Murder! Murder! Murder! Someone Should Be Angry

Jamie Reid: Anarchy in the U. K. flag design 

for the Sex Pistols first single on EMI (1976)

Reimagined by Stephen Alexander (2023)

 

I.

 

I've never been to Plymouth, a city on the south coast of Devon, famed for its maritime history, its shipyards and ports, etc. 

 

And I certainly don't want to go there now that the council have - in the face of widespread opposition from local people - needlessly cut down more than 100 healthy, mature trees in the city centre; a disgraceful act of state-sanctioned eco-terrorism carried out with chainsaws and heavy machinery under the cover of darkness, that now leaves just 15 trees still standing.      

 

Apparently, this was done as part of a £12.7 million pound revamp - known as the Armada Way project - which would transform the city, enabling pedestrians and cyclists to get around more easily. Other councils around the UK are, apparently, also planning to chop down and uproot their trees - often justifying their actions on the grounds that new houses and roads must be given priority.   

 

Plymouth council have said they plan to plant 169 new (semi-mature) trees and will consider a wider tree planting programme in the future ...  

 

 

II.

 

Meanwhile, on a remote Scottish island - South Uist, in the Outer Hebrides - residents are voting on whether they should not merely cull, but actually exterminate their red deer population, in order to safeguard against Lyme disease, which can be spread to humans from infected ticks living on the deer. 

 

At least, that's the cover story: and by making it a human health issue, they hope to disguise their real issue with the deer; namely, that they are a nuisance - causing road accidents, destroying crops and gardens, frightening the children, etc. 

 

It's thought that more than half of the island population (c.1,750 people) will vote on this, with hundreds having already signed a petition in support of the move. 

 

Thankfully, there are some people opposing the idea - including the Scottish Game Keepers Association who are tasked with managing the deer and who point out that density of deer on the island is significantly below the Scottish government's recommended figure (only 3 animals per sq km rather than 10).

 

But it still shocks me that anyone in their right mind would support eradication of such a magnificent animal, which has been native to the island for thousands of years - although, having said that, my own sister has recently expressed her wish that all foxes and deer in Essex also be eradicated as pests.      

 

 

III.

In sum: from one end of the UK to the other, the natural environment and the astonishing wildlife it supports is constantly under threat. 

 

There may (technically) be more trees now than a century ago, but native woodlands are isolated, in poor ecological condition, and depressingly silent due to the decline in wildlife. In the last fifty years, half of all species have faced a significant fall in numbers and Britain has lost more of its biodiversity than almost anywhere else in western Europe.   

I really don't like to throw around terms like ecocide, but how else is one to refer to the long-term, widespread and wilful destruction of the natural world? I suppose, one day, people will wake up and realise to their horror and shame and fury what's been done ... 

 

And with one big shout, they'll all cry out: Who killed Bambi?

     

 

 Illustration by ATAK (Georg Barber)

fcatak.de 

 

 

For a follow up post to this one on arborcide in the UK, click here.   

 

 

Update to post (23-03-23): Richard Bignley, the Tory council leader who oversaw the felling of more than 100 trees in Plymouth, has quit following an outcry over the operation (and before facing a vote of no confidence). 

On the Fall and Rise of British Woodland in the Last Hundred Years

The Major Oak, Sherwood Forest

Photo: FLPA / Rex Features

Sir Clifford Chatterley was very proud of the fine (if somewhat melancholy) park and woodland - a remnant of Sherwood Forest - that belonged to the Wragby estate; "he loved the old oak-trees. He felt they were his own through generations. He wanted to protect them. He wanted this place inviolate, shut off from the world." 

His father, however, Sir Geoffrey, had been rather less proud and protective of the ancient oaks. In fact, he was more than willing to chop them down for timber during the War. Blinded by patriotism and "so divorced from the England that was really England", he failed to see the difference between Lloyd George and St. George.  

Thus it was that, post-War, when Clifford inherited the estate, there were large clearings in the wood, "where there was nothing but a ravel of dead bracken, a thin and spindly sapling leaning here and there, big sawn stumps, showing their tops and their grasping roots, lifeless."

Standing on the crown of the knoll where the oaks had once been, you could look over to the colliery and the railway and the sordid-looking houses of the ever-expanding town with their smoking chimneys. It felt exposed and strangely forlorn; "a breach in the pure seclusion of the wood", that revealed the industrial world triumphant: 

"This denuded place always made Clifford curiously angry. He had been through the war, had seen what it meant. But he didn't get really angry till he saw this bare hill. He was having it replanted. But it made him hate Sir Geoffrey."

This hatred of his father and his father's generation for their wilful destruction of the heart and soul of England, makes me rather love Clifford - even though, of course, his dream of securing such is in vain and he ultimately proves himself more concerned with modernising his coal mines than he does with replanting trees and preserving the natural world. 

Thus, there's not only a certain pathos to his words, but falseness and perhaps a degree of self-delusion. The wood, as Lawrence notes, "still had some mystery of the wild, old England", but the War had had a truly devastating effect and exposed forever the lie of England as a green and pleasant land entrusted to the care of a benevolent ruling class.

For if truth be told, in 1920 - the year when Sir Clifford and his wife Constance enter into their married life at Wragby Hall - the amount of land covered by trees in Britain stood at less than 5%. This is an outrageously low figure, particularly when recalling that the entire country was originally (and is potentially) one huge forest thanks to ideal conditions for tree growth, including relatively mild winters, plenty of rain, and fertile soil.

The good news is that in the hundred years since, things have significantly improved and, today, about 12% of land surface is wooded, with plans to increase this figure to 15% by 2060. However, before getting too excited about this, it's sobering to recall that other European countries already average between 25-37%. France and Germany, for example, both possess almost three times the number of trees that England has.

Further, whilst the planting of young trees is to be welcomed, the real issue is preserving what remains of the UK's ancient woodland - defined as woodland that has existed continuously since 1600 in England and Wales and 1750 in Scotland; i.e. long enough to develop incredibly rich, complex, and irreplaceable ecosystems.

It is ancient woodland that provides home to more rare and threatened species of flora and fauna in the UK than any other type of habitat. But presently just 2% of land is covered with ancient woodland, which means there are very few oaks still standing as majestic as the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest; a thousand-year-old tree which is said to have provided a safe haven for Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men.

In sum: there is cause for celebration; British woodland has returned to the levels of the 1750s, with tree cover having more than doubled since Lawrence's day. But it would be foolish to become complacent on this issue and not acknowledge that there is still much that needs to be done (the present government is already falling well below its own target for reforestation - a target that one might argue was insufficient in the first place). 

Like Lawrence, I adore the stillness of trees, "with their crinkly, innumerable twigs against the sky, and their grey, obstinate trunks rising from the brown bracken". And I marvel at how gaily the birds and forest creatures and lovers move among them.  

See D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993). Lines quoted are from Chapters 1 and 5. 

This post is dedicated to David Brock; an Englishman with a heart of oak.