Molly Groves and the Revolting Peasants

The other day my old friend Molly Groves phoned - and I recalled writing this opinion piece for the newspapers and also remembered going to see this indomitable woman and her partner up in the hills of Exmoor…

Let’s get one thing clear: the peasants are not revolting. I can say that because I am one of them. Not that I ever actually joined the Exmoor Revolting Peasants’ Party - but only because I never join organisations of any shape, size or kind. 

Regular readers will recall that this colourfully named protest group was formed several years ago when dissatisfaction among Exmoor locals came to a head, partly over a proposed bit of “re-wilding” which would have seen an ugly, but perfectly inhabitable, little bungalow in the middle of the moors purchased and made to vanish into thin air. 

In a beautiful upland where there is a dreadful shortage of affordable homes, the idea that you could demolish a perfectly good house simply to improve the prettiness of a landscape quickly became the talisman of protest. 

What the local people who formed the Revolting Peasants’ saw was a wider world full of strangers who wanted their little bit of the UK preserved in pretty aspic, regardless of the wellbeing of the folk who actually lived there.  

Molly Groves at home on Exmoor - I took these photos in 2007

What they heard - or thought they heard - blowing in the official winds were the kind of words that declared: “This is a national park - it is a very special place - therefore we treat it in a different way to everywhere else, whether the locals like it or not.”

The protestors would not have disagreed with the first two clauses in that statement - they were, however, very angry about the latter. They argued - and still argue - that local working people pay the most heavy price of all for having their area designated as a national park.  

The moors near Blackpitts

When it came to the little house in the hills, they won their day. Blackpitts bungalow still struts its stuff on the side of the Simonsbath-Lynmouth road. Thereafter, the group was renamed to become a less angry-sounding Exmoor Uprising and its leaders were more regularly consulted by local power-brokers.

However, after some years of semi-equable relationship, the mood is darkening again. The erstwhile peasants aren’t exactly revolting, but they are angry and their most eloquent voice has just sent me a long, highly detailed, letter explaining why.

It is both too lengthy - and in many places deals with too many intricacies - for us to publish, but the gist of what Molly Groves writes will be of interest to our wider readership. 

For example, she says: “Conservation of the local working population is essential. The same is true all over the West Country working areas, like the fishing villages which have the same problems of too many second homes.”

In Exmoor’s case, Molly writes: “Local contractors and working people have the expert working knowledge and experience for maintenance of the conservation of moorland, farmland, wildlife, walling, hedge-laying, draining and forestry at their fingertips.  

“We need to keep these people, together with their families, to continue this conservation and to support one another, their way of life, and the villages they live in.”

Molly and her supporters are not impressed by official provision for affordable homes: “Park planners seem to want to shove all locals into the bigger villages, tacked on to expensive estates, in houses with high rents and maintenance agreements. Any so-called cheap building sites are in the worst part of the estate, not big enough for a rabbit hutch.”

The Exmoor Uprising has always believed that newly designed temporary log-cabins would provide a non-offensive, easily-tucked-away, answer to the rural housing problem. For example, allowing grown-up children to remain at their family farms - working in, and contributing to, the local community.    

Molly’s letter deals with other issues, but it is the underlying message that interests me and, I imagine, most people living in the attractive rural Westcountry. Is there an unspoken concept that says beautiful places are there to be enjoyed by everyone - therefore they fall under a different set of principles compared to general run-of-the-mill areas no-one’s heard of and no-one but the locals care about?

Can it be right to say: “Millions of people love your national park, your fishing village, your pretty bit of coast… Therefore what goes on there is of interest to many - which in turn means local people cannot have the same powers of decision-making they would in less popular areas.”

As an Exmoor-dweller I have a foot in both camps. I do believe that national parks are special places and therefore require special measures of governance. I also know of people here who would take the mickey - who would grab a mile if they were given a planning inch. I can, for example, imagine some of those affordable log cabins designed for grown up local children one day magically turning into lucrative holiday homes…

On the other hand, I know that Molly is right. A national park - or a fishing village for that matter - isn’t worth the paper any official designation has ever been written on if local communities are not thriving and sustainable. 

In this modern world we do not live in some heavenly, antediluvian, Garden of Eden - people make places what they are, not some happy coincidence of nature. If red-tape turns too brittle, then it needs smashing and replacing with something more malleable. One-size-fits-all rules and regulations might suit bureaucrats who are happier working within the easy black or white constraints, but all too often they do not apply on the ground, especially somewhere out of the ordinary like a national park.  

Surely it is not beyond the wit of man to design special and unique sets of regulations which apply to special places?