From custodian to activist

Charles Moore reflects in the Spectator on the National Trust’s new ten-year strategy published to coincide with its 130th anniversary.

As a Trust member, I received last week a babyishly written round-robin: ‘Charles, the next chapter starts now.’ After ‘18 months of listening to 70,000 people from all walks of life’, the Trust has decided that ‘Together we can: Restore nature – not just on National Trust land, but everywhere. End unequal access to nature, beauty and history. Inspire millions more people to care and take action.’ Hilary rightly says that one of the NT’s original aims was to ‘give access’ to nature, but does not remind members that the other founding aim was to preserve ‘tenements (including buildings) of beauty and historic interest’. The ‘new chapter’ subtly moves into territory beyond the Trust’s remit. By intervening ‘not just on National Trust land, but everywhere’, it makes itself an activist agent rather than a custodian, thus neglecting the interests of members. By speaking of ‘unequal access’, the Trust is disparaging its country houses. Hilary McGrady says: ‘The majority of our places are in rural areas, but by 2030 something like 85-90 per cent of the population will live in urban areas’, so she must ‘maximise the public benefit’ by greening cities. Does she not know that by 1895 the British population was already about 80 per cent urban? It was chiefly to minister to that urban public’s need for space, nature and architectural beauty that the NT began. She says she is ‘a massive advocate of using culture to find the things we have in common’; yet, unlike the founders, she sets country against town. Contradicting itself, the Trust is also pushing for large-scale rewilding – which, almost by definition, happens outside big towns. This shows a lack of care for its tenant farmers. As our second-biggest landowner, the NT would restore our rural heritage better if it put more of its 600,000 acres into producing top-quality food.