One movement, three clusters: The national parks movement in England and Wales, 1929-1949

Kristian Mennen

doi:10.1080/13619462.2023.2196409

One movement, three clusters: The national parks movement in England and Wales, 1929-1949

Kristian Mennen

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

The history of the national parks movement in England and Wales culminated in the passing of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949. Many constituent bodies were, however, dissatisfied with the administrative arrangements in the new National Parks. To explain this inconsistency, this article seeks to understand the national parks movement as a heterogenous network of loosely affiliated civil society organisations. The movement consisted of three separate clusters, each with its own approach to, definitions and expectations of national parks. These clusters emphasised the aspects of planning and rural preservation, scientific interests and nature preservation, and open-air recreation, respectively. They first joined forces in 1929, when the government appointed the first National Park Committee. Different core organisations led the movement at different stages, forming different coalitions and committees, re-defining the character of the national parks movement and its public and political profile in the process. The scientific and nature preservation cluster was the most successful after abandoning the other two clusters after 1945. This article offers a new interpretation of the history of the national parks movement in England and Wales as a highly contentious and internally divergent social movement.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	266-300
Number of pages	35
Journal	Contemporary British History
Volume	37
Issue number	2
Early online date	20 Apr 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2023.2196409
Publication status	Published - 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This article is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 832350. I would like to extend my thanks to the reading room staff of the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading, and of the National Archives in London Kew, for their excellent support and assistance during my visit; the last time in the National Archives in the difficult conditions of a global health emergency situation. I am also grateful to the British Ecological Society for their kind permission to study their archival records at their office, and to Lidewij Nissen, Catherine Forrest and three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

England and Wales
Planning
Open-air recreation
Nature conservation
National parks

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One movement three clusters the national parks movement in England and Wales 1929 1949Final published version, 776 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "The history of the national parks movement in England and Wales culminated in the passing of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949. Many constituent bodies were, however, dissatisfied with the administrative arrangements in the new National Parks. To explain this inconsistency, this article seeks to understand the national parks movement as a heterogenous network of loosely affiliated civil society organisations. The movement consisted of three separate clusters, each with its own approach to, definitions and expectations of national parks. These clusters emphasised the aspects of planning and rural preservation, scientific interests and nature preservation, and open-air recreation, respectively. They first joined forces in 1929, when the government appointed the first National Park Committee. Different core organisations led the movement at different stages, forming different coalitions and committees, re-defining the character of the national parks movement and its public and political profile in the process. The scientific and nature preservation cluster was the most successful after abandoning the other two clusters after 1945. This article offers a new interpretation of the history of the national parks movement in England and Wales as a highly contentious and internally divergent social movement.",

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One movement, three clusters: The national parks movement in England and Wales, 1929-1949

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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