VIEWPOINT
Let them plant trees
GEORGE GALE
It is not often that I find myself on the side of the angels. Do-gooders do too much harm, have done too much harm, will do the final irreparable harm of extinguishing us, if extinction is to be the human lot, for any man of sense or sensibility to associate him- self with them except rarely, and then with the greatest of caution. (I am not on the opposite side, either: the war between the goodies and the baddies, or between the elect and the fallen, or between light and dark- ness, or, come to that, except on mundane or economic, common or garden, grounds, between left and right, strikes me as an un- necessary war. There is a necessary war, which is between, let us say, freedom and authority. But that is enough of that.)
Let me then celebrate a plunge into the warm, soupy waters of do-gooding fellow- ship. When, last year I think it was, we entered into what the United Nations, or some such outfit, had designated Human Rights Year, I thought to myself, 'well, that's a bloody silty sort of year to have', and so it transpired, with I dare say the highest toll of political corpses and prisoners of any year since the halcyon days of the last world war.
This year, however, it is 'European Con- servation Year'. I don't know exactly who are the people who get together and bestow such names on such an otherwise abstract packet of time as a year, or by what conceivable right they do it. But it is a harm- less enough pastime, the giving of names (provided of course that it is not taken so seriously as to' create in men's minds the illusion that because a name has been given, something is brought into existence which corresponds with that name, like, for in- stance, Baal), and occasionally it may also in seeking to concentrate do-gooding activity, actually manage to do some good, rather than the reverse. As part of 1970's series of campaigns which all have to do with environ- ment, which is what we have around us, even the Automobile Association has come up with an idea which may be harmless. It has, apparently, a 'drive to plant a tree' cam- paign.
I'd rather a 'walk to plant a tree' cam- paign: but I suppose that would be asking too much of the Automobile Association. Also, I hate to think of some of the places its more ignorant rally-driving members might drive to, in order to plant their trees, like beautifully blasted heaths, for instance. Still, let's not quibble. Although I am not excessively fond of trees—they sometimes look like vegetables suffering from gland trouble—there is little doubt that the supply of the right kind of them has diminished, is diminishing and ought to be increased. What we don't want any more of is plantations of conifers. Avenues of elm or beech or even, perhaps, oak, now: what about that? Alas, I'm afraid not. There is no use or point in an avenue unless it has something suitable at the end of it; and I do not think, even had we the patience and modesty that would allow us to plant trees for our grand- children's delight, that we have the architects around at the moment, or the clients and patrons, capable of producing buildings
which it would be worthwhile planting an avenue of trees to lead up to.
No. What I think we want are small and accidental-seeming copses and spinneys, silver birch, hawthorn in the hedges and crab-apples. These could, or did, come about naturally; but now that the farmers have dug them up, only the farmers can put them back. That is to say, we may have to plant imitation copses and spinneys, because all the natural ones around may have been de- stroyed. I do not see Automobile Associa- tion members driving out anywhere to plant copses and spinneys, even supposing they could find some spare land in which to do it. What do I see these motorists planting? I see them planting all over the English and Scottish and Welsh and Irish countrysides, given half a chance, cuttings from their favourite front-garden flowering cherry trees.
Looking at land and water and clouds is one of the most dependable pleasures that I know, inducing at the very worst an in- dulgent form of melancholy in which one fancies one communes with all the choice sceptics who refuse to perceive more than wind in the movement of air or more than gravitational pull in the swing of tides. At the best, such looking is most pure and un- adulterated pleasure. Any doing which is likely to increase the delights of looking or decrease the pain is do-gooding of which I can thankfully approve. I am glad that the noise abatement people show signs of suc- cess: that huge monsters like the airbus will be less noisy if not less noisome than their smaller predecessors. I am glad that fish are venturing up the Thames again, each year further: none could not desire the hope of a sweet Themmes again. I am glad that chemical firms are being taught some man- ners by. our legislators and that cars are being made to poison us less, even if other- wise they continue to kill us more. And I am infuriated that the old industries have left their ugly messes: have not been ordered to clean up their slag-heaps, their watery holes where gravels and clays have been gouged out, their deserted mills, their machinery left on mountainsides when it had no use left, no money-making property. Surely, I say to myself, we would not let the
new industries do what the old industrialists, under laisser-faire, did? We would. We do.
I have a small contribution to make to Conservation Year, a suggestion of legis- lation. This suggestion will prove how com- pletely I am (temporarily) on the side of the do-gooders: almost any suggestion of legislation proves this. What is the greatest single maker of litter in our countryside? What ruins more landscapes, and town- scapes also, come to that, than anything else? I do not mean advertising, although hoardings and posters doubtless come second, just as television aerials come third. The great blight we all suffer from is wire. The main offender is the electricity industry. Some member of Parliament would do well, if he had the chance, to move a Bill which would make it illegal to transmit electricity, except underground, by, say, 1990. Give the present bosses of the electric supply industry, who are undoubtedly the greatest despoilers of our countryside ever, twenty years to clean up their mess. The same Bill could well have another clause, making the manufac- ture or use of barbed wire an offence. Over- head wire is our eyes' great affront; barbed wire, even used against animals, is an affront to our freedom. Let me, in my role of do- gooder, suggest these two reforms to our authoritative law-givers. Let us put an end to visible wire. Let them plant trees in the holes left by their poles.
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