CENTRE POINT
The flinching of Fatty; in which the Hon. Nicholas Soames is made to look silly by the ministry boys
SIMON JENKINS
The Honourable Nicholas Soames is a jovial chap. Eton and the 11th Hussars taught him not to flinch from adversity. When offered Crawley as a constituency he took it on the chin. His political apprentice- ship was tough, first as aide to John Gum- mer and then as minister for food, a dig at his ample girth. His dream of becoming Tory party chairman was dashed when Max Hastings satirically supported it in the Daily Telegraph. Then this summer Soames was sent as junior minister to defence to com- mand the withdrawal of the British Army from Germany. Still he did not flinch.
But he flinched on 1 September when he returned to his new job from the Bank Hol- iday. I can imagine his valet flicking a speck from his suit and murmuring, 'Take care today, sir. First day of autumn. Those min- istry people can play tricks on new boys.' The Soames frame should have stiffened. The periscope should have been up and turning. It should have spotted a letter in the Times that morning from Mr Robin Pellew, director of something called the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Mr Pellew was clearly furious. He was protesting that the Army had blithely decided to convert a quarter of the Northumberland National Park, 80 square miles, into an enhanced artillery range to compensate for being booted out of Ger- many. Lulworth, Catterick and Salisbury Plain were not enough. A shrinking Army apparently needed growing Lebensraum. It had fixed on a national park for the live fir- ing of multiple rocket-launchers with 60- ton tow trucks, not to mention 22 hardened gun emplacements, 30 miles of roads, and housing for 725 men. Equally outraged was Chris Bonington of the Council for Nation- al Parks, who had just led a protest march over the doomed moorland.
A reply clearly drafted by a civil servant duly appeared above Mr Soames's signa- ture in the Times last Saturday. It was a cry of self-righteousness. The letter expressed surprise that the Northumberland plan should be seen as 'retrograde', since so much of the Army's 245,000 hectares of land was 'wild and beautiful and includes many sites of Special Scientific Interest'. The letter dripped with the jargon of green- ery. The Ministry would 'take account of environmental factors . . . commission independent environmental studies . . . employ full-time conservation staff. It boasted that thousands of servicemen were already 'encouraged to undertake volun- teer work' in what were proudly listed as `over 200 MoD conservation groups'. (Soames should have sniffed a rat in that word `volunteer'.) The missive plodded on its way: 'What we propose in order to protect the fragile landscape while accommodating the mod- ern weapons that the Army needs if it is to maintain its current first-rate operational capability, is to widen and strengthen some of the existing roads.' This would be sub- ject, of course, to another 'independent environmental impact assessment'. A final flourish stated that 'the Ministry's conser- vation record stands comparison with that of any other landowner'.
A robust Soames would have laughted on seeing such a letter put in front of him: 'I say, Fotheringay, you've left out our Hot- ties-for-badgers scheme and what about mentioning the time the corporal delivered a baby on the bonnet of his Saracen?' He would have then torn it up and given a stern lecture on doctrine. 'Never complain, never explain. We get to rape the English landscape unhindered. That is our right. The Pellews of the world get to write letters to the newspapers. That is their right. Herein lies the subtle equilibrium of the British Constitution. Leave it alone.' But it was not left alone. The letter went out.
The trouble, I imagine, is that Mr Soames secretly agrees with Mr Pellew. Ministerial letters to the press always reek of insincerity and another's hand. In more independent circumstances, Soames would have held forth in a booming voice about the bloody Gunners wrecking the country- side. He would have suggested colourfully what they could do with their multiple rocket-launchers. He would have promised to mention the shoddy affair to the whips should he ever have the misfortune to encounter one of them. Instead, junior ministers must put brave faces on things.
The MoD's conservation record is so atrocious that the Soames letter at least deserves a mention in despatches for brava- do. Of course a lesser ragwort and a purple emperor may thrive free of pesticide amid the pounding of the guns. Railway embank- ments are likewise rich in lupin and sedge. There are virtues in benign neglect and the Army has in places become the botanist's friend. But conservation is a seamless web. The Ministry's spoliation of England's landscape is apparent to anybody who has walked the coast of Dorset or the heights of Salisbury, or circumnavigated any number of disused airfields. The detritus of rusting vehicles, barbed wire, scarred hillsides, con- crete pillboxes and gun emplacements litter England's most glorious scenery. Defence ministers come and go, but nobody cares.
The agency recently appointed to dispose of the MoD's huge stock of surplus land and buildings is finding the task difficult. This is partly because the estates are out of the way, but mostly because they are hideous. They are hideous because the Ministry, whose ancestors sponsored some of the noblest architecture in England, builds ugly. While private developers in Dorset and Wiltshire must adhere to strin- gent planning controls, MoD housing at Lulworth or Salisbury can be as cheap and crude as it likes. The same goes for air- fields, depots, naval bases and signals sta- tions. I can only assume Mr Soames has yet to pay an official visit to these places.
The real test of the Ministry's intent will come in the handling of the current dispos- als. During the first world war, the Wylie Valley under Salisbury Plain was used as a camp for over 10,000 Commonwealth sol- diers. After the war the buildings were cleared and the land returned to country- side. No trace remains, except an Anzac emblem cut into the chalk hillside. Today there is no talk of such restitution. The Ministry has been told to get the highest price it can for its land and buildings, including using Crown privilege to get plan- ning permission for development before sale. Airfields must become industrial parks. Barracks must become factories.
Many of these sites are in parts of Britain that were formerly beautiful: Lincolnshire, the Yorkshire dales, the uplands of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. The MoD claimed national interest to justify spoiling these places, as it wrecked so many of the country houses it took over in the war. It might reasonably show some nation- al interest by returning the landscape to its former state, starting with the dozen air- fields recently made redundant. The sec- ond world war has been won at last. The peace dividend should be paid to the English landscape not just to the Treasury. As for wrecking the Northumberland National Park, Mr Soames should stop it rather than merely sign letters about it.
Simon Jenkins writes for the Times.
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