FEATURES: No 5

‘Beat the retreat, army off Dartmoor’
Note of talk by Kate Ashbrook given at a debate organised by the Dartmoor Society, 27 September 2003.

Kate began by explaining why the military should leave Dartmoor. She referred to the eyesores caused by the military roads, huts, flags, poles, notices and camps; the disturbance from noise and low flying, the fact that public access was banned for much of year and that it made it difficult to regulate the grazing and to deal with fire risk because of unexploded ordnance.

Turning to the history of Dartmoor as a national park and the military occupation, Kate said that in this country there had long been a commitment to protecting wilderness which went back at least to the early nineteenth century. Even during Second World War there were plans to preserve our top landscapes.

The report by John Dower in 1945 on National Parks in England and Wales quotes war-time debates which recognised the importance of protecting areas of natural beauty. The areas recommended by Dower for national parks included the military land of Dartmoor and Pembrokeshire Coast.

The Report of the National Parks Committee (Hobhouse Report) of 1947 considered Dower’s proposals and recommended the designation of Dartmoor, while expressing concern about the military occupation.

Many of the military structures were unlawful because they had been built on common land without the required consent of the Minister.

The first inquiry into military use of Dartmoor opened in the summer of 1947 but that inquiry, like every other to do with military training on Dartmoor, proved to be a charade. Even before the inquiry opened, Devon County Council had been drawn into agreeing to the use of 40,000 acres, leaving the objectors with a fait accompli.

During the inquiry the proposed boundaries of the Dartmoor National Park as recommended by the Hobhouse Committee were announced. However, the Hobhouse report itself, which opposed military training on Dartmoor, was only released the day after the inquiry ended.

The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 followed and in 1951 Dartmoor was designated a national park despite the military presence, but there was a great hope that the military presence would decline.

The access and amenity bodies gathered evidence of military abuse and in 1963 the Dartmoor Preservation Association published a pamphlet Military misuse of Dartmoor which exposed much of the damage to ancient monuments, the tracks and excrescences left by the military.

In 1973 the Nugent report was published. This committee had reviewed the military landholdings in UK with view to improving access. But no fundamental change was proposed, merely window dressing. John Cripps, a member of the Nugent Committee, published a note of dissent for Dartmoor. He recommended a reduction in use and a public inquiry into how the needs of the armed forces could be met elsewhere.

This led to the Sharp inquiry for Dartmoor in 1975, but this was not the inquiry Cripps had called for. It proved to be a sham because the terms of reference were restricted to finding alternatives in the south-west of England only, which everyone knew did not exist. So the result was more window-dressing, a few small boundary changes and the establishment of a Dartmoor steering group.

This result was despite Lady Sharp’s admission:

And the military’s admission:

So clearly national park status imposed severe restrictions on the military which was to their disadvantage too.

After this the opponents of military use stepped up their campaign to find and report problems but this had little effect. In 1985 once again the Duchy of Cornwall renewed the licences to the military for live firing on northern Dartmoor.

In 1991, the Edwards Report on national parks was published, to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the parks. The report took a strong line on military training.

Shortly after that the Duchy renewed the licences for a further 21 years. This was particularly alarming because it was for an unprecedented length of time, just when world defence requirements were changing radically, and despite a telling report produced by the independent UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development, Military live firing in national parks, which called for an independent inquiry into military use of national parks.

The Environment Act 1995 section 62 put a duty on relevant authorities to have regard to park purposes and this was reaffirmed by the recent review of national parks authorities in England. But there is little evidence that the Ministry of Defence actually observes this duty.

Kate then set out why the organisations she represented, and many thousands of visitors to Dartmoor, wanted the military off the moor.

The military presence created eyesores, such as prominent huts and flagpoles on the skyline, rows of poles and notices. The military roads are themselves ugly but, worse still, are used by civilian cars penetrating far into the wilderness where no cars should be. The military create ugly tracks, they leave rubbish, they erect portaloos, and generally suburbanise and degrade the wilderness.

On public access, she pointed out that the military hog the ranges for many more days than they actually need them. In 2002, firing was advertised on 400 days, but only took place on 276, so on more than three days out of every five the public could have used the ranges had they known they were free.

There was the risk of fire which could not be controlled because of the danger of unexploded missiles. She also challenged the military claims that they helped create biodiversity, conserve the habitat and regulate grazing, arguing that we didn’t need the military for that.

Although the military argued that their presence generated jobs and income, Kate put the other side. Tourism also generates a huge income, and she quoted recent figures for the South West Coast Path (£300 million a year, supporting 7,500 jobs) and from a Ramblers’ Association report (walkers generate £2.7 billion in England each year, supporting 250,000 jobs). We needed a proper study into the economic aspects of military training.

So what was to be done? The Duchy licences to the military expire on 29 September 2012 and it was not too early to start preparing for the military’s departure. The Duchy and the national park authority should signal to the military as soon as possible that the licences would not be renewed. That would precipitate a wide-ranging inquiry into military needs and land use. Such an inquiry should not be restricted to the south-west, or even to England but should be on a global scale, looking at alternative methods of training too.

Dartmoor was a unique, wild landscape. For the thousands who love this place, it provides inspiration and rejuvenation, peace and tranquillity and freedom for body and spirit. It deserves to be treated with love and respect. Dartmoor has always been denied a proper, independent, wide-ranging inquiry into its use by the military. Now is the time to promote such an inquiry.


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