TRUST, BUT NO CONFIDENCE

Charles Clover believes that

the National Trust interferes more than it preserves

WHAT is the point of the National Trust? Many people like to think that the point of the National Trust is to preserve the tradi- tional landscape of the countryside, its country houses and the values they repre- sent. One has only to be herded through a National Trust gift shop — a necessity if You wish to get out of Chartwell, or many Other country houses — to have a crash course in the present motives of the institu- tion founded in 1895 by that trio of Victori- an do-gooders, Robert Hunter, Canon Rawnsley and Octavia Hill. The Trust is now the largest private landowner in the country with over two

mil i0 paying members. Its discernible

interests are: first, money, whether from admissions (no OAP tickets at Chartwell, extra admission for Churchill's studio) or new, snobby country-house merchandising; second, an easy, well-cushioned life for the genteel bureaucracy which runs it; third, the pacification of the Trust's opinionated membership, the majority of which comes from the urban, or newly rural, middle Classes. Damaging conflicts only arise when these interests conflict with inconvenient minorities bypassed by history, such as the foxhunters and distressed gentlefolk who icince lived in Trust houses, who think they -Know better how the countryside should be ran.

With two million members and a budget " £84 million a year, the quiet life is not always possible for the Trust's latterday managers, though they yearn for it to the Point of desperation. The power which the Trust can wield over 570,000 acres of Eng- land and Wales has made them vulnerable to entryism by pressure groups hungry to Wield that power to their own ends. Just such a group is the alliance of middle-class animal welfare protesters who have made hunting the focus of the Trust's annual general meeting this Saturday for the sec- ond year in a row. It is a strange spectacle, watching the :just, an institution ostensibly dedicated to the preservation of the past, desperately sitting on the fence in a battle over one of the traditional sports which has shaped the

nglish landscape. For many country peo- pie — who are in a minority bothnational- ly and among the Trust's membership — the hunt is the soul of the countryside; it is the living reason for its coppices, fences and covers. For some non-enthusiasts, like myself, the hunt is a rather objectionable primitive tribe which, nevertheless, has the right to be left alone. For many of the urbanised recolonisers of the countryside, hunting with hounds, whether it be fox or deer, is simply cruel and should be tidied out of the picture.

A significant number of people in this

last category are members of the National Trust. The Trust's 52-member ruling coun- cil underestimated what it was up against. When anti-hunting protesters proposed their first resolution to ban fox-hunting on Trust land in 1988, the resolution failed, but it gained a large number of members' votes at the Annual General Meeting. The Trust, which has a well-meaning tradition of trying to please every shade of opinion at its annual meetings, decided to impose a system of new licences on the hunts which

had formerly galloped over National Trust properties as of right. Far from being pla- cated by these concessions, the League Against Cruel Sports and their allies simply came back for more.

The Trust made its second mistake last year, when the antis won a resolution call- ing for the Trust to ban deer-hunting. The Trust's then chairman, Dame Jennifer Jenkins, had told the members that hunting was a moral issue which should be settled by Parliament. When she lost she failed to stick to her convictions. The Trust would have been within its rights under the National Trust Act to refuse to respond to the resolution to ban deer-hunting — which many people voted for without knowing anything about it simply to be provocative — thereby giving notice that it would not be manipulated by any group which had won the votes of only 3 per cent of the membership.

That, however, would have been a breach of the Trust's coffee-morning man- ners, which are to fall over backwards to please both sides. So, terrified of a ban because it might lose them the goodwill of potential stately home donors in the future, the Trust found the perfect compromise: a working party which would look for two years into the feasibility of such a ban. They thus guaranteed that the League Against Cruel Sports and its followers will return year after year until not only hunt- ing, but shooting and fishing with barbless hooks are consigned to the dustbin of his- tory. The Trust is a model of democracy: it is also coming to look like a model of indeci- sion. The council is formed from 25 appointed members of amenity groups and 25 elected individuals plus the chairman and director general. This, to say the least, makes clear decisions tricky. In addition, the Trust's annual members ballot, in which any member with sufficient support- ers can propose resolutions from the floor, makes the council prone to manipulation by very small minorities within its total membership. This is largely the council's fault. With the kind of hand-wringing mod- ern Fabians who make up the council — from the Council for the Protection of Rural England to the Open Spaces Society — nobody should be remotely surprised.

This Saturday, seven anti-hunt protesters are standing for election to the Trust coun- cil at the meeting in Central Hall Westmin- ster. There will also be attempts by hunters and anti-hunters to change the Trust's rules to their own advantage. In particular, the anti-hunting campaigners want to abolish the chairman's right to use members' proxy votes against motions he doesn't like.

If the anti-hunting campaigners get on to the council, and it is possible that some will, it will have political consequences. It will give encouragement to the Labour party which is committed to a free vote on hunting (which effectively means a vote against) if it is returned at the next elec- tion. Even if some Labour members have the courage not to vote for a ban on hunt- ing, there are are growing numbers of urban Tory MPs, such as Teresa Gorman, Dame Janet Fookes and Teddy Taylor, who are likely to back the abolition of hunting with hounds in the country as a whole.

The National Trust is now uneasily com- ing to terms with the fact that if hunting is banned, it will have had an instrumental part in killing off a living part of the coun- tryside. The blame will have to be shared by the former chairman, Dame Jennifer Jenkins, wife of the former Labour Chan- cellor, Roy; Lord Charley, the present chairman, crossbench son of a famous socialist peer and, perhaps most squarely of all, by the director general of the Trust for the past 11 years, Mr Angus Stirling.

