A whole village of Dorset is faced with expulsion – proof that private money holds all the power of rural England | George Monbiot

POwer hides by putting us against each other. This is never more true than in the countryside, where the impacts of an extreme concentration of property and control are attributed to those who have nothing to do with that. The rural people are constantly indicated that they are not oppressed by the lords of the country, but by vicious and ignorant Townies – the “urban jackboot” as the alliance of the campaign called it – to kiss him on their traditions.

Near Bridport in Dorset at the moment, an entire village is faced with expulsion, after the sale of the bride area for around 30 million pounds sterling. The new official owner, Bridehead Estate Ltd, is registered at the same address, with the same officers, as a company called Belport. The Telegraph reports that the succession “was bought by Belport, a capital-investment company, on behalf of a rich customer last fall”, but nobody knows who is the customer. So far, I have not received any answers to the questions I have sent to Belport.

The inhabitants of Littlebredy, a village of 32 houses, held entirely in the estate, say that they were ordered to leave from January. At the beginning of this month, access to parts of the 800 hectare land (2,000 acres), widely appreciated by the local population, was finished, with red panels for this purpose and padlocks on all entries. No one knows who does this to them. The feeling of helplessness is overwhelming.

A person has already been expelled to make way for a succession office. When she complained about her treatment on social networks, the first answer declared, without the slightest proof: “You are expelled so that young male refugees in the age of fighting, who escape war in France, can have a safe place to live, which, as far as our government is concerned, has priority over you … Voting Retoyage!” This is how Divide and Rule works: regardless of the anonymous rather anonymous which expels it, the real culprits, in a way, are asylum seekers.

We are given by the right -wing parts and the right -wing media on the need for “integration”. But this word is only used as a weapon against immigrants. They are not they who tear the communities, tear people from their home and have excluded us from the country, causing social disintegration. It is the power of money.

But look, a spider! The cosmopolitan city, teeming with immigrants and trans people, picks you up! It will end the traditions that countries that countries love and impose its own culture instead. He is in the process of attacking us in our heads that what rural people want to be different from what oppressive urbanites want. But that is not true.

Embarrassing for self -proclaimed goalkeepers in the campaign, some of the evidence comes from their own surveys. Future country – who tells us that it is “propelled by the Countryside Alliance Foundation”, the charitable arm of the Countryside Alliance – commanded the survey in 2023. Despite this, there was almost no difference between the responses of urban and rural people: 55% of urban people and 54% of rural people agreed that it was a good idea. Even more striking, when asked for what political party “would do the most to prioritize / protect / promote the campaign?”, Only 9% each of the urban and rural people appointed the conservatives, while 38% in the two categories declared the Green Party.

Unsurprisingly, these responses failed to find their way in the public presentation by the results campaign. Instead, the only mention of a right to travel was a comment from an anonymous rural respondent: “They were not raised in the campaign. They think they can walk in all areas with the right to walk. ” The links to raw survey data and public presentation on the organization’s website are currently displaying a “404 error” when you try to open them.

Strangely, writing a year after the publication of these results, the director general of the Countryside Alliance, Tim Bonner, said that a broader right to travel is “completely contradictory with what the public really wanted”. With the admirable Chutzpah, he accused those who call him to conduct a “cultural war in the countryside”.

When Yougov supervised the question more objectively, for a survey commissioned by the campaign of the right to travel, he found that 68% of urban people and 68% of rural people supported it. He also discovered, in contrast striking with the claims of certain rural “tutors” which call it “the social glue which maintains rural communities together”, that the opposition to hunting with dogs is strong everywhere: 78% of urban people and 74% of rural people are against. As the Jon Moses access activist points out in an article for the example, “the problems on which we are told that we are the most divided are often the problems on which we most agree”.

This point of view is supported by fascinating research published in the Journal of Elections, public opinion and the parties. He found that, in several other Western countries, there is a political fracture between urban and rural populations, this does not apply in Britain. “We find no evidence that rural British are more resentment, dissatisfied or” left behind “compared to their urban counterparts.” On cultural issues, he revealed that “ruralites are often less – no more – authoritarian than Urbanites … and are less likely to support an undemocratic leader”.

We are fundamentally the same people, despite the best efforts of culture warriors to divide us. But we must be convinced that others do not want what we want: that we are foreigners, intruders, strange minority, pushing against the social current.

In reality, the strange minority is the 1% which has half of all the land in England, and the subset of this group which hide their property behind the companies before and the opaque trusts. If the changes proposed by the government in the land register continue, it can become easier to discover the real owners of places such as Bridehead, although I suspect that we will always have trouble.

On July 5, the campaign for the right to browse will organize a peaceful intrusion to Bridehead, to draw attention to the almost feudal powers that burn rural life. The real conflict is not the country of the city against the city, but money and power against people. It holds, no matter where you live. Never let powerful people tell you who you are.

• George Monbiot is guardian columnist

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