The National Trust; For ever, for everyone

The bold proclamation of the National Trust – For ever, for everyone. It sounds great doesn’t it? The thing is, having spent six months of 2017 as a NT employee, I have a worrying feeling about the organisation that has motivated me to put these words together…

Here’s a list of a few of the areas that have raised my concerns (note, the hyperlinks are likely to break over time, especially as bad-press eventually has a habit of getting buried by powerful organisations):

• A new licensing scheme to supposedly help manage events and activities that take place on NT land seems to me to be more about squeezing a margin out of other organisations that work on NT land. Of course it may be true that over-use by groups may increase maintenance costs etc. of that land. But what about public rights-of-way etc. that go across that land? Should the leaders of leisure oriented walking groups have to pay to use a public footpath?
• Although the policy to force volunteers to wear gay pride badges was ultimately reversed after an outcry, I fear it says more about an organisational culture more obsessed about itself and it’s image than it’s aims, people, and customers.
• It may be an issue related to the National Trust for Scotland, but the National Trust for Scotland has threatened a firm with legal action for using the name “Glencoe”. How can any organisation assert a copyright like this? Not to mention that the assertion is for gain! This is a pattern of behaviour that I recognise in the National Trust, check out these next couple of topics…
• While I understand that flying of drones where there may be people present constitutes a risk and goes against current civil aviation regulations, but what about open spaces like those in the Lake District? Places where the nearest person might be several miles away! I suspect the NT policy for flying of drones is more about maximising revenue from licensing flights.
• The National Trust is targeting photographers and film-makers over image rights in yet another bid to maximise revenues. How can it make sense that any photo taken with a recognisable landscape such as Snowdon in the background should attract a license fee? Is this what the NT mean by For ever, for everyone? Maybe, so long as they get their cut!

From the To Hatch a Crow blog
The Glencoe and Image Rights issues in many ways are just the tip of a PR iceberg as far as the Trust is concerned. It’s approach to hunting and bloodsports on its land, its hazy policies on wind farms and renewable energy projects on NT estates etc etc, are just some of the issues which have antagonised both member and non member alike. Whilst these latter projects are considered good PR and are generally well received by the average metropolitan Guardianist, many conservationists question for example, why a scheme like the Hafod Llan hydro-power development which was constructed on the Trust’s eponymous estate, near Beddgelert in north Wales, was necessary?

This then moves me on to main issues of contention and motivation for leaving my employment with the National Trust, gentrification of landscape, and weak leadership with respect to hunting…

I joined the NT as I believe they offer a great product at a reasonable price. Plus they do an amazing job of conservation of the properties they manage. However, with respect to landscape and wildlife, I think they are best described as schizophrenic. The approach to landscape too often borders on to developing that landscape in to something more akin to a public park or attraction. Remember their aim is supposed to be For ever, for everyone, and they have the unique power to do that inalienably.

LANDSCAPE: I can see that the plan to restore James Marshall’s vision for Tarn Hows could be seen as conserving the property in the state in which it was entrusted. But is that what a piece of the Lake District should be like? A completely artificial landscape. Is that what hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Lakeland Fells want to see? Clearly Tarn Hows is popular, impressively and strangely disproportionately so in a Cumbrian landscape that bristles with equally amazing yet largely deserted spaces! Those many visitors today are happy to see that it has evolved naturally to be naturally Lakeland like. (I know this because I worked there and asked many of them.) Therefore I question the motive to restore Tarn Hows. Is it really to make it more like a park? And frighteningly, I fear there is a plan somewhere down the line to make Tarn Hows in to a paid-for entry NT attraction.

The nail-in-the-coffin for my NT employment, HUNTING on National Trust land: On 21st October 2017 at the NT’s AGM held near Swindon the member’s motion – cessation of trail hunting, exempt hunting and hound exercise – was defeated in what I think to be a deeply flawed manner. Here are the NT AGM voting results.

Basically the specified member votes won the motion by 1,104 votes. Then the chair had 3,460 discretionary proxy votes he could cast as he saw fit. This was against 2,057 discretionary proxy votes held by those bringing the motion. A difference of 1,403. Thus bringing it to an overall defeat of 299. In other words, the chair’s, or the Trustee’s position, was the deciding factor not the member’s point of view. Surely this is wrong? Surely a membership organisation’s leadership should vote with their members’ wishes!

• National Trust defeats move to ban trail hunting on its land
• National Trust votes against banning trail hunting to dismay of animal rights campaigners
• Trail hunting in Cumbria set to continue after National Trust votes against ban

As an employee I was gagged and actively told to not comment on these topics. As an ex-employee I hope to continue to promote what is great about the National Trust, but I am no longer restricted in challenging what I see to be the NT’s shortcomings…