ONE of the most oft-repeated criticisms of the Countryside Alliance is of the "where were you when..." variety.

It goes something like this. Where were you when the village schools were being closed? Where were you when the farmers - with vast Euro subsidies appearing before their eyes - were ripping up hedgerows?

And where were you when the motorways were cutting immense swathes through land that had never even felt a plough, let alone an earthmover?

Well - just exactly where were you?

All right. Maybe there's a simple explanation. Let us assume that the closure of village schools didn't bother enough people at the time. Perhaps the scale of hedgerow removal and its disastrous consequences for wildlife only rang alarm bells in the heads of a few birdwatchers.

And as for motorways... well, you can't stop progress, can you?

Up until a short while ago, I would have agreed with people who said that the Countryside Alliance was nothing more than a front for the pro-hunting fraternity.

As someone who doesn't like foxhunting, yet would rather see it policed than banned, my assessment of that organisation would have gone along those lines.

Come on, ladies and gentlemen. Admit it - this is all about the continuation of hunting. Just nod your collective head and then we will all know where we stand. We all prefer a level playing field, is that not so?

My view of the Countryside Alliance has now changed. I think it was the London demonstration that did it. It was something to do with the sheer size, the numbers of people involved.

Logic would suggest that nearly half-a-million don't take to the streets solely in order to protest their right to chase that little thief in a red furry coat.

There has to be something more to it than that.

However, I fully realise that support for hunting is conditional for anyone who wishes to actively participate in the Countryside Alliance. This may be so, but that does not mean it is a single-issue organisation.

Far from it. And this is how my change-of-heart came about.

I have lived the majority of my life in towns and cities, yet I was born and brought up in north-east Warwickshire. Not the most attractive corner of Shakespeare's county, I'll grant you, but the rolling landscape of George Eliot country has nevertheless left an indelible mark on my soul.

On reflection, I think we can safely say that my childhood - the 1950s - was spent in the late evening of England's rural idyll. This was the Cinderella time for a way of life that was soon to be lost forever, the hands on the clock approaching midnight, and with the grey dawn of creeping urbanisation beckoning.

But this is how I remember it.

There were towering elms spaced 30 feet apart in the average Midlands hedgerow. Every other field contained a pond and a hovel where the barn owls nested.

With boyish cunning, it was possible to

uncover the secrets of the stream... bullhead, loach and crayfish fell to net, baited bottle and bent pin.

But that was long ago. For the elms are long gone, dead from a disease that came from overseas... no longer do fly-tormented cows lie beneath their shady canopies.

The ponds have been filled in for years and the barns are now homes for the upwardly mobile. As for the tiddlers, they have been electrically fished out so that an angling syndicate can stock the waters exclusively with trout that will all, in any event, be gobbled up by herons as soon as they are placed in the water.

All this would be bad enough. Yet there is more... a lot more.

For there is the environmental catastrophe that is the house-building explosion. Changing social patterns plus the highest-ever levels of immigration this country has ever seen are now putting intolerable pressures on the British countryside.

Only a mad person seriously believes we can go on at the present rate. Yet politicians talk glibly about many thousand more homes, as if the available space of the tiny landmass that is Britain was an inexhaustible resource.

But the crowning glory in this dunce's cap of idiocy is, of course, the plan for a new Midlands airport.

As revealed in a recent Phillpott File, Worcestershire narrowly escaped. Instead, my old stamping ground has been chosen for destruction.

However, there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip - for I have this feeling that it will be rural dwellers who will ultimately be the undoing of Tony Blair and his party of urbanites.

With frightening rapidity, a countryside that, until recently, would have been recognisable to nature poets such as Edward Thomas and John Clare has changed to an alarming degree.

Industrial estates spread outwards from towns, probing fingers of concrete, plastic and metal searching for more land to grab.

Vast tracts of open fields are swallowed by industrial estates whose proportions have no correlation with the number of people employed. Warehouses half-a-mile long are populated by a few men on forklifts shifting packages from one end to the other.

Clusters of buildings producing nothing nudge up to motorways that serve only as temporary barriers, moats of tarmac that will one day be crossed by the armies of "progress".

Nothing is in proportion any more. The red barn built from available materials that gave the cattle shelter for three centuries is now displaced by

pre-fabricated sheets emblazoned with letters 15ft tall. At night, such edifices light up the surrounding area for hundreds of yards.

This is the land where there is no night.

What we are now witnessing is the wholesale destruction of the British countryside. At the present rate of deterioration, it is hard to imagine much being left for future generations to gaze at, let alone enjoy.

This is why the Countryside Alliance must be in the vanguard of the defence of this threatened heritage.

We know that the cottages will never again provide homes for the labourers and that the era of the mixed farm has gone. We must also probably accept that the days when every village had its shop, off-licence and bakehouse are now confined to the pages of the numerous books that lament the passing of our pastoral heritage.

But if the British countryside is to become more than a glorified theme park, then the Countryside Alliance must continue to broaden its approach.

It should campaign increasingly for all things rural... affordable housing, local industries keeping in scale with their surroundings... sustainable farming that creates habitat for a diverse, thriving wildlife.

The Alliance could so easily thwart the single-issue anti-hunting lobby. But to do so, it has to persuade those who are worried about the wider issues of the countryside that it has credible policies regarding the bigger picture.

A lot is at stake here. The London demonstration put the wind up the Government - they will pretend otherwise, but there are now some very worried New Labour MPs in marginal constituencies.

Now is the time to consolidate this beachhead.

For the rural crisis is Labour's Achilles heel. And that is why all those opposed to the present power structure should think hard about what the next move should be.