Witney: A Quiet Town In Unquiet Times - Witney, a village near Oxford, England

Contemporary Review, Sept, 2001 by Jonathan W. Doering

Have there been other effects on Oxfordshire and Witney from the crisis? This county, like much of rural Britian, enjoys high revenue from the tourist industry. Roger Sheridan, Head of Leisure and Tourism at West Oxfordshire District Council, is quick to acknowledge that there has been an adverse impact: "A large proportion of visitors are from overseas. Visitors from America, Australia, and Canada, and from Japan as well, received a lot of negative coverage of the disease in the media, and some people decided not to visit the UK to avoid spreading the infection. Overall there has been about a 25 per cent drop in visitors to the South of England this year, and those who did visit, tended to stay in urban areas, which was from entirely responsible motives. This has hit the Cotswolds -- we don't have 'hard' walking, like the Lake District and the Scottish Highlands. We offer gentler walking with local interest, but the people who usually come to enjoy the Spring and the green just weren't there in great number s this year." The situation is easing, although sporadic fresh outbreaks are still occurring. But Mr. Sheridan is cautiously optimistic: "The situation now is that we're open for business, but not business as usual.... Anywhere that has rural agricultural-based tourism has been affected, but local people have dealt with the situation as best they could, responsibly and positively."

Has this crisis turned people against the government, especially here in Witney? Nationally, the general election in June saw the lowest turnout rate, at 60 per cent, since 1918. Certainly, this apathetic behaviour can be explained in part by disappointment with a government that many feel has not lived up to its rousing promises of four years ago. However, there are other explanations for low turnout: a certain sense of inevitability surrounding Labour's re-election, and a feeling by some that the Conservative Opposition has lost its way.

In Witney, the turnout was 65.1 per cent; the winning Conservative share was 43 per cent. This is a Conservative safe seat, and previously was held by Douglas Hurd, John Major's Foreign Secretary. He was succeeded by Shaun Woodward, a director of party public relations, who later crossed the floor of the House of Commons to join the Labour Party.

There was no little resentment of Woodward for this betrayal; he was found a Labour stronghold in Lancashire (which has seen its normal Labour majority halved), with his old seat giving their new party representative a convincing majority of 8,000. Woodward is married to a vastly wealthy wife, a Sainsbury's heiress. He is probably the only MP with a butler. However, perhaps surprisingly for a loyal Tory seat, Labour had the next largest share of the vote, with 28 per cent, followed by the Liberal Democrats with 20 per cent. Having comfortably regained government, Labour has instituted a broad scheme of change in Whitehall, including the dissolution of MAFF, and the institution of a new Department of the Environment, Rural Affairs, and Agriculture, headed by party stalwart Margaret Beckett. Will this be an improvement? Elizabeth Margetts is undecided: "I like Margaret Beckett. She's quite efficient. But as far as I know she doesn't know anything about farming. Maybe it'll work out if she listens to people who do"; Andrew Duffy warns that "we must guard against Agriculture being an 'add on' to a Department of Rural Affairs"; clearly country dwellers are keen not to be left behind by British society.