A question of ethnics

Two elderly men and a woman sit on a jagged rock beside a limpid pool of water in the green hills of the Lake District. They are Indians, wearing shalwar-kameezes beneath layers of cardigans, coats and scarves; the men wear white Muslim topi caps. On the next page of Visits to National Parks — a Guide for Ethnic Communities a group of windswept Chinese men and women stand smiling, cameras round their necks, in the Yorkshire Dales. In the Broads National Park, meanwhile, members of a large Afro-Caribbean family laugh as they trip through a field of long golden grass.

These pictures were taken on a series of experimental outings to the British countryside for city-dwelling black and Asian Britons. Alongside are snatches of encouraging blurb: we learn that a group called Bolton Asian Elders were able to bring their own food to the Lakes; while the Chinese, hailing from Manchester, were delighted to find that their youth hostel had ensuite bathrooms. ‘This …gives you an idea of what you can do in National Parks — based on real-life visits by different ethnic community groups,’ the guide gushes.

Since the Race Relations (Amendment) Act of 2000, bodies like national parks have been compelled to ensure that they discriminate against no one. And so, in 2001, the Council for National Parks formed the Mosaic Project to organise ethnic minority outings into the hills and dales. The Lake District National Park even announced it would axe its free guided walks because they seemed to attract only white hikers, although this decision was later rescinded. But these steps were deemed insufficient by the government’s rural watchdog, the Countryside Agency. In its recent diversity review, it seemed to echo the view expressed by the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, that there was a ‘passive apartheid’ in the countryside.