“It was just a tree,” Adam Carruthers said when voicing his amazement in court that the Sycamore Gap crime had drawn so much media attention.
Both he and his accomplice Daniel Graham were found guilty of criminal damage in felling the tree and are now facing up to ten years in prison. They cut down the tree when Storm Agnes hit in late September 2023.
The Times on Saturday explains:
“in the late 19th century, a landowner planted a sycamore tree in a gentle dip between two hillocks. John Clayton, a lawyer by trade, had bought up about 20 miles of Hadrian’s Wall in an effort to prevent the destruction of what was once the frontier of the Roman Empire.
Over the following 150 years, the ruin would become a world heritage site under the protection of Northumberland national park, while the tree flourished by its side. It attained worldwide fame after featuring in the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991, a celebrity cemented in the era of the smartphone thanks to its photogenic setting.
By September 2023 the sycamore’s roots had grown deep in the public’s imagination, yet it took only three minutes on a stormy night for it to come toppling down.”
Carruthers is correct; it was just a tree. And not even an oak tree either. Yet the destruction of the sycamore sparked outrage not only in Britain where they can get funny over things like this – the pointless cutting down of trees or skipping queues – but across the world.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the outrage. For I am a conservative. Therefore I understand the blind rage you feel when something that has been built or grown for over 150 years is destroyed by some moron in 3 minutes. Conservatives experience a Sycamore Gap tree moment at least once every single day.
Amazingly, everyone is a conservative when it comes to a tree. And it was just a tree. It just did its thing. It was planted and it grew. That’s what trees do. Sure, it took over 150 years but it did not to my knowledge require the time and energy of hundreds of people over the course of decades to build and cultivate into a thing of beauty or importance.
It wasn’t like the Garrick Club for instance that was built over decades and then some feminist comes along and says I don’t like your Garrick club, I want to cut your Garrick Club down by demanding a lot of women join it. And not just the best women like say Laura Perrins – but the really annoying ones, the nagging feminist one. Now some men (I assume none of my readers ) say they cannot understand the male desire to get away from the lady folk for a few hours now and then. Those men are irritating and shouldn’t be let in the Garrick Club either.
Or you have the Sycamore Gap tree known as the Catholic Church. That gem of an institution has been built over 2000 years. And it has some fundamental teachings: anyone can join, you must love your neighbour as yourself, don’t do these 10 things, and also the hierarchy will all be men. Jesus only went with men, so we want to carry on that tradition.
The women can be nuns and saints and run schools and hospitals – all the important stuff. Women can be a Doctor of the Church such as Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresa of Avila, and Saint Thérèse of Lisieu, which means other men, the priests and cardinals and such, can learn from their great wisdom. But we reserve the priesthood for the men.
And as sure as night follows day you will have some wrecker say former Irish President Mary MacAleese who comes along with her big chainsaw and wants to cut the Catholic Church down to size. We need women priests, she demands. No, we really don’t. Truly I tell you there is not much between her and Adam Carruthers.
These chainsaw massacre merchants are everywhere. They come after buildings. Once they wanted to pull down the magnificent St Pancras train station and hotel in London but that was thankfully saved by John Betjeman who headed a campaign to save both buildings. They were Grade 1 listed just days before demolition was due to begin. Now you can sip champagne in that beautiful Victorian station before boarding the Eurostar to Paris, the capital of conserving beautiful buildings.
Works of literature of course provide a veritable treasure trove for the chainsaw massacre merchants. They don’t call it that of course. They call it diversity casting or the work is reimagined for a modern audience. Hence my concern over what Netflix will do to Pride and Prejudice or what the BBC will do these days to any Dickens remake. One can only hope they don’t go full Hollywood. Their chainsaw never sleeps when it comes to felling Disney classics such as Snow White or indeed much beloved 80s films like Ghostbusters.
On and on it goes. Wreckers everywhere – it’s a wonder how I can get up out of bed every morning. It is, as that great philosopher of our time Jerry Maguire once said, an up at dawn pride swallowing siege. Man, I still love that movie.
The biggest Sycamore Gap Tree of them however is the Nation or indeed our borders. If only they would police our borders as closely as they do trees. Indeed, on the very same day as the tree conviction London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan was running around proposing to build houses on the green belt to ease London’s housing crisis. The same day – they do it on purpose.
One of the main reasons you have a housing crisis in London is because you have a border crisis and immigration crisis. The Guardian “It marks the first time city hall will support the strategic release of low-quality or inaccessible green belt land near transport links in order to provide hundreds of thousands of new affordable homes.”
Strategic, low-quality, inaccessible. Etc. Give me a break. What this means is that they are coming after London’s green spaces. What it means is that there will be a lot more trees cut down than, other than the one up by Hadrian’s Wall. These trees are the lungs of London whether they are accessible by morons like Sir Sadiq Khan or not.
It was Sir Roger Scruton who said “Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”
This is why the destruction of a single tree was a sucker punch; it demonstrates this universal truth to perfection. But it would be best to dry your eyes over that one tree whose felling the authorities are happy for you to cry over.
If you, dear reader, start getting uppity over preserving the green belt or your national identity or your countryside or the great works of literature or even less great works of Hollywood, you will be dismissed as ‘reactionary’ or ‘old-fashioned.’
Conservatives just like good things. Chainsaw massacre merchants do not. It’s that simple.