rewind.
The fight for access to land is one that has been happening in England almost as long as England has existed as a concept. While it has always been the case that large landowners controlled swathes of the country, this land was often available to access. Communal plots were common, allowing those lower down in society to graze animals or even grow crops to sell at market. Tracing the fight for access through the medieval period, then how protest became more official through the industrial period, helps us to appreciate the eventual Kinder Scout protest, and how it is a symbol of all that came before it.
An interesting place to start thinking about the long history of protest and land rights is responses to the dreaded act of Enclosure, the scourge of the Midlands in the sixteenth century. Enclosure was the act of breaking up or buying communal land to consolidate it as one large field, fencing off the boundaries, and often grazing sheep there due to the vast profits of the wool industry. In Thomas More’s book Utopia, the character Hytholday lambasts sheep as animals that “eat up and sallow down to the very men themselves,” and enclosure as “that one covetous and insatiable cormorant and plague of its native country.” More’s description of disease is an interesting way of framing land as naturally communal and healthy, then corrupted by enclosure and sickness. Religion, as ever, played a part in this. When translations of the Bible arrived in England, the idea that God had made the land for all started to ruffle some feathers, pushing some to radical ends.
The “Diggers,” also known as the True Levellers, were a group of radicals in the 1640s who, in the context of social upheaval and the Civil War, staked their claim for a common form of living. Immortalised in Billy Bragg’s tune of protest The World Turned Upside Down, they have been viewed as proto-communists due to their embrace of communal ownership, crucially done from a place of scripture. With the introduction of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611, English people could now read passages such as Acts 4:32, a passage used by the Diggers to justify their actions: “Neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things in common.” This radical view of property was dangerous, and they were violently attacked for their attempt to live from the fruits of the earth in their “commune” on St George’s Hill in Surrey.
Jumping to the nineteenth century, forms of protest moved into parliamentary opposition, objecting to the developments in intellectual thought that occurred around this period. Thinkers like John Locke began to view land as potential, and that until it had been “legitimised” by being cultivated it was up for the taking. He thought of the Americas as a “waste” land, one that needed to be christened by a European presence, and ownership of land there. This assumption that all land should be privately owned and legitimised crept into government legislation as well. The Vagrancy Act of 1824 criminalised anyone who did not have an abode, the assumption being that all should have their own land or property, and stick to it. This was not without protest, however; opponents included William Wilberforce, who spoke out against the act, and throughout the nineteenth century many became concerned with the consolidation of “great estates” in owning large swathes of private land. In 1884, James Bryce submitted the first act calling for public access to mountains. This was immediately dismissed before reaching debate, and there would be fourteen more attempts to pass this act before it eventually was granted in 1939.
To look at how the tide changed in granting access, another form of protest, the mass trespass, needs to be explored. Mass trespass is an interesting form of protest, technically breaking the law, but doing so in large groups creates a kind of herd immunity. The mantra of “they can’t arrest us all” drove many groups of young, particularly working-class men, to travel to and walk on private land. The construction of the Settle to Carlisle line opened the Yorkshire Dales and Lake District to workers from Leeds and Bradford in 1875, while the Manchester to Hope Valley railway opened up the Peak District to workers from Manchester and Sheffield in 1894. Groups such as the Sheffield Clarion Walkers would take groups of workers out to nearby hills such as Kinder Scout, leaving in the morning, trespassing, and returning by the evening to catch the train back to Sheffield. Public opinion on this practice was divided. The Manchester Guardian records a letter sent by Walter Armitage, who complained that trespassers would “probably object to the world at large wandering through [their garden] at their own will.” A week later, a response appears from “The Mountaineer,” who said he frequently climbed Kinder Scout with his friends and faced no threat or even knowledge of the gamekeepers who apparently so eagerly kept this land.
The famed Kinder Scout trespass of 1932 is often shown as the pivotal point in gaining access to the Peak District, but it is a culmination of years of previous work. The 1932 trespass was very politically charged, populated by large numbers of the Manchester Communist Party. The gamekeepers objected to what some might today brand as “lefty loonies” treading on their turf. Gamekeepers brought batons and violently confronted the 400-strong group, while police arrested five of those considered the ringleaders of the protest. This violent response, and subsequent prosecution of the ramblers, created a media furore. In 1939, the Act of Access to Mountains allowed free access to mountains in Britain. This was followed in 1949 by the National Parks Act, which made the Peak District, home of Kinder Scout, the first recipient of a protected and open regional designation. This was the crescendo of a movement that had started decades, if not centuries, before, but is still active today.
Mass trespasses are still a tool used by protestors. One in 2022 found a mass grave of 200 pheasants on the land of the Duke of Somerset, a stark reminder that rights should not be taken for granted but should continue to be fought for. A recent government plan had pinned the cut-off for finding lost rights of way as 1st January 2026, but luckily the scale of reclaiming lost paths and common rights of way proved too great, and the deadline has been extended. Writing this article, the song This Land Is Your Land by US folk artist Woody Guthrie has been haunting my ears, serving as a reminder that this issue is felt the world over. The particular English and British tradition of protest is one that we should be proud of, and so when we walk through fields on common rights of way we should thank those who have continually fought for our right for access.
Bibliography
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