Leading the thousands of farming families who walked through the pouring rain along Whitehall on Tuesday (19 November) was Rory Rees, from Pembrokeshire. Three-year-old Rory’s tractor was the only type of agricultural vehicle allowed to drive freely along the closed street – small, plastic and pedal-powered – but it nonetheless helped to send a message to those in power. Rory’s father Tom, 36, is the sixth generation of his family to work on Dudwell Farm near Haverfordwest. He hopes Rory will be the seventh, but for the first time in his career he is unsure if the farm can continue. A series of economic shocks to the farming industry, including energy prices, higher interest rates and the worst harvest for decades, have been followed by a change in government policy that farmers say will break the agricultural sector.
The freezing rain did not deter a large crowd from gathering on Whitehall. The Red Lion on the corner of Parliament Street, normally a haunt for civil servants and special advisers, could have been mistaken for a Newton Abbot pub on market day, such was the profusion of khaki jackets, wellies and sideburns among the drinkers gathered outside. Many of the marchers’ banners were a variant on the No Farmers, No Food theme. A darker current ran among them, however: a number of banners, and the people chatting around them, framed the new tax in more conspiratorial terms, as a means of control.
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