THERE is a sentimental but wonderful film starring Kevin Costner titled Field of Dreams which tells of a farmer from Iowa who risks bankruptcy by ploughing up a field of corn to build a baseball pitch where the ghosts of the legends of America’s national game drift out from the corn stalks to play.

Moreover, it is a place that reunites the spirit of a dead father with his son and to which complete strangers are drawn for no apparent reason.

Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella, created the pitch because voices told him: ‘If you build it, they will come.’ In the closing credits ‘they’ came in their thousands – ordinary people drawn by a hankering for lost ideals that in their fathers’ and grandfathers’ days were the underpinning values of a moral society.

That simple pitch in the middle of nowhere epitomised the best of the past as well as hope for the future in a society which had lost its way in the pursuit of profit for gain’s sake and where winning was more important than taking part and playing well.

Why does this schmaltzy story pluck at our heartstrings? Because we all despair at what modern society has become and the basic, decent values we have lost along the way. In an Island that is transformed year on year by new development, we hark back to childhood when life was simple and it was a treat to kick a ball around with our dads, tag along behind our paternal heroes to low water, or sit in front of the box and watch Liverpool thump Nottingham Forest (and, best of all, Man U).

There was a feel of the Field of Dreams in St Ouen’s Bay last Sunday when an estimated 7,000 Islanders followed the call of one man to show their support for safeguarding the coastline.

Those who joined Mike Stentiford in the National Trust for Jersey’s Line in the Sand event came in all ages, from weeks-old babes-in-arms to nonagenarians. They cycled, drove, caught a bus, cadged a lift or walked – many accompanied by a Heinz variety of dogs – to send out a defiant message that when it comes to developments on our coastline, enough is enough.

Families covering three and four generations lined up on stretches of the sands they regard as their own. The less able came in wheelchairs or supported on walking frames to stand alongside tiny tots, toddlers and teenagers; twenty- and thirty-somethings and the middle-aged, to be joined by a gaggle of visitors and surfers of all nationalities taking part in the European Surfing Championships.

By standing side by side from La Pulente almost to L’Etacq, their collective silence spoke more eloquently than words.

The States have shown that they think petitions are nothing but sheets of paper. And referendums, just as the way the legislation is framed ensures, are not binding. But a living three-mile chain cannot be ignored. If the Council of Ministers wanted a demonstration of public concern, they got it.

The message was that this Island’s coastline is precious and must be protected. It is not an asset for developers to exploit for gain, but a precious environment that is to be cherished. It is ours, the people’s, so leave it alone. Or at least develop it with sensitivity by paying due attention to the surrounding area and local character.

Mike Stentiford is the closest we have to a living national treasure. A newcomer to our shores once told me she did not ‘get the Mike Stentiford thing.’ I replied: ‘Think David Attenborough, Bill Oddie and David Bellamy all rolled into one’ and the penny dropped.
Mike dreamed up not a field of dreams, but a line along Jersey’s longest beach out of his heartfelt frustration and anger that the powers to be pay merely lip service to the environment.

It was his passion that persuaded the usually conservative National Trust for Jersey to take it on board, but notwithstanding the huge effort on the part of the organisation, the Line was Mike’s and his alone. He asked for 5,000 and he got almost 2,000 more. What began out of one man’s frustration culminated in the biggest public rally this Island has seen since thousands protested against the flooding of Queen’s Valley.

We all know what happened there, so don’t let the legacy of the Line in the Sand follow the same route. It is incumbent on all those who stood in the line to take up the torch and keep it burning brightly in the trying times to come as attempts are made to rezone more land to increase the economy and population in the name of progress.

Developers, landowners and architects have become cocky of late in the false belief that the people of Jersey don’t really care about potential development sites, and not just in prime sight coastal locations. Combine that with a government that does not put the environment at the forefront of its decision making and you have a recipe for planning disaster.

Political support to save Plémont has been disappointing, to say the least, and promise after promise has been broken. Yet eight years ago the States voted to save the old Bal Tabarin site from development by acquiring it for the public at a cost of £1m. The sorry, neglected state of this little headland leaves a great deal to be desired, but that acquisition set a precedent that out current crop of beloved leaders should follow.

Sunday’s mass demonstration must not be ignored by the politicians, planners, speculative landowners and developers who thought it was just the same old tired voices complaining every time yet another application for an ‘iconic’ building is submitted to Planning. Those usual suspects were in the Line in the Sand, but they were far outnumbered by new faces.
The overriding task now is to convert the Line in the Sand into an effective campaign.

It is the responsibility of every Islander who is truly concerned about the worrying direction this Island is being steered down – especially as those at the tiller don’t seem able to read a compass – to make their voices heard in what ever way they can.

(I should declare an interest as a member of the council of the National Trust for Jersey, although the views expressed are my own.)