As part of the overall deficit-cutting package announced a few weeks ago by George Osborne, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) will seek to sell of gigantic tracts of forests and woodlands all over the UK. All just earn a quick quid.
From Friday’s Guardian:
"The environment secretary Caroline Spelman is expected to soon spell out plans to raise as much as £5bn from the sale. … If confirmed, it would amount to the largest change of land ownership since the second world war and could, some claim, see previously protected woodlands make way for golf courses, housing developments and a wave of new Center Parcs-style resorts."
Now I understand that the deficit needs to be cut, and in general I am fully in support of lower government spending, but here the Government seems to be going a bit off script. Cost cutting and selling off assets should never be done for their own sake. Every measure should have an objective besides simply saving money. In this case, however, there seems to be no rationalisation except the necessity of slashing the DEFRA budget. Except that is, if more golf courses, Center Parcs resorts and expensive mansions are cause enough to get rid of one’s woodlands. Of course, they aren’t cause enough. Britain has enough of those already. Why should a nation highest aspiration be to have the most acres of golf links per capita of any country of the face of God’s green Earth?
It would be one thing if the only forests being lined up for auction would be those hideous commercial monoculture pine-nurseries, but it gets worse: the full, foolish extent of the mistakes being planned is described in last Saturday’s Telegraph:
"Legislation which currently governs the treatment of "ancient forests" such as the Forest of Dean and Sherwood Forest is likely to be changed giving private firms the right to cut down trees.
Laws governing Britain's forests were included in the Magna Carta of 1215, and some date back even earlier."
Yes, forests that have been domains owned by the Government in all its many guises for nearly 800 years are now in danger of the logger’s axe. These woodlands, the last of those primeval forests where once Kings hunted the furtive stag and rich-robbing outlaws could live unencumbered by civilised law, are the scattered remnants of a Britain that is passed forever into memory. They are as potent reminders of the glories of the past as the Cathedrals and Manors of men and intrinsically bound to the history of the British Isles.
But before I get overly sentimental – as the romantic in me is perhaps too wont to do – this proposal is a perfect example of why calling the Coalition Government conservative is looking increasingly untenable. A true conservative-minded government would never seek to sell things that have been very well managed by the public sector for centuries without proper review and discussion. In the case of the ancient woodlands of Britain, even a moderate conservative can see that maintaining these forests is something that can only be done by the government. A private company looking and needing to make money of it will interfere in such a way as to destroy the essentially natural character of an ancient wood.
Finally, it ought to be a priority for an administration that wants to promote such a vague concept as the ‘Big Society’ to give people – especially children – the opportunity to experience the joys of a British wilderness. There they might realise that Britain is more than the grey, concrete tower blocks of the modern British city. There they might feel a deeper connection with their country and all its beauty than they will ever feel through government-sponsored society-enhancing programs. A ‘Big Society’ can never come into being without such an instinctive shared connection.
The selling of forests for a few billions would be a mistake. Some cuts are good, but this is not one of those. If the Coalition really goes through with this plan they should also realise that once ancient woodlands are gone they will never come back. And that would be a great sadness. To quote from Keats’ Robin Hood:
"Gone, the merry morris din;
Gone, the song of Gamelyn;
Gone, the tough-belted outlaw
Idling in the "grenè shawe;"
All are gone away and past!
And if Robin should be cast
Sudden from his turfed grave,
And if Marian should have
Once again her forest days,
She would weep, and he would craze:
He would swear, for all his oaks,
Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes,
Have rotted on the briny seas;
She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her--strange! that honey
Can't be got without hard money!"
