Times, 24th February 2023
Coffey’s turnip comment is Tory folk memory of nineteenth century exploitation
Only a Tory Minister such as Therese Coffey could manage to dip the turnip into the enormous condescension of posterity. In Rural Rides William Cobbett noted with something like pride turnip crops growing across the south of England. E P Thompson had the measure of Tory Ministers in the Making of the English Working Class when he noted that low wages had turned labourers into turnip pilferers.
Cobbett wrote extensively about turnip farming in Cottage Economy but regarded turnips as cattle feed.
In Plenty and Want, John Burnett’s social history of food from 1815, he notes that in The Hungry Forties (1904) recounted memories of the 1840s suggested that a working class diet often consisted of bread, potatoes, root vegetables and weak tea.
Coffey is clearly displaying a Tory folk memory of nineteenth century exploitation. There are of course other memories, from those who fought against it.
In the meantime I expect Suella Braverman is already preparing a turnip law.
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