ABSTRACT

The origins of the desire to empower the British state to protect nature lay in the evolving sense of the public commons that can be traced to patterns in thought and sensitivity that reflected the effect of industrialization and urbanization. During the war, national park designation, thanks to the sympathies of Lord Reith, the minister of town and country planning, was a minor component of Whitehall deliberations over post-war reconstruction. National park advocacy often overlapped with the defence of the traditional farming practices that created and maintained valued landscapes, an assumption that informed the influential findings of the Committee on Land Utilisation in Rural Areas chaired by Lord Justice Scott. This mix of snobbery and paternalism was typical of the preservationist milieu – the national parks were for people with walking boots and knapsacks, not motor cars and transistor radios – but the sense of affront was more widely shared, chiming with a broader strain of post-war cultural pessimism.