Country life
Let it be
Leanda de Lisle
It was bought by the council and is being returned to heathland with the help of English Nature. Well, except for a hundred- acre business park. This park is owned by a trust, which has just run a landscaping com- petition for the common. According to one newspaper report, the winning design includes a 'lake of light' shining on the old runways and a number of sculptures to be placed according to the whims of former shock-troopers of the sandbag movement.
Haven't you come to hate the word `park'? It conjures up images of corpora- tion gardens in hot colours, corporation merriment queuing for the log chute, and corporation art overshadowing our every move. Of course, a big businessman wouldn't think a plain old bit of heathland around his park would be enough. He'd want to prove he's not some geek in a suit by commissioning the school of `yah, I'm cool' to build really big — and, you know, really daring — sculptures. Then he'd find somebody iconic — like the peace person in the combat fatigue frock — to plonk them amongst the rare butterflies. Finally, he'd light them up, to ensure the residents of Greenham couldn't escape his ego, even at night. 'Why can't patrons of the arts just stick a little abstract picture on their sit- ting-room walls and leave us alone?' I asked myself as I rang Newbury Council to find out what was going on.
The council spokesman assured me that the newspaper report had been inaccurate. Yes, there had been a competition, but it was a damn cheek that the brief covered the area outside the business park. There was no runway to light up and they could take their sculptures and stick them up their bunkers. Then I telephoned a spokesman for the trust. He also assured me that the landscape competition meant nothing — or at any rate it didn't mean that they were intending to floodlight areas of the com- mon. It also transpired that the sculpture competition had just been launched and the peace wimmin are not going to be so much sought out as not excluded from any consultation with local people. So that's all right then. Up to a point.
I can't help but wonder if those involved with the trust aren't hoping to go over the heads of local people, straight to Westmin- ster politicians and Islington-based movers and shakers. A trust spokeswoman said, `Many people will always think of Green- ham Common and remember peace women and bombs and protests.' The winning entry of their landscape competition took this on board and supposedly reflects a 'Utopian view of the technology of the information age resolving the issues of the nuclear age, so as not to inflict disasters on future gener- ations'. It sounds very, Millennium Dome, and I can hear the words, 'Look, Norman Foster judged this landscape competition. It's Cool Britannia. It's modem. It speaks to the young.' Well, those who connect Green- ham with bombs and bags only knew it from the news. When I think of Greenham Com- mon I think of peace, not peace women. And the orchids on the heath are, like the poppies of Flanders, the best symbol and expression of it.
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