Angry protesters threw paving stones at the police, punctured tires on parked cars and smashed shop windows. It was March 23, 1971 and about a hundred thousand farmers had come to Brussels to show their anger at the agricultural policy of the European Economic Community (EEC), the forerunner of the EU. They came from Belgium and from the rest of Europe. It is estimated that there were a thousand Dutch people among them. And farmers who thought Brussels was too far, protested in their own country, for example by blocking roads with tractors.
Things got out of hand, especially in Brussels. About 150 people were injured and a farmer was hit with a tear gas canister from the police. He died.
The farmers of half a century ago protested changes that had reversed the nitrogen measures that their colleagues are now opposing: then it was about plans to grow farms, while now farmers are forced to downsize. Yet there are lessons to be learned from their rebellion for today’s politicians and farmers.
In the years around 1971, Europe was working on agrarian reforms to prevent civilians from ever going hungry again, as had happened in World War II. In order to feed everyone, farmers had to work more efficiently and modernly, according to policymakers. This mainly meant: scaling up and specialization. No more small farms, with some arable farming, a few cows and some chickens, but large companies with one specialism. Cows, for example, or pigs or chickens.
The great man behind this way of thinking was Sicco Mansholt, who had shaken up farming as a Dutch minister of agriculture and had since become a commissioner at the EEC. He wanted European farmers to modernize together to ensure that there would always be enough food. The EEC would then guarantee minimum prices. In this way he laid the foundations for European agricultural policy as it largely still exists today.
The farmers who moved to Brussels in March 1971 therefore disagreed. One of their complaints was that small farmers would have to give up their business. They did not fit into the scaling-up plan and, moreover, Mansholt foresaw that with all future efficiency, surpluses could also arise. To prevent this, the total amount of agricultural land would be restricted. And that’s why small farmers had to stop.
In addition, farmers felt that the prices guaranteed by the EEC were far too low. They couldn’t keep their heads above water. And they showed that in Brussels. ‘Hitler exterminated the Jews, Mansholt the peasants,’ said a banner maker. The comparison of farmers with Jews in Nazi times is therefore anything but new.
What to do when activists are so angry? Two historians give three lessons.
Lesson 1: The farmer never existed
If you read newspaper articles from 1971, you quickly get the idea that all farmers were opposed to scaling up. But that was not the case, says Liesbeth van de Grift, professor of international history in relation to the environment at Utrecht University. ‘I don’t think there is anything more diverse than the agricultural sector,’ she says. This also applied to the years of the protest against Mansholt’s increase in scale: ‘There were major differences between agriculture, horticulture and livestock farms and between large and small businesses. The last two groups had different interests.’
The disagreement among farmers became clear during an action in August 1974, in the Utrecht stadium Galgenwaard. There thirty thousand farmers together demanded better earnings. But some wanted more government intervention, while others were in favor of self-regulation. That clashed. One of the speakers that day was Gérard Mertens, chairman of the Katholieke Nederlandse Boeren- en Tuindersbond, and opponent of much government interference. As soon as he tried to say something, part of the audience started yelling “boo” so loudly that he became unintelligible.
For twenty years Mertens had been a farmer’s representative and had consulted a lot with governments. But in 1974 some of the farmers thought he was old-fashioned: ‘People in Utrecht no longer knew what it meant to be a farmer in the 1970s’, says Van de Grift. Compared to Mertens’ early years, farming had changed so much that his way of thinking was outdated for some of the farmers.
Speaking tubes, such as Mertens, do not always represent the entire group, says Van de Grift. It is important to keep an eye on this: ‘Politicians like to talk to representatives of interests in order to create support for policy. But then they have to think for whom exactly the advocates are speaking. Who makes the most noise does not necessarily represent the most people.’
Lesson 2: Change is possible, with a good story
The booing from 1974 makes something more clear: the thinking of ‘the farmers’ is not cast in concrete. Mertens’ opponents largely came from a younger generation. Older farmers came from a time when there were still many small businesses, but their younger colleagues had grown up thinking that scaling was the future. They looked fundamentally differently at peasant life.
So Van de Grift says: ‘History shows that transitions are possible. But they can be very drastic for individuals. That’s why you need a good story and a long-term plan.’
In the post-war decades that story was: ‘There must always be enough food’. There is little to argue against this and although the situation has changed considerably – the Netherlands now produces largely for export – farmers still use it as an argument: without farmers there would be no food.
We have long since known that intensive livestock farming causes great damage to soil and air: ‘The problem of over-fertilization and acidification was already discussed under Gerrit Braks, the Minister of Agriculture from 1982 to 1986. But there has never been a real political debate about how to solve this and who should foot the bill. We have not worked on a clear story about the long term, while that is necessary to get people on board and to bring about change.’
Lesson 3: Even the longest actions are finite
With their protests from the 1970s, the farmers partly got their way. For example, Europe promised price increases shortly after the Brussels actions. But elsewhere, in another country and another economic branch, activists had to give up unsuccessfully.
In the early 1980s, the British government led by Margaret Thatcher felt it was time to close many of the country’s coal mines. They did not bring in enough money, so they had to close, to the anger of the men – almost all men – who made their money there. In March 1984 they started strikes and actions that would last a year and cost six lives.
Robert Gildea, emeritus professor of modern history at Oxford, investigates the strikes: ‘In other European countries, mines were also closed, but governments there had done something about alternatives for miners. For example, by offering training, so that dismissed employees had the opportunity to find other jobs. But the Thatcher government did not. And she was also determined to resist union protests.” This resulted in a long struggle with a lot of violence, especially on the part of the police. A low point was the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ on June 18, 1984. There, in South Yorkshire, thousands of police officers hit thousands of strikers hard. Irresponsible and excessively harsh, is the widely shared judgment in retrospect.
The miners had an important asset, Gildea explains, which made strikers last. That was their collective approach: ‘When the strikes started, many support groups, often led by miner’s wives, quickly set up. For example, they collected money to support the families of strikers, because they received no wages. Thanks to that support and mutual help, they were able to last for a long time.’
But mutual support had its limits, because like the peasants, the miners were divided. ‘Not all mines were threatened with closure,’ says Gildea. ‘In some regions there was still a lot of easily extractable coal, and mines were still profitable there. The men who worked there did not have to worry about their income yet. So not all miners were inclined to strike.’
Administrators took advantage of this division by sending men willing to work to mines that were on strike: “In every mining pit they tried to get a few to work, so as to break the morale of the strikers.”
That approach had an effect, especially towards winter. Despite the financial support, many strikers found themselves very tight financially. And they got cold, because normally they received coal to keep their house warm. But those who did not work received no coal. “Over the winter, more and more miners went back to work, making it difficult for the others to keep their spirits up.” Thus only the most fanatics remained and they too ended their actions in March 1985, without Thatcher having to adjust her plans. The mine closures continued.