What sort of Christmas are you dreaming of? Will the young still have Christmas to celebrate in future?
We, alive today, are custodians of this island. But when we are long gone, our grandchildren, and their children will seek to call it home. It should feel like home. Britain should offer a sense of belonging and security. Even if we’re prepared to put up with a miserable, dystopian existence, we should not inflict that on those who come after us. What right do we have to squander their inheritance? Yet the way society is heading, that will be our fate. Future generations of Britons will feel like strangers in an increasingly strange, overcrowded, atomised land, our precious countryside concreted over by sprawling estates of expensive rabbit hutches for people to eke out an existence in. The Rural Conservative Movement wants to do better than that for our young people and those yet to be born.
Do you agree?
The Rural Conservative Movement believes in . . .
Our Island Story and its people. We believe in our place in a continent whose people have blessed the world with the most successful, prosperous, fair-minded civilisation in history. The Rural Conservative Movement is more than just a collection of policies and pledges. We are more than merely a political entity. We are a philosophical movement which is very much about how we feel, about ourselves and our surroundings. Rural Conservatism is about a deep and atavistic connection to the soil beneath our feet and to the ancestors whose footprints we now walk in. It’s about the romance and beauty of the land in which we live - mountains, forests, moorlands, meadows, rolling farmland, beautiful towns and villages.
You may well retort that there is a great deal of ugliness in modern Britain and in particular in its urban areas. True. But that is because we govern with our heads in this land, and rarely with our hearts. Politically, we are obsessed with the economy and what can drive GDP ever higher. Nothing else seems to matter. If mass immigration gives a short-term boost, we go for it, regardless of the long-term social and cultural consequences. Our membership of the EU was framed - by Remainers at least - in purely economic terms, when to folk like us, that was the last thing on our minds. Politicians from the mainstream parties continue to fixate on fiscal prosperity and, of course, the pledge to spend ever vaster sums on the NHS. It’s good to have a health service fit for purpose and free at the point of delivery but unlike the others, the RCM has no need to trumpet our undying love for the NHS to mask the fact that we don’t believe in much else (save for obtaining power).
On the contrary, we believe in a great deal and we believe that politics should be about so much more than, well, politics. It’s about who we are, and how we live and the development of an over-arching island story that unites us and gives us something to value and nurture. It’s about constantly striving for simple beauty in all things, living in harmony with nature and only ever putting up buildings which lift the soul rather than make us shudder.
You’ll see below brief outlines of our policy platform below, which we intend to develop and expand in the coming weeks. We’ll also give you the chance to subscribe to newsletters, get involved in some way and/or make a donation to help fund our work. We’re still setting these facilities up but in the meantime, feel free to get in touch.
National sovereignty
The United Kingdom should be a fully self-governing nation able to make its own laws without suffering interference in its internal affairs by foreign powers. No trade agreement or treaty with other countries should be allowed to encroach on our unfettered right to self-determination. With this in mind, the UK should withdraw from the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees as no longer appropriate to the modern age and ignore the non legally-binding Global Compact for Migration. In a post-Brexit world, we should seek useful trade deals with the EU and elsewhere without undermining the sovereignty we have so painfully won back.
British culture
The RCM believes in the primacy of British culture, now under threat now as never before. The Left loathe the indigenous culture of these islands and under the pretext of anti-racism and diversity are hell-bent on undermining our cultural inheritance. Schools are under pressure to drop the study of our finest writers, including Shakespeare, Hardy and Dickens on the grounds that they are white and male and not as “woke” as we are today. But multicultural propaganda is no substitute for a proper education which all our children deserve. A grounding in the fruits of British literature, music and the arts is fundamental to our sense of self.
Rural heritage
The environment is too precious to be left to the Left, whose apparent concern for its welfare is usually motivated, less by the need to be green, rather the desire to paint everything revolutionary red. Conservatives are the natural custodians of the countryside. It should be in our blood to care passionately about the soil beneath our feet, the well-being and prosperity of our farmers and the natural beauty and biodiversity of this land. The RCM has the word “rural” in its title for a reason - because rural Britain is very precious to us. Our farmers are vital to the whole process and lynchpins of local communities. We are proud to champion their cause.
Christianity
The Christian faith provides the backcloth for the last two centuries of our history. Britain would not be the country we are today without its spiritual guidance. Nor would Europe have evolved to be the sophisticated, cultured epitome of civilised excellence that it became without the values instilled in us by our belief in the Holy Trinity. The compassion but also the steely determination of Jesus Christ paved the way for our society to become benevolent, kind and altruistic - not out of weakness but from a position of strength. Yet in the modern era, Christianity finds itself on the backfoot - treated as an embarrassing anachronism while imported faiths in our land are encouraged to grow in strength. We must reverse this and the Church of England should lead the way.
Traditional family
The traditional family is enormously important to the strength and stability of society and thrived in the days when we were proud to call ourselves a Christian country. But again, under the banner of Progress and the turmoil caused by population influx, its importance is underplayed and often positively undermined. There are many successful single-parent homes but it is undoubtedly and unquestionably true to say that it is in the best interests of children to be brought up by a married mother and father. The institution of marriage should be strengthened and the importance of rearing children stressed to native British women whose fertility rates are falling and who have wrongly been encouraged to put a high-flying career before the task of raising a family.
Immigration control
Mass immigration is the great tragedy of the post-war era. Having twice spilled the blood of our finest young men in two ruinous world wars for the right to live in peace in our own land, we recklessly imperil all they fought for by allowing large numbers of unsuitable and incompatible people to settle here. While a certain number of migrants can be successfully integrated, the sheer numbers arriving each year make that impossible. As a result, our small country is increasingly overcrowded with house prices through the roof, and it all comes with unwelcome social and cultural implications. The RCM wishes to see immigration all but stopped for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, let us help those from overseas build successful societies in their own countries.