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Book: The Wild Rover: A Blistering Journey Along Britain’s Footpaths by Mike Parker
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Authors: Mike Parker
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you by the throat at the very outset, and launched us into the new millennium on a surge of pure adrenaline.
‘The country was founded on the principle that the primary role of government is to protect property from the majority – and so it remains,’ intones Chomsky, before the guitars and drums storm in and speed us into submission. It’s a great line, and one that the linguist-philosopher-guru expands upon on his web-site, saying, ‘American democracy was founded on the principle, stressed by James Madison in the Constitutional Convention in 1787, that the primary function of government is to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority [his italics]. Thus he warned that in England, the only quasi-democratic model of the day, if the general population were allowed a say in public affairs, they would implement agrarian reform or other atrocities, and that the American system must be carefully crafted to avoid such crimes against the rights of property , which must be defended (in fact, must prevail).’
Strong stuff, but look at the agonised history of legislation around the issue of access to our hills and paths, and it’s hard to disagree with any of it. Inspired by my trip to the north-west, I wanted to read up on the turbulent background that had sparked the fights at Flixton, Bolton, Darwen and Kinder, especially how they had been conducted within the political discourse of the day. It was an illuminating, and not terribly inspiring, search.
Since huge tracts of the countryside were enclosed, particularly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of massive industrial expansion and concomitant urbanisation of the population, public rights of access have only ever been grudgingly returned, and only in the most piecemeal of ways. Scores of pieces of legislation, each one chipping just a fragment off the granite block of our obsessions with property and privacy, have occupied Parliament for months at a time. Helped perhaps by listening to ‘The Masses Against the Classes’ at full volume, reading up on this interminable struggle was a fine way of making the sludgy blood of a lapsed lefty fizz once more through my veins.
The bottom line is that, had it been left to the Conservative Party, we’d still be peering through the gates. Every single advance in our rights of access has come about because of the dogged persistence of campaigners, their willingness to break the law and their often few friends in Parliament. Such members have invariably been drawn from the radical fringes of the Liberal and Labour parties, and often faced considerable opposition on their own benches, let alone the scarlet-faced opprobrium of those on the opposite side of the chamber. At every measure, Tories have spluttered indignantly and tried to bat away progress with a well-worn litany of disingenuous half-truths, perverse speculation, scaremongering and a persistently nasty seam of hatred towards the lower orders. As a result, it has taken well over a hundred years of constant new legislation to reach the point we are at today, with a half-decent public footpath network and a modest right to roam, mainly on uncultivated land, in England and Wales. In Scotland, there’s a rather bolder presumption of access to the land (and, importantly, to waterways too), one that brings the country into line with the age-old Scandinavian ideal known in Swedish as Allemansrätt , or ‘every man’s right’.
The first parliamentary attempt to claw back some of the land came in 1884, with James Bryce’s Access to Mountains (Scotland) Bill. Scotland’s story is even more remarkable than that south of the border, for the most liberal access rights today have come out of a background that was the most generally repressive anywhere in these islands. With the infamous Highland Clearances fresh in the popular memory, the late nineteenth century saw something of their ghostly echo, as vast swathes of the Highlands were cleared and closed
‘The country was founded on the principle that the primary role of government is to protect property from the majority – and so it remains,’ intones Chomsky, before the guitars and drums storm in and speed us into submission. It’s a great line, and one that the linguist-philosopher-guru expands upon on his web-site, saying, ‘American democracy was founded on the principle, stressed by James Madison in the Constitutional Convention in 1787, that the primary function of government is to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority [his italics]. Thus he warned that in England, the only quasi-democratic model of the day, if the general population were allowed a say in public affairs, they would implement agrarian reform or other atrocities, and that the American system must be carefully crafted to avoid such crimes against the rights of property , which must be defended (in fact, must prevail).’
Strong stuff, but look at the agonised history of legislation around the issue of access to our hills and paths, and it’s hard to disagree with any of it. Inspired by my trip to the north-west, I wanted to read up on the turbulent background that had sparked the fights at Flixton, Bolton, Darwen and Kinder, especially how they had been conducted within the political discourse of the day. It was an illuminating, and not terribly inspiring, search.
Since huge tracts of the countryside were enclosed, particularly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of massive industrial expansion and concomitant urbanisation of the population, public rights of access have only ever been grudgingly returned, and only in the most piecemeal of ways. Scores of pieces of legislation, each one chipping just a fragment off the granite block of our obsessions with property and privacy, have occupied Parliament for months at a time. Helped perhaps by listening to ‘The Masses Against the Classes’ at full volume, reading up on this interminable struggle was a fine way of making the sludgy blood of a lapsed lefty fizz once more through my veins.
The bottom line is that, had it been left to the Conservative Party, we’d still be peering through the gates. Every single advance in our rights of access has come about because of the dogged persistence of campaigners, their willingness to break the law and their often few friends in Parliament. Such members have invariably been drawn from the radical fringes of the Liberal and Labour parties, and often faced considerable opposition on their own benches, let alone the scarlet-faced opprobrium of those on the opposite side of the chamber. At every measure, Tories have spluttered indignantly and tried to bat away progress with a well-worn litany of disingenuous half-truths, perverse speculation, scaremongering and a persistently nasty seam of hatred towards the lower orders. As a result, it has taken well over a hundred years of constant new legislation to reach the point we are at today, with a half-decent public footpath network and a modest right to roam, mainly on uncultivated land, in England and Wales. In Scotland, there’s a rather bolder presumption of access to the land (and, importantly, to waterways too), one that brings the country into line with the age-old Scandinavian ideal known in Swedish as Allemansrätt , or ‘every man’s right’.
The first parliamentary attempt to claw back some of the land came in 1884, with James Bryce’s Access to Mountains (Scotland) Bill. Scotland’s story is even more remarkable than that south of the border, for the most liberal access rights today have come out of a background that was the most generally repressive anywhere in these islands. With the infamous Highland Clearances fresh in the popular memory, the late nineteenth century saw something of their ghostly echo, as vast swathes of the Highlands were cleared and closed
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