The Small Farm Future Blog

My constituents are … leaving town

Posted on October 8, 2025 | 1 Comment

I’ve shared platforms with Westminster parliamentarians twice in the last few months, and more than that in the last few years, who’ve been dismissive in one way or another of my case for agrarian localism. Given that that case is itself quite dismissive of the ability of parliaments and centralized politics to deal with the problems of our times, perhaps it’s not surprising that I tend to find myself at loggerheads with such folks.

Generally on these occasions, I’ve been on the receiving end of a mini-lecture along the lines that (1) the present world is one of mass urbanism, globalism and intensive trade; (2) that these are good things; and, (3) that this isn’t going to change in the future. To which my replies would have been (I’ve rarely had the chance to make them on the occasions in question – professional politicians are good at having the last word): (1) Yes, that’s true; (2) Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that; and, (3) Yes it is. The ignorance and complacency of the political class on this last point, the precariousness of the existing global political economy, is one reason why I find it hard to see the kind of renewal that’s needed emerging from centralized mainstream politics. It’s also a reason why the global political economy is so precarious.

Anyway, here I’m going to home in on the most interesting of my recent sword-crossings with a politician, namely with Clive Lewis MP at a panel we were both on along with Simon Fairlie at the Green Gathering in July.

Let me first say that I think Clive is one of the most incisive, thoughtful and honourable members of parliament in Britain right now. The bar isn’t high, I know, but I still want to record my appreciation in case what I’m about to say seems aimed over-critically at him. That isn’t the purpose of this post.

And in truth, our sword-crossing wasn’t much of a sword-crossing. An audience member asked about building agrarian communities, to which I replied with an anodyne remark about the need in this present historical moment for people to be experimenting with exactly this, but in doing so to draw from the lessons of existing agrarian societies past and present. Whereupon, if my memory serves me correctly (which it may not), Clive interjected something along the lines that we had to be careful with that kind of thinking in view of the fact that it had little relevance to the lives of the urban poor such as some of his constituents, and that there was a danger of the far-right appropriating such narratives.

That was basically it. And, as I said, I may have misremembered his comment or misunderstood his meaning. Still, I hear these points – the urban poor, and far-right appropriation – raised against the case for agrarian localism with monotonous (and increasing) frequency. In my opinion, they badly miss the political challenge of present times. Since I didn’t get the chance to respond at the session itself, I’m going to use the leisure of my own website to explain why.

So, to start, while it’s true that the case for a future involving widespread, small-scale, local agrarianism probably doesn’t seem relevant to the lives of urban poor people today (or to the lives of most other people, for that matter), at least in the rich countries, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen or that people shouldn’t prepare for it as best they can.

Often, these ‘my constituents…’ or ‘yes, but the urban poor…’ remarks seem to be based on a status claim about having knowledge of real people’s hard lives. If nothing else, at least this ‘hard lives of the urban poor’ narrative punctures that other hackneyed objection to agrarian localism, that city streets are paved with gold in contrast to the impoverished and miserable countryside.

I suspect Clive’s remarks also draw strength from the residual notion on the political left, originating in one of the more fanciful aspects of Marxism, that poor, landless, urban-industrial workers are the key agents of history who will bring about political redemption.

Another widespread take sees such people not as the solution but as a problem – and particularly as a problem for approaches to present problems based on ruralism or agrarianism. A small farm future is all very nice, the argument goes, but how will it work when so many millions or billions are stuck living in urban poverty? It’s a fair question, provided it’s also asked of modernism or urbanism-as-usual politics: how will the millions or billions of urban poor be kept housed, fed and quiescent as the ecocidal and genocidal logic of commodification and economic growth grinds on? The answers I’ve heard usually invoke technofixes just as fanciful as Marxist theories about industrial labourers as political redeemers.

My approach to the urban poor is that while they’re not the agents of history, they – along with every other kind of person – are agents of history all the same, rather than being a problem for somebody else to solve. As the welfare capitalist state offers people increasingly little in the way of welfare, they will start seeking ways to generate more welfare for themselves. Possibly, in view of their urban location and their poverty the urban poor will be at a disadvantage in this. Then again, the typical comfortably off middle-class professional is also generally urban, clueless about how to create a material livelihood, and wealthy only in respect of salaries or property ownerships that will be melting away. So the disadvantage may be less than some think.

I play a little bit with these possibilities in my new book, not least with my foray into climate fiction at the end. For now, I’ll just say that when politicians or others invoke the urban poor as if their existence is a counterargument to the case for agrarian localism, I think they misunderstand the nature of the world we’re entering. The concepts of ‘the urban poor’ or ‘my constituents’ invoked by leftwing politicians become ironically conservative thought-stoppers harking back to a managerial capitalist politics rapidly fading into history. The key idea of this managerial capitalism is that we should stop electing idiots or malefactors to high political office and we should share wealth more equitably, and then the meta-crisis will be averted. I agree with everything in that previous sentence up to the words ‘and then’.

