The Council for the Protection of Rural England is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year and with a new president (David Puttnam, the film producer) and a relatively new national chairman (David Astor) it is all set to conduct a high-profile campaign on the many controversial issues that affect the countryside. In the process the CPRE is hoping to increase its membership, currently standing at 30,000.
In a letter to all four current party leaders, David Puttnam asks them to follow the precedent set 57 years ago by three former prime ministers — Stanley Baldwin, J Ramsay Macdonald and David Lloyd George — in a joint letter to The Times, written in support of the CPRE and its aims. “On one subject we speak with a united voice, namely, in advocating the preservation of our countryside in its rich personality and character,” the letter stated.
“We do this with full confidence that the development which is requisite in many forms can and should be directed with thoughtful and scrupulous attention to the charm of the land.”
In his letter to Margaret Thatcher, Neil Kinnock, David Steel and David Owen, the CPRE president says that powerful new forces are now pressing to reshape the countryside — population movements, new patterns of housing and industry, the crisis in food production surpluses, and new pollution problems, for example. “Such factors reflect forces which lie in many respects outside the conventional ambit of party politics — yet all of them have to be addressed in the parliamentary arena. What is more, political responses will have to take account, increasingly, of a public opinion which is now deeply concerned about the future of the countryside, about our landscapes, our wildlife, and our rural communities, as well as the need to expand the recreational opportunities the countryside offers.”
