to but that maybe reinvents that in a way that isn't exclusionary. Yeah, I think it's really possible, but I think we have to get like fully imaginative about.OK, thank you very much. I do couple more questions I think, and then we'll call it today. I just want I want to. Pick up one. I going to be inspired by one to ask a slightly different question because Asma Rasul's talked about the need of a new planning approach to deal particularly for the needs of young people in rural areas and housing and so on, which to some extent. We've touched on, but I suppose the question that comes from that is.If we if we.Devolve more to rural areas which you were talking about, Tabitha? Does that just sort of build in a majority of the older home owners and the second home owners to stop the sort of change that would be needed for young people? Or is actually, if you really devolved? Power to people still enough of a sense of community and identity and wanting for belonging that would enable people to provide for young people, particularly for example. Instead of this current planning system where you're as likely to end up with four bed executive houses as you are with the Community Land Trust, if you change that so you could actually control what you want. I mean, how optimistic should we be about entrusting today's rural communities to make the right decisions for the future?Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think that leads on to another kind of solution that was put forward by some of the rural voters that I spoke to. That hasn't really come up, yeah? I mean it's not a political solution, but I think you know shift to proportional representation is you know a core thing that's really necessary for. Or, you know, for particularly these very alienated, kind of isolated communities, and in terms of, you know, having you know one group more represented by another. If there was further devolution, you know the kind of optimist in me, you know, doesn't want to think of it that way, but. But yeah, it's it's definitely some. It poses an interesting question and I think it is something to consider as well. I guess the hope would be that you know some kind of assembly, some kind of citizens assembly, you know, made-up of, you know, more proportionately represented. Kind of group of people could help to counteract that.OK, what's your experience?I think there's some really interesting precedent in Wales around the Future Generations Act, and having future generations Commissioners and like, yeah, recognizing that currently. We don't have. Yeah, like no system is gonna be perfect. But yeah there will like currently home owners and second home owners, land owners in general have a much stronger voice in the system. Lending many, many other people. And so yeah, I I fully agree with the idea of citizens, assemblies and kind of trying to make sure that. Or pulling together, you're not just listening to the loudest voices, but I think also recognizing that you've got to be making decisions on behalf of the future and on behalf of the yet the future generations and nature as well. And I think there's lots of interesting examples from around the world of both. Like how do you build in a kind of voice for the. The voice for future generations who might not be clamoring for four bed executive homes and a voice for nature around you, know particularly things like rivers and how they? Like the impact of development on things like water catchments, sort of finding creative ways of. Feeding those into legislative and planning processes is completely doable. It just requires a bit of imagination.Thank you Ryan. Going and hopefully that. That answer are those two answers go some way to answer a question that was put about centering the people who live in the countryside, in our politics and an anonymous attendees. But I think a reasonable point that you have to start with the people who live there at the moment. You can't exclude them that that may help to answer those questions. But I gotta end with a question that intrigues me and I want to know the panel's answers with all of these issues out there. Why has this not produced a politics of the countryside? And the only politics of the countryside I can think of in, you know, in the recent past was. The Countryside Alliance, which was quite broadly based socially when it started, but but soon became another largely representative of of vested interest in the countryside. So why haven't we had articulate? Rural leaders raising the issues. Tabitha that people have been talking to you about. Why isn't there a a bigger land reform movement? There is committed to some extent. We touched on this earlier, but there's not much of a movement demanding access, so that's one question for each of you. But then the one that goes with it is, is there anybody you can point to? Politically or culturally. That you speak that you think speaks well for the English countryside, who addresses the sort of issues that we've talked about today. Big big questions but but I'm gonna go. I'll start. I'll start with Kavita. Then I'll go Kate, then back to Tabitha. So reverse. Order more or less Kavita.So in terms of someone who speaks to the countryside, to be honest, I can't really think of anyone like any one person. I think they're kind of like hopeful movements happening like I touched on earlier with the colonial countries like product, like what individuals are doing with kind of building projects that include people of colour and access to the country. Right, but I think the reason why there isn't a kind of countryside move political politics of the countryside that