The day we burned down Parliament

The day we burned down Parliament was my contribution to Warren James Day 2025 (see here)

‘Look forward to seeing you tied to an oak tree.’ My grown son laughed down the phone when I told him I’d thrown myself actively into the Hands Off Our Forest campaign.

‘If it comes to that!’ I’d laughed too, but the image shimmied unflatteringly in my heated brain … hmm.

At 57, protests and demos had never been my thing – I missed the 60s by a shade, living them out in a country high school. Also, we’d only lived in the Forest for a little over two years. So what was it that boiled my blood? Why did a desperate need to DO SOMETHING fill my soul when my husband wandered in that autumn morning in 2010 and said, pointing to a Guardian article –

‘This might interest you.’

Plans to sell off England’s public forests? It certainly did interest me – and, as it turned out, most of the rest of the country. Even those who didn’t live within cooee of a forest.

I’d been tapping away at emails on my laptop, the dog asleep at my feet post our morning walk in the woods.

When we arrived here in mid 2008, I’d asked our builder where was a good place to walk the dog.

‘20,000 acres of forest out there,’ he’d told me with an expansive sweep of his arm. ‘Take your pick.’

The painter was more helpful, directing me to Wenchford – or the Straits as ‘real’ Foresters call it. And that began my love affair with the trees.

When John French produced his video of the campaign after the event, I answered one question by saying  how the forest made me feel as if it was mine, personally – one becomes possessive! Barb French, watching, muttered a passionate ‘Yes!’, thus spoiling the scene, but hey, me and Barb understood each other.

Forests – trees – heal, soothe, inspire. Scientific basis to this we now know, and there’s a burgeoning industry out there exploiting what used to be called ‘a walk in the woods’.

Summer was my introduction, when the beech woods are bathed in a heavy, lush green light; the pines sleep, tall, motionless, quietly waiting their fate as timber; and pink foxgloves brighten the deep shadows cast by old oaks.

If you go early in the morning, you can have the woods to yourself – you, the dog, the birds, the squirrels, and if you’re lucky, a glimpse of deer or (lucky or not) boar. If you’re really in favour, a fox will dart across your path, feathery red, huge compared with its city cousins – a tribute to the luxury ample of forest pickings.

Autumn – the larch a golden blaze on the hillsides (for how much longer?); bright red spots of rowan, and best of all, effulgent beech. There’s a stand above Soudley I must have photographed a hundred times, and I never tire of the view on the road from Wenchford to Blakeney, as you come to the Welcome to the Forest sign.

I confess to not being a fan of winter, unless it snows. Then the dog snuffles his way through cold, savoury drifts, and your lungs burn with the biting crispness of the air.

Spring is the season I love most, watching the Forest greening, cloaking the drab browns and greys with shining freshness. Clumps of white blackthorn, and, later, elderflower with its enticement to homemade cordial, or wine. Sweeps of bluebells – where you can find them – spots of yellow and pink wildflowers, tender shoots of unfurling bracken, innocent of their future as tall barriers to even well trodden paths. Lengthening days lift the winter SADness – warming air, light, mizzling rain to soak your jacket and send you home to a dry satisfaction that you’ve been out there …

Although still new to me in 2010, this is why I was passionate about helping to sort that government out and save MY forest. I called around, attended the meeting at Speech House, and finally emailed my CV to Rich Daniels, pleading to help … and Rich took me on, bless him, and I was there, at Speech House with 3,000 other passionate Foresters, the day we burned down Parliament in a snow storm. And of course, we won.

But here’s a caution … they’ll be back. This wasn’t a new trick, oh no. For centuries before Warren James, and in the two centuries since, Foresters have had to stay alert … History always repeats.

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