ANOTHER VOICE
The proper target for the rage of the beetle fanciers
AUBERON WAUGH
Those who live in the country are always in danger of feeling left out of things. Somerset is full of retired majors who sincerely believe that Edward Heath is a communist agent (along with Wilson, Macmillan and all the rest of them). In the country, everything gets slowly worse, nothing gets better, but perhaps the most painful aspect of life is that nobody pays much attention to it. Thus the fiendish Janet Fookes can demand a ban on the sale of fireworks to the general public, and if she is lucky she will score a mention in one or another of the lower-class newspapers, with or without a photograph. But nobody pays any attention when Major Anstruther Fookes-Anstruther, who, unlike his distant cousin Janet Fookes, has seen service in the Far East and helped to build the Burma Railway, announces in the bar of the Farmer's Arms, Combe Florey, that the best solution to muggings in Brixton is the castration of all male black teenagers. 'It is what they would do in Africa,' he explains, but nobody cares.
Hence, as I maintain, the existence of such admirable bodies as the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, the Nature Conservancy Council and the rest of them. If I am right, they have little or nothing to do with such things as butter- flies, ants, beetles and grasshoppers, or any of the things which apparently concern them. They are simply a vehicle for coun- try dwellers to register their complaints against the process of growing old.
Last week the Nature Conservancy Council published an aerial survey showing how the purple heather of Scotland was vanishing: moorland is being changed into grassland, grassland is either being changed into arable land or planted with rows of conifers, broadleaf woodland is dwindling, many hedgerows have gone, peatland is disappearing and many species of beetle simply don't know where to lay their heads. Above all, everything is get- ting worse, and will continue to do so unless the Government doubles its £39 million annual grant to the Nature Conser- vancy Council.
On Saturday, Christopher Booker joined the chorus on a more poignant, personal note. 'Over the past 37 years there are few places on earth I have thought of more often than a certain steep hillside in Dorset,' he revealed to the Daily Telegraph's readers. He first went there one summer in his childhood, and was particularly impressed by the `downland grasses'. Over them flew clouds of butter- flies — 'and in the surrounding turf one could observe a ceaseless miniature drama, as ants, beetles, grasshoppers and a myriad of other creatures crawled about in every direction'.
Then one day 20 years ago — it must have been just about the time young Booker was counting 16 different species of butterfly flying above the downland grasses — the hillside was ploughed up, fertilised and turned into a cornfield. Goodbye to all those ants, beetles and grasshoppers. This bitter experience has enabled Booker, 20 years later, to pilger on about the 'ecological catastrophe in Britain's countryside'. He believes, with Sir Richard Body, that as a result of over-cultivation, 'within a few decades we may be faced with vast tracts of country- side where nothing will grow'.
If Booker and Sir Richard were younger, less venerable persons, I should advise them to cheer up and have another pink gin. They would be amazed by how quickly nature reasserts itself. The days of over- productive, high intensity farming are numbered in this country. Vast tracts of land will soon be restored to small, mixed farms, catering for the luxury market in free-range eggs, farmhouse cheeses and the rest of it. Only a small proportion of the land is required for the sort of farming which has been encouraged since the War. Bit by bit, we are going to discover there are more things to be done with land than grow food on it. The only question is what.
As soon as land is left alone, the ants, beetles, grasshoppers return to it — often within one or two seasons. Nature is extraordinarily resilient, as I say. After the storm a few weeks ago, bitter tears were shed over the million-odd trees which were lost. It is always sad to lose a tree, but it is part of the inexorable process. Other trees are coming up everywhere. On a visit to Hyde Park after the storm — Somerset, mercifully, was unaffected this time — I was astounded not so much by the number of trees that were down as by the number left standing. I had no idea how many trees there were. Admittedly, the Dutch elm disease of ten years ago was more of a blow, since that wiped out a whole species. I don't know if we will ever get our elms back. But, like the storm, it gave us nothing to pilger about, since the same force — call it God or nature — which gave us the trees in the first place decided to take them away again. Man's despoliation of nature is comparatively ephemeral, with one exception: building. It is no longer possible to hope, with Pope, that:
Deep harvests bury all his Pride has planned And laughing Ceres re-assume the land
I do not see that the beetle-fanciers have an exclusive claim on all land which is no longer needed for agriculture. Some, alas, will have to be devoted to Wild Life Safari Parks and kiddies' Recreation Areas, where sex maniacs can roam at ease. But the worst thing that can possibly happen to land is that it should be built on, and it is in this context that one feels bound to pro- nounce a solemn curse on the Bracknell District Council's development committee, with its sycophantic welcome to the Duke of York's monstrosity on Green Belt land: `We owe this family a terrific debt and, if benefit of the doubt is to be exercised, we must jump very firmly in their support,' said Councillor Geoffrey Taylor. 'I am absolutely delighted and proud they have chosen our district and welcome them with open arms.'
`This family', more than any other, has an obligation to set us a good example. As I pointed out before this disgusting deci- sion was announced, there are hundreds of beautiful old houses crying out for owners with enough money to restore and cherish them. The Duke and Duchess of York, by opting for a luxury Dallas-style ranch set plumb-spang in the middle of the Green Belt, have not only shown us what sort of people they are. By calling upon all the forces of deference to reinforce the vulgar- ity and oafishness of their choice, they reveal on exactly what sort of base the monarchy is now built.
It is to the Yorks that Booker should address all his pilgerish moans about ecolo- gical catastrophe in the countryside, not to some wretched farmer who disturbed the beetles and grasshoppers on a Dorset hillside 20 years ago.
Previous page
