The article will seek to plot the position of the Labour Party in relation to debates during the Second World War between rural preservationists and agricultural modernisers. It will review the recommendations of the Scott Report into land utilisation in rural areas, and outline recent research into popular attitudes to the countryside. It will then describe the way the Labour Party responded to these developments and draw some longer-term conclusions about their significance in relation to current debates about national identity and the countryside. It will be argued that while the Labour Party supported the need to protect the look of the landscape as part of the nation's heritage and national identity, in line with public opinion at the time, it also sought to encourage the physical planning of both town and country in a way that rejected some of the more anti-metropolitan tendencies of the rural preservationists.