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| Andrew Motion: 'Once you develop land, it is gone forever as countryside' | Andrew Motion: 'Once you develop land, it is gone forever as countryside' |
| (30 days later) | |
| On Wednesday, Sir Andrew Motion was in Bath to address a meeting of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), of which he has been president since June, and for once, the former poet laureate was almost at a loss for words. The previous evening on Newsnight, Nick Boles, the new Tory planning minister, had presented what amounted to a governmental two fingers to everything the CPRE stands for. | On Wednesday, Sir Andrew Motion was in Bath to address a meeting of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), of which he has been president since June, and for once, the former poet laureate was almost at a loss for words. The previous evening on Newsnight, Nick Boles, the new Tory planning minister, had presented what amounted to a governmental two fingers to everything the CPRE stands for. |
| Boles, two months into his job, announced that he could solve both Britain's economic woes and its housing squeeze at a stroke: by relaxing planning laws and sanctioning new building on an additional 3% of Britain's countryside. This would amount to an area of 1,500 square miles, more than twice the size of Greater London. | Boles, two months into his job, announced that he could solve both Britain's economic woes and its housing squeeze at a stroke: by relaxing planning laws and sanctioning new building on an additional 3% of Britain's countryside. This would amount to an area of 1,500 square miles, more than twice the size of Greater London. |
| Speaking before the meeting in Bath, Motion described his feelings at the minister's performance as "somewhere between horror and enormous anger". | Speaking before the meeting in Bath, Motion described his feelings at the minister's performance as "somewhere between horror and enormous anger". |
| "Nick Boles has clearly spent a lot of his life in thinktanks," he said. "And he has the kind of attitude you imagine went down quite well in a thinktank. Slightly abrasive, irksome, ruffling feathers. But to talk so blithely about these issues where so many people's lives and so much of our land is at stake is just incredibly irresponsible." | "Nick Boles has clearly spent a lot of his life in thinktanks," he said. "And he has the kind of attitude you imagine went down quite well in a thinktank. Slightly abrasive, irksome, ruffling feathers. But to talk so blithely about these issues where so many people's lives and so much of our land is at stake is just incredibly irresponsible." |
| If Boles's smug tone was incendiary, the content of what he said was even more poorly judged in Motion's eyes. "On just about every level what he said was wrong. Start at the level of fact: he said 9% of our countryside is bricked over; by CPRE reckoning it is actually already more like 12%. And that doesn't take into account the collateral effects of development. About 50% of our land is already compromised in some way or other." | If Boles's smug tone was incendiary, the content of what he said was even more poorly judged in Motion's eyes. "On just about every level what he said was wrong. Start at the level of fact: he said 9% of our countryside is bricked over; by CPRE reckoning it is actually already more like 12%. And that doesn't take into account the collateral effects of development. About 50% of our land is already compromised in some way or other." |
| Boles calls the opposition of lobbyists such as Motion and the CPRE "the hysterical scare-mongering of latter-day Luddites", but on this occasion a degree of hysteria may be justified. One can imagine armchair psychiatrists watching Newsnight dusting down diagnoses of Oedipus complex in the minister, who grew up in a Grade II-listed house in Devon, the son of Sir Jack Boles, then head of the National Trust. What better way to exorcise subconscious patricidal angst than to become concreter-in-chief of what your father held most dear? | Boles calls the opposition of lobbyists such as Motion and the CPRE "the hysterical scare-mongering of latter-day Luddites", but on this occasion a degree of hysteria may be justified. One can imagine armchair psychiatrists watching Newsnight dusting down diagnoses of Oedipus complex in the minister, who grew up in a Grade II-listed house in Devon, the son of Sir Jack Boles, then head of the National Trust. What better way to exorcise subconscious patricidal angst than to become concreter-in-chief of what your father held most dear? |
| Motion, who grew up in a village in East Anglia and, like Boles, attended a top boarding school, thinks he knows the type. What, I wonder, does he make of the minister's suggestion, bizarre to many city dwellers, that a little house and a patch of land around it is the right of every person in the country, like the right to healthcare or education? | Motion, who grew up in a village in East Anglia and, like Boles, attended a top boarding school, thinks he knows the type. What, I wonder, does he make of the minister's suggestion, bizarre to many city dwellers, that a little house and a patch of land around it is the right of every person in the country, like the right to healthcare or education? |
