This is a comment posted on an earlier blog post by a committed NT supporter – I thought it worth giving more profile because it’s very powerful.
NT must surely realise what they are doing, through their own choice of action, to alienate their supporters and paying members.
The offer of a guest blog here for the NT to win over the likes of this supporter is still open – copy deadline Thursday evening.
‘I’ve been with the National Trust as a volunteer of over 5 years and a member for 1 year I’m seriously torn between leaving and giving them a chance on this one. I had to think this ‘trying to please everyone’ attitude through. There’s just not enough like minded people around to talk it through with and I just don’t know enough about the whole thing to make an educated decision so I’m left having to make an emotional and ethical one. I don’t disagree with shooting for food to eat, that in my mind is perfectly acceptable. I do disagree with it done for sport. I do disagree with birds being killed just because they eat the chicks reared for the shoots. The birds are doing what comes natural to them and it’s simply a matter of if you put food out for them you can expect them to take it rather than hunt for miles for it and quite rightly so, that makes sense to me.
I don’t know if it’s all shoots or some but killing birds and mammals for your sport, your money, your fun, your networking or your ‘kudos’ is simply distasteful, destructive, arrogant beyond belief, you have no right to.
I love the National Trust, I have the best memories of taking the odd day’s leave from work to go on wildlife training courses at Fountains Abbey then helping to take visitors around on a weekend and sharing stories about the flowers, deer, the bats and flowers, anything that’s part of the estate, it’s been the best experience. Not that I’m an expert, I remember little information but have a lot of enthusiasm! I’ve always appreciated the NT isn’t there to conserve wildlife, it’s areas and buildings really as that’s what brings in the money for them to grow but….. when it comes down to it, thinking about it, if they had a ‘workable’ model that they can showcase to other landowners that doesn’t mean those landowners will take it up, these are people so set in their arrogant ways, they don’t want to lose anything because every bird is money. There will be compromise in that model.
I think the NT could have said more on the subject, I think they could have said no to shoots which they think would be the easy thing to do but I think that would have been difficult but heroic. They could have turned the publicity from it in to something exciting and raised a lot of support. I do fear they are only trying their best but that’s the best from a weak minded team that have failed to understand that the land they care for comes with sitting tenants called wildlife which was there before the Trust and have more right to it. The Trust want to please people that are killing birds and mammals in terrible inhumane ways for business at the very least, they shouldn’t be killed at all, by any method. That’s how I see it.
Gutted beyond belief, it’s a crap feeling.’
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Would it be too cynical to suggest that the National Trust is simply a vehicle through which the relatively less well off can be hoodwinked into paying for the protection of old manor houses and sporting estates so the better off can continue to pursue their countryside pursuits without having to pay much to do so?
I mean, the NT draws membership fees and public donations to buy stupidly expensive mansions from the wealthy, then maintains them at members’ expense, and the relatively wealthy visit them. And they draw on member fees and public donations to purchase moorlands from the well-off and then lease them back to the well-off for shooting and fox savaging.
I don’t think Messi is especially cycnical to view the NT in that way. That is rather how the Trust comes across. Which is actually surprising, even ironic, if you dig back into the organisation’s origins where a shared sense of culture – in its widest sense – conserved for the benefit of all strata of society was one of the principal founding aspirations. They didn’t start playing around with ostentatious old country houses until quite late in their history but, fairly or not, it has now become one of the things that defines them. All the grouse moor bollocks is the baggage that goes with that. Would some insight into the backgrounds of the current posse of trustees shed further light, I wonder?
Messi, the NT does have the feel of the charity that looks after the landowning aristocracy, but you’re wrong to suggest that they “buy” mansions – they don’t. They may be left them, but without an endowment to pay for future maintenance they won’t accept them these days. Their existing estate is a huge financial liability they cannot afford to expand.
Most NT members, I suspect, join because its cheaper than paying entry fees. That makes their membership as a whole very different, and much less engaged, than say RSPB or the WTs, whose members consciously contribute to “the cause” rather than simplying thinking about cheaper days out. That’s partly why NT neglect nature conservation compared to the big houses when it comes to maintenance spend; the wild land doesn’t generate significant income apart from car parking.
It’s another aspect of their business minded approach that goes along with the estate land agent culture, and it is that culture that is the real criticism I’d have of them.
I was a member of the National Trust for several years, but gave it up when they failed to unambiguously withdraw support for the badger cull. Prior to my deciding I couldn’t stay a member they had taken action against one shooting tenant whose keeper was filmed by the RSPB catching and killing buzzards on their land. Somewhere I have an e-mail from them expanding on their approach to shooting which, to the best of my memory, included giving shooting tenants targets for bio-diversity with particualr emphasis on bird of prey populations. I really must find it and refreah my memory.
I’ve just tracked down an email that I sent to Jon Stewart of the NT this time last year to congratulate the decision to withdraw the shooting lease. I think that this was following a suggestion on the Raptor Persecution Scotland blog and I agreed that given the likely negative response from certain groups it would be good to express support.
I didn’t receive a response. I’ll follow it up shortly to express my disappointment at the latest developments.
I suspect many of us sent congratulations to Helen Gosh and or Chairman, didn’t receive responses but did that matter? What matters is that they’ve now acted outwith engagement and consideration for their membership?
Someone must have done the risk calculation in terms of revenue income from the shoot vs loss of membership revenue and brand damage?
I would endorse Mark’s appeal to the NT to make a response through this blog, then readers will have the opportunity to analyse their logic (if there is any) behind this action.
Is Messi a cynic or a long standing observer of such institutional behaviour profligate in today’s greedy & power crazed ‘society’ driven by an ambition agenda (for the few not the many) rather than ethics, honesty, integrity or principles?
