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Outrageous    

  • Stoker
  • Jun 13
  • 5 min read

by Stoker

 

Readers will think this is yet another howl of discontent about the planning system, and so it is. Some may also detect a roar of rage about the sheer incompetence and utter lack of imagination of our new(ish) government, and it is that as well. And the majority may detect tears of despair at the death of Britain, and it certainly is that. But most of all we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the first publication of an extraordinary book: Outrage written by Ian Nairn, one of Britain’s great historians of landscape and architecture, originally published as a special edition in June 1955 by The Architectural Review.

 

Nairn was one of the original Angry Young Men, perhaps exemplified by the playwright/actor John Osborne, but with many others who wanted to change the world, including the writers Alan Sillitoe and Kingsley Amis, the poet Philip Larkin (he and Amis became much less angry as they got older), and a whole range of painters, philosophers, and indeed, architects.  Nairn never became less angry but he did become very disillusioned, and eventually took to strong drink and died in 1983 at the age of only 52, after a long silence. 

 

Outrage was the great magnum opus which established his reputation, and made him Britain’s foremost commentator on architectural design.  He published many books on the subject, all of which are worth reading; they indeed should be required studies for all those involved in building, design and planning.  And indeed, for Angela Rayner, who we will come back to.

 

Nairn was neither a modernist or an old fogey; he was not against industrialisation or development, and whilst he was certainly an early conservationist he was most certainly not conservative.  What made him furious, the source of his outrage, was the lack of thinking and consideration that went into building development.  The Second World War had brought about opportunities, the necessity indeed, to modernise Britain, especially urban Britain.  Much building stock had been damaged in the war; even greater amounts were in poor condition and not fit for the new technological revolution.  The countryside was blemished by immense military landscapes – not just airfields (in fact they were the least of it) but huge military stores thrown up quickly and badly by the army and navy. And most grotesque of all was the rapid building of a power network; huge pylons strung with transmission wires striding across rural lands visible from almost anywhere in the country; no respecter of remote beautiful landscapes or of handsome townscapes, they.

 

In fact, Nairn did not object to pylons and wires per se; he recognised and indeed welcomed the improvements to life that their electricity brought, and individual pylons could be masterpieces of design.  But what he hated was the thoughtless ways they were put up, without any consideration as to the visual damage done.  He wanted more cables buried and he queried the need for a national grid. He examined the hydro-electrical power stations then being built in the Scottish Highlands and thought them generally acceptable, often well-designed in a brutalist style, and built in concrete which actually suited the harsh landscape in which they sat.  But why, he asked in Outrage, was their power sent south, necessitating the great pylon chains across the Scottish mountains, when they could provide a reliable and low impact supply to their local communities?


Outrage narrated a car journey by Nairn and several companions from Southampton in a straight line to the far north of Scotland, with a slight deviation through the Lake District, and omitting about one hundred miles from Carlisle to north of Glasgow.  He photographed many outrages; not just ribbon developments (houses stretching into the country along roadsides; retail and factories being built outside towns on arterial routes; cafes and petrol stations dotted here and there in rural locations),  municipal style flower beds on roundabouts, block planting of coniferous trees, bullying signage, with never a “please”, most of it completely unnecessary except to show the citizenry who is in charge. All this Nairn christened “Subtopia” – his dismissive term for suburban sprawl. 


Thirlmere, in the Lake District, a water source for Manchester, drew his complete rage, concealed among great fir plantations, fenced off with high wire fences, repetitious officious signage to keep the public out.  As though a few walkers would have any effect on piped water.

 

The publisher Notting Hill Editions have just republished Outrage in a delightful pocket-sized edition which persons of taste may transport easily to look at what has happened over the last seventy years and ponder on what Nairn might have thought about modern development (probably not printable). One defect is that Nairn’s black and white photographs are more or less invisible because of the scale of this otherwise lovely book, but any reader will get the ideas, and it is the furious text which is both delightful and inspiring.

 

Which brings us to Ms Rayner and her Cabinet co-conspirator, Ed Miliband.  Mr Miliband is Minister for Energy, and Ms Rayner Minister for many things but in particular, Housing and Development.   It should be said that Outrage did, over time, bring about some modest change: pylons and cables paid some (very limited) heed to the landscapes they booted their way through; many military bases were cleared away and returned to farmland; the concept of brownfield development was introduced – the re-use of abandoned urban sites; residential development in cities became denser and higher; green belts stopped building in rural areas around cities; and more heed was paid to quality of design (though little to quality of construction) in sensitive locations.  Perhaps most obviously, municipal flowerbeds on roundabouts and highway verges have gone, though mostly because of budgetary cuts rather than taste. But, in truth, not much has changed in how we use land and build in modern Britain; in this tiny crowded island we still use our precious land as though we could easily create millions more acres.  And, a particular Nairn bugbear, no heed is paid to the heritage of our regions as the mass residential developers fling up endless identical unimaginative estates, usually on former farmland.

 

But worse is to come: the rush to green energy is equally a rush to steel energy as the pylons and cables are once again on the march, together with all the transfer plants, substations, solar parks, wind turbines, and other necessities they bring with them.

 

Ms Rayner has promised that in the five-year term of this Parliament she will cause to be built one million, five hundred thousand houses.  Not a word as to impact or quality or positioning; most of them will be built on greenfield sites and many by either inexperienced local authorities or large speculative builders - it is hard to know which will be worse.  Changes to the planning process being progressed by both ministers will remove most of the current ability of citizens to object or to delay the process.  If the minister says “let it happen”, it will happen. 

 

A feature of this government is its lack of original thought, of new ideas and approaches, of a search for radical and novel solutions (nor are any of the other parties any better).  That, alas, is true of Mr Miliband and especially so of Ms Rayner, whose approach to the planning conundrum is simplistic and unimaginative.  She has far too many responsibilities, none of which she seems to have the personal resources to handle.  Both ministers could usefully take the Outrage reprint and follow in Ian Nairn’s footsteps (tyre tracks) and reflect on what he saw and how we might manage to avoid these terrible errors. 

 

Will they? Of course not.  The State is about to double down on the damage done.  Take your vacations in Britain whilst you can; things are not going to get better.   

 

 

 

 

 

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