Samantha Blanc-Talon LLCER L2

Commentary

“Excerpts from the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Bill”

HC Deb 31 March 1949 vol 463 cc1461-568

After the Industrial Revolution and drastic urbanization of the most populated areas in

South and West Britain, the British masses felt the need to reconnect with nature and an

idealized vision of the countryside —the “Green and Pleasant land” described in William

Blake’s Jerusalem, a founding poem for the United Kingdom’s national identity. Thus, as

soon as the late 19th century, the question of private properties and ‘freedom to roam’ was

raised, leading to vast conflicts in the 1930s and the establishment of national parks in 1949.

This document is a collection of excerpts from the National Parks and Access to the

Countryside Bill, and to be more specific, parts of the speech Lewis Silkin, then Member of

Parliament and Minister of Town and Country Planning, gave in favor of this law to his

fellow MPs on the 31st March 1949.

The text follows a two-times argumentation, where he first explains why saving the

typical rural English landscape is so important, given what it represents and the historical

context, and then presents national parks as the solution, two ideas one shall analyze to

understand how Mr. Silkin convinced his audience.

The United Kingdom has long been defined by its countryside: from paintings to

literature to propaganda, the typical English cottage, complete with its green pastures and

hedgerows, represents, at both national and international scales, an ideal of peace, calm and

freedom. This fantasy was created in reaction to the drastic changes in landscapes and living

conditions in the 19th century due to the Industrial Revolution and lived on to this day, as the

Page 1 of 5
Samantha Blanc-Talon LLCER L2

idea that at some point in history, people living in the countryside were the happiest beings

on Earth before a sense of private property, of enclosures, was introduced amongst them, is

now part of the British national narrative. As David Haigron justly said, the rural is “a core

feature of [British] national identity”1.

On the other hand, expressions of human activity and technical progress were always

considered poorly, Mr. Silkin himself believes that “[e]ach of these more or less necessary

appurtenances of modern science, progress and civilisation makes a great contribution to the

disfigurement of the countryside.”. This idea of the Industrial Revolution ruining landscapes

emerged along with the “Green and Pleasant land” myth, and the same mediums that praised

and extolled the typical picturesque countryside often depcited industrial landscapes as

hellish, ‘‘an unEnglish aberration, ‘a spread over a green and pleasant land of dark satanic

mills that ground down their inmates’’’2.

In his speech, Mr. Silkin lists what he believes to be damaging natuallandscapes and

thus the United Kingdom’s national identity —”We have shacks, ribbon development,

unsightly coastal development, mineral workings, quarrying, power stations, gas works, poles

and pylons supporting overhead electricity, telegraph and telephone wires, radar and radio

establishments, reservoirs, outdoor advertisements, nissen huts, hutments, hangars and other

Service buildings.” (l.12-15)— an ideal that became overly important because of the World

Wars.

Indeed, during the 20th-century conflicts, as soldiers were sent out far away from

their homeland, one of the ways governments had found to motivate them to fight was to

remind them what was at stake: the end of what they knew, the death of the people they

1 David Haigron, ‘Introduction’, in The English Countryside: Representations, Identities, Mutations, ed. David
Haigron (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 1.
2 M. J. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981), as quoted in Paul Readman, ‘Introduction’, in Storied Ground: Landscape and the
Shaping of English National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 10.

Page 2 of 5
Samantha Blanc-Talon LLCER L2

loved, and the destruction of the landscapes proper to their country, or at least the mythical

ones that, in the collective imaginary, represent the epitome of Englishness: the rolling hills

and almost hobbit-like villages of the English countryside were one of the United Kingdom’s

main points of propaganda, not only for soldiers but also for those who stayed. After the

horrors they had lived through in World War 2, it is understandable that veterans and

Londonians who were under the bombs asked for access to those lands they had looked

forward to and fought for. Besides, in the years following the war, people of the middle class

and lower, ergo the ones who could not afford a country house and who were the most

affected by the conflicts, needed a way to recover, something the Minister summarizes as “we

should be able to enjoy the peace and spiritual refreshment which only contact with nature

can give” (l.9-10).

