Liaison Meeting reveals National Trust lied to SUN in 1995
The meeting was chaired by Mark Harold, National Trust Area Manager,
Celia Mead, NT Regional Press Officer, Julian Homer, Property Manager,
and representatives from SUN, CCBN and the Studland Parish Council
attended.
Little was covered that was out of the ordinary with the Trust
maintaining they would not budge on their restrictions.
In August 1995, at our
first formal meeting with the National Trust, SUN was informed that the new measures
were introduced following "complaints
from members of the public who had stumbled across nudists while
walking through the heathland." At the time the National Trust flatly refused to state exactly
how many 'complaints' had been received, or exactly what the
nature of the complaints were.
At this meeting SUN pushed the Trust about how many complaints they
had received about the presence of nudists. The Trust started wriggling
and tried to side-step the issue but we did a Paxman, and repeated the
question over and over again. Both Mark Harold and Celia Mead were prevaricating like crazy, saying they couldn't give
details, they weren't willing to show us the letters of complaint, etc.,
but we kept on asking the simple question "How many complaints have you
received simply about the presence of nudists?"
Eventually Julian Homer cracked and replied "Not a single one".
In this simple answer Julian not only revealed the truth that nudists
are not the cause of complaints at Studland but also that the Trust had
tried to hide this fact.
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