NAKED AS NATURE - BUT NOT NOTTINGHAM - INTENDED
by David Flint

It was reported this week that a planned naturist event in Nottingham's Wollaton Park had been banned by the local council. This sort of story is all too common in modern Britain, where a combination of prudery and petty local government muscle flexing combine, but as this was in my local stomping ground, I was intrigued.

Nottingham City Council are notoriously dodgy, and have long had an unpleasant moralising streak. This is the council that imposed dubious restrictions on nudity in public venues, and refused to licence sex shops and strip clubs until forced to after legal appeals; more recently, they have sought to crush such venues by imposing a ridiculous annual licence fee of £13,000, which to date they have refused to lower despite a legal precedent set by a a London court case that determined that licence fees should not be more that the legal costs of enforcement (and unless Nottingham pays its police and trading standards inspectors vastly inflated sums, then thirteen grand for a couple of inspections a year is grossly excessive). They were never going react well to a group of naked people in one of their public parks.

Yet public nudity is not illegal. The council's ability to ban such an event seemed a bit dubious. I was curious to find out more, so I called British Naturism, the organisation behind the event to find out more. I spoke to PR man Andrew Welch and unsurprisingly, it seems the newspaper story was not the whole truth.

“It must have been a slow news day, I think... we're a national membership organisation, and one of our members approached the council about what their view would be about a picnic in the park. So it wasn't an event – in fact, the approach was made last year, just testing the water, to see what would they say. Because the answer was 'no', and because some of the things they said in their answer were not good, our member then followed up with a Freedom of Information request to get details as to why they said what they did. That's what the paper had picked up and unfortunately reported it as an event being cancelled.”

Ahh... so not a formal event then. But still, the council did refuse permission for a group of people to gather to do something that isn't even illegal. So what gives?

"As I'm sure you know, there is no law against naturism, so other than being polite we didn't really need to ask. Of course, a gathering of any sort, the authorities need to be involved. If you are issuing an invitation for more than a dozen people to gather, then permission of the people who operate the space needs to be sought. Same with protests, where all they're doing is marching, they need to get the police to say it's okay. We will be talking to Nottingham council. We're not taking it lying down. We've had situations like this before. The way the council have said 'we can't run the risk that people, especially families, will be offended'... there are three or four mistakes in that statement. It is a family activity. Most people involved in naturism are in family groups. We have a phrase – 'prudery is child abuse with good intentions'. Don't get me wrong – one must protect one's children from the nasties, the a naked body – be it their parents or someone they don't know – is not in the least bit harmful. We've lost out humanity. If you could provide some evidence that there's harm being done, then of course, we'd stop straight away – but there just isn't, you know?”

Now... your Strange Things editor is not a naturist as such. I've never been to a naturist event, but that's not through any sense of disapproval – I rarely get to visit beaches full stop, to be fair. But I've been at plenty of events where nudity is, if not the norm, then at least entirely accepted, and this level of hysterical council prudery distresses me. I can only imagine how it must feel to committed naturists. Unsurprisingly, Andrew is keen to cut through the crap and – ahem – expose the truth.

“It's always nice for us to dispel the myth. The whole point about social nudity being perfectly legal surprises people. We often get situations where members of out organisation, being perfectly law-abiding citizens walking through the woods on a Sunday afternoon when there's nobody around, up comes a horse rider and suddenly the police are all there... and there's no crime being committed. Often, people don't understand that and the police don't either. We are hardwired to think someone without their clothes on might be acting suspiciously.”

the fact that public nudity is not illegal is something we can't emphasise enough. The law, unfortunately, is vague enough to ensure that people like Naked Rambler Stephen Gough have spent longer in prison than some murderers, just for walking naked in public – an act that, I once again emphasise, isn't even a crime. The crime, it seems, is in intent, and the wilful misinterpretation of that intent – assuming that anyone who is upset has been deliberately upset – has been used by police and courts alike.

“'Alarm and distress' are the words, and it has to be proved. The onus of proof is on the complainer, not on the person complained about. We have this debate going on internally within British Naturism – even some naturist websites say 'if you are offended...'. I know it all boils down to semantics when it comes down to it, but is anybody REALLY offended? We've all got a naked body, so how can you be offended by something you have yourself? I was on the World Naked Bike Ride in London the other day, and people have done those all around the world. It's total pleasure, total euphoria. People bring their children to the front of the crowd to have a look! We had a situation with a swimming pool in Manchester years ago that cause furore because some mother and babies group swam in that same pool – on a DIFFERENT DAY! It's just crazy...”

Things of course are not helped by public perceptions that naturism must have something to do with sex – that it is intrinsically connected to dogging, swinging and other 'public' sexual activities/

“My daily challenge is that the perceptions are completely different from the reality. People have all these negative connotations, that we're all having sex in the bushes or we're trying to have sex with passersby... and people, particularly women, feeling vulnerable in that environment or worried that someone was going to be staring at them... 'my boobs are too big, my bum's too saggy', all that kind of stuff. People come to a naturist place and all of that goes away. It really is good for you – good to have the sun on your skin, good to have the breeze on your skin – it's a cliché to say at one with nature, but you know what I mean. So a picnic in the park – should that have happened? Yes, we appreciate the sensitivities, and the fact that it could have brought about a tension – no one's going to walk past a group of fifty people having a picnic in the nude and not have a look, are they? - but actually, it would be good for people, and you would find, as you do with the World Naked Bike Ride, that people will come along especially to join in because it sounds like a laugh.”

Hopefully, British Naturism will win this unnecessary fight with Nottingham's moral guardians. If they do, we'll let you know where the event will take place, and encourage you to go along and join in. For more details on British Naturism, currently celebrating its 50th year, visit their website.