Acorn to SUV - Consume & Be Damned

by Chris Draper

THE NATIONAL TRUST proclaims itself “Europe’s Largest Conservation Charity” but its eco-credentials are as exaggerated and dishonest as its interpretation and presentation of Britain’s history.

Founded by Christian socialists in 1895 to protect threatened countryside and promote public access, NT has been re-engineered into a powerful corporation preserving Britain’s aristocratic legacy and promoting the vicarious enjoyment of an uncritical middle class. Whilst maintaining the myth that it’s a democratic organisation committed to ecological aims, in reality NT regards members as little more than cash cows buying into a “country house experience”, targets for as much ancillary marketing as it can muster. Some excellent environmental work remains but as NT has grown it’s become less radical, more Establishment, more Corporate and more Consumerist, and consumption is killing the planet.

LOGO?

The National Trust’s logo is no longer appropriate; my abiding memory of NT visits isn’t the ubiquity of “leafy oak branches dotted with acorns” but the depressing sight of seemingly endless acres of car parks that once were fields and meadows. 'Enter via the car park, exit via the gift shop.' Replace NT’s oak leaf logo with the more appropriate silhouette of an SUV, or possible a cash till. Although, to be fair, I learn from the website that, 'The National Trust has produced a car “badge” of some sort for 70 years and we know that many members love displaying their car sticker.'

Fair enough but don’t then claim to be, 'Europe’s largest conservation charity' whilst acting as, 'Europe’s largest Jeremy Clarkson appreciation society.' Even Clarkson’s rampant eco-vandalism is eclipsed by the Trust’s ability to annually generate fifty million environmentally destructive car journeys through visits to NT properties.

Carriage Trade not Charabancs

The National Trust has given no consideration to whether any of the grand country houses it eagerly acquired were accessible by public transport. Even where visitors were initially able to arrive on foot, by bicycle or via public transport NT closed off that option by sealing off minor entry points and channelling visitors down carriageways monopolised by motor vehicles. “Enter via the car park, exit via the gift shop.” I’ve often alighted from a bus and been forced to walk along a main road bordering NT land before turning into the sole permissible entry point and then walking another mile or so down NT’s drive as motorised visitors sped by. Adding insult to narrowly avoided injury, NT ticket offices, inevitably sited adjacent to the car park, frequently offer buggy transport to convey motorists those last few yards to the front door of the country house.

'Europe’s largest conservation charity' marginalises everyone who arrives on foot and does nothing to facilitate connections to bus stops or railway stations. Where buses do pass near National Trust properties the Trust doesn’t erect shelters or cooperate with local authorities to ensure that they do so. The Trust ensures signage directs motorists from far and wide but the un-motorised are ignored although 25% of households don’t own a motor vehicle.

Click on any National Trust website and see for yourself how little information, help or concern is shown for pedestrian. Now compare the Harewood House website – what a contrast! Harewood positively encourages public transport users who are offered live transport timetable links, half price entry and are even met by golf buggies at the entry gate and conveyed free of charge down to the house but then Harewood is run by an independent trust not the National Trust.

In Bed with BMW

As if the National Trust’s general promotion of private transport isn’t bad enough it’s now climbed into bed with car manufacturer BMW. The National Trust won’t disclose the terms of the deal and in response to my email requesting specific details the Trust sent me an uninformative press release. Curiously this didn’t mention that in February 2019 BMW was fined 8.5 million Euro for selling vehicles that breach EU permitted emission levels nor that two months later, after raids on the company’s headquarters, BMW was further charged with 'having colluded with other motor manufacturers to limit the introduction of clean emissions technology'.

The National Trust claims that its partnership is eco-friendly as BMW also makes electric cars but using tons of precious resources to move private motorists around in a vehicle that’s stationary for approximately 95% of its lifetime is inherently wasteful. Some studies suggest that over the complete cycle of such vehicles, from construction to disposal, electric cars cause even more environmental harm than petrol engine equivalents. The batteries are especially damaging as lithium is found in only a few arid countries and its extraction consumes vast amounts of water. Cobalt, another essential ingredient, generally comes from parts of central Africa where widespread “artisanal mining” operates with notoriously low standards of safety and pollution control. The disposal of batteries is also hazardous and potentially explosive but on the plus side, the Trust’s backing for BMW brings in the cash, helps 'greenwash' a powerful polluter and reassures self-deluding National Trust members that they can enjoy guilt-free motoring.

Three in a Bed

The National Trust’s bedsheets were already soiled by its long-running affair with junk-food giant Cadbury. Every year for more than a decade the Trust pocketed approximately £7 million to host and promote a “Cadbury Easter Egg Hunt” although in 2017 when Cadbury excised “Easter” from the billing the Archbishop of Canterbury, Teresa May and Jeremy Corbyn all joined the chorus of critics, with Corbyn observing that the Trust’s 'commercialism had gone too far'.

The claim that 'Cadbury’s Easter Egg Hunts are the perfect way to unleash your inner explorer and connect with nature' is absurd as junk food produces unnaturally fat kids with rotten teeth. Cadbury was reminded of this in 2018 by the Advertising Standards Authority who found the firm guilty of breaching junk food advertising regulations.