| Motion laughs. "He seems to be taking his model from the Burghley estate, which forms a large part of his constituency. It is, in any case, a pretty high level of social entry to suggest that everyone in London, for example, should have a house and garden of their own. But the underlying problem is this idea that in a difficult economic time you can just lighten the burden of planning regulation as a kind of short-term fix. That is not how it works. Once you develop a piece of land it is gone forever as countryside. Clearly there are issues around housing, but clearly also not nearly enough is being done to develop brownfield sites. | Motion laughs. "He seems to be taking his model from the Burghley estate, which forms a large part of his constituency. It is, in any case, a pretty high level of social entry to suggest that everyone in London, for example, should have a house and garden of their own. But the underlying problem is this idea that in a difficult economic time you can just lighten the burden of planning regulation as a kind of short-term fix. That is not how it works. Once you develop a piece of land it is gone forever as countryside. Clearly there are issues around housing, but clearly also not nearly enough is being done to develop brownfield sites. |
| "And we know what will happen if this goes through: builders will slap up new estates in the most desirable places; they will snap up prime land in addition to the vast tracts of undeveloped land they own already. As we know, the real reason why no one is building or buying houses is that mortgages are so hard to come by..." | "And we know what will happen if this goes through: builders will slap up new estates in the most desirable places; they will snap up prime land in addition to the vast tracts of undeveloped land they own already. As we know, the real reason why no one is building or buying houses is that mortgages are so hard to come by..." |
| Though Motion is not combative by temperament, he arrived at his CPRE post in summer ready for this kind of political scrap. And he had first-hand experience of the kneejerk ideology of ambitious new ministers. | Though Motion is not combative by temperament, he arrived at his CPRE post in summer ready for this kind of political scrap. And he had first-hand experience of the kneejerk ideology of ambitious new ministers. |
| In the year before he stood down as poet laureate in 2009, Motion, now aged 59, was looking around for something else useful to do. "It may sound pious," he says "but I believe Keats was right when he said one must do the world some good." | In the year before he stood down as poet laureate in 2009, Motion, now aged 59, was looking around for something else useful to do. "It may sound pious," he says "but I believe Keats was right when he said one must do the world some good." |
| To this end he took the job of chairman of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, a body that was "in a pretty difficult state and likely to get worse". He worked hard to make it a more coherent organisation for a couple of years, only to be hit by ministerial edict. "Five minutes after Jeremy Hunt, another appeaser and pleaser of the chancellor, came to office, he just put the MLA in the bin." | To this end he took the job of chairman of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, a body that was "in a pretty difficult state and likely to get worse". He worked hard to make it a more coherent organisation for a couple of years, only to be hit by ministerial edict. "Five minutes after Jeremy Hunt, another appeaser and pleaser of the chancellor, came to office, he just put the MLA in the bin." |
| Motion spent the second half of his four-year tenure sinking, miserably, with his ship and all hands. It was at about the moment that he was winding up his MLA duties for good that a letter inviting him to succeed Bill Bryson as president of the CPRE arrived. | Motion spent the second half of his four-year tenure sinking, miserably, with his ship and all hands. It was at about the moment that he was winding up his MLA duties for good that a letter inviting him to succeed Bill Bryson as president of the CPRE arrived. |
| "I immediately thought: great! It had the word 'campaign' written on the tin. And it was a very real job of work, concerned with issues that I've cared deeply about all my life." | "I immediately thought: great! It had the word 'campaign' written on the tin. And it was a very real job of work, concerned with issues that I've cared deeply about all my life." |
| He drew in his mind a map of what might be his priorities: arguments around wind farms ("difficult and nuanced"), HS2 (the planned high-speed railway between London and, initially, Birmingham – "bonkers"), and the wider agenda of localism, "which this government came into office promising to support, and has failed to do at every turn". A few months on he finds himself beset instead with ash dieback, ("a lesson in how not to respond to a disaster"). And Boles. | He drew in his mind a map of what might be his priorities: arguments around wind farms ("difficult and nuanced"), HS2 (the planned high-speed railway between London and, initially, Birmingham – "bonkers"), and the wider agenda of localism, "which this government came into office promising to support, and has failed to do at every turn". A few months on he finds himself beset instead with ash dieback, ("a lesson in how not to respond to a disaster"). And Boles. |
| His priorities, he says, are to help give a strong and coherent voice on such issues, and to widen access to the countryside. "I live in Kentish Town, north London, and I see lots of kids who have rarely if ever been to the country, who have as a result no idea where their food comes from and no idea what this resource is that we are trying to preserve." He hopes the CPRE can help to join up all the agencies and initiatives that get urban children out into nature. | His priorities, he says, are to help give a strong and coherent voice on such issues, and to widen access to the countryside. "I live in Kentish Town, north London, and I see lots of kids who have rarely if ever been to the country, who have as a result no idea where their food comes from and no idea what this resource is that we are trying to preserve." He hopes the CPRE can help to join up all the agencies and initiatives that get urban children out into nature. |
