Another day, another demo

This time I was an observer

I’ve been on five protest marches in my entire life – so it is weird that two of them were within three weeks of each other.

But while I was inspired to go to the water march (see here) from deep personal investment as a sea swimmer affected by sewage in the water, I went to the rally of British farmers in Whitehall yesterday, to support my daughter (who as a keen horsewoman is deeply invested in country life) and to observe.

Unlike their French counterparts, who are constantly clogging up central Paris with tractors and walls of hay bales, I don’t remember British farmers gathering in political protest before.

I wanted to see it.

What inspired 13,000 farmers and their extended families to converge around the Cenotaph on Tuesday, from as far away as Northern Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall, was the inclusion in the first budget from the new Labour government, of a serious change to farmland inheritance tax law.