Some members of the Trust's ruling body believe that Mr Stirling should have stopped the rot years ago by encouraging his chairmen to rule any action on hunting ultra vires, or by refusing to consider it until parliament did. But Mr Stirling has never advocated strong medicine. This year he is scarcely in a position to favour strong measures, for he has taken on the job of chairman of the Royal Opera House, cur- rently locked in a dispute with its musi- cians.

At the best of times, Mr Stirling's instincts are those of the bureaucracy which has traditionally ruled the Trust — for the quiet life. It is possible to imagine him sacrificing hunting, at some point in the future, if it would ensure the smooth, unacrimonious running of the Trust. It is almost certain that it would not — it would cause ugly scenes in the shires where hunt- ing is a way of life. So continued fence-sit- ting is his most likely plan of action.

Some of the more robust council mem- bers believe what is needed now is a strong chairman who will turn the Trust away from the policy of genteel surrender it has inherited and get tough with pressure groups. It may be that Lord Chorley is that man.

The portents are not good. In previous chapters of its history, the Trust has stood

to gain more from the winds of change than from the old order. It has, after all, inherited an empire from others' misfor- tunes. In saving the 'heritage' from the punitive inheritance taxes of the post war years, it has replaced family homes with palaces run by bureaucrats, sometimes not so distant in atmosphere from the forlorn -summer palaces of the Tsars.

It is not easy to explain the sour sense of unease which many still feel about the National Trust, despite its immense practi- cal achievements of restoration and land- scape management. One has only to look at the landless and rotting country houses of the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland to feel grateful for the Trust's immaculate restora- tions. My own favourite, Erddig in North Wales, is a masterpiece of loving restora- tion which expressly celebrates the benevo- lent paternalists, the Yorkes, who lived there.

Perhaps this sense of unease lies in the certainty that were one to start again to preserve the estates laid at the mercy of the nation by socialistic legislation, one wouldn't, as the Irish say, start from here. The existence of the Trust has for decades prevented governments from attempting true inheritance-tax reform, from con- structing sensible legislation to protect buildings — and a system of tax rebates to pay for their maintenance.

Another source of unease is that, through design or negligence, the Trust has managed to part with many of the families who gave its properties life and made these properties part of the life of the village or nearby town. The Luttrells moved out of Dunster Castle, Somerset because they did not want to live in the granny flat the Trust provided for them. A similar problem led the Clives to move out of Nunnington Hall, North Yorkshire.

There is no laughter after nightfall in many of the immaculate mausoleums owned by the National Trust — unless it is the agent and his wife having a private party. Where the families remain, it is an uneasy experience: dinner guests have been told they cannot park in the drive; National Trust gardeners have demanded money from the former lady of the manor for a sprig of parsley; donor families are often crammed in to small flats and required to renegotiate terms after the death of each generation. There are the other problems of living in an institution. The Earl of Bel- more was driven out by, among other rea- sons, the ghastly `Germolene pink' the Trust's experts selected to paint the hall at Castle Coale.

Inevitably, in a bureaucracy, it is the interests of the bureaucrats which wins out. I recall the story told me by the late Earl of Powys's butler of the septuagenarian Earl finding himself locked out of his castle in the dead of winter because the Trust had changed the locks. The Trust began as an organisation dedi- cated to the purchase of open landscape — still one of its most useful tasks where, m the case of the coastline, the conflicting development pressures make conservation all but impossible. It became, during the 1940s and 1950s, a genteel club for those who saw the possibility of staying in their estates which punitive taxation would have otherwise made impossible. When, in the 1960s, the Trust found itself penniless and having to maximise its revenue from its houses, those families discovered where the true interests of nationalised ownership lay — with its controlling bureaucracy. Far too many properties were given to the Trust by parents whose families came to regret the decision. Sir Francis Dash

wood's father gave West Wycombe, his exquisite Palladian country seat in Buck- inghamshire, to the Trust in 1944, when the young Dashwood was aboard ship in the Indian Ocean. He received a cable 'Have handed West Wycombe over to the Nation- al Trust. Hope you have no objection.' He certainly had. Sir Francis told me once he could afford to buy West Wycombe back if the Trust would only let him.

Henry Hornyold Strickland is another who told me that he would dearly like to buy back his family home, Sizergh Castle in Cumbria, where his family has lived for 750 years. On all occasions this question has been asked of the Trust, the answer has been a stern No.

These days the flood of country houses coming into the Trust's hands has long abated. A crumbling pile can be safeguard- ed without calling on the National Trust --- by tax concessions, grants from the Nation- al Heritage Memorial Fund and

private trusts. All provide increased opportundY for historic home owners to pay some of their bills — if they provide public access. However, the root cause of the fragmen- tation of estates remains, despite 12 years of Tory government. Inheritance tax, an essentially socialist invention, can be relied upon to force more estates into the Trust's hands in the end.

Mr Major has said he wants wealth to cascade down the generations', but the largest tax exempt sum he is talking about IS £300,000, the kind of money a family house can be worth in the south of Eng- land. It is worth remembering that in respect of taxation, we have not yet redis- covered the wisdom of the past, the wis- dom which encouraged the construction of landed estates, without the fear of expro- priation by the state. As for the National Trust, there is no reason to believe that an institution which grew up in an era of socialism should not have its objectives scrutinised as It approaches its 100th birthday. A Royal COmmission on the Trust's land holdings Would be a fitting fate. One change which could be easily achieved without legisla- tion, is to make the Trust's ruling council less drippily responsive to every member of a pressure group that cares to pay a sub- scription. It is time to be tough, Lord Chor- ley.

Charles Clover is Environment Editor of the Daily Telegraph.