The colorful politics of rural life

Embach with its twin, Lend have a quarterly magazine mainly about social activities the schools and council. Those of us who help produce it are proud of its quality and it is popular among residents. Being one of the production team for a number of years, I have often been surprised by the strength of political feeling which permeates deep into life here, so far from the nation's capital.

Embach and its bigger twin sister village, Lend, are united by a single council with its own mayor and deputy mayor with considerable control over finance and other activities.

However, these are unalike twins. Lend, down in the valley is an industrial village dominated by a large aluminium manufacturing plant. Embach, 500m higher, is a farming village with many small, traditionally-run dairy farms.

Lend, because of its location in a narrow valley, is considered rather gloomy because of its lack of sunlight, whereas Embach lies on a sunny plateau. The people of one village, participate little in the activities of the other.

Lend is red while Embach is black. Political parties are defined by colour – red leans naturally to the left and black to the conservative right. Move further right and you come to blue and orange. And so the two villages are not only unalike, but in many respects they appear unrelated.

The village magazine, the IGEL, the intials stand stand for Information from the Gemeinde (council) Embach and Lend, but the word also means hedgehog - is sponsored by the SPÖ – the left wing political party. Their logo appears on the title page and there is a single page advertisement inside. There are some politically involved members of the production team but there is no overriding political message.

However, it is always brought home to me during the production cycle, how deeply ingrained and immovable are the differences between the red and black communities, differences which permeate many other aspects of life in Austria.

Take, for example, the motor rescue services or the banks. Until recently I was unaware, than one bank was more red or black than another. But it explains why Embach has one bank and Lend another – and possibly why only one of them advertises in the IGEL.

On a more local level, the village ski club may lean in one direction and the eisstockschießen (it's like curling) club in another. That one group is “black” while another is “red” is not obvious until it is time to put the magazine together, when political leanings creep in While my training is to assess a story by its newsworthiness, here,an additional factor,the shades of political color may be taken into account.

If you are born and bred here, the colour of your politics are embedded in your DNA and unlikely to change. Though they remain invisible to the incomer, they play an important role and exert an influence even in the most rural community. The strength and depth of politics in the countryside is disproportionate to the blandness of the grand coalition in Vienna.

There's no right or wrong about this – it only clarifies the obvious, that DNA is inherited and however long you live as an incomer in another country, you'll never fully absorb the local genes.

The IGEL production team proofreading a recent issue