‘We must not stop being articulate about what matters and what needs defending’

As president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, Sir Andrew Motion is promoting the countryside rather than poetry. He talks to Chris Bond.

IN his maiden speech after taking over from Bill Bryson as president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) back in June, Sir Andrew Motion praised the writer’s campaign against litter and his role in helping create the South Downs National Park.

Bryson is a hard act to follow and the former Poet Laureate takes on the role with the British countryside which we love and cherish arguably under greater pressure now than at any point in living memory.

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It faces threats from all sides, from politicians who insist we need a new London airport and a high speed rail network to ignite an ailing economy, to the growing number of wind turbines, which some people see as nothing more than a blot on the landscape, and profound fears about the proposed shake-up of the planning system and what this means for our precious green belt land.

Motion has come to Ilkley to meet members of the organisation’s West Yorkshire branch and discuss their concerns and what he hopes to achieve during his tenure. “I want to keep the heat turned up on the issues which occupy the foreground of most people’s thinking about environmental matters, so High Speed 2, wind farms, alternative energy and the fight against litter which Bill led during his presidency. These are all very important things in themselves and they are also rallying cries for people,” he says. “But over-arching them all, and what I hope will be my equivalent to Bill’s commitment on litter, I want my flagship project to be around questions of access.”

The countryside, he says, needs to be enjoyed and appreciated by everyone whether they live in a remote corner of the Yorkshire Dales, or the centre of London.

“Like many people I live in a street, mine’s in north London, with a lot of kids being brought up in it of whom I doubt whether one has ever been to the countryside. So not only do they not know what pleasures there are to be had, what interests and delights, but also they don’t know that there’s anything to protect.”

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It’s an issue he says needs to be addressed. “I think characteristically the age of CPRE membership, like other kindred sorts of organisations, is, and I mean no disrespect when I say this, elderly and that membership is incredibly valuable and important. They have a tremendous amount of knowledge and this needs to be shared with younger people.”

He also wants to look at ways of getting urban youngsters to experience country life.

“We should see what kind of provision there is for getting kids out there into the countryside and if there are holes in that provision, we should fill them. We have to be concerned with the here and now and these big issues which are in the foreground, but we also have to think about the future in a creative way.”

Motion himself grew up in the countryside. “My father’s family lived for many generations in the same village near the Essex and Suffolk border and although he had a job in London he was really a country man. Similarly my mother had been brought up in the country and their life revolved around the changing seasons.”

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As a youngster Motion immersed himself in the great outdoors. “My brother and I had ponies and we would ride around the countryside which is a completely brilliant way of getting to know it well.” It provided him with an appreciation for the natural landscape that has remained with him throughout his life. “Although my childhood is a rather long way away, nevertheless a lot of the things I enjoyed and learnt there have remained with me very vividly.

“And in dark times when people are looking for a way out of economic difficulties by threatening to lay down a load of cement over things and kick-start the economy by relaxing planning laws and so on, this is a way for me at a personal level to connect things that are primitively important to me as an individual with those that are out there in the world.”

There are several key issues concerning the countryside that have been rumbling on for some time and Motion’s views are likely to chime with many rural supporters who feel they are increasingly being marginalised.

“I can’t see the point of High Speed 2 if all it is concerned with is a way of getting business people to Birmingham 20 minutes faster and ripping up a huge spine of beautiful English countryside in the process,” he says.

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“And quite frankly the idea that this is going to pay for itself by people eating delicious meals 
as they go is ridiculous, because you won’t have time to raise the fork to your mouth before you’re there, so I can’t see that happening.

“But I can see a great deal of point in having a proper, expansive conversation about beefing up the infrastructure of the railway network generally. The CPRE would be very supportive of that, so if we can broaden that conversation then all well and good.”

Wind farms are another bone of contention with some people.

“We have to find a percentage of the nation’s energy from alternative means by 2015 
and of course we want that to happen because we want to 
be self-sufficient and save the planet.

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“But clearly there are tremendous problems for some individuals and communities so we have to look at these things on a case by case basis. It’s a very complicated conversation and there is no panacea, no easy answer that ticks all the boxes. The only way to proceed is with maximum vigilance and to make the location of these things as appropriate as we can.”

This prompts another question. “If we really don’t want these things parked on our doorsteps are we prepared to pay more for our energy so that the alternative sources can be supplied to us in a less visible way? Personally, I would be more than happy to pay a bit more for my energy in order to achieve that. But that’s not an option which is going to be available to a lot of people because they feel they’re already paying too much.”

As a nation, we are fiercely protective of the countryside as 
the Government discovered to its cost over its proposed sale of publicly-owned woodlands. But why does he think we are so protective?

“We think of our national identity as being to do with certain traits of character, but however we cut it, even people who live in towns and cities and don’t have any great familiarity with the countryside are inclined to see this green and pleasant land as just that – it is a green and pleasant land. I think there’s a subtle way of developing that thought which is to say we are the country of Shakespeare and he is part of our national identity, because he speaks to us in a way no other writer in the history of the universe has ever done.

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“We tend to think of the landscape as part of that same conversation but interestingly we tend to think of Shakespeare’s work as being a man-made thing and the countryside as being purely natural.

“But the landscape is actually 
an ingeniously-made thing as 
well, so even when we look out 
of the window here in Ilkley and see the moors, we can say to ourselves ‘we did that’ and I think that is something to be immensely proud of and therefore something we are very quick to defend,” he says.

“We do need to be reminded about the benefits the countryside brings and not only that but we need to be reminded that it is 
very vulnerable as our population rises.

“So there is a very big job of 
work to be done, it’s partly advocacy for something which already has a large number of 
very eloquent advocates, but we must not stop being articulate about what matters and what needs defending and we must also keep making practical interventions to make sure damage isn’t done.

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“If the government is going to allow planning bills through and the green belt is going to be put at risk, which there seems a very serious danger of happening, then that means things get concreted over and you never get them back, so it must not happen.”

Rural issues that lie ahead

The Green Belt: The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) says the countryside is under threat with the Government wanting to speed up planning decisions and encourage development of green belt land in England, if certain conditions are met.

Airports: The Government is looking to expand the UK’s airport capacity with some people calling for the construction of a new London airport or a third runway at Heathrow.

High Speed 2: Earlier this year the Government announced a controversial £32bn high-speed rail scheme. The project is due to be built in two phases – a London to Birmingham line and then extensions to Manchester and Leeds to form a Y-shaped network.