Michael Gove plans to tweak river pollution laws to encourage housebuilding. This was occasion enough for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), an agglomeration of ‘The Fin, Fur, and Feather Folk’ and ‘The Plumage League’, to bestir itself, and to enter public life for the first time in opposition to the idea.
Organisations like these fill a niche in the English mind. The RSPB is one. So is the National Trust, the Church of England, the Women’s Institute and the Heritage Railway Association. They are mustily Rotarian. They are endearingly local. Their membership is charmingly old; their remit is charmingly narrow. They usually carry the stamp of royal patent, with all that that entails. They are cute. They speak to a certain idea of England that is, not quite Victorian, but certainly a kind of midcentury Christopher Robinesque. They are – for some reason – inextricably bound up with the person of Paddington Bear, and with Harold Macmillan.
Most of these bodies have now clashed with the current administration, over various issues. This hasn’t passed without comment. But here’s the strange thing about these rows. They are never about the actual substance of disagreement. Rather, it’s about the fact that these bouts are occurring in the first place. They are said to augur ill for the future of British society. We know that things are in dire straits, apparently, when even the guild of bird watchers feels compelled to enter upon political life. Things have gotten so bad that an ancient Middle England has been shaken from its repose, and is, in extremis, finally speaking up. Have you really even got the bloody British Hedgehog Preservation Society coming out against you? You’ve done it now, soul sister.
Interventions from these groups follow a familiar template. These organisations, all of which employ PR teams, are keenly aware of their twee mien, and trade on it lavishly. And so, the main method is to affect a kind of political virginity. This underlines how awful the target is for having driven these sweeties to such a precipice. In the RSPB’s case, this was accomplished through a particularly insipid tweet:
LIARS! @RishiSunak @michaelgove @theresecoffey you said you wouldn’t weaken environmental protections. And yet that’s just what you are doing. You lie, and you lie, and you lie again. And we’ve had enough.
The staccato sentences. The childish diction. The incredulous tone. The apparent shock that politicians might lie. It all suggests an organisation that is charmingly unworldly, and endearingly untutored in public affairs. The same is true of Archbishop Justin Welby’s interventions on refugee policy, which are always delivered in a coltish and halting cadence. This is Paddington Bear raising his voice for the first time, quiveringly, to speak out against divisive populism.
After these initial sallies, cute organisations can – if attacked – always retreat into the safe bailey of schmaltzy apoliticism: part of the furniture; part of the eternal pattern of English life.
Why is this so effective? It relies on a number of illusions and deceptions about what modern England is, and what these organisations are.
These bodies strike against the measures that one might put under the broad heading of Right-wing populism: feeble attempts to control the border; feeble attempts to disperse the roaming prides of newts that block HS2’s path. It is curious, then, that the rhetorical power of these attacks rests on an idea of British society in the 2020s that is solidly Little Englander. The notion that these organisations represent the ancient conscience of England relies on a certain picture of life outside of London: of fields, clipped and verdant, dotted with bowling clubs. Need I add the blousy, blue-rinse matrons? Of course, this is all nonsense. In 1968, the Kinks could sing of The Village Green Preservation Society with ironic affection, as something that was passing, or already gone. When John Major claimed that England was still the country of “old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist”, nobody believed him. The bowling club is now a drive-thru Taco Bell. The church is now a dogging ‘hub’. The village florist is now a vape shop. The society that produced these organisations is gone; they speak for no one but themselves.
There’s also a collective amnesia at work when it comes to the groups. As late as around 2010, bodies like the RSPB were used as a Clarksonian shorthand for killjoys and sneaks. And well-funded ones, too: powerful enough to play the perennial heel to Britain’s motorists, fox hunters, developers – and Jeremy Clarkson himself. This is of course still the case. We are reminded that the RSPB – to take one example – enjoys revenues of £158 million a year, with a substantial chunk of this coming directly from the taxpayer. It’s only recently that these groups have been able to conflate themselves with the Outraged of Tunbridge Wells, and so claim the narrative mantle of the knitting circle that took on Whitehall, and won.
So, what to do? Sure, these organisations shouldn’t receive public money. These streams have to be cut off. But this would take legislation, legislation takes time, and Paddington Bear and his confederates need to be dealt with right now. Those who do not wish for the RSPB to exercise a veto over their lives need a rhetorical attack of their own. Here are two suggestions.
These organisations pose as the embodiment of ancient English sentiments. From this deep cup, two can drink. Another current in our island story is the old hatred for the conscientious meddler, for the well-funded busybody. This feeling, taken very far, was what did it for the English monastaries. Use it.
A second clue might be found in a scene from the recent film Oppenheimer. This is when President Harry Truman loses patience with our hero’s qualms about the nuclear destruction of two Japanese cities, reminding him that he was the one who had to take the decision, and bear the consequences. We might say something similar to bodies like these. It is, ultimately, nothing to the RSPB whether more houses are built. They have the luxury of myopia; the people’s elected representatives do not. There’s a reason why we didn’t traditionally franchise out governance to sectional interest groups, especially those without even a crude financial stake in things staying on a basically even keel. Paddington Bear has no place in the councils of state, and should be shown the door.
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