HUNDREDS of farmers descended on Parliament on their tractors yesterday, demanding ‘Save Family Farming!’
Having driven to the capital from as far afield as Exmoor, Shropshire, Somerset and Northumberland, the vehicles lined up on Whitehall from 10am ahead of speeches at noon and a slow drive around central London from about 12.45pm.
The ‘RIP British Farming’ protest was the second major demonstration in London against the Labour government’s announcement that inheritance tax will be imposed on small family farms in future.
Farmer and TV presenter Gareth Wyn Jones said: ‘There is a lot of anger, a lot of frustration, a lot of people who feel we need change.
‘Keir Starmer promised that he would look after family farmers but the first budget is one of the hardest that we’ve ever had as an industry, so things need to change.’
He went on: ‘What a lot of people haven’t understood is that poorer people in society will suffer with this and I’ll tell you why. Because we’re going to have food inflation. Food is going to have to go up about 20%. We’ll have to claw that back, and the poorer people in society will not be able to afford that.
‘So this government should be protecting them. They’ve let the pensioners down. They’ve let businesses down and now they’re letting the farmers down.
‘We need the farming community. Every person who has turned up in London and in the other cities has come out because they have had a bellyful, a bellyful, of this government and the way we’ve been treated for many, many years.’
He added: ‘We need to make sure the government don’t bite the hand that feeds them, and that’s what they’re doing. And they will get a shock, they will get a shock, if the countryside turns. And it’s beginning to get very frustrated with the way these numpties living down here in their ivory towers are treating us. And it’s been happening for a long, long time.’
He concluded: ‘Mr Starmer was up in Llandudno and he left out of the back door like a rat. He wasn’t willing to speak to the farmers there. They’ve closed the port in Fishguard, they’ve closed the port in Hollyhead. There’ve been a lot of farmers protesting and everything has been done peacefully and respectfully and we haven’t heard a dicky bird.
‘They’re hiding in their ivory towers down in London. They need to wake up and smell the coffee. The farming community are honest people that are giving their life, their time to make sure that people are fed all the year round.’
Nineteen-year-old Spencer Campbell said: ‘I’m here today because I want to support the farmers. I’m a self-employed farmhand and I’ll never inherit a farm, but I’m worried about losing my future job. I’m on about £10 an hour, which is awful really.’
He went on: ‘We want the best produce we can have. We have got the perfect weather here to grow good sustainable arable crops and livestock, so why aren’t we?
‘A friend of mine produces potatoes not far from where I live and he can sell his potatoes in Spain for more money than he can in this country. So where is the sense in that?’