One might notice that in Mr. Silkin's speech, mention of said conflicts is nowhere to

be found, however, the year of the passing of the bill speaks for itself, and it would be

uncautious to overlook this part of the historical context.

One of the main problems encountered by those citizens was the privatization of the

land: most of the accessible and most picturesque countryside belonged to rich landowners

who refused to open their properties to the public. As a response, in 1884, MP James Bryce

introduced the ‘freedom to roam’ bill, which failed but set a precedent and encouraged the

public to demand more access to iconic English sceneries. The conflicts between lower and

upper classes on that topic escalated until the 1932 Kinder Scout’s mass trespasses, where

different associations of hikers unified and went for a walk on private lands, leading to five

arrestations. In 1945, the government finally took action in favor of national parks, by

creating the Hobhouse committee, which goal was to imagine and plan what would national

parks in the United Kingdom would be like. Finally, in 1949, the National Parks and Access

Page 3 of 5
Samantha Blanc-Talon LLCER L2

to the Countryside Bill answers the public demand by establishing several areas almost

entirely dedicated to the public. In his speech, the Minister thanks many associations that

contributed to raising the general public’s awareness and encouraging the government to take

action: “There is the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, the Commons, Open

Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society, the Ramblers' Association, the Cyclists' Touring

Club, the Youth Hostels Association and many others. The results of their endeavours to

interest and arouse public opinion have been slow but steady.” (l.38-45). One shall note the

trespassers of Kinder Scout are not mentioned for obvious reasons, even though their very

mediatized action probably was one of the most efficient.

The national parks however are not just an answer to public demand, it was also a

way for the British government to respond to the economic and cultural crisis the country was

undergoing.

Indeed, as the Minister mentions in the very first paragraph of this text, the United

Kingdom in 1949 was one of the most populated countries in the world, and the feeling of

estrangement between the different layers of the population was only growing. The national

parks were not just a way to help people living in the city reconnect with nature and rural

inhabitants, as Mr. Silkin might imply when he explains that “[t]here are almost two different

peoples with differing mentalities with a lack of understanding by the townsmen of the

countryman's point of view.” (l.6-7), but also a place where all kinds of people would blend

and regain faith in a country they might not be able to recognize after the War.

Besides, as Mr. Silkin very clearly explains in the second half of his speech, the parks

they were offering to create were not open-air museums, where the preservation of flora and

fauna is the main goal, because “[t]his is a small country, and we cannot afford, as can the

United States, to set aside large areas solely for public recreation or establishing a museum.”

(l.67-69). The parks they envision are spaces where the public can roam freely, and where the

Page 4 of 5
Samantha Blanc-Talon LLCER L2

rural life can go on. This is a way for them to compensate for the “loss of agricultural land”

(l.18) and activity the country underwent during the mass exodus caused by the Industrial

Revolution. This need for agricultural exploitation comes from a growing fear of dependence,

caused once again by the wars and the embargos many countries suffered from, but also from

the loss of major overseas territories, like India, which won its independence in 1947. The

loss of autonomy and the shortages the United Kingdom had known in the past decades

motivated those measures.

Those excerpts from the Minister of Town and Country Planning’s speech bear

witness to their time. Mr. Silkin manages to remind and imply all the reasons that led to this

moment, where the establishment of national parks might be the most effective solution to

many of the United Kingdom’s problems —the loss of national cohesion due to the war, the

urge to preserve iconic landscapes from industrialization and urbanization, the loss of

autonomy of the country when the fear of a third World War is overwhelming and the

growing anger of a public that just started regaining trust in their leaders. The National Parks

and Access to the Countryside Bill was passed in 1949 and initiated the creation of 15

national parks throughout the country, the most recent one being the Cairngorms, in Scotland,

founded in 2003.

Page 5 of 5