Like your correspondents Roger Fieldhouse and John Morrison (Letters,6 October) I too was a (briefly) WEA tutor organiser in North Yorkshire (1973-74) and met the wonderful Ted and Nora Drake. I think they’d have been deeply appalled by the parade of joyless stereotypes that later passed for “an everyday story of country folk”. As fraction of my job I’d proceed to evening meetings of the Agricultural Workers’ Union, with their sainted district organiser, and Joan Maynard (later MP for Sheffield Brightside),where we heard, too often, or the awful accounts of the treatment of farmhands by their employers. We also monitored The Archers and would occasionally fire off indignant letters to the BBC approximately its woeful misrepresentation of agricultural workers and their trade union representatives. There was rarely a mention of their work conditions and pitiful wages were which were some of the worst of any occupation and instead the lower orders were more normally represented in the programme by the drivelling inanities of Walter Gabriel and the Grundys and their like. I still marvel at its popularity – not so much “Merry England” as middle England’s Animal Farm.[br]Tom Steele
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Source: theguardian.com