Suffolk writer on the mood at the Farmers' Rally in London

Richard Negus shares his experience of the farmers' rally on Tuesday (Image: Supplied) I wedged my back against an ornate lamp-post opposite the Cenotaph and looked out across Whitehall. People flowed around me. Hundreds carried boxes filled with food grown on family farms, donations for the Capital’s foodbanks. One steady handed young man in a boiler suit bore stacked trays of eggs. He swerved like a matador around the human traffic. Behind him a gentleman with a placard in one hand carried a bulging bag in the other, filled with Savoy cabbages. I read his sign, “I Can’t Afford To Die”.

I can't afford to die, said one banner (Image: Callum McInerney-Riley) I couldn’t quite put my finger on the mood of the thousands already assembled, or the thousands more who continued to flock into the heart of London wearing their wellies and boiler suits, country coats and caps. Was this a party? No, the smiles and laughter were too muted for that.

The pundits on the breakfast radio shows had claimed the farmers were coming to “vent their fury” at Rachel Reeves’s budget. Yet I struggled to feel any visceral anger.

Families turned out in force (Image: Callum McInerney-Riley) Some of the placards they carried were forthright enough, but there was no banging drums or chants. I stopped three boys in overalls, their mother shepherding them like a collie. “Why are you here?” I asked one.

He reached inside his boiler suit for a hand written speech, in a remarkable display of pre-planning for one so young.

“If family farms like ours stop, the nation will not thrive,” he read. “The government doesn’t see the consequences of putting taxes on small farms. We are already pushed to the limit and if we have to import food it will cause more pollution.”

I learned his name was Ezekiel and he was nine.

Richard found the mood quite good-humoured (Image: Callum McInerney-Riley) An articulated lorry filled with bales formed a stage near the Women in War memorial.

Speeches began, but the sound system was insufficient for much to be heard.

Someone from the farmer-led organising team fiddled with a volume control and Kemi Badenoch’s voice rang around the grand offices filled with civil servants.

“We will at the very first opportunity, reverse the Family Farm Tax,” she promised. Cheers echoed her words and the placards waved, but there remained a solemnity to it all.

Jeremy Clarkson then mounted the podium and the crowds warmed up. As he listed the litany of challenges farmers faced in the wake of Labour’s budget - Agricultural Property Relief, Business Property Relief, the Basic Payment Scheme and National Insurance hikes - I heard for the first time a roar of agreement and shared approval. Yet still I held a niggling sense that this was unlike any other protest I had witnessed.

A dog joins the rally (Image: Callum McInerney-Riley) I bumped into Glenn Buckingham the Suffolk NFU chairman.

“What’s happening here?” I asked him. “This all feels odd”. “Do you know?” he replied, “I think there is a realisation, it's not just farmers being hurt by this budget, it's everyone in rural communities.”

Glenn paused to find the right words. “Any trust between government and rural society has gone. It all is so very sad.”

Glenn rushed off, he had meetings with MPs to attend. As the rain fell on Whitehall and I walked back to Westminster tube station, I realised Glenn had summed up the emotions that I had so struggled to discern in this protest. The tens of thousands of farmers gathered in London were expressing their feelings not of self pity, anger or indignation but a heart rending sadness. Sadness that their lives, their farms and their families appear not to matter to this government.

*Richard Negus is a professional hedgelayer and writer from Finningham. His book ‘Words From The Hedge’, published by Unbound, is released on May 1, 2025 and is available to pre-order at is https://unbound.com/books/words-from-the-hedge .