Sustaining the Countryside: A Welsh Post-War Perspective

In October 1994, the Environment Secretary and Agriculture Minister announced their intention to publish, for the first time, a joint White Paper, setting out Government policy for the economic, social and environmental well-being of the English countryside. It stimulated a further flurry of interest in how such policy agenda are drawn up and implemented. Although ostensibly, ministers sought fresh policies under the banner of sustainable development, some commentators discerned an even greater concern as to the growing sense of deprivation felt by the 12 million voters who lived in the countryside. Although there had been much rural debate and research in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Cloke and Little have contended it laboured under two deficiencies. Not only was there minimal Government interest, but it did little more than highlight the inadequacies of a simple positivist approach. This time round, much greater use might be made of a political-economy perspective, that took fuller cognisance of the connections that prevailed between economic change, restructuring of society, and the role of the state.