Growth for what ?
LETTERS
From Leonard Cottrell, Simon S. Lilley, Stephen Cook. Professor H. C. AfcLaren. I. C. Simpson. I. H. Priilove.
Sir: I am sure that all your reactionary, tradi- tionalist, rural-minded readers will agree with this one that seldom has any letter given us so much solace as that of Mr D. E. Folkes t28 July).
At last we have the answer to all our anxieties. Never. mind that our countryside is being ravaged by technological progress. Forget Stansted; forget the eighty-foot pylons across the Cotswolds, the rape of the Lake District by the Manchester City Corporation and others. Mr Folkes has the answer, brought down from the mountain as Moses brought the Tablets. 'One useful living tradition,' he says. 'is of more value than thousands of relics of the past in the form of old houses and buildings.' If only we had known! If only the benighted French had known! Would they then have spent all that public money on preserving Versailles and Chambord and Chenonceaux? We don't need the National Trust, or the Ministry of Works, or the Council for the Preservation of Rural England. Loosen your Green Belts and let progress ride freely.
But, incidentally, what exactly does `a living tradition' mean in Mr Folkes's interpretation of the phrase? I hope he can explain, but seriously doubt it, because his 500-word letter, the gist of which could be expressed in a couple of sentences, makes it very clear that he is already marching with that golden generation of the future who, having abandoned literacy, are, in Mr Folkes's words. as familiar with these [scientific] disciplines as the present can read and write.'
Shocked by Mr Maude's statement that 'this age is not producing anything of lasting 'value: he tells us that 'Mathematics, science and tech- nology . . . have as good a claim to be branches of culture as all the plays of Shakespeare.' This means, I presume, that such scientists as Newton. Boyle and Locke were quite indifferent to their environment; Newton, of course, never gave a second glance at Trinity College, Cambridge.
So take heart, everyone who entertains the slightest doubt about the environment in which we or our children will live in the future. When all Britain looks like Ealing, London W5, we have Mr Folkes's assurance that we shall all be so en- raptured by the austere beauty of some new mathematical formula that we shall not even hear the thunder of sonic booms, or notice the atomic reactor at the bottom of our regulation-sized garden.
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