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Clarkson, Lloyd-Webber: millionaires, entertainers…Farmers?

By Angelika Etherington-Smith

In November 2024 thousands of farmers descended upon Westminster protesting the new the Labour government’s reform to Inheritance tax – making farmers pay 20% over 10 years and from which they have been except since 1984. Leaders of the protest included composer Andrew Lloyd-Webber and presenter Jeremy Clarkson, with the latter running a farm of 1000 acres and the former owning 5000 acres of farmland in Hampshire. These gentlemen got fame and wealth from the entertainment industry, not farming, yet positioned themselves as avid farmers, pushing back against government policy. This raises a question: who is a farmer?

To understand why mogul musician and motorist millionaire present themselves as farmers we need to understand the identity of the farmer beyond the economic claims. Instead, Marxist and linguistic analysis shows the professional identity and birth culturism elements critical to a farmer’s identity and why adopting such identity is both hypocritical and attractive to Clarkson and Lloyd-Weber. 

The issue of ownership of and and labour has long been a critical one – from slavery in America to serfdom in Europe. Marx discussed in detail about the exploitation enforced by the “owners” – bourgeoisie on the “workers” – the proletariat. Lines blur in these definitions when it comes to the identity of the modern farmer, with some working the land they own. This is a key split in the definition of a farmer today – a farmer who farms vs a farm owner. In cases of both Clarkson and Lloyd-Webber, they both fit the Farm Owner description much better for a while. The former has owned 1000 acres since 2008 but has began to farm himself in 2019 for his show, with “A man in the village [running] it before”. The unnamed man then was the farmer, not Clarkson, for over a decade. Similarly Lloyd-Weber claimed to have worked his farm for the last 40 years, incongruent with a life as a frequently travelling musician. His staff worked his acreage and the nearby Watership Down Stud farm. He sees his farm as an “asset only pay[ing] back 2.2 per cent”. Farming not being his livelihood is highly conflicting with an identity of a farmer, who’s production of raw food goods are his main source of income, thus defined most by a profession, not biology or nationstate. 

This leads to a complex relationship with birth culturism central existent in the farmer identity. Friedrich wrote that “farmer’s existence depending on his place of birth, “fatherland” becomes an inseparable part [of their identity]”. This explains why Marx’s claim that “proletarians do not have any fatherland” falls on deaf ears when it comes to farmers. Due to this emotional connection to land and labour at the centre of this identity, farmers often see the land passing down in the family as consolidation of their identity. Clare Wise shares that “From an early age, it’s drilled into you that the farm, the land and its legacy are things you carry and pass on to your children”. This embeds the birth culture into this identity – jus sanguis bonding the land to profession. On a smaller scale this follows common stereotypes about farming families, but in the context of a homogenous rural environment the birth culturism shifts into a xenophobic nationalism, stemming from the farmer’s love of land mixed with agrarianist apprehension to strangers and urbanist modernity.

Lloyd-Webber further perpetuates xenophobic nativism, stating that as a consequence of new policy the land “will be bought out by foreigners, (..)outsiders…not British”. Such nativist statement coming from someone identifying as a farmer is critical in the discourse about a farmer’s identity. The idea of a foreigner obtaining (their) British land evokes strong emotions from farmers, whose “attachement to paternal soil [leads them to support] emotional appeals, no matter how extreme”, connecting farmers to ideologies randing from white nationalism to fascism. This support is not driven from complete ideological support, but rather a nativist connection to land and hereditary profession. 

The hereditary aspect of the identity is the greatest challenge to Lloyd-Webber and Clarkson’s pursuit of a farmer’s identity. Neither entertainer comes from a farming family, with both buying the land with wealth acquired from their non-farming professions. Their hypocrisy is in evoking the birth culture from which they do not stem. Lloyd-Webber’s accusation that “[foreigners are buying land] purely as a long-term investment” is contradictory to Lloyd-Webber referring to his own farm as an “asset” and Clarkson seeing his as “a good way of passing on wealth to my children without the taxman getting involved”. With the government aiming to close the tax loophole while protecting farmers, reassessment of the farmer’s identity is necessary to create both just and responsive policy while supporting the backbone of Britain. 

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