Today is the anniversary of the Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout, which took place in 1932. The protest sought to highlight that walkers were denied access to areas of open countryside which had been fenced off by wealthy landowners who forbade public access. Although the mass trespass was a controversial strategy at the time, the imprisonment of some of the trespassers led to public outrage, which increased public support for open access land.
In 1932 the Kinder Scout in the Peak District was exclusively kept for grouse shooting by the landowner, the Duke of Devonshire. The Duke employed gamekeepers year-round to patrol his land and keep walkers out, despite the fact that he only used the land for a few days each year. A few weeks prior to the mass trespass a group of frustrated walkers were chased off the Duke’s land by his gamekeepers.
Unhappy with a lack of progress by mainstream ramblers groups, on 24th April 1932, between 400–600 workers set off on a walk up Kinder Scout. They were organised by the British Workers’ Sports Federation, a Communist-influenced group, and many of those who joined the Kinder mass trespass were also members of the Young Communist League. The protest aimed to highlight that walkers were denied access to areas of open countryside which had been fenced off by wealthy landowners who forbade public access. As expected, the walkers were met by a line of gamekeepers, and when entry was refused, a fracas broke out. Ultimately, the gamekeepers were overwhelmed and the walkers continued on to their destination, the Kinder plateau.
The general outrage that greeted the arrest and sentencing of the walkers was a catalyst for the passing of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949, which effectively created protected national parks. Fittingly, in 1951 the Peak District became Britain’s first national park and agreements for access to Kinder Scout were negotiated the following year. Walkers’ rights to travel through common land and uncultivated upland were eventually protected by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act (CROW Act) of 2000. Though controversial when it occurred, it has been interpreted as the embodiment of “working class struggle for the right to roam versus the rights of the wealthy to have exclusive use of moorlands for grouse shooting.”
A lot of optimism here….
Today is the birthday, in 1948, of Steve York who with Manfred Mann had the 1964 UK & US No.1 single ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’ and the 1968 UK No.1 & US No.10 single ‘Mighty Quinn’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc0x7xOap4I
