A wave of attacks on “woke” charities by rightwing politicians has “backfired”, generating an outpouring of public support for the targeted charities and helping drive a surge in social justice activism, say campaigners.

An annual survey of social campaigning suggests many charities feel increasingly emboldened to speak out on contested issues, including race, immigration and the environment, despite attacks they feel are designed to intimidate them into silence.

The findings of the Sheila McKechnie Foundation survey come as charities report huge concern over the “chilling” impact on civil society of a raft of proposed legislation designed to restrict public protest and legal challenge.

Campaigners said they have faced an increasingly hostile political environment – 78% said they felt politicians were hostile to civil society campaigning, up from 63% the previous year. A majority said attacks by politicians and the media were a threat to charities’ right to speak out and campaign.

The National Trust will stop issuing licences for trail hunts on its land, the charity’s board of trustees said.

Trail hunting is legal and sees dogs and riders follow an artificial scent along an agreed route. It differs from traditional fox hunts which are banned.

In 2020, the National Trust suspended trail licences after video emerged of a prominent huntsman advising how to use them for covert illegal fox hunts.

Following his conviction, trust members voted to ban trail hunts on its land.

Using dogs to chase or kill foxes was made illegal in England and Wales in the Hunting Act 2004. Many organisations instead turned to trail hunting which involves laying a scent for hounds to chase instead of a live animal.

In October, huntsman Mark Hankinson was ordered to pay £3,500 after Westminster Magistrates’ Court concluded he was “clearly encouraging the mirage of trail laying to act as cover for old fashioned illegal hunting”.

Harry Bowell, the National Trust’s director of land and nature, said there had been “a loss of trust and confidence in the Masters of Foxhounds Association” – where Hankinson was a director.

He said other reasons behind the decision included “the considerable resources needed to facilitate trail hunting, and the reputational risk of the activity continuing trust our land”.

The move to ban trail hunting applies to the trust’s land in England and Wales. No hunting is allowed on Northern Irish trust land.

A teenage farmer has accused the National Trust of endangering farming for future generations by acquiring a piece of land in the Lake District, which has sparked an outcry in the area over fears it could end an agricultural tradition going back thousands of years.

Fifteen-year-old George Purcell, who began farming Herdwick sheep with his parents when he was 11, said the National Trust’s actions had put the future of farming in the Lake District in jeopardy.

Purcell moved to Kendal with his parents, William Purcell, a part-time English teacher, and Jenny Willis, when he was four. He joined an outcry in the area after the charity bought the land and sheep of Thorneythwaite farm, but not its farmhouse or outbuildings, last month.

The historic farm in Borrowdale, near Keswick, has a flock of 413 Herdwick sheep, a rare breed that the author Beatrix Potter once helped save from extinction. There were concerns about what would happen to the sheep, but the charity has insisted they will be saved.

This week the broadcaster Melvyn Bragg accused the National Trust of bullying. Lord Bragg, a Cumbrian, said the charity’s “mafia-style” tactics would destroy “centuries of what working men and women have created”.

The charity’s actions have upset residents of Borrowdale and farmers who had hoped to buy the house and land and keep it running as a working farm.

“For years the conservation charity has been a supporter of renewable energy, including wind, to reduce carbon emissions and help fight global warming. But in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Sir Simon Jenkins warned that wind was the “least efficient” form of green power, and risked blighting the British landscape.” The Trust has distanced itself from his position as set out in the following article which tells us:

“But a spokesman for the trust said Tuesday that “our chairman has long-held views on wind that don’t necessarily chime with our current views as an organisation on wind”. Asked if it was true that the organisation was “deeply sceptical” about wind, the spokesman said: “No, our position hasn’t changed on renewable energy.”

Charities of the size and scale of the National Trust have a privileged position in terms of our national life – in this case with assets of over £1 billion and very significant tax and other benefits from the public sector deriving from charitable status. The Trust is as large as some public departments but seems to have little in the way of the accountability requirements national public bodies face. I wonder if applying the same rules of accountability appropriate to small single issue focused local and even more modest national charities, to the Trust and other very big charities, provides enough in the way of checks and balances for those who run them – in view of all the muscle and influence they posses? Particularly when they enter into aggressive campaigning modes?

 There has been previous disquiet about the way the organisation campaigns, in 2007 Charity Commissioners investigated the role of the Trust in terms of campaigning on green belt issues.

 One thing is certain the ongoing core business of the Trust continues to thrive with them having achieved a record year for visits.

“We are reforming the planning system which is massively complex and very, very slow. The Government’s aspiration is to meet people’s aspirations and lots of people still want to own their own homes. I think it is the Government’s responsibility to try and help people meet their aspirations.”

But the NHF warned of a bleak outlook due to under-supply of homes. Chief executive, David Orr, said: “With home ownership in decline, rents rising rapidly and social housing waiting lists at a record high, it’s time to face up to the fact that we have a totally dysfunctional housing market.

“Home ownership is increasingly the preserve of the wealthy and, in parts of the country likeLondon, the very wealthy. And for the millions locked out of the property market the options are becoming increasingly limited as demand sends rents rising sharply and social homes waiting lists remain at record levels.”

A National Trust spokeswoman claimed it was not the laws that were to blame for the low level of house building, but the economy. She said: “We are not against house building. But in our view changing the planning laws risks creating a free for all where development is presumed without any regard to sustainability.”

Luminaries as widely drawn as Sir Peter Hall and Lord Matthew Taylor have subsequently developed critiques of this approach. An approach which has made large areas of rural England impossible for people of ordinary means to live or work in. The 2010 OECD review of Rural England built on these critiques, reminding us that by world and even EU definitions none of England is rural. And in the process pointing out that attitudes to the countryside in England are therefore based on a pastoral idyll of ‘green space” in a densely populated island. Leading to policies which seek to preserve “green space” as a buffer against development between towns and cities, rather than seeking to understand their connectvities and hinterlands.

The current plannng system has led to policies which exclude people of ordinary means from living and working in some parts of the countryside. This needs to change, if our vision of sustainable development is to be achieved, not least beacuse there is a carbon imperative to reduce travel by creating more local employment. Achieving this will reduce the high carbon impact of previous policies which encouraged dense urban dwelling.

What we describe in this country as Rural England should not just be available for everyone to visit but also for people to chose to live and work in. Its time to let our national talent for compromise and common sense determine the nature of the countryside not a series of well intenentioned but inflexible codes and guidance. Codes and guidance which represent perhaps the last bastion of a now defunct post war approach which found expression in nationalisation. Anyway have a look at what the National Trust has to say and form your own view!!

“The 3.6 million-member organisation voiced “grave concerns” on Tuesday over government proposals to slash 1,000 pages of planning policy to just 52 pages in a move that has won the ringing endorsement of property developers.

Opponents claim the new draft policy effectively removes the national target for recycling brownfield land and allows local communities to support building on the green belt. It is set to be the biggest change to the planning system in more than 60 years and scraps detailed planning guidance notes and circulars. Instead, the government insists there should be a presumption in favour of “sustainable development” to house a rising population.The national planning policy framework (NPPF) is intended to speed up and simplify often complex laws at the same time as encouraging economic growth.”