Jeremy Corbyn’s potato husbandry has roots in British labour history
Jeremy Corbyn’s allotment gardening, theory and practice, has come under attack in the Guardian and he is rightly defended his allotment methods.
As he has written this week allotments were long fought for against the wealthy who saw land as a source of profit, a tradition of claiming people’s land that goes back to opposition to enclosure from the late eighteenth century and the Chartist Land Plan of the 1840s.
Historical accuracy however does require the footnote that William Cobbett argued potatoes were suitable for pigs not people.
The letter below appears in the Guardian 9th August together with several others including one from Toby Wood who suggests that the new ‘your party’ should be named the Allotment Party
I must respond to a scathing attack on my gardening knowledge and integrity. Dariel Francis claims I am wrong about “leaving spuds in the ground till February” (Letters, 6 August). I never said I would – and I reject this scandalous and deeply hurtful accusation. I said “digging ground for potatoes” in February. That means manuring and preparing the ground, before planting the potatoes in March or April. Save our potatoes – and save our allotments!
Jeremy Corbyn MP
Independent, Islington North
Research has underlined that Corbyn’s potato husbandry has roots in British radical history.
The weekly Chartist newspaper in 1849 carried an ad from a smallholder on the Chartist Land Plan estate at O’Connorville. The estate was in Rickmansworth (off the M25) and the Chartist dwellings still stand albeit as highly desirable properties.
The ad makes reference to potatoes being an important part of the small holding that was up for sale.
Jeremy Corbyn himself is part of labour history, albeit an active one, and his potato gardening underlines the point
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