Carry on Communities
Act 4 : The Charter of the Forest
Draft 1

Much good had been accomplished by Simon Hobbit, Boris Cat and the Witch of Worcester, but much more remained to be done. One concern was the fate of the Deputy Prime Minister, when he and his comrades awoke from hibernation. The timing of the awakening was also in question.

In the meantime, the Witch and Boris had been charged by higher powers with "cleaning up" the City of London. Fear not, this cleansing was not required as a result of some catastrophic deluge or other environmental catastrophe, although fog had been a problem of late and air pollution levels certainly needed reduction, for both local and global considerations. However, the greatest concern of our hero and heroine just now was the poor ethical condition of London as one of the world's great financial centres. Unfortunately, London was known globally as the World's No. 1 Money "Laundry of choice". Nor was money laundering limited to the Capital, but it was here that the Witch and Boris would earnestly begin the process of cleaning it up.

Meanwhile, Simon Hobbit had been charged with sorting out some of the more unruly parts of Middle England, a task by no means small. A key challenge was what to do with the large number of people who had been employed or otherwise retained by quangos and other unproductive enterprises of that ilk during the rules of the wicked Blair Wizard and the Big Clunking Fist. "Hard labour for them, restoring the great forests !" Boris Cat had advised. The Witch also sympathised with this view : "They have lived off the fat of our land, now let them do some real work for a change. I want to see those former Queens of the Quangos sweat !". Simon, however, was a compassionate hobbit and wished to deal gently with the quango people. Mention of labouring in the forest had, nevertheless, given him an idea. He vaguely remembered an ancient "Charter of the Forest" which had apparently guaranteed basic subsistence to the people of these lands in earlier times. Simon had therefore acquired agreement in principle with the powers that be on the introduction of a type of "Citizen's Income", which would be available to everyone engaged in some kind of productive enterprise, subject to certain basic requirements.

For the purpose of piloting this project in the Birmingham conurbation - something Simon believed would provide a major catalyst for its sustainable regeneration - the services of one Sir Digby de Br'm had been procured (at no little cost in cash and other benefits, it had to be said).
Now Simon also knew that Sir Digby wanted to see Birmingham made the home of a newly to be created English Parliament. This would involve a major downsizing of government in London -something which would liberate much needed space for more important uses - and the relocation of a number of departments of state to Birmingham and other regional cities which could better accommodate them. As a simple man, all this made total sense to Simon Hobbit, and, whilst he sometimes thought Sir Digby de Br'm was a pompous loud mouth, he also believed that, with the right incentives and supervision (from the Witch and Boris, as well as himself), Sir Digby was the man for this particular job. "One day Birmigham will be the apotheosis of the long prophesied sustainable community !", Simon forecast, and so it transpired.


Epilogue : Britain 2107

When the Rt Hon John Prescott MP, Deputy Prime Minister of HM Government of Britain, awoke on the morning of 1 January 2007, he was somewhat surprised to find himself rather more modestly accommodated than when he had fallen asleep. He was also surrounded by rather fewer people than he remembered on that fateful foggy night in December.... Moreover, he was still recovering from a dreadful nightmare in which a disembodied Big Clunking Fist was chasing him through the London Underground. "Must have been that reception at the Irish Embassy", he thought to himself : "The Bishop of London - or was it Woolwich - told me he thought someone had spiked our drinks...."

However, the Deputy Prime Minister looked out of his window, everything looked much better than he remembered it, and he gave a loud snort of satisfaction. "Everything runs much more more smoothly when I'm in charge !", he said.

Crookbarrow Farm “Regeneration” and Battenhall to Norton “Green Corridor” Proposals

This paper summarises 2 possible “rural-urban fringe” projects, to the south east of the city of Worcester, and adjoining areas of Wychavon district. These projects are :

• “Regeneration” of Crookbarrow Farm, Whittington
  
• Creation of a Battenhall to Norton “Green Corridor”*
  * The “Corridor” is focussed on the area between the A44 (to the north) and the railway line (to the south). The M5 roughly bisects this.
  

1. “Regeneration” of Crookbarrow Farm
Crookbarrow Farm is home to the “Whittington Tump” or “Crookbarrow”. According to Jabez Allies “Antiquities and Folklore of Worcestershire” (2nd edition 1852): “Cruckbarrow Hill is rather larger than Silbury Hill in Wiltshire. Silbury Hill is said to be perfectly artificial, but Cruckbarrow only partially so”. Noakes Guide to Worcestershire (1868) also notes that Crookbarrow Hill is “one of the largest tumuli (supposed) in England". Before World War II, and prior to the construction of the M5 motorway (Junction 7 is a few hundred metres from the Crookbarrow), the Tump (or mound) was an important focus for the local community. A history of Whittington by Michael Craze, published in 1977 to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee (which involved a night time gathering with torches at Crookbarrow Farm) mentions that “the older recalled similar crowds on Good Friday…when the Worcester custom was to walk out and picnic on the top” as well as “…the Whit Monday Fair on Whittington Tump”. However, in recent years both Tump and Farm have suffered the “degeneration” typical of rural-fringe areas, with the added problem of noise/pollution and severance caused by road construction/traffic.

