Jenkins' Ear

I don’t want to leave the subject of the National Trust just yet. It’s the senior charity in the country dealing with land and buildings and its adopted patrician air demands we should expect good judgement and high standards. But I believe that, locally at least, it bears some responsibility for the poor management of local sites even those they are not official keepers of. As an NT member I’ve earned a say though I’ve noticed they are not in the habit of soliciting members’ opinions in relation to local consultations. NT does not manage Blacka, SWT does, but it has a very strong influence both through personal relations between managers and in the fact that NT is involved in management of land all round Blacka. NT is also the leader in the Sheffield Moors Partnership whose intention it is to impose uniformity of a approach to all constituent parts.

Given the amount of public money going into the land management they are responsible for the question who decides how our money is spent? Who decides what kind of appearance our landscape should have and what kind of wildlife should enjoy it? How much say do we have in it?

This is the essence of the question posed by the most prominent public figure of the National Trust in the article I quoted in the post two days ago.

Sir Simon Jenkins, NT’s very articulate and outspoken Chair, wanted to know why the public in particular the majority urban population were not being asked what their money should be spent on. Who decides how the £3 billion plus gets spent that goes on CAP farming subsidies (and more on things like Higher Level Stewardship). The message of his article is that we should all be holding to account those landowners who receive masses of subsidy and that we should insist that they keep their land looking beautiful.

And not to forget he’s talking mainly about farming on private land. He’s concerned about the quality of the work that we get from those receiving public subsidies for what they do on their own land. He’s saying that he expects a high standard of work and that it should also look good. With all that money coming from CAP to the landowner we the public have a right to expect great things when we walk in the countryside. Nobody can accuse Jenkins of not appreciating what’s attractive and worthwhile in the countryside. His books on English Churches and Country Houses are much praised guides to those buildings and testament to  a fine and educated judgement. As he says we should now expect certain farmers he identifies to set about sorting out their ‘manky’ hedges and keeping their sheep looking smart implying that he’s not been much impressed up to now.

I would love to hear what he would say about some of the sights he would find on land on and around Blacka Moor. What would he make of the livestock defecation, the destruction of wildflowers, the war waged on trees, the large scale poisoning of vegetation, the depressingly low standards of workmanship and management, the anti nature agenda. And this is not the responsibility of private landowners it is on public land and influenced and encouraged by the same National Trust of which he is the most senior figure. I wonder how much he gets as Chair?  And does he really believe that the public should be fully involved in the decisions about what kind of landscape we should have. Because if he does I would like to know what his reaction would have been to my call for a proper debate over the future of such a large area of public land as the Sheffield Moors – and let’s add in the High Peak area too; the National Trust has gone about their new management strategy in both areas in tandem. Because there has been no serious debate however much paperwork and self justification the local apparatchiks have produced to obfuscate their line managers and political masters. And some of us who follow his articles and books know that Jenkins is keen on local decision making yet we know down here that any local element to these processes has been phoney, a calculated bamboozlement disguising top down decision making.

I would be quite happy to support Simon Jenkins' campaign against pylons and wind turbines bestriding the Welsh hills ( as well as his other campaign against city skyscrapers) if he will support those of us who want a more natural and more wooded landscape in our uplands. At the very least he could promote a proper debate about it. After all that seems to be the implication of what he is saying in his article of 2005.

Back in April I made a plea to the SMP through the NT that a full scale debate was necessary on the uplands. The substantial area of Peak District land up for consideration raises all sorts of questions which the local officers just did not want to discuss. So what happened to the message in the article? Or did the local officers and the middle managers in the National Trust make sure that this never reached Jenkins’ Ear?