ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the emergence and organization of the rural movement, illustrates through three brief case studies, of the Countryside Alliance and Farmers for Action in Britain, British farmers' protests that coalesced into Farmers for Action and the Confederation paysanne in France. The several mass demonstrations organized by the Countryside Alliance have been the most visible manifestations of an extraordinary political mobilization of rural people that has taken place in Britain since the mid 1990s. Common experiences of rural restructuring have produced a similar resurgence of rural politics in several countries other than Britain, albeit shaped by local circumstances. Rural protests have at times provoked a loss of nerve by the British government, with vacillation over action on issues such as hunting and the handling of the foot and mouth epidemic. Contemporary rural protests cannot be researched using the conventional interpretative tools of rural political analysis – concepts such as policy communities and insider and outsider pressure groups.
