Angela Rayner’s allotment sell-off is an act of class treachery

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.