| That Wordsworthian impulse, connection, has to be at the root of any campaign, he believes. "We all know instinctively the importance of peace and quiet and being reminded of our more primitive needs. We know the countryside does us good. And even though most of it is man-made here in Britain, we should never forget that what we are looking at and trying to preserve is the great national masterpiece, greater even than Shakespeare. We made it, and it is the most wonderful example of what human beings can do." | That Wordsworthian impulse, connection, has to be at the root of any campaign, he believes. "We all know instinctively the importance of peace and quiet and being reminded of our more primitive needs. We know the countryside does us good. And even though most of it is man-made here in Britain, we should never forget that what we are looking at and trying to preserve is the great national masterpiece, greater even than Shakespeare. We made it, and it is the most wonderful example of what human beings can do." |
| Motion hadn't imagined he would come into the role at such a time of crisis, but he is already finding it more stimulating to creativity than his decade as the nation's official poet. He admits that being public property almost did for him as a writer. "Emily Dickinson said, 'Tell all the truth but tell it slant'. The pressure on a laureate does not allow that. It's 'we want a poem about foot and mouth for the Today programme on Wednesday'." | Motion hadn't imagined he would come into the role at such a time of crisis, but he is already finding it more stimulating to creativity than his decade as the nation's official poet. He admits that being public property almost did for him as a writer. "Emily Dickinson said, 'Tell all the truth but tell it slant'. The pressure on a laureate does not allow that. It's 'we want a poem about foot and mouth for the Today programme on Wednesday'." |
| Poetry is not a branch of journalism though, he says. "It doesn't go in through the front door of a subject, and as a laureate that is what was expected." | Poetry is not a branch of journalism though, he says. "It doesn't go in through the front door of a subject, and as a laureate that is what was expected." |
| Motion feels "two-layered" now, and usefully so. "One half of me likes being alone in the cellar, as it were, where I write, down among the id-men. But I also need to have an argument about things in a public way." | Motion feels "two-layered" now, and usefully so. "One half of me likes being alone in the cellar, as it were, where I write, down among the id-men. But I also need to have an argument about things in a public way." |
| In his writing he draws inspiration, if indirectly, from his work with the CPRE. As if to prove the point, his new collection of poetry, The Customs House, is a series of war poems, imagined at one remove, of battles past, and battles to come. | In his writing he draws inspiration, if indirectly, from his work with the CPRE. As if to prove the point, his new collection of poetry, The Customs House, is a series of war poems, imagined at one remove, of battles past, and battles to come. |
| • This article was amended on 2 December 2012. In the original we said Sir Andrew Motion is the chairman of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, he is in fact the president. | • This article was amended on 2 December 2012. In the original we said Sir Andrew Motion is the chairman of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, he is in fact the president. |
| POET'S PROGRESS | POET'S PROGRESS |
| 1975 Won the Newdigate prize when a student at Oxford University for his poem The Tides. | 1975 Won the Newdigate prize when a student at Oxford University for his poem The Tides. |
| 1976 Had his first volume of poetry published and began teaching English at the University of Hull. | 1976 Had his first volume of poetry published and began teaching English at the University of Hull. |
| 1980 Appointed editor of the Poetry Society's Poetry Review. | 1980 Appointed editor of the Poetry Society's Poetry Review. |
| 1987 Won the Dylan Thomas prize for his book Natural Causes. | 1987 Won the Dylan Thomas prize for his book Natural Causes. |
| 1993 Published his Whitbread prize-winning biography of Philip Larkin. | 1993 Published his Whitbread prize-winning biography of Philip Larkin. |
| 1996 Became chairman of the Arts Council of England's literature panel. | 1996 Became chairman of the Arts Council of England's literature panel. |
| 1999 Appointed poet laureate, following the death of his friend Ted Hughes. | 1999 Appointed poet laureate, following the death of his friend Ted Hughes. |
| 2009 Knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours list and retired as poet laureate. Became chairman of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, appointed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. | 2009 Knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours list and retired as poet laureate. Became chairman of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, appointed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. |
| 2010 Chaired the Man Booker prize. | 2010 Chaired the Man Booker prize. |
| 2011 Premiered his debut play Incoming about the Afghan war. | 2011 Premiered his debut play Incoming about the Afghan war. |
| 2012 Became president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. | 2012 Became president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. |
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