Sir Keir did little to emphasize his family's rural origins. Photo: PA/Ben Birchall
Herbert Starmer remembered fondly his rural upbringing – how their cottage was used during filming to shelter from the rain, and his gamekeeper father would leave with a gun under his arm.< /p>
As he recounted in a local history brochure, some of his earliest memories were of catching rabbits and having a pet fox living in the family barn.
The essence of rural life is a far cry from the image of his grandson, the knighted human rights lawyer who is vying to become the country's next prime minister.
In an interview, a copy of which was obtained by The Telegraph, Mr Starmer explains that his father, seven of his uncles and his grandfather were huntsmen.
It is perhaps surprising that Sir Keir Starmer, always keen to shake off his reputation as a member of the metropolitan elite, and talk of his father being a toolmaker, have done little to highlight his rural history.
Perhaps this because traditional Labor voters, most of whom come from cities, don't know what a gamekeeper's larder is, or the details of a day in the life of protecting pheasants.
But Labor knows. that she needs to win over the rural counties if she wants to get the keys to Number 10 in July. At the last election the party won just 1 per cent of constituency seats, compared with the 28 per cent that went to Conservative MPs.
Sir Keir Starmer pictured visiting a farm in Wiltshire Photo: PA/Stefan Rousseau
The party promised to show more “respect” for rural communities. But it has angered some over a vow to outlaw trail hunting, seen as a return to the class war that erupted under Tony Blair.
Campaigners are now calling on Sir Keir to take his family history into account when crafting his policies. ahead of the July election.
The call comes as the Labor leader told voters in his first major speech of the general election campaign on Monday that his “character is shaped by where I started in life.” .
He said Oxted was where his grandfather Herbert also grew up – he was a “real Englishman”, recalling his first job collecting stones for local farmers and sharing a football pitch with the local cows.
“It's part why I love our country. Not just beauty – or football – but a kind of quiet, resigned resilience,” he said at the event in Sussex. “Village unity. It's the best of Britain.”
Sir Keir was just 14 when his grandfather also reflected on his rural childhood for the north-based Bourne Society's Record of Local History magazine. – East Surrey.
In the 30-page booklet, Mr Starmer explains that his “first memory is of being punished for killing a rabbit by setting a gin trap, a type of which is now banned.”
“It shocked my mother and my father beat me up. I guess it wasn't that surprising; my father was gamekeeper for Sir Walpole Greenwell of Marden Park, and he was always killing rabbits,” Mr. Starmer recalls.
“The Tamed Fox”
The family had no running water, but they got it from a local spring or rain barrel.
His father, Gustavus, worked as a gamekeeper for Sir Walpole Greenwell, who owned Marden Park and founded W Greenwell & Co., one of the city's most successful stockbroking firms.
“On rainy filming days, Walpole Greenwell's guests used our cottage and its picnic table, although Father was strict with rabbits and other predatory animals, we had pet rabbits, a pheasant pen… and a pet fox. !” Mr Starmer recalled in a 1977 interview.
“The fox lived with us for about three years, kept in an open barn, but my father shot him after he bit my younger brother Reg.”
Gustav moved to Surrey from Yorkshire, “where his father (a resident of Lincolnshire) had eight sons. All were caretakers, and two are still alive.”
“Every morning my father went on his 'round'… It was his job to look after the pheasants, which meant he killed or caught just about anything he could get his hands on. walked, ran or flew,” Starmer told the Bourne Society.
— By the way, there were partridges on the estate, but they never bred them. Rabbits, badgers, owls, moles, jays, magpies… everyone was shot, and my father had a “gamekeeper's storeroom” – a small shed with dead animals hanging outside. The owls were caught in a trap set on a high pole, a very cruel device.”
Stuffed and sent to the museum
One day, during a snowstorm, his father shot “what he thought was a sparrowhawk,” but it was later discovered to be a “peregrine falcon,” which was then stuffed and sent to a local museum.
“Foxes are treated specially,” he said. “This was hunting country, and shooting foxes could get my father fired. He told my mother, “I'm going to look for monkeys,” with a gun under his arm. The fox population in the Marden Valley has never gotten out of control, although my father could never be made to admit that he ever had one in mind. «
Mr Starmer, who later worked as a blacksmith, even recalled how he received 50 shillings from the Greenwell family when his son Rodney – Sir Keir's father – was born on Christmas morning in 1934.
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Tim Bonner, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, said: “I hope the fact that Keir Starmer comes from a long line of gamekeepers and rural workers will shape his approach to the countryside.”
“His grandfather was raised in a deeply rural community, and many of the issues his family faced remain very relevant today. Jobs, housing, education and a sustainable countryside were the most important issues for Keir Starmer's family 100 years ago and remain priorities for rural people now.”
The Labor Party has been contacted for comment.
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