Angela Rayner’s allotment sell-off is an act of class treachery
These tiny parcels of land have deep roots in Britain’s working-class culture.
LISA MCKENZIE
These days, there is very little that can unite our deeply divided nation. UK deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has seemingly achieved the impossible this week, to the extent where I and many others now find ourselves in agreement with Jeremy Corbyn. What has caused us all to put our class, politics and religion to one side, and to unite in our outrage against the British government? It’s Labour’s war on allotments.
That’s right: Rayner, our very own working-class hero, has told cash-strapped local authorities to add allotments to the Great British Sell-Off. Recently, it has emerged that Rayner has given councils the authority to sell these valued public spaces in order to fund their day-to-day expenditure. According to reports, she has personally approved the sale of eight allotments across England since coming to power last year.
The sell-off of allotments might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of Labour’s social, political and economic destruction of the country. But the humble British allotment matters for many reasons. It represents the uniquely British belief that even the poorest households have a right to their own piece of New Jerusalem. Or, in Corbyn’s words, the right to practise a uniquely British pastime: ‘The joy of digging ground for potatoes on a cold, wet February Sunday afternoon.’
Jokes aside, Rayner’s war on allotments is in fact a serious attack on our history and culture. Allotments have particularly deep roots in working-class history. During the English Civil War, the right to access common land for growing food was a key demand of the Diggers.
In Nottingham, where I’m from, these small parcels of land have been used to feed the poor for almost 600 years. In the 19th century, when Nottingham was one of the most overcrowded cities in the UK, with dysentery and cholera outbreaks common, allotments were critical in keeping the working class healthy and fed. Postwar, on the St Ann’s council estate where I grew up, allotments were a source of pleasure and recreation for the workers in the city’s factories and mills. Only in light of this history can we discern the true significance of allotments: they remind us that, once upon a time, Britain cared about looking after people.
The allotments at St Ann’s are safe (at least for now) thanks to their heritage-listed status. But hundreds of others across the country will not survive Rayner’s assault.
Though they were first only used by the poor, allotments have long since transcended class boundaries. Lawyers and doctors in Brighton and London use them to grow their chard and other upper-class vegetables. Corbyn uses the allotment near his house in Islington to cultivate marrow. Second-generation immigrant families from the West Indies and India use them to grow callaloo, potatoes and cauliflower. Allotments, at a time when the country has never seemed so fractured, have become a source of unity and connection. Yet Rayner is prepared to sacrifice them, and the bonds they sustain, simply because local councils cannot manage their budgets properly.
We need to protect public spaces from short-sighted politicians, selling out our culture to make a quick saving. Rayner should make the most of her free holidays, free clothes and other perks of her position while she can – because the working class she claims to represent won’t forget her treachery anytime soon.
Lisa McKenzie is a working-class academic.
This article (Angela Rayner’s allotment sell-off is an act of class treachery) was created and published by Spiked Online and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Lisa McKenzie
See Related Article Below
Labour’s War on Allotments Is a War on Britain Itself
CP
There is something unutterably bleak about the news that Angela Rayner, Deputy Prime Minister and newly crowned destroyer of British charm, has signed off on the sell-off of allotments across the country.
Yes, allotments, those last bastions of joy, sanity, and runner beans, bulldozed to balance the books. The sort of thing that, until now, might have only happened in dystopian satire or the pages of a Soviet-era town planner’s diary.
But no, this is real. Under the grey, technocratic fist of Rachel Reeves and Rayner, Labour has declared open war on one of the quiet glories of British life. They have taken their red pen to our green spaces. The marrow-growing grannies and bee-fancying pensioners who lovingly tend to their plots are now on notice: you’re in the way.
And why? Because Labour is broke. They are killing our businesses, driving our highest tax payers abroad and making us all poorer in the process. Local councils are going broke and rather than cut even a single pound from the bloated Diversity & Inclusion apparatchiks embedded like ticks in every public body, or trim the fat from the vast, low-output government leviathan, they have chosen to sell off soul. That’s what this is: a liquidation of heritage.
“Labour will concrete over Britain,” said Priti Patel. And she’s right. First they came for the playing fields. Then the family farms. Now, they’re bulldozing the very vegetables out of our hands.
Allotments are not just scraps of dirt for pottering eccentrics… though God bless the pottering eccentric. They are microcosms of community, purpose, and beauty. They are the cathedrals of the working class, the playgrounds of the elderly, the therapy of the lonely, and a haven for biodiversity that does more for the environment than a thousand Westminster net-zero consultations.
Labour’s response? Concrete it. Monetise it. Move on.
The cruelty is staggering. I read about Victor Thomas, 77, this morning in The Telegraph. Victor walks 20 minutes every morning to his plot in Storrington. For him, it’s not a hobby, it’s life itself. It keeps him healthy, sharp, and part of something. But now, thanks to Angela Rayner’s rubber stamp, that land has been sold. Sold for housing, sure, but it’s not the houses that sting. It’s the message: “You don’t matter. Your life’s work isn’t worth more than a few budget line items.”
And make no mistake, this isn’t an isolated case. Across the country, the same story repeats. Allotments in Oxfordshire, Kent, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire, all green-lit for “disposal.” Nothing green about it. Rayner didn’t just wave this through, she is the author of it.
Even the Green Party is furious, which is frankly remarkable, given they’ll normally embrace Labour with all the loyalty of a Labrador. Jenny Jones, Baroness and allotment-holder, said it best: “Labour knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
And she’s right. These spaces don’t just grow carrots, they grow resilience. They grow community. They grow pride. And yes, they grow tomatoes that don’t come wrapped in plastic.
Labour used to understand this. Nye Bevan kept pigs. Jeremy Corbyn (for all his faults) grew vegetables. Today’s Labour, in contrast, is allergic to dirt, deaf to tradition, and blind to beauty. They think a “green space” is a PowerPoint bullet point in a climate strategy… not a lived, loved corner of the earth with dahlias and compost bins and pride.
What’s most galling is the moral dishonesty. These allotments were often gifted : by philanthropists, churches, or commons acts, not for profit, but for the public good. And now the state is pawning them off like heirlooms at a car boot sale, hoping no one notices what’s been lost.
It is not just politically stupid, it’s culturally criminal.
This daft, dead-eyed policy reveals the soulless core of the Starmer project. It’s not about building Britain back better. It’s about monetising the past and managing the decline. For all their talk of fairness and community, this Labour government treats those values like scraps on the chopping board.
The sale of allotments won’t fill the funding gaps. It won’t fix the NHS. It won’t revive town centres or end homelessness. But it will quietly sever the last remaining links between many people and nature, dignity, and joy. And what a terrible trade that is.
Shame on them.
This article (Labour’s War on Allotments Is a War on Britain Itself) was created and published by Conservative Post and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author CP
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