Tim Bonner: Challenging the perception of the countryside

On Sunday, BBC Countryfile tackled the thorny issue of the attitude of ethnic minorities towards the countryside. Presenter Dwayne Fields referenced Defra's Landscapes Review published last year which found that: "The countryside is seen by both black, Asian and minority ethnic groups and white people as very much a 'white' environment".

I have spent many years rebutting claims - usually from the far-left and animal rights movement - that rural communities are endemically racist. This is utter nonsense, often generated by the real prejudice of such groups against people who live in the countryside. Some Labour MPs even tried to smear the Alliance when far right groups tried to infiltrate marches and protects in the run up to the hunting ban, but we were always able to show that the racists had been rejected and never tolerated.

Later, when the British National Party was having some electoral success a decade or so ago, I locked horns with an unwise national newspaper columnist who suggested that naive country people living near her second home were going to be duped into voting for the BNP. The evidence actually showed the exact opposite - that rural people were much less likely to vote for a racist party than their urban counterparts.

None of this, however, contradicts the findings of the Landscapes Review which relate to the attitude of ethnic minority communities towards the countryside, not on the attitude of people in the countryside towards ethnic minorities. The reality is that the countryside is very much white. Ethnic minorities have historically settled in urban, not rural communities, and the proportion of the rural population from such backgrounds is therefore very low. So, it is no surprise that when people from ethnic minorities do visit the countryside, they often perceive that there are barriers to their engagement in rural activities.

Whilst I am certainly not suggesting that it is a direct comparison, an Englishman who has walked into a bar in West Wales - or a pub in the Western Isles - entirely inhabited by locals, knows something of what it feels like to be the 'other'. It is this feeling, multiplied many times over, that creates the perception within ethnic minority communities that the countryside is not for them.

For the economic - as well as the social - wellbeing of rural communities, that perception is a problem. It is a problem that a significant proportion of the population feels disconnected from the countryside and disinclined to visit it, but resolving that problem is not straightforward. Overcoming the perceived barriers to ethnic minority engagement with the countryside and rural activities may require targeted campaigns and positive discrimination, and this is action we should welcome if it helps to challenge the perception that the countryside is solely a 'white' environment.