As part of our exploration of APRS history we are looking at key achievements. Founding the National Trust for Scotland is surely one we can be incredibly proud of!
You know that feeling when a younger sibling, or someone you mentored at work, goes on to bigger and better things. There’s a huge amount of pride in their achievements, but also perhaps a wee bit of envy.
Well spare a thought for APRS (Action to protect Rural Scotland), the tiny countryside charity which, 95 years ago, founded the National Trust for Scotland.
We are about to celebrate our centenary and so we are looking back to explore our achievements over the years. There is a lot to celebrate but one of our most significant successes happened within the first five years of our history.
The story began when the owner of the Loch Dee estate in Galloway proposed gifting the 9,000 acres to the nation with discussions initially about taking it into the care of the National Trust. However Sir John Striling Maxwell, vice president of APRS, and later President, felt strongly that ownership should remain with a Scottish organisation and he brought together a group of the great and the good to discuss what to do.
Our 1930 report says:
“The Committee has the question of the formation of such a Trust under consideration…. It is felt that, whereas the National Trust in England has its hands very full, and is by policy averse to commitments in Scotland, public benefactors in the North, who might be disposed to gift properties, either large or small, to the nation, have no body of public trustees to whom to resort.”
Many of those involved in initial discussions were office bearers or members of APRS but there were also representatives of many organisations present. The discussions centred on whether APRS could, itself, become the National Trustee, or whether it should establish a separate organisation. In the end, due to the Objects of the APRS focussing on, what we would now refer to as policy, advocacy and education, rather than on ownership of land and buildings, it was thought to be better to allow the APRS to continue with its work while a new organisation was established.
The National Trust for Scotland was founded in 1931, with Sir Iain Colquhoun, APRS chair, stepping up to the helm as the first chair of the NTS. APRS also offered the services of their Honorary secretary, the planner and architect Frank Mears, to help set up the fledgling organisation, and their offices as a base. The NTS returned the favour sixty years later, as APRS held their offices at Gladstone’s Land, NTS’s 17th Century tenement on the Royal Mile for 25 years.
The early growth and success of the NTS was due to a substantial bequest of £5000 (worth £400,000 today) which was made by Miss Mary Lumsden, a London-based APRS member. This gift paid for the administration needed in acquiring and managing properties and recruiting members. By 1932 the NTS was in full swing and our 1932 Annual report proudly declared:
“So successful a début under the adverse financial conditions of the past year augurs well. Scotland abounds in places of natural beauty and historic interest, for the safeguarding of which new possibilities have now been opened up, and as the Trust becomes more widely known it may be anticipated with confidence that increasing support will be given to it, both in Scotland and by Scottish people overseas.”
The success of the NTS since those early days speaks for itself. It is interesting that, since we established the NTS, APRS has excelled at creating new bodies, and also campaigning for new public bodies to be formed. As well as the NTS, we founded Scottish Campaign for National Parks (SCNP), an organisation we still campaign alongside on National Parks. Our campaigns for a strategic approach to hydroelectric development taking account of natural beauty and local development needs, led to the formation of the North of Scotland Hydro board in 1943 (dismantled with the privatisation of utilities in 1990). APRS campaigning on river pollution over more than a decade led to the establishment of the River Purification Boards which were then subsumed into SEPA in 1995. Our campaigns on woodland protection led to the Forestry Act 1951, which regulated the felling of trees and stopped the wholesale felling of Scotland’s native woodlands. And our campaigning for a Town and Country Planning Act throughout the 30s and 40s laid the basis for legislation which is still at the core of our work today. As APRS wrote in their annual report in 1932, ‘the choice before the Nation is either to plan for the future, or to proceed as before without method or control’. We feel the legacy of the Town and Country Planning Act speaks for itself.
The early history of APRS is tied up with the history of the formation of the environmental institutions, structures and key legislation that we still value today.
Today APRS is as small as it was in those early years, with only three part-time staff. We work on policy and campaigns related to landscape and countryside and also support communities to engage with the planning system to protect their local countryside. With the array of legislation, institutions and new organisations that we have helped to bring about over the past century, it certainly feels like we should be well on our way to working ourselves out of a job. However landscapes are still under threat and there are constantly evolving issues, which means that APRS is as important as ever as a voice for landscapes and countryside, and to support communities campaigning to protect their own local places.
We still work with the NTS on landscape issues, through our mutual membership of Scottish Environment LINK, the coalition of environmental charities, and NTS have been key supporters of our 10 year campaign for new National Parks for Scotland. Alongside advocating for protected landscapes, like National Parks and National Scenic Areas, our other priorities are: greenbelt protection and improving access to these areas around our towns and cities, and energy, particularly battery storage and data centres.
Considering what the NTS has achieved for Scotland’s landscapes since APRS convened that first meeting, I think that, were APRS to look back over its long and successful 100 year career, our proudest moment would be in creating the National Trust for Scotland.