2. Battenhall to Norton “Green Corridor”
Current proposals to build a bus park and ride facility in Battenhall, and a rail park-way in Norton (ie at either end of the “Green Corridor”), and associated plans to increase the capacity of the local road network, would compound existing pressures on Crookbarrow Hill and Farm, and adjoining areas which also have important archaeological and historic environment value. Indeed, the “sub-text” of transport proposals would seem to suggest plans to expand the City of Worcester into these areas, as happened with Warndon Villages (also a place of high landscape value, although much of this is now subsumed under residential and – rather poorly designed - commercial developments). It is proposed here that the relevant authorities re-consider their transport proposals (the objectives and status eg funding of these is anyway unclear), and consider instead sustainable “regeneration” (as broadly defined, for instance, by English Heritage) of the Battenhall to Norton Green Corridor. This would involve investment in measures to improve conservation of the historic landscape, including its ongoing management, and to enhance public access, in ways compatible with such conservation aims.

version 1 1.9.2006

"Small is Still Beautiful"

This book, by Joseph Pearce, appeared in 2001, one of a number of visionary works published around the turn of the millennium, which somehow seem to have been lost in the culture of size matters which has grown evermore in recent years. "Small is Still Beautiful" has a foreward by Barbara Wood, the daughter of E F Schumacher, who wrote the better known and certainly more influential "Small is Beautiful" in the 1970s. Yet Joseph Pearce's book is very well written, and endorced by key figures from the green, co-operative and social enterprise movements. In short, it is definitely worth a read, and it will certainly make you think.

For this reason (ie incitement to serious thinking), "Small is Still Beautiful" would not be welcomed in New Labour circles. As a the previous editor of the New Statesman, Peter Wilby, noted after his tenure there came to an end :

"New Labour welcomed ideas only within very tight boundaries, most of them technocratic rather than inspirational. New Labour is a tightly-corseted suburban party, and almost everyone connected with it - in academia as well as in Westminster - keeps the curtain tightly drawn lest the neighbours catch them running wild with ideas..." (Guardian 12.9.05)

However, this observation, I would suggest, applies not only to New Labour but also to wider society, including much of the environmental movement, with regard to green issues today.

Last year, whilst attending a planning inquiry a serious green man, whom I have known for many years, expressed the view to me that it was easier before the concept of "sustainable development" came into being. Whilst I find this concept useful, on the one hand, as something which encourages joined up thinking about environmental issues, and their relationship with economic and social considerations, I also found myself agreeing with my aquaintance.

I will use this analogy from the area regeneration context. On the radio last week, it was reported that representatives from UNESCO (?the United Nations Educational Science and Cultural Organisation) were to visit Liverpool to ascertain whether development proposals for the waterfront area were compatible with this part of the city's status as a World Heritage Site.
A man from the local preservation society spoke very eloquently on this theme - in fact the society had "called in" UNESCO - and also said, with some passion, that whilst he greatly welcomed "regeneration", funding associated with this seemed to have brought with it "a load of carpet baggers". The same, I feel, is true of funding associated with "sustainable development".

My feeling is that the "sustainable development" community (if there is such as thing), which began with strong links to the environmental and green movements now also plays host to "a load of carpetbaggers", which is not to say that, as with area regeneration, some excellent work is not being done.

Many environmentalists and greens have been suspicious - rightly so in my opinion - of large funding streams, whether from public or private sources, which may divert their "resources" from core areas of work. This is not to say that large projects and funding streams do not have their place.

However, in my view "Small is Still Beautiful" whether - and perhaps especially - in an over developed country such as our own, or in developing/less developed countries still very much applies. With regard to the latter, the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006, divided into two equal parts, to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for their efforts to create economic and social development from below would surely have won the approval of E H Schumacher, and be hailed as good news by Joseph Pearce. Mohammad Yunus, an economist from Bangladesh, and the Grameen Bank which he founded, are world leaders in the provision of micro-credit.

Aims of The Green Man Project

The aim of The Green Man Project is to offer examples of good practice in "local conservation" (broadly defined) throughout the world, and to carry out studies/projects in my local area.