Living in the continuous present
Alastair Goodlad
TOWN AND COUNTRY edited by Anthony Barnett
and Roger Scruton
Cape, £12.99, pp. 288 Own and Count?), is a collection of 30 essays edited by Anthony Barnett, who describes himself as a dedicated cosmopoli- tan, left-wing townie, and Roger Scruton, the country-dwelling Conservative philoso- pher and polymath. The editors see them- selves as coming from different ends of the Political spectrum but sharing a concern for the long-term perspective and a desire for negotiated rather than dictated solutions. The essays have their origin in a meeting Convened by Scruton to discuss three issues that concerned him: the potential effects on the countryside of chemically driven agribusiness, the plan for four million new homes, and the mounting hostility to fox- hunting. The meeting led to the establishment of the Town and Country Forum, bringing together a group of experts qualified to dis- cuss the future of town and country and the relations between them. The contributors to the book were chosen for the relevance of their arguments rather than their con- clusions, and their interests range as widely as, their political opinions — anthropology, his , toriography, politics, economics, litera- :ure, music, geography, philosophy, archi- tectural history, planning, journalism, teaching, farming and veterinary surgery. The editors believe that the issues touched On in the book are so deep. and important that they should not be surrendered to what they see as the short-term view of party politics. The objective is to show, by stimulating a wide-ranging public debate, how town and country can grow, flourish and supply each other's needs in the mod- ern world.
The debate is conducted in terms varying from the rancorous to the high-flown — sometimes out of shot. Anthropomor- phism, anthropocentrism, social entropy, participative democracy, concepts of history, envrionmentalism, Englishness, the urban jackboot, nature worship, the her- itage, nostalgia and pet industries, urban decay and regeneration, car dependence, electronic road-pricing, patterns of travel,. the planning process, the National Trust, the CPRE, the veterinary profession, light pollution, genetic engineering, regional decentralisation, the culture of Maff (`More Aid to Farmers Fast') — all are on the palimpsest to resolve our mutual incomprehension — even funerary prac- tices:
The line between the living and the dead is now broken, particularly in cities, and per- haps for the first time in human history we are in danger of creating a culture lived in the continuous present, with the past eradi- cated or denied in modern urban architec- ture and planning, and the future similarly rendered off limits by the reaction against all forms of teleological or utopian idealism.
(Ken Wcirpole, 'In the Mists of Life'). Count me in, Squire.
Familiar undertones emerge. In 'Conser- vation by Rights', George Monbiot writes on the Countryside March of 1998:
The rally, organised by such bodies as the Countryside Alliance, Country Landowners Association and the Scottish Landowners Federation, had been called, we were told, to defend the countryside from the town, whose tyrannical and uncomprehending governance of rural areas was leading to the collapse of rural employment and the smothering of farmland by new housing developments. Def- erential as ever, we townies were careful not to display our ignorance of rural life by ask- ing who had sacked the agricultural labourers whose demise the landowners so publicly lamented or who had sold the land to the house-builders. . . . We couldn't help making unkind comparisons with the New Model Army, many of whose rank and file had joined up to fight enclosure, and whose offi- cers included the nation's most rapacious enclosers. . . . It is a source of enduring mys- tery to us ignorant townies that good farmers continue to allow themselves to be represent- ed by the National Farmers Union, the Country Landowners Association and the Scottish Landowners Federation, all of which are controlled by predatory men in suits.
The distinguished author is apparently per- sona non grata in seven countries and has a life sentence in absentia in Indonesia.
Town and Country is a challenging book. Ideas and abstract nouns crowd the page. How will it strike the rus in urbe market? It is not for the hedonist. Wooster will not see the book as his idea of a large after- noon, but will appreciate the Grade A apple sauce. Jeeves will hail a new galaxy of fellow fish-eaters. The judges of the Heywood Hill literary prize will not be distracted. For people who like this sort of thing, this is very much the sort of thing they like. Will the book succeed in provok- ing debate? It deserves to do so. The lap- idary prose of Roger Scruton draws no final conclusions. The Tower of Babel stands adjourned.
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