Farmers To Action launch ‘Trailer of Truth’ campaign

Farmers and rural campaigners will take to the roads this September with the Trailer of Truth, a nationwide protest tour demanding urgent government action on rural issues ahead of the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool.

Organised by Farmers To Action and backed by several grassroots farming groups, the campaign begins today in Truro and culminates on 28 September in Liverpool, where all three protest trailers, from England, Scotland and Wales, will converge for a mass rally.

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Kathleen Renner, of Farmers to Action, said: “We have been able to bring a lot of the campaigning groups together. There is a real coming together this time.”

The campaign’s message is: “Truth over spin. Accountability over excuses.”

Each trailer will travel across the country adorned with banners.

The public are encouraged to write messages on the banners to their MPs calling for reforms to inheritance tax, fairer national insurance contributions, restored rural protections, and action on declining food and energy security. 

There will also be an opportunity to post personal letters into a mobile post box fixed to the trailers, which Farmers to Action will deliver to the MPs. 

The confirmed southern trailer route includes:

• Truro Livestock Market – 3 September
• Hallworthy – 4 September
• Exeter – 5 September
• Sedgemoor – 6 September
• Blackmoor Gate – 8 September
• Frome – 10 September
• Thame – 12 September

Further stops include Salisbury, Hailsham, Dover, Farnham, Shrewsbury, and Mold, with more locations to be announced.

The trailers will be towed by different farmers across the various legs of the journey, passed on like a baton in a relay.

‘Show solidarity’

Farmers and the public are being encouraged to join the convoys for any part of the route to show solidarity and raise awareness in their local communities.

Steven Carpenter, from Bishop’s Waltham in Hampshire, who first proposed the idea, said: “We felt that sending the trailer to most parts of the UK, people would write their own messages… arriving in Liverpool the government can see for themselves how many are affected.”

Adding his support to the campaign, Gareth Wyn Jones, a hill farmer based in North Wales and a social media influencer, said: “We have a duty to protect the food security in this nation to keep the general public fed with affordable nutrition and good home-grown produce.”