Yet despite its sporadic successes, the popularity of leftwing politics among its favoured groups of poor and working-class urban workers often considerably trails the popularity of nationalism and right-wing populism. It’s easy and perhaps fair to some extent to invoke the Machiavellian political arts, propaganda, false consciousness and dark money to explain this, but I don’t think these get far in accounting for why right-wing nationalism so regularly bests left-wing rationalism – another topic that I consider in my new book (Chapter 11). It’s not just the medium, it’s the message itself.

I thought Clive Lewis got close to what this message is in his comments about his friend who attended the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march that I quoted in my previous post, along the lines of wanting to belong and to ‘feel proud of my country again’.

Referring to the poet Holly McNish, a commenter under that previous post of mine on Substack wrote this interesting response:

Her refrain was – in your search for ‘belonging’ did you participate in anything? Did you run a youth club, join a Men’s Shed group, volunteer for anything in your community? Her point, and it seemed reasonable was that ‘belonging’ isn’t a passive affair, and if your only action to seek ‘belonging’ was to go on a Tommy Robinson march then that is highly questionable.

I think this is true and wise, but it potentially also misses something. People don’t just want the immediate and tangible, the inevitably messy reality of local human life with the screaming adolescents at the youth club or having to deal with that numbskull you met at the last community meeting. They also want something grander and purer. Wherein danger lies – you’d better be sure that this grander, purer thing you want to worship isn’t going to eat you or somebody else that it targets alive. I discuss this in my new book too in relation to religion. Nationalism has been called the religion of modernity. It’s a false god and it eats those who worship it and those it targets alive, but there’s no virtue in just dismissing it and arguing that better pay and conditions or the end of capitalism are worthier goals. Instead, it’s necessary to get into the logic of the grander, purer things that people desire, and seek worthier goals within that logic itself.

This is why I’ve become a bit tired of the concept of ‘far-right appropriation’, which I’ve heard increasingly often this year, especially in the context of farming. I’ve used it myself in the past, while my writing has also even been accused of courting it. Unquestionably, there is a growing threat of far-right politics, which I would define as a politics of racist nationalism and violent authoritarianism. However, there seemed to be some implication in Clive Lewis’s comments on our panel that the very idea of building material wellbeing on a local and sustainable ecological base involved courting this far-right wolf. I strongly disagree.

Perhaps the waters have been muddied by far-right mobilisation not so much around the kind of agrarian localism I advocate, with its mashup of broadly egalitarian left-wing libertarianism and small c/smalltown conservatism, but the way that genuinely far-right ideologues are courting farmers and the farming sector in the context of the latter’s desperate search for political allies that they’re not finding in mainstream politics. I abhor the violence, racism and authoritarianism of this kind of far-right activism – the real kind, that is, not the mirage danger of ‘far-right appropriation’ supposedly arising when people like me talk about the need to build local agrarianism on a sustainable ecological base. But I do wish mainstream politicians across the spectrum would take a look at their farming policies, at the misery in the sector, and at their fantasy desire for producing food and fibre that’s simultaneously healthy, cheap and environmentally friendly yet without fundamental political and economic change. It’s pretty easy for far-right ideas to get a hearing among farmers when every other shade of politics fiddles while their sector burns. Indeed, I’d generalise that point. It’s pretty easy for far-right ideas to get a hearing among wider publics when every other shade of politics fiddles while the wider meta-crisis burns.

People in mainstream politics often suggest that the far-right is cynical and manipulative in using the present crisis to push its messages of hate. Maybe so, although I see a lot of cynicism and manipulation in mainstream politics. The real problem with the far-right is more the hate than the tactics. And the real problem with mainstream politics is the business-as-usual hopium, which is quite unequal to the task of staving off the crisis that the far-right exploits. For the time being, I expect people like me will have to endure many more mini-lectures about the virtues of urbanism, globalism and international trade. But while we’re all yelling at each other about how our favoured politics are the best, the more important political story might lie with constituents, including the urban poor, who are quietly innovating their own welfare, perhaps by leaving town.

This, by the way, is my last post before official UK publication of my new book Finding Lights in a Dark Age next Tuesday (14 October). Tickets for the book launch in Frome are now sold out, which is a good start (though it probably helped that they were free, thanks to Frome Town Council and Chelsea Green). I’ll publish a post here next week about the book. Meanwhile, you can hear me talking about it on podcasts with David Bollier and Lucy Ridge. Do keep an eye on my publications and events pages for notices about this sort of thing.