City and Suburban
By JOHN BETJEMAN THE mindless uglification of England by bodies like the Central Electricity Authority. Service Departments. local and county authorities. the Ministry of Fuel and Power, the Atomic. Energy Authority and poster agencies was visually exposed in June, 1955, by a number of the Archi- tectural Review called 'Outrage.' The December number this year is called 'Counter-Attack' and puts forward positive proposals for the saving of what is left of England and clearing up that sort of needless 'street furniture' which could better be named 'street litter.' There are illustrations of good examples of town and country landscape contrasted with bad ones and useful suggestions about legal means of curbing public enemies. `Subtopia is nothing like the will of the people; it is a mindless juggernaut, a mixture of ministerial inertia, the megalomania of public bodies, the petty squabbles of local authorities and the sheeplike acceptance by all of out- of-date theories constructed to apply to nineteenth-century industrialism and now codified into a set of inflexible byelaws.' Whether the sweeping proposals made in this number ever get through Parliament or not, there is still positive action that can be taken where local enthusiasm exists. Quite lately the people of the Middlesex village of Hampton found that the open private spaces of that Georgian mg in urbe by the Thames were threatened with greedy development keeping within the strictly legal general terms of the Middlesex County Development Plan. They formed themselves into a 'Residents Association' and at a packed public meeting applied to the Minister of Housing, their own County Council and the Royal Fine Art Commission for a special development plan to be made for Hampton which would have regard for the character and amenities of the place. From this example take courage, you who live in other threatened places.
FIGHTING BACK There are other positive steps which can be taken. A friend who has just returned from Italy tells me that Calabria, until lately some of the most unspoiled country in Europe, is scored with petrol signs all along its main roads. A society has been formed of Italian people who refuse to buy the particular brand of petrol thus virulently advertised (Esso). We in England. should we get petrol again, might use the same dis- crimination. and we might well extend the boycott to other commodities which use defacing hoardings. For years, when buying toothpaste or spirits or cigarettes. I always ask for what is least advertised, under the impression that the less spent on making the thing well known, the more is spent on making the commodity good.
TWO UTOPIAS The one place in the British Isles which 'Counter-Attack' commends wholeheartedly for the excellence of its public signs, walls, fences, lamp-posts, roadside kerbs and landscape preservation is the Isle of Man. But the editors make the mistake of calling the Island a 'county.' As a keen Manx Nationalist I would like to point out that it is a country, with its own Parliament, the House of Keys, comparative immunity from interfering English Ministries. arid an enlightened local authority which realises that the life of the Island depends on keeping it attractive. The same might be said for Alderney, where no outside advertisements are allowed and where a town crier does their work by shouting advertisements in the cobbled streets. But these Utopias are not England.
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