Magic, dirty boots and being a conservative

Yesterday, Kathryn and I went on a meandering route in the glorious spring sunshine to Newby Hall near Ripon in North Yorkshire. Now those of you who know this part of the world will be aware of its wonderful scenery, its sense of being kempt, of being cared for. It's not just the great houses and gardens - Studley Royal, Harewood, Newby, Ripley - that are looked after but the whole countryside. And although that countryside has changed over the decades, those changes are subtle, human and accepted. The changes work with the grain and allow us to keep looking at the rolling hills, to glimpse rougher moorland at Ilkley and Blubberhouses and to enjoy the spring sunshine bouncing off the old red brick and softer millstone walls.

The freedoms and liberties in such a place are not the frantic rush of the market or the screeching of rights but a deeper, older freedom. The freedom of Old Hob:

"His dead are in the churchyard - thirty generations laid.
Their names were old in history when Domesday Book was made;
And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line
Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine"*

Being a conservative isn't about ideas, policies or philosophies. Being a conservative is about understanding the magic of place. Of looking out onto something loved, cared for and cherished knowing that this generation and the coming generation will continue to love, care for and cherish that place. It should be second nature for conservatives to care about the environment - not from some abstract, scientists' fear of the future but because of Old Hob - and tomorrow's Old Hob's too. Woodie Guthrie was wrong - this land isn't our land, at least not forever.

And being a conservative isn't about government - large or small - either. Indeed, Old Hob's story tells us that the masters change from year to year, decade to decade, generation to generation. But Old Hob and his wife, his brother and his children remain. What the conservative says is that government doesn't know better than Old Hob. Indeed, when it comes to that loved, cared for and cherished place, Old Hob knows a damn sight better what's right than any politician, planner or bureacrat.

The magic lies all around us - in the myths of history as well as its truths, in folklore, in song and in half-remembered tales. As Puck concluded:

"Trackway and camp and city lost,
Salt Marsh where now is corn -
Old Wars, Old Peace, Old Arts that cease
And so was England born!

She is not any common earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare!"**

We can rant about government, cry foul as our freedoms erode, bemoan the passing of politeness and the singing of songs. But in the end our boots are dirty, planted firmly in the soil of some fine place. So slow down again. Witness the magic of where you live and love. And feel what it's like to be a conservative.

*From "The Land" by Rudyard Kipling
**From "Puck's Song" by Rudyard Kipling

...