I don't know about the U.K., McGrath, but in North America country people tend to be more politically and socially conservative than city people. In my home provice of Ontario, for instance, the Conservative Party's abiding strength is in the more rural areas, and those are the areas that can be depended upon to back right wing legislation.

Cities are more cosmopolitan and varied in their makeup, and that tends to promote liberalism. Cities with universities are particulary so. Also, the average age is a lot younger in the major centres, and that's a BIG factor.

In the recent Ontario election the Conservatives got clobbered, but they still managed to hang on in some of their rural bastions, where the population is older, whiter, and more traditional...BUT...a mock election was held province-wide among high school students in every Ontario riding AND....not one single riding of students in the entire province elected a Conservative member this time!!! Not one. This is after 8 years of Conservative policies that did more harm to this province, its schools, its ecological protections, and its hospitals than anyone could have anticipated in their worst nightmares.

This tells me that the older people are, the more conservative and frankly mean-minded a lot of them tend to be (it's the old "I'm all right, Jack, so just promise ME a tax cut and to hell with the have-nots, they're just bums anyway" attitude), and the younger people are the reverse, ready to try something much more egalitarian. Young people dream of a better World, while people try to protect their established position of comfort and control and their hoard of material possessions.

Thank God for the young! (They're a great encouragement to old radicals such as myself.)

- LH