Internationally, Cadbury is widely recognised as an environmental vandal for the parent company’s role in deforestation, particularly in central Africa and in Indonesia, causing critical habitat loss, to chimpanzees and orangutans respectively.

Greed is Good

Unsatisfied with partnering eco-villains, the Trust also has millions of pounds invested in oil, gas, mining and similar industries whose core activities are environmentally devastating. Exposed by the Guardian in 2018 the Trust responded by promising to limit the extent of such investments in the future but insisted that the trustees of its pension fund must be left to operate as they wished. One might expect 'Europe’s largest conservation charity' to lead the way in such matters but the Trust does nothing until caught out, then there are grudging excuses followed by token improvements. NT should play an active role in managing its billion pound portfolio, directing fund managers to intervene, vote and report back on AGM’s of its invested companies instead, 'Investment managers are given the flexibility to achieve maximum returns on investments'” The Trust boasts of installing a few solar panels on toilet blocks but is morally derelict in permitting Black Rock and its other fund managers to invest its vast wealth in raping the planet.

Countryside to Command Centre

Ignoring protests from members, the local Parish Council and CND, in the 1980’s NT backed a NATO scheme to build a military command centre on eleven acres of Trust land in the Chilterns, along with a twenty acre spoil heap. Despite the Braddenham Estate having been donated as 'inalienable' the development went ahead and in the 1990’s this Command Centre functioned as Headquarters of the UK’s Gulf War operations, it also played a key role in directing the RAF’s bombing of Iraq and Kosovo.

At National Trust’s 1937 Annual General Meeting a member, Mr J L Cather, proposed the banning of hunting and shooting from Trust land but his resolution was vehemently opposed by NT bosses and the motion was lost. This pattern was sporadically repeated over the following half century – members proposed and bosses opposed, employing increasingly sophisticated measures to get their way. Even after the membership won the vote in 1993 it wasn’t implemented. When Parliament eventually legislated against fox hunting the Trust still went along with the farce of permitting 'trail hunting' where riders purport to follow an artificial scent as terriers rip to shreds foxes that 'just happen to break cover'. When members backed a ban in 2017 the Chairman employed the dubious device of proxy votes to “conserve” the killing.

Giant Eyesore

I saw the Giant’s Causeway for the first time in the 1970’s as I rambled along the spectacular Antrim coast. It wasn’t long after NT took over the site and ever since I’ve retained a powerful visual memory of an awesome array of hexagonal basalt columns set against a beautiful, simple, unadorned natural seascape. Returning in recent years I was shocked by the utter despoliation caused by NT’s commercial exploitation of the site. The Trust boasts that it now attracts more than a million visitors a year to its 'Causeway Car Park', shops and appalling 'visitor centre'. To anyone with respect and love for nature this is desecration. A place for quiet contemplation has been transformed into a theme park for the uniformed and little interested who clamber all over the stones, take selfies and then drive off to the next advertised attraction. Anyone sufficiently concerned to properly prepare themselves for a visit would at least consult a map and realise that it’s more appropriate to approach the site via the footpath which also offers free access. The Trust prefers to fleece the ignorant and channels tourists through its airport terminal-style building as they’re relieved of £13.00 each.

What do we Want – More Car Parks!

Ruskin inspired the National Trust’s founders and warned of the environmental threat to the Lake District posed by the coming of the railways – what would he think of what the magazine Private Eye recently described as 'The National Trust’s rampant enthusiasm for car park building.' As I write, residents of a tiny picturesque Oxfordshire village are campaigning to 'Save Buscot' from the National Trust. The National Trust’s money-making Buscot proposal is to transform one of the village’s buildings into eight business units and create a 24-space car park.

At Devon’s, Woolacombe Down, the National Trust's planned to turn a redundant sheep pen into a 30-space car park together with signage and a pay-and-display ticket machine. Rather than come clean on yet another act of commercialism, NT bizarrely claim 'a purpose which will allow the public to enjoy the biodiversity improved wider landscape.' Savaged by local critics, NT have apparently backed down and withdrawn the planning application – at least for the present.

At Trelissick House & Gardens in Cornwall, the Parish Council are pushing the Trust to improve access for walkers and cyclists arriving via the King Harry Ferry but the Trust is only interested in creating a new 266-space car park. NT outlined their proposal for the Council who recently expressed its concern at 'the visual impact of the car parking areas on the landscape character of the AONB and the setting of the historic parkland and buildings'.

Meanwhile, 'Hidden away in a secluded Kent valley is this perfectly preserved medieval moated manor house. Created in the natural landscape almost 700 years ago, Igham Mote is built from Kentish ragstone…' (NT Handbook) except NT is determined to end the seclusion by creating an enormous gravel car park for more than 300 vehicles. Situated in a designated Area of Natural Beauty (AONB) the local planning authority recently rejected the scheme but the Trust are undeterred and ominously assured the local press they don’t regard this as defeat but merely “feedback” from which they will 'learn'.

Unfit for Purpose

The National Trust’s original aims have been irretrievably corrupted and its power structure is beyond repair. In the next and final instalment of this 4-part polemic I’ll analyse how the hierarchy maintains its control, how members are effectively disenfranchised and along the way I’ll reveal some more inconvenient truths.

(CMD August 2020 – part 3 of a 4-part NT series)