David Gauke is a former Justice Secretary and was an independent candidate in South-West Hertfordshire at the 2019 general election.
On 8 September 2000, a small number of men met in the cattle market of St Asaph, in North Wales. The meeting had been called by Brynle Williams, a popular local farmer and haulier, who wanted to vent his anger at the price of fuel.
The international price of oil had recently spiked and Williams was concerned that this was going to make his business unviable. Fuel duty constituted 81.5 per cent of the price of a litre of unleaded petrol and British motorists faced the highest fuel prices of anyone in Europe.
The group discussed what measures they could take to put pressure on the Government to reduce the price of fuel. The farmers and hauliers considered paying their taxes in wagons, overloading the DVLA switchboard, and blockading petrol stations. Then one voice asked: “Why don’t you close the refinery down in Stanlow?”
Williams put it to the vote and within hours a convoy of lorries would descend upon the Stanlow Shell Oil Refinery in Cheshire and blockade it.
Few would have anticipated that the meeting would prove to be quite so consequential. Others copied these actions and further blockades at refineries were launched across the country. This in turn provoked panic buying of petrol, with filling stations soon running dry, shop shelves being left empty, and the NHS placed on red alert.
The country appeared to be on the brink of collapse. For the first time in eight years, the Labour Party lost its lead in the opinion polls. The Conservatives were 12 points behind Labour at the end of August; a month later they were two to eight points ahead. The Tory criticism that the Government had been imposing “stealth taxes” on the British people was now resonating.
This moment will be in the minds of ministers as rural disquiet grows. Farmers have not done well out of Brexit and turned against the Tories in July.
But they are far from enamoured with a Labour government that has just announced a reduction in the generosity of Agricultural Property Relief (APR). The consequence is that many relatively small farmers believe that their estates will now be subject to inheritance tax. Ultimately, they fear, their farms will have to be broken up to pay the bill.
It is perfectly possible that nothing much will come of it. The National Farmers Union is a voice of moderation, seeking to find a compromise and maintain access to ministers and MPs. The Government might offer concessions and, in any event, can reasonably argue that many of those who think that they will be affected will not be.
But there are clearly more militant voices out there who want to take direct action, who – as one of them put it recently – want to be “more French”. They look at the events of September 2000 and argue that something similar could happen again, that the country could be disrupted and the Government would get the blame. In a weakened position, concessions could be wrung out of them.
All of this means that ministers will be nervous. Chaos and disorder are usually bad news for a government; the public is unforgiving of administrations that are perceived to have lost control. The 2000 fuel duty protesters were seen as plucky underdogs, standing up for ordinary motorists against a remote and arrogant government. Public opinion was supportive, even in the queues outside filling stations.
Could a farmers’ revolt on APR have a similar impact? Is there another Brynle Williams out there who could lead this revolt? (Williams himself went on to be a Conservative Welsh Assembly Member and died of cancer in 2012.) Is this potentially a transformative moment for the Conservatives to use this issue to boost their political standing?
Not really.
For a start, although there is no doubt that there is public sympathy for farmers over the impact of inheritance tax on maintaining family farms, this is not like concerns over fuel duty.
Most of us are motorists; most of us pay fuel duty. Not many of us are farmers with more than £3m in assets to pass on. It is more than likely that the level of public support that farmers currently receive would not withstand significant disruption to the lives of those with much less wealth.
Nor should we forget that the 2000 protesters made their point but did not sustain their actions for more than ten days. Williams did not push his luck with public opinion. Had he done so by maintaining the blockade, there was a distinct chance that public anger would have switched from the Labour government to the protesters.
There are lessons, too, for a Tory opposition. It is not surprising that the Conservatives oppose the APR reforms. This was a measure that was always likely to create strong opposition, which is why proposals to reform APR were rejected by Conservative ministers (although we certainly considered them in my time at the Treasury).
But there is a further question for Kemi Badenoch and her team to consider: if protests escalate, where should the Conservatives stand?
In 2000, William Hague took a sympathetic stance on the fuel duty protests. He described the protesters as “fine, upstanding citizens” and pledged to cut fuel duty by three pence in response. Given the electoral plight the Tories found themselves in, and the strong public support for the protesters, the opportunity was hard to resist.
But there were two problems for the Conservatives in associating themselves with an oil blockade as part of a campaign to bring down fuel duty.
The first was a fiscal one. If the Conservatives were now committed to cutting fuel duty, where was the money coming from? There was no convincing answer.
The second issue was that by being seen as broadly supportive of the protests, the Conservatives did not look like a natural party of government. It is generally the left who come across as the placard-wavers, obsessed by the politics of protest not the politics of power. Tory support surged in that September, but it was not to last. A heavy election defeat in the following June was to come.
Similar challenges would apply today. On the substance of the policy, promising to reverse the reforms of APR (and, for that matter, Business Property Relief which protects family businesses from inheritance tax) would not be the most expensive measure (£500m a year).
But Labour will be asking, at the next election, if that is the right priority for the hard-pressed public finances. I am sceptical that many will conclude that it will be.
Then there are the protest tactics. The public supported the fuel protesters mainly because the cause directly affected millions of people and Williams knew when to back off before the “enough is enough” sentiment became too strong. Those calling for greater militancy may lack Williams’ judgement, and overplay their hand. If so, the public mood will quickly change.
There will be some Conservatives who would relish an escalation of protests. But a true understanding of what happened in 2000 shows that there are political risks for the opposition, too. Badenoch should keep her distance from the more militant farming voices.