The Express

Don't Make Farmers Pay For GM Chaos

It sounds like one of the great class confrontations of recent years. The noble lord and his followers, charged with destroying a crop in front of hard-pressed farmers, the Brigham brothers of Walnut Tree Farm in Norfolk.

A scene from the enclosures of the 18th century? Some terrible aristocratic repression of English farmers of yesteryear? No. This was, it is alleged, a Greenpeace attack on genetically-modified maize, grown as a farm trial to discover its effect on the environment. Lord Melchett, a hereditary peer, is also Greenpeace's executive director. T'was he who is said to have led the devastation of the brothers' crop. They were not happy. According to The Guardian's reporter, William Brigham, one of the three, was yelling: "Look! It's Lord ****** Melchett. You're a right democrat, you are... You Lord Melchett, you're a ********. You ****. I'll punch that ******. You rotten ******* sods." (I could go on but the *** key on my computer is getting sticky).

We all know the arguments against GM food. But to understand the brothers' fury in full, you have to know that, like thousands of other British farmers, their incomes are collapsing. They see GM food as one escape: William Brigham said he'd put 2,000 gallons of slurry on it ("You know what slurry is? Well, it comes from the back of a cow") and only two pints of herbicide.

I think there are good arguments for going slow on commercial GM planting in Britain, a small and crowded island, though I believe the technology is potentially good. But testing the plants first is a fair way to proceed. The anti-GM crusade, though, has cast logic, rather than pollen, to the winds. First, they said there should be no commercial planting until the effects had been thoroughly tested. Now they say, let's destroy any test crops.

Worse, to my mind, is the argument that it is "undemocratic" and "indefensible" of the Government to allow the tests to go ahead because a majority of people in an opinion poll are against GM crops. Hold on. We live in a parliamentary democracy. We don't have rule by referendum, still less opinion poll. If a majority of the population wants hanging, or castration of rapists, does that mean it is "undemocratic" not to begin lynching now?

We choose politicians to balance competing interests, to broker compromise, to protect liberties against the majority. Three hard-working farmers who were operating within the law and doing what they thought right for the environment have suffered. I think that's disgusting. One of the brothers collapsed and was taken to hospital, although he was later released. Before those responsible go further, they might ask themselves how they'd have felt had he died. Would that also have been a price worth paying?