Can Labour win in the countryside?

By Kieran Roberts / @kieranlroberts

At the last general election, I lived in Cumbria in Tim Farron’s constituency. I was just starting to get involved in the Labour Party and after tentatively arriving at my first CLP meeting I was made, by default, the Youth Officer and before the next meeting asked to be a paper candidate for an unwinnable council seat. I naively thought this was me making a good first impression but alas, this was my first experience of the less than ideal state of the Labour Party in Cumbria.

So with a backdrop of barely any campaigning and years of being the smallest bar on the Lib Dem’s chart, making any gains would at best be an uphill struggle. Despite this, the tale of 2010 for the CLP was a positive one. We had the money to leaflet, a dedicated handful of us that put in a lot of work and in Jonathan Todd an excellent candidate. In the ward I stood in, one that hadn’t been canvassed, ever, after posting two leaflets and a few incomplete canvasses, the Labour vote increased 400%. And that wasn’t quite gaining 3 votes after last time’s 1.

That’s one lesson I’ll never forget, and one that can hopefully encourage similar CLPs to venture in to wards deemed just as unwinnable. That’s why the Progress campaign ‘Third place First’ is so important to our long term success. The reason wards like that and in some cases constituencies like that aren’t campaigned in is because they’re assumed to be a lost cause. I understand the logic behind placing all the limited resources in a more winnable area but that’s not how gains are made. Natural Labour voters and even members aren’t found by piling all our eggs in one basket. So the first step must be to have no no-go areas. But for Labour to win in rural areas, it will take more than a start in campaigning.

Labour needs to demonstrate it has the fight in it to defend rural communities. The coalition may have lost some support through the Forestry Commission fiasco but that will be short term. In rural communities, the issues that matter most aren’t preserving the landscape and there isn’t a ‘Gerr’ off my land’ mentality. Much. For Labour to be electable, we need to prove we understand rural areas and that we’ll fight for their interests.

That means reforming competition law so small businesses and farming stands a chance against big business. It means providing high-speed broadband and high-speed rail so there isn’t a digital and psychological gap as well as a geographical one, allowing innovation, growth and jobs in areas that frankly have been starved of them. It also means introducing measures so that towns and villages can’t all be second homes for holiday makers leaving businesses stranded. Employment in a lot of rural areas is largely in retail and tourism so this leaves them particularly vulnerable. Once we’ve done that, then maybe we can talk about forests.

The perceived differences between people in towns and people in the countryside are exactly the same as Northerners and Southerners: there aren’t any. The fight for social justice in Cumbria is the same as the one in Camden. If we’re ever to win in rural areas we need to realise that, craft our message accordingly and have the members on the doorsteps to deliver it.