This year we have seen many ceremonies and memorials devoted to the recognition of those who fought for Britain in two World Wars.

The Prime Minister has called for ideas for a new type of war memorial and yet one of the most significant and vital memorials that formed the peace dividend and was enshrined in legislation in the years of austerity following the second World War is in danger of being emasculated due to the policies of national government and local politicians.

The product of the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act not only gave us the Lake District National Park but helped catalyse the movement for a greater freedom to roam the British countryside and the basis of our consistently eroded protection for nature.

In 1929 Professor G M Trevelyan summed up the cause for which many young men braved the fight of the Great War when he wrote “the England which men crossed the ocean to visit on account of its delicate beauty, the England to save which the young men went to die in the Great War.” He could equally have written the same after 1945.

Many soldiers carried Houseman’s poem ‘A Shropshire Lad’ into the trenches as it reminded them of the vision they were fighting for - an English countryside with greater public access and better protection for the fine landscapes not just from the increasing industrialisation and agricultural change and which might be lost totally to foreign aggressors.

They went to war to defend the inspirational beauty of the British countryside as they recognised it was a basic human right to gain fresh air and re-creation.

The national park movement gained greater momentum after the Great War and during the second World War as due recognition of the aspirations and bravery of those who went to fight.

In the post 1945 years of hope we had legislation to create national parks. In more recent years we have had the attempts by the North-West Development Agency, thankfully now history, to undermine the purposes of national parks, and we have had government cuts that have affected our national park and conservation movement in a way that is excessively disproportionate to the cuts affecting other aspects of the quality of life for the people of England.

We have some Cumbrian MPs and, especially peers, who recognise the value of national parks to the holistic well-being of the nation.

The Lake District could go forward next year as a candidate for World Heritage Site inscription. Much ground work has been undertaken and there is a great deal of political will in support of its candidacy.

Such an inscription would recognise the area's special qualities. Yet one of the partners in the bid, United Utilities, is proposing miles of ridge-line fencing over the open fells - contrary to their signing up to the special qualities which includes the openness of the fells.

Even within the national park its senior officials are constant pushing developments which run contrary to the spirit of the national park - the ideas for intrusive major zip wires or for cable cars come to mind.

You have only to read the current consultation edition of the National Park Management Plan to realise how little weight is given to either the two statutory purposes of national park designation or to protecting and enhancing the special qualities which are fundamental to the World Heritage Site bid.

National parks, as fitting war memorials, are under the greatest threats they have ever faced. It is time to accord them their proper place for today as well as better recognising why we have accorded protection for such wonderful places.