Radio 5 Live did one of their programmes from a vegetable farm at Stourport on Severn yesterday. I had relatives who lived there in the late 60s and early 70s and we used to quite often meet them for a day at places like Ross on Wye.
I remember that the England v Brazil match in the 1970 World Cup was played on a Sunday and that I was worried about missing it because we were on one of our visits to our relatives. On that day, we went to a farm at somewhere like Symmons Yat and spent the day picking strawberries - the deal with the farmer was that, although you didn't get paid, you could eat as many strawberries as you liked as long as you were able to present him with a big enough quantity of picked fruit for him to sell.
Obviously, it was a system which was open to abuse, but on the four or five times I went there, I never came across anyone who did.
It was hard, tiring work in the sun, but I enjoyed it and yet I wasn't altogether surprised to hear yesterday that the farmer they interviewed was concerned about the implications of leaving the EU because he thought it would impact on the number of full time fruit pickers he would be able to employ.
Not to put too fine a point on it, he was very dubious about being able to fill the posts with British workers if the mainly migrant workforce he now uses were unable to continue with their jobs as a result of Brexit. He tried to stop short of saying British people were too lazy or just unwilling to do such work, but that was the message which came over.
If you offered me a job now (he pays the latest living wage rate) picking fruit and vegetables, I'd turn it down because I know I'd be knackered and no use to anyone after a couple of hours, but forty five years ago, I did it willingly and wasn't even being paid.
I'm not knocking youngsters here because I believe huge numbers of this country's adult population would consider such work beneath them somehow and, with productivity levels falling, I think those who try to make out that Brexit won't be a problem because we got along fine before we joined the Common Market may be guilty of not recognising that the character of the British worker has changed since then.
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