Growing strong - causes which took root years ago can change the world
"First they ignore you , then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you ." --- Tony Benn IT was 175 years ago this week that a small group of Victorians set-up the Vegetarian Society to promote meat-free diets. This might perhaps surprise you in a society where most men and no women had the vote, where the workhouse was a fact of life and slavery had only been abolished some 15 years earlier. Today, official estimates suggest one in ten Britons - more than six million people nationwide - follow a vegetarian diet. Obviously this means that a clear majority do not, a fact that shouldn't be forgotten by those who have chosen to make the switch. But it's obviously equally nonsense to treat meat-free diets as either new or niche - this is a growing constituency of the population, feeding a multi-billion pound industry of plant-free produce. These are facts that clearly escaped senior Tories