Rant over, hit the dislikes:)
Well, looking at the overall contribution the National Trust makes to quality of life in this country, for anyone motivated to take an interest in the vast range of experiences their properties and tracts of countryside offer, I am happy to continue as a member. Would those who don’t like the fact that we have a heritage of properties formerly owned by wealthy elites be happier if they were maintained by the state, paid for by all taxpayers including the poorest , as maybe happens in some other countries? Or, as in parts of Italy, beautiful villas are either locked up or bought by oligarchs, inaccessible to anyone else? Recently visiting for the first time the fabulous Wicken Fen NNR, largely owned by NT since 1899, I felt my NT subscription (I have no other connection with them) was possibly worth it for that memorable site alone.
Personally I’d be just as happy to see the mansions pulled down or used to home people, but I’ll accept there’s a demand to keep them. But I do wonder whether the need to fund property maintenance doesn’t conflict too much with real conservation management of the land.
Wicken Fen is a nature conservation area, no large houses just a small fen cottage to view. If the NT protected wildlife at its other properties in the same way it does as Wicken Fen, it probably wouldn’t have disgruntled and disaffected members.
i don’t think financial considerations have anything to do with this decision. Like most conservation organisations, the National Trust is unwilling to upset influential stakeholders – even if that means ignoring the concerns of a far larger number of less influential members.
Of course, financials may come to play a part if a substantial number of NT members resign. Even then the Trust will probably prefer to absorb those costs than upset large landowners – given that its trustees probably have more in common with the latter than they do with the majority of members.
Yup. The myth of false balance at play. If they do X for one group (for example conservation and environment) then they think as a representative body that they ought to do Y for another (shooters). However that only applies where both X and Y have comparable evidence behind their requests. This was why the BBC until a couple of years ago fostered climate change denial, albeit inadvertently, by having a denier on every time they discussed evidence that confirmed man made climate change. False balance, the BBC eventually learned the lesson (on climate change, but not much else admittedly) and it is high time that the NT, RSPB, and the various other charities and bodies in similar roles need to learn it too. They don’t need to do X for the shooters, because -like the climate change deniers- they don’t have a similar body of evidence behind them. The balance in this case is between the various environmental positions and which one goes far enough.
Like your blog writer, I am a National Trust member, and have been for the last c15 years. My children did all the “50 things” before they were 11 3/4, and I have great admiration for a lot of what the National Trust has done in recent years. I also have some admiration for the challenging role that Jon Stewart is trying to do in the Dark Peak team (I also knew him before from his days in Natural England) Seeing the gully blocking on Kinder, the clough tree planting and revegetation that is going on in parts of the NT estate and elsewhere is utterly heart-warming.
But there is a problem – a cancer of criminality on these Dark Peak moors. There is an indifference to these sensitive, protected environments from many estate managers, shooting tenants or gamekeepers – all in the name of killing hordes of wild birds that have been intensively managed in these wildernesses, then shot from the ‘comfort’ of over a thousand gun emplacements that litter the upper slopes of our moors. Where, a century ago, gamekeepers would turn away trespassers from the moorlands around Kinder Scout, now it is the gamekeepers who themselves appear to be trespassers in these wild, protected places. That the National Trust did not taken even more decisive action last year when it served notice of eviction on its shooting tenant, businessman Mark Osborne, is deeply regretful.
I am no apologist for the National Trust; if I were, I would never have organised the Moorland Vision campaign to lobby them. Yes, I am deeply saddened by the appearance of their tenancy advert two days ago.
But for anyone thinking of resigning from the Trust right now, do read the details within it. I’m a believer in giving people the benefit of the doubt (more fool me), so I think there does still remain a chance that no shoooting syndicate or individual will be found who is capable of meeting the NT’s conservation criteria. It’s probable that driven grouse shooting becomes impossible and financially unviable under those circumstances, assuming they behave themselves. (why wouldn’t they???)
I would suggest to anyone thinking of resigning from the NT to stay their hand a while. Wait a further couple of months or so until we really know how the National Trust will respond. Once we know for certain, then that would be the best time to loudly inform them you won’t be renewing your annual subscription again, and precisely why. Indeed, the Moorland Vision wenbsite would be happy to publish everyone’s names and past membership numbers if they do.
Or it might (just might) turn out to be time for another congratulatory letter to Helen Ghosh.
Yes, work to influence from within. We don’t leave the country (most of us) because we don’t like its direction, we hope and strive for a wiser future time again. Ntl Trust is a great and valuable organisation on many things – it needs to be persuaded and supported to get this issue right and members surely have the greater currency than non-members.
For a membership organisation nothing is more persuasive than a steady stream of resignations. However, influence from within is the logical starting point.
I think may be the National Trust (NT) fear the nostalgia element of why people are willing to pay for the upkeep of some of their estates. Perhaps some people are buying into the “Downton Abbey” fantasy and paying their membership to help prevent the breakup of these once “great” estates.
Where does stopping grouse shooting come into this? Well that’s pretty obvious really: change (hence nostalgia) is what people who support the NT have the most difficulty with. But this is a logical fallacy since it is change in the form of over intensification of grouse shooting which has led us to where we are today, essentially at the point of schism.
What this situation really needs is leadership. Is it possible to use your NT membership to elect someone to the board of the NT who will provide that leadership? My membership which is lapsed was merely pragmatic, I joined for cheaper parking at Clumber Park. However I would consider rejoining if a proper pro-rewilding executive could be elected.
Anyone at Countryfile Live today (Thursday 3rd Aug) to hear Helen Ghosh talk about the NT vision for the environment?
Was she wearing a blindfold?
You can read it here – https://ntplanning.wordpress.com/2017/08/03/seizing-the-moment-dame-helen-ghoshs-speech-at-countryfile-live-2017/ All about farming and the environment. No doubt Mark and others will be commenting.