Even if we are doomed to accept the globalisation of everything else, accepting the globalisation of the food economy will mean the doom of human communities. The case for this has been put so powerfully in recent years that I am surprised to discover politicians, economists, WTO apologists, eurofreaks and other unscrupulous optimists who are still able to pooh-pooh it. We may not agree with George Monbiot that globalisation can be controlled only by global democracy. But we must surely accept the premise from which his argument begins, which is that our local human resources - material, geographical, social and (I would add) spiritual - are being depleted by processes that have no need to answer for the damage they cause and no ability to repair it.
Hereabouts, we still have a local food economy. That is because we sell to each other, and can ignore the laws that tell us not to sell unpasteurised milk, unstamped eggs, home-killed pork or freshly strangled chickens. When it comes to local wine, however, the regime of insane regulations begins to bite. An enterprising neighbour has planted vines at nearby Noah's Ark, where he makes a crisp dry white from Riesling, Scheurebe and similar varietals. He has worked seriously and scientifically and has named his product "Cloud Nine", in honour of the crows, which were the ninth pair of creatures to enter Noah's Ark and which chattered contentedly in the clouds around the mast. And he has proudly put his product on sale as "English Table Wine". A European directive now tells him that he must pour the excellent 1991 vintage down the drain or risk prosecution.
The offending word is not "table" or "wine" but - you guessed it - "English". This bottle lays claim to a locality not recognised by our rulers, the locality that shaped me and maybe half our readers, the object of our visceral attachments and subject of our collective memories. Just as the English are not to be allowed their own parliament, their own law or their own historical homeland, so they are not to be allowed their own wine. Sure, the UK is still recognised - it has an aseptic, bureaucratic sound to it, and shares a letter with the ruling power. But there is no such region as England, and the person who sets out proudly to show that the English can make wine now, just as they did in Saxon times, and who announces this on the label, is committing a crime.
George Monbiot wouldn't worry about this, for he sees national loyalties as obstacles to the global democracy that is to rescue our birthright from the global predators. I see the EU's directive in another way: as an invitation to reassume English sovereignty over Gascony, and to sell the English Wine that Chaucer sold, grown on the banks of the Gironde.
