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The Land Is Ours
a landrights campaign for Britain
LAND ESSAYS 3
The Countryside Movement claims to be concerned about all rural issues, and its formation coincided with the publication of the Government's Rural White Paper. Fronted by mild-mannered Sir David Steel, the Movement presented a plausible case for an umbrella organisation to lobby the corridors of power on issues like rural unemployment and housing. So what went wrong?
The Times immediately identified the Movement as a front for hunting, shooting and land-owning interests. The Scotsman called it a Trojan horse for the promotion of bloodsports. Even the Daily Telegraph carried an article ten days after the launch criticising the Movement for promoting conflict between town and country by exaggerating urban ignorance. The Guardian did a demolition job, publishing extracts from confidential minutes of meetings held from June 1995. These unceremoniously exposed the real reason for establishing the Countryside Movement and identified the source of its considerable funding. Animal rights campaigners were threatening the 'rural economy', meaning the vested interests of hunts, game shoot providers, landowners, farmers and agro-industry. According to the Guardian, Max Hastings, then editor of the Daily Telegraph, warned of the danger of being seen as the 'haves' against the 'have-nots', at the inaugural meeting on 21 June. He stressed the importance of tempting environmental groups to join and the need to campaign on non-controversial issues to draw in wide support. Alan Kilkenny, PR consultant for Lowe-Bell Communications, and Michael Sissons, pro-hunt journalist, wrote the proposal document for the new Movement.
The Countryside Business Group (CBG), a fund-raising body, would provide the finance. A multi-million pound advertising campaign was planned. Bartle Bogle Hegarty (of Levi's jeans fame), were persuaded to undertake the advertising account. This caused raised eyebrows. Launching an IFAW campaign around five years ago, John Hegarty (of Bartle Bogle Hegarty) had pledged that he would never work for a pro-field sports organisation. The Peterborough column in the Daily Telegraph reported much ponytail shaking amongst staff at the agency, who would have preferred an alternative account with the RSPCA.
From its inception there have been contradictions and tensions within the Movement, and these were to lead to publicised difficulties almost immediately. Having been so comprehensively de-smocked by the press, they Movement might have been expected to fade quietly from view. Not a bit of it. Within six months of the launch, the organisation had made its first decisive strike.
In March 1996, the RSPCA was warned that some of its animal rights campaigning exceeded its charitable remit. This was achieved by a single letter of complaint from Sir David Steel to the Charity Commission. The RSPCA was no longer allowed to campaign against activities considered of benefit to mankind, and was forbidden to stop anyone joining if they did not agree with its current policies. Following this ruling, the blood sports lobby began to infiltrate the RSPCA at the rate of 100 applications a week.
The main guns of the Movement are clearly trained on animal rights activists. But they were also concerned with the prospect of a Labour government giving greater public access to private estates. Marion Shoard, lecturer in countryside planning at London University, has highlighted how the right of exclusion is being increasingly used to turn access into a tradeable asset. Landowners are finding it lucrative to charge visitors for controlled access to land on which they are already receiving set-aside and other subsidies. Access therefore becomes yet another issue of the rural economy, which Steel and Co. are pledged to defend.
It is no surprise to find both the Duke of Westminster and the Earl Peel on the board of the Countryside Movement. The former is well known for his policy of minimum access to the Forest of Bowland. The latter, as Chairman of the Game Conservancy Trust, has been active in the Moorland Association's fight to stop the public being given the right to roam on moorland.
Exclusion has its down-side. Central to the Countryside Movement's formation was the realisation that for all their wealth and privilege, their power base exists in splendid isolation. Political power has gradually slipped away from the landed aristocracy, and they no longer command public sympathy for their recent stewardship of the land. The Movement's charter brands politicians of all parties "urban", animal rights activists are "urban", even the majority of village dwellers are classed as "urban" incomers and commuters with no understanding of country ways.
Instead of envying the 12% electoral support commanded by the countryside party in France, the Movement might stop to consider that this is achieved by an active participation of French people in their own farming communities. It is our own depopulation of the countryside which has led to its disenfranchisement. With increasing concern about how to accommodate future rates of urbanisation, the Movement could do worse than engage in a meaningful debate on land reform. Land for livelihoods, land for life and land for homes.
