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'We don't tick boxes'
Adam Lusher
(Filed: 09/01/2005) Under the slate roofs of a Lake District village, sinister figures are handling seditious literature. In a quiet café in Staveley, a man slides a pamphlet across the table. National Park Events 2004, says the cover. It gets even more disturbing inside, on page 16: "Gateway to the Lakes: a short but scenic walk. Climb through Craggy Wood to visit Potter Tarn."
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Ranger Clive Langley talks to a group of walkers
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The bespectacled man wants us to accompany him, to show us what free guided walks in the Lake District are like. Just how sinister he is becomes clear when he reveals his identity. He is Clive Langley, 60, a retired chartered surveyor. Quite clearly, he is white, middle-aged and middle class. "You can't help it, can you?" he says, with a grin that suggests he isn't even ashamed. Fortunately, someone has tried to stop all this. Last week The Telegraph revealed that a decision has been taken to scrap the national park's programme of 900 events, including all 400 free guided walks. The walks attract about 5,000 people a year, but they are the wrong sort of people. Mr Langley and his 300 fellow voluntary rangers have received letters informing them of the decision of the corporate and financial services committee of the Lake District National Park Authority. "The strategy will take immediate effect," wrote Paul Tiplady, the National Park Officer. "We will focus on new audiences (urban young people from minority ethnic communities and disabled people)." Mick Casey, the senior media relations adviser, explained why the free walks must be purged. "Our research shows that the majority who do the walks are white, middle-class, middle-aged people." He didn't stop there. "In July 2002, the Government issued a report, in which it outlined what it saw as a problem: not enough ethnic minorities and young people coming to national parks. "We have a limited budget and can't do everything. The Government gives us an annual grant of about £6 million. It is our only source of money. If the Government says we would like you to do this, what do you expect us to do?" The Review of English National Park Authorities, launched by Alun Michael, the Minister for Rural Affairs, does indeed complain of "a lack of engagement with a wider, predominantly urban, constituency". "This work should be accorded higher priority," it insists, adding, in Recommendation 15: "The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs should encourage park authorities to develop greater understanding among a wider audience, including those from urban areas, ethnic minorities and young people." Of course, what Recommendation 15 didn't make clear was exactly how encouraging Defra should be. Should the ministers and their officials be offering gentle hints? Or should the encouragement be more akin to orders from those with a firm grip on the national park's purse strings? The report also didn't make clear exactly how much encouragement the national park needed. As early as August 2001, Mr Tiplady was agonising to the Guardian: "Go into a national park and where is the working man or woman, the ethnic minorities? Have they achieved their primary ideal? No. They have become the domain of the white middle classes." On the committee's decision to scrap the walks, he refused to be drawn. "I have to say that the committee used good information, and used it well, and came to their own views. I don't think my individual view is relevant." Whatever Mr Tiplady's view, and whatever the level of Government encouragement, it all provokes dreadful bourgeois reactionary grumbling. "If that is what the Government is doing," said Tim Yeo, the Shadow Environment Secretary, "it is a ludicrous form of social engineering through funding. It shows their complete failure to understand the countryside, rooted in an urban, rather anti-countryside prejudice. It is also part of their obsession with targets and using them as a completely false way to achieve different social patterns." "Different people enjoy doing different things," he went on. "To judge everything that receives government funding by whether it is socially inclusive is nonsense. Why should ethnic minorities have to go on a guided walk if they don't want to?" "Social engineering sounds a little dramatic," insisted a Defra spokeswoman. "It is targeting: creating more equality of opportunity to access these places. Some people can't just do it in the way others can." Cynics might go further and claim the move is another addition to the Government's proud record. Surely it adds to achievements such as that of Charles Clarke, the then Education Secretary, who last year gave the newly created Office for Fair Access the power to fine universities £500,000 and prevent them from charging higher tuition fees if they failed to do enough to attract applicants from ethnic minority students and lower social classes? Sadly, Mr Michael seemed circumspect last week about following such leads. "National parks are independent bodies that make their own decisions about how they spend their budgets," he insisted. "At the same time," the minister added – perhaps just a touch menacingly – "they are accountable to ministers who provide their funding." He added another, equally finely balanced, explanation. "The Government has a policy of inclusion, aimed at adding to the range of people who benefit from the national parks – not at displacing those who have already discovered these areas." Social inclusion and free walks were both desirable, the Defra spokeswoman emphasised. There would be no grant cut if the guided walks stayed. The minister was happy that the events programme had been granted a stay of execution. This is exactly what Mr Langley and his fellow plotters wanted. Thanks to the pressure they exerted at the authority's quarterly meeting on Tuesday, the members decided against rubber-stamping the purge. They deferred the decision until a special meeting on February 7. Mr Langley smiles, with typical bourgeois politeness. "The strength of public feeling, and common sense, mean the strategy of scrapping everything just cannot happen." Mr Langley tries to explain himself. He may have had the honour of leading one of the last free guided walks in the Lake District, on December 28. "We had one black man, one blind man and people from Liverpool and Sheffield. "They keep saying the walks only attract the white middle class, but they don't seem to have asked the people actually doing the walks. We get all sorts, and welcome them all." Before we have left the banks of the River Kent for the slope of Craggy Wood, however, it is clear that Mr Langley is hopelessly underqualified. He waffles on about years of experience, a first aid certificate and teaching compass techniques, but looks totally blank when I ask him about Dizzee Rascal, a rapper popular with the "urban young". "Er, I like folk music and Radio 2," he says eventually. He is not the only one in need of re-education. Rowena Forfar, a self-described "middle-aged, middle-class black woman", wrote in support of Mr Langley: "Thanks but no thanks to the bureaucrats. From the age of five, my Jamaican father and English mother felt quite able to take me on walking holidays in the Lake District. We even made it to the north of Scotland without feeling threatened. "People from differing cultural and ethnic backgrounds really don't need to be patronised in this way." By the time we have climbed through Craggy Wood, the situation is hopeless. Before us, stretches a vista of green grass, dry stone walls and sheep. "This is the highlight for me," beams Mr Langley, "the fresh air, the freedom." He doesn't mention the word "inclusion". He just pauses, looks around, and reveals how truly misguided he is. "It's a great joy to help others enjoy this. We don't tick boxes. We make no distinction on the grounds of race, creed or class. We just take people who enjoy walking, whoever they are." |
