Skip to main content
The times they are a-changin'
DAVE BANGS sees all socialist notions long gone from farming communities overridden by mega farms and agricultural monopolies
ponnies

ISAAC EVANS has gone now. He died in 2006. 

Yet when I visit my mate Chris, his son, who now runs the farm alone, his dad is alive in my mind. How could he not be? He was such a big presence, with his beard and his cap, and at one stage a dowsing stick, talking the hind leg off a donkey, as he always did. And how often do you meet a socialist farmer?

When I recently visited Chris I asked him to tell me how many socialist farmers he knew in this rolling Welsh border country east of Pontypool.

Morning Star call for advertising
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Chippenham fen
Notes From A Free Walker / 10 August 2024
10 August 2024
From John Clare country to ancient fenland, Ed Miliband’s solar farm approvals risk industrialising precious rural spaces — we must find greener solutions that don’t sacrifice our countryside’s beauty, writes DAVE BANGS
bonfire
Notes From A Free Walker / 13 July 2024
13 July 2024
Houses on St Anne's council estate in Bristol, dating from t
Notes From A Free Walker / 8 June 2024
8 June 2024
Decades of right to buy have eroded the social balance of our countryside — and now holiday lets and second home owners from the cities are compounding the crisis, writes DAVE BANGS
A cuckoo
Notes From A Free Walker / 11 May 2024
11 May 2024
Spring has sprung in all its glory — but DAVE BANGS is disturbed by the absence of a crucial sound