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Historic Right to Roam
by Bob Walker |
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Seventy years ago this week a group of some 200 men from the factories of Manchester and Sheffield exercised what they believed was their God-given right to walk across the mountains and moorland of the Derbyshire Peak District.
Waiting for them as they set off from a quarry in the village of Hayfield were the gamekeepers, determined to keep the trespassers at bay and off their grouse-shooting moors.
As a number of the ramblers - many of them active members of the Young Communist League - left a footpath and spread out onto Kinder Scout Mountain. There was a confrontation and one gamekeeper was slightly hurt. Some of the walkers were later arrested and charged with public order offences. Six of them were jailed for up to six months.
The severity of the sentences created martyrs and the Kinder Scout Trespass became shrouded in folklore and myth. Many believe the trespass was responsible for the ultimate creation of national parks (The Peak District was the first) although landowners would argue it was little more than an early PR exercise and that its significance has been greatly exaggerated.
However, there’s little doubt that it highlighted the debate of public access and right to roam.
Seventy years later the campaign for a greater right to roam has all but ended with the passing of the Countryside and Rights of Way (CROW) Act. The Peak District will be one of the first areas in the country to have strictly defined areas where right to roam - or open access - will be allowed.
Eighty-five-year-old Jimmy Jones from Manchester is one of the few - if not the only – surviving participant in the 1932 trespass. He accompanied his father, a committed communist, on the walk and remembers the commotion that took place when the ramblers confronted the gamekeepers.
He became firm friends with Benny Rothman, the legendary leader of the trespass who was one of those jailed. Mr Rothman died earlier this year.
The Duke of Devonshire whose grandfather owned part of Kinder Scout in the 1930s (the land is now owned by the National Trust) has publicly apologised for the attitude of his family at the time. He says he was horrified at the severity of the sentences that were handed down.
The 70th anniversary will be marked this Saturday (the 27th) with a ceremony at Bowden Bridge near Hayfield in Derbyshire. The environment minister Michael Meacher who pushed through the CROW act will be in attendance.
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85-year-old Jimmy Jones at Bowden Bridge Quarry, the site of the start of the 1932 mass trespass.
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Looking towards the Kinder Scout plateau from the site of the 1932 trespass.
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Looking towards the Kinder Scout Mountain across Kinder Reservoir
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