Stirrings in the Forest of Dean

HOOF (as in Hands off our Forest – the Forest in question being the Forest of Dean) organised a rally on Monday for its campaign to drum up support against the possible sale of the Forest. It was an inspiring occasion – around 3000 people from within and beyond the Forest, single-mindedly intent on doing everything in their power to derail the government’s privatisation proposals.

Watching the march onto the Speech House Meadow, before the rally, I was reminded of the Duke of Wellington’s words on reviewing a new consignment of troops during the Spanish campaign in 1809:

“I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me”.

Indeed, it’s a brave man who takes on the Foresters – though they’ve lost a few battles over the years, they’ve won many more.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Mark Harper (the local Tory MP) chose not to attend. He would certainly have had a robust welcome. For reasons I don’t quite understand, Mark Harper has chosen to antagonise his constituents from the very start. He’s attempted to characterise them either as lacking the intellectual wherewithal, to understanding the essence of the government’s proposals, or as a ramshackle bunch of ranting lefties.

Even more foolishly, Harper has set out to persuade them that this is all about giving them the opportunity to buy and manage what are now state assets from ‘Big Government/State’ to ‘Big Society’.

But people in the Forest of Dean already see it as their Forest. Many speakers on Monday referred eloquently to the historical rights and entitlements fought for seriously over the centuries. Legally, it may be a state asset, managed on behalf of the state by the Forestry Commission, but that’s just a technicality as far as the local community is concerned. The excellent relations that exist between the Foresters and the Forestry Commission rely largely on an implicit understanding about ‘ownership’ in all its different meanings.

So Mark Harper gets little credit for offering to sell off something to people who already think they own it!

What encouraged me most about the rally was the understanding of just how urgently we are going to have to move on this one. The Public Bodies Bill (which will give the government all the powers it needs to sell off the whole of the Public Forest Estate) is already in the House of Lords – even though there’s been no Green Paper, no consultation of any kind and no White Paper. It’s quite clear what the government’s agenda is here: to get far-reaching enabling legislation in place before people wake up to the scale and impact of what they are planning.

The message from the Forest of Dean on Monday – to local communities all across England – was crystal clear: wake up to what’s happening; don’t be seduced by the government’s honied words about local ownership. Get mobilised and prepare for the fiercest of fights – that’s the only way we are going to win this one.