Rural England isn’t free of issues – but calling it racist is wrong
The current favourite for my epitaph is the wonderful description “a politically naïve liberal”, bestowed upon me by the British National Party after their unsuccessful attempt to hijack a rural demonstration more than 20 years ago.
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This supposed slur came after I pointed out that everything the Countryside Alliance stands for is the opposite of what they believe in.
Sadly, some still assume that rural communities are made up of bigoted yokels. Academics from the University of Leicester were so determined to prove this that they established the Rural Racism Project to ‘challenge the dominant depictions of rural England as peaceful, neutral and apolitical’. Given the project’s name, it seems some minds were made up before research began. It was no surprise that the project’s report concluded rural racism is rife, by deploying torturous arguments.
Firstly, the research avoids anything that could be described as an objective statistic. The one number quoted is the 98,799 race hate crimes recorded by the police in 2024. Unfortunately, it ignores the readily available breakdown by police force, possibly because it shows, both in terms of total and per capita incidents, that the more rural a constabulary, the fewer racial hate crimes were recorded. This is compelling evidence that, whilst racism remains a pressing societal issue, it is not particular to the countryside.
Similarly, voting patterns for the BNP during their 2000s heyday showed overwhelmingly urban support. It never even gained a foothold in rural politics, despite its attempts to piggyback on the huge demonstrations against the hunting ban. There was no suggestion that rural communities embraced racist views - in fact the evidence is the exact opposite. This is presumably why statistics are almost entirely absent from the report, which instead relied on “115 semi-structured interviews and numerous informal conversations”.
Secondly, the Rural Racism Project consistently defines the overwhelmingly white makeup of rural communities as inherently racist. Predominantly white spaces are racist because of the psychological burden of navigating them. Pub culture and rural customs are racist because they are exclusionary. Rural England is racist because a lack of diversity can lead to isolation for minoritised residents and visitors.
The sad thing about this divisive research is that there is a serious issue for some members of ethnic minorities in navigating what is a very white and often slightly alien culture. This can create a feeling for some that the countryside is not for them, which is a problem for all communities. The Countryside Alliance stressed in its contribution to the project that uncontextualised allegations of rural racism only create further barriers, sadly not something referenced in the report.
Had the academics behind this report relied on objective evidence, they would have found plenty to support the depiction of rural England as peaceful, neutral and apolitical. The countryside is far from perfect, but on the issue of race, it compares well with the rest of the country. Branding rural communities as racist is not just unfair, it is unhelpful in encouraging people of all backgrounds to enjoy the countryside.
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Tim Bonner is Chief Executive at the Countryside Alliance.
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