Bog Myrtle & Peat

There’s been fresh controversy in the National Park debate since it was revealed in a Ferret article that aspects of the NO-Park campaign have been funded by a handful of wealthy landowners. It seems to make a nonsense of claims that the NO-parkers are a grassroots, community-led organisation, suggesting instead that they’re buoyed by a conspiracy of Tory-voting establishment figures with grimly dystopian interests. 

Whatever the nature and extent of this financial intervention, it’s stupid and unnecessary – particularly if it has been wilfully concealed. It actually appears to have been driven by people who don’t even live in the proposed park area, and it seems to have done the NO team a certain amount of damage. It’s suddenly easy to view the Parkers as the “real, organic voice of Galloway” and the No-Parkers as a bunch of opaque and sinister cheats.

Of course neither presentation is true. There are good people on both sides of the divide, and I daresay donations have been made to both camps by individuals and organisations with all kinds of motives. It’s also daft to make out that there are conspiracy theories at foot here. In the same article, the Parkers imply that there was something suspicious in the way that a No-Park campaign seemed to spring out of nowhere when it was announced that Galloway was a leading candidate for designation. They had not encountered any resistance whatsoever for seven years, so they were appalled to find that anybody was against the idea. Extending this narrative, the Parkers would have us invest in their belief that everybody wants a park – No-parkers are just mercenary droogs who have been bussed-in by some top-hat wearing monopoly man in order to cause trouble. That would be very exciting, but the truth is probably far more mundane. 

From what I saw, resistance to the National Park was largely driven by a sense of frustration. The Parkers had been circulating some fairly presumptuous materials on behalf of local people for several years, claiming (without data or rebuttal) that their views enjoyed “widespread support” across Galloway. That probably wasn’t true, but they were given a long leash because it all seemed like a pipedream and most people were just getting on with their lives. But when the Minister came to New Abbey and made an enigmatic announcement about Galloway’s “preferred candidate status” in July, a real change came over the debate. It couldn’t be ignored or dismissed any longer because it seemed to be happening whether we wanted it or not.

The Parkers appeared to have deliberately triggered something that most people didn’t understand – resistance arose with the same intensity as a parent who leaves their child unattended and comes back into the room to find the curtains on fire – the cry was a horrified “what on earth have you DONE?!” Perhaps this explains why some of the backlash has been so heated, but it’s also fair to say that aspects of the campaign against designation have been excessively pig-headed, hostile and ill-informed. Some of the No-Park online discussions have collapsed into silly ad hominem attacks, and I’m not surprised that people don’t want to share their views in public because they’re worried about being yelled at. Both extremes are differently wrong, and it’s still almost impossible to know what this decision will mean for Galloway itself.

The Ferret news story doesn’t actually contain much to commend it. It’s no great surprise to learn that people have been weighing in with donations, although it is eye-rollingly frustrating that some of these have not been declared or made transparent. The controversy really depends upon a feeling that “TORIES” are so inherently wicked and toxic that everything they touch turns to shit – and that if we want to punch aristocrats in the face, we should immediately vote for a National Park (…if we were allowed to vote, which is another story).

I’m no Tory and I think there’s a pretty disgusting sense of entitlement behind the scenes of the No-park campaign here – but it’s hard to see how this news story changes much about the debate in Galloway. Even if aspects of the NO campaign have been funded by “the people we love to hate”, the movement can’t be automatically disqualified or invalidated by association. Herein lies the same dynamic which pervades so many modern controversies – not that two sides might disagree, or that you and I might have different opinions – instead, it’s an understanding that there is only one truth; “I see it because I’m good – you can’t see it because you’re lying/corrupt/funded by Tories”.

Most desperate of all, it seems like this whole conversation is being pulled out of Galloway and into traditional deep-seated grievances which have nothing to do with this place. It seems bizarre that your views on a National Park in Galloway should be made to depend upon what you think of parties and politicians in Holyrood – particularly when none of them ever bother to come here anyway. I didn’t think that the quality of this debate could get worse, but perhaps I was being naïve.