The Movement probably has other priorities. Its funding, for instance. £6.5m of funding was expected to come from the Countryside Business Group to finance the first year's advertising campaign. Founder and Secretary of the CBG i s Eric Bettelheim, a millionaire American barrister based in London with a shooting estate in Wiltshire. Chairman Hugh van Cutsem attended the inaugural meeting of the Movement in June 1995. The CBG hoped to raise an annual £5m, for example through persuading gunmakers, and similar businesses to contribute a percentage of their turnover to the group. A voluntary national game levy had also been mooted for angling and shoots.
By August there were warnings that the CBG might not be able to come up with the promised financial support. Worse from a PR point of view, by November Eric Bettelheim had gone public with his extreme views on animal rights activists. Members of the Board distanced themselves discreetly from his emotive language.
The CBG had better luck by April 1996. After a prolonged search, Neil Kennedy was appointed as Director. Admirably suited to the post, Mr Kennedy has a track record in defending commercial freedom for tobacco advertising and similarly threatened products. However, it is anyone's guess how much support the CBG is currently giving the Countryside Movement, which has always expected to become self-financing "in due course".
Also in April 1996, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, British Field Sports Society chief executive, wrote to his members via Countrysports magazine to complain at the lack of response to his le aflet "You are the future of Country Sports". Only 50 new members had been gained and barely 1% of the current members had offered help. Robin H-T is currently on the board of the Countryside Movement.
In any event, the Movement is claiming great success in registering new supporters at a rate of 700 a day, with volunteers organising stands at country fairs and placing leaflets in country pubs. For whatever reason, the Movement's minimalist office at 11 Tufton Street, Westminster is not geared to respond to a large mailing list. Soon after its launch, the Telegraph was reporting that it was difficult to obtain its charter, and its telephone number yielded no response. Currently, even with a Bristol agency handling replies to its leaflet, the London office can take a month to send out its charter pack.
Despite the best efforts of the Board, environment groups are steering clear of the Movement, and there have been skirmishes between Steel and the Ramblers. Ken Ball, president of the National Federation of Anglers, was tempted onto the board in time for the launch last November, but he failed to carry the rest of the angling world with him and is likely to lose his post. Anglers are wary of being tied too tightly to the hunting fraternity.
Steel is aware of the danger of alienating other groups by poaching their territory. In particular the CPRE (Council for the Protection of Rural England) may be less than pleased at having its own research quoted in the Movement's charter. Jonathan Dimbleby, its president, was quick to deny any connection with the Movement when he was linked to it by the Guardian.
For the moment, Steel is focused on the quieter pastures of rural education, fronting a press conference in mid-July. He complained that children know more about global warming than they do about how their food is produced. This raised a hoot from John Vidal in the Guardian's Eco-Soundings column. Surely some mistake, Sir David, your advisers will soon tell you: "the less children know about BSE, Farmer's Lung, sheep dip poisoning, battery farming, veal calf-rearing, pesticide spraying and so on, the better."
In fact, Steel is wearing his networking hat, promoting some of the existing rural education projects. The NFU's National Association of Farms for Schools initiative was launched in March 1995 to present the acceptable face of farming. Country Life magazine helpfully explained that this targeted those farms which had taken a more benevolent approach by developing quality and animal welfare. "A special benefit of these farms is that they are interesting....They are attractive to visiting schoolchildren who learn....that conditions do not always correspond with the vegetari an rhetoric." The Suffolk Farm Project leaflet comes complete with photographs of children cuddling piglet, duckling and well-feathered hen.
Make no mistake, there is real anguish in the shires. The rolling effects of BSE are compounded by fears of firearm control following Dunblane, and there is hardship as many go to the wall. The result should be a more honest public debate about the state of the countryside. What is certain is that the Countryside Movement did not move effortlessly into the position of leadership it has initially hoped. The fences are high and the lines are drawn in what has been dubbed the rural civil war.
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