Kinder Scout Mass Trespass Commemoration



Manchester communist, Jude, reports back from last month's Kinder Scout commemoration.

On the 22nd May a group of around twenty Young Communist League members, Communist Party members and Morning Star supporters from around the North gathered at a bus stop in the small Pennine town of Hayfield to commemorate the Kinder Scout trespass.

Alongside local Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion branches the YCL and party members paused at the foot of the memorial for an inspiring speech by Dave Toft from the Hayfield Kinder Trespass Group, where Benny Rothman and the trespassers had gathered some eighty-nine years prior. Unlike the 1932 trespassers, we set off onto the moorland with the right to do so.

Thanks to the contributions to the sponsorship fund over £750 has been raised in support of the Morning Star and YCL. With particular thanks to the attendance and support of the High Peak Unite Community, High Peak Welcomes Diversity, the local Extinction Rebellion branch/High Peaks Green New Deal, Glossop Labour Club and Labour Party members from the Hayfield Parish Council.

To understand the significance of the 1932 mass trespass it is necessary to understand the background. On the 24 April 1932 a crowd of around several hundred marched up Kinder Scout with a single purpose: the right to roam our countryside. At the time when Rothman led the march, access to the moorland was overwhelmingly reserved for the pleasures of a small number of landowners.

Ultimately, the events that day saw six of the trespassers arrested on charges such as riotous assembly; the act of protest made national papers, bringing with it greater attention and support for the right to roam movement. However, it was not until seventeen years later the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act (1949) that public right of way and access to open land was granted and only recently the right to roam was implemented through the Countryside and Right of Way Act (2000), even then it only provided the right to roam on certain parts of uncultivated land.

The mass trespass of Kinder Scout and the right to roam is perhaps even more relevant today particularly with regard to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill currently being pushed by Boris Johnson’s cabinet in which it aims to criminalise trespass. The Bill would have drastic consequences not just on ramblers and campers but it would also endanger the act of protest and the rights of Travellers and Roma.

Land distribution in England is founded upon an irrational archaic and irrational system. Around 92% of England’s land is privately owned and inaccessible to the public and it is massed in the hands of less than 1% of the population, with a third of the land still owned by the landed aristocracy. The vast majority of these estates are the result of the enclosure of land that was previously held in common. This theft of land saw entire communities forcibly evicted so land would be adapted for private profit for no reason except they had the power to do so.

During the lockdown many turned to nature to find some respite from the Coronavirus restrictions and as such the value of the right to roam is more paramount than ever. The significance of commemorating the Kinder Scout mass trespass has never been more apparent, where the value of open spaces and access to land has been a necessity for a population who have been confined to their homes.

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