incorporates these issues. It's just it's because of the history, like the historical formations and the way that they're so entrenched. I think it's really easy to overlook the way that history shapes the present in a really deep way. And like the fact that the countryside is kind of involved in these racial entanglements. Probably slows things down, and that's one of the reasons why we need to kind of have a more inclusive. Post colonial understanding of the countryside and move away from romantic notions of what it is, because otherwise that's what's gonna keep coming up as attention and hold back the kind of political movement I think.Thank you Kate.Yeah, all of that and. This is one reason why we might not have this politics in the countryside at the moment is that for the people who mostly have the power in the countryside. It's all working out quite nicely. And and that those power structures are. You know both culturally and practically very hard to breakthrough. And yeah, I don't know that they're I don't, I'm not. I'm always a bit mistrustful of there being like one person who can speak for anything that I say. Is the the. The the person who came to my mind when you asked that question is Nick Hayes. He's a part of the right to roam campaign, and the author of the Book of Trespass and is doing a lot both. I think culturally and. You know, politically, to advocate for a reimagining of ownership through creative and fun and polite trespassing. And and I think there's a whole bunch of really interesting stuff to unpick there about the emotional impact of doing that, both on the trespasser and the trespass upon. And yeah, his book is a really good unpicking of some of this stuff around. What land ownership does to the culture and the kind of psyche of the countryside. So yeah, I would say.OK, thank you very much, Tabitha.So to answer the first part, I think I mean I agree with both Peter and Kate, absolutely, and I think the people that are making decisions and representing us. I think there is a real kind of experience gap where real disparity and you know real kind of authentic experiences of. You know rural life, you know and. I don't know what it takes for people to kind of go into this, but for me personally, you know I grew up in a rural village in North Dorset. I grew up in a Council house and so these themes are the things that I carry through in in my research, and I don't know if anyone's ever watched the TV documentary called This Country by Daisy. Mini Cooper, but it was the first time I watched, you know I saw. OK that was my that was my upbringing that is. You know what? My early years are like and seeing that on TV was so kind of empowering as well where they you know is a comedy. So I think that kind of more personalized approach and you know more kind of authentic. People with real life experiences really kind of, you know being involved and then for the second part of the question I think you know it's a very difficult question, but I probably report kind of point to kind of the recent constitutional proposal that Labour has done recently with Gordon Brown. Not to say that he represents. What I I I? I think he should represent real voices, but I think some of the things put forward. Some of the recommendations about decentralization and you know having a kind of more constitutional rights embedded in terms of, you know, some. Bar, you know social care and you know opportunity and power should be really important. So yeah, I'm interested. You know I've I've read the report. I'm interested to see where. I might go.Fine, thank you very much indeed, and I'd like to thank you all and the audience for this evening. I'm often asked where I get ideas for speakers from from these webinars. One of the places is a journal called Renewal. A it it is a journal of Social Democracy. So don't be surprised about its politics. If you read it all three of our speakers tonight have written in that in the last couple of years. And if you want to know more about what they say, which will also ask to answer some of your unanswered questions in the chat, do do look them. Up there. My reflection on this is that. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. These three strands that. We've talked about. Are often kept in separate silos of debate with different people talking about the different aspects of class, race and ownership, and if I've left with one overwhelming impression from tonight, it is the need to bring these together into a single story about Rural England and ideas of English identity. The the encouraging thing about the discussion tonight is we are not there yet. We can't actually talk about the person and the movement, the organization that embodies this, but everybody has pointed to appropriately green shoots organizations that are beginning to work in these areas. And if we can bring those together. And perhaps we can tackle collectively the issues that our three speakers have. Raised so brilliantly tonight, our next webinar is in January. Incompetently, the date slips my mind for the moment, but look at the Centre for English identity and politics website and we'll be looking in the light of the Gordon Brown report at what sort of government England needs at the centre. If we're actually going to have devolution. To local communities. So thank you very much indeed. Have a good Christmas, have a good new year and goodbye to all of you. Thank you. And I will say thank you very much to our speakers, and I'll be in touch shortly, but I think that's been a great discussion. And we'll post the video and let you know when it's up. Thank you.Thank you thanks bye.