How Rachel Johnson became the voice of Britain’s forests
Clueless, aimless, rudderless, directionless. Labour’s disarray has left the task of holding the government to account in the hands of volunteers and publicity-seekers. The result is pop-up opposition, scrutiny by happening. Groups of protestors coalesce around a famous figurehead and raise merry hell until the coalition gives them what they want. Joanna Lumley established the format with her spirited campaign for the Gurkhas. The latest blonde bombshell to enter the lists — it seems to help if you have a flaxen mane — is Rachel Johnson, president of Save England’s Forests. The campaign seeks to amend the Public Bodies Bill (currently subject to ‘consultation’), and prevent the government from disposing of the nation’s woodlands on the open market.
Ms Johnson’s club boasts some imposing names. The biggest hitter is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, a man worth listening to on woodlands, and not just because it looks as if he cohabits with a family of elves in a pine-strewn grotto. He’s also named after a tree. Amiable beardies like David Bellamy and Bill Bryson add depth to the team sheet. Tracey Emin offers chaotic glamour and Judi Dench matronly gravitas, while Julian Barnes brings a hint of intellectual class. Ms Johnson has even persuaded her reclusive father, Stanley Johnson, to break a lifetime’s silence and pen a few thousand words on the topic.
The atmosphere of the campaign is pragmatic, professional and faintly bossy. Every category of woodland user has been recruited: ramblers, cyclists, horse-riders, dog-walkers, bird-watchers, bark-rubbers, gatherers of wild herbs and mushrooms. The only forest-goers omitted so far are buriers of midnight corpses. When I added my name to the 158,000-strong petition I quickly discovered that mere membership was not enough. I was expected to join in the legwork. ‘Make a splash in your local paper,’ the website chivvies. ‘Get on to the front page by organising a meeting or a picnic. March down the high street on a Saturday afternoon.’
There’s a press release to send to your local newsdesk, declaring that our ancient woodlands were prized by ‘Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Winnie the Pooh’. Supporters are expected to intervene at Cabinet level. ‘Phone Caroline Spelman,’ says the home page. ‘Demand she withdraw the consultation until the Forestry Clauses in the Public Bodies Bill have been properly debated.’ I rehearsed this soundbite in the mirror, dialled the number provided and asked to speak to the secretary of state. ‘Caroline Spelman?’ a clerk repeated with a weary lilt. Click. He diverted me to an automated switchboard. ‘To report a dead bird press one. For the Pet Travel Scheme press two. For the Whole Farm Approach website press three. To listen to these options again, press four.’
Fair enough. The minister’s busy. Perhaps I can talk to her opposite number. I phoned the Lady, where President Johnson is editor. My brief telephonic wait was beguiled by a burst of Tyrolean opera and suddenly I was through to the bombshell herself. ‘Constitutionally it’s a fiasco,’ she told me. ‘The Forestry Commission isn’t even a quango but this measure has just been shoved onto the bonfire-of-the-quangos bill. And selling forests wasn’t on anyone’s manifesto. It’s been sneaked in under cover of darkness.’
I asked about the phenomenon of celebrity activists doing the opposition’s job.
‘This is off the record,’ she intoned carefully, ‘and it doesn’t come from me’ — which is what journalists say when they want their words quoted in the first paragraph — ‘MPs are getting thousands of letters about this. Every Tory backbencher has a forest in their constituency. But the coalition doesn’t listen to internal noise. Hence all these campaigns by “slebs”. External noise. Far more effective than action from constituents.’
The government certainly has a problem with spur-of-the-moment campaigns. Sooner or later it will have to tell some celeb-led faction to get lost or it risks looking weak. It’s hard to predict the outcome of the present bust-up but David Cameron has a formidable opponent in Ms Johnson. Much of her success owes itself to her manner. She has the head-girl’s knack of assuming command unobtrusively and getting things done with a smile, a tilt of the eyelids and a note of steel in the voice. It’s an enchantment that Labour’s Cabinet suffragettes never mastered. Ms Johnson is the acceptable face of Harriet Harman. And a government U-turn on woodlands would represent a double victory for the campaigning blonde. Responsibility for the forests is likely to pass into the hands of the National Trust, whose communications director, by a happy accident, is a certain Ivo Dawnay. Or, as Ms Johnson calls him, ‘my husband’.
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