On this day in 1932, hundreds of workers took to the hills of northern England to challenge the right of landed gentry to enclose the countryside. Their act of defiance became known as the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass. The celebrated story of the mass trespass by hundreds of young working people from Manchester and Sheffield on Kinder Scout, to establish the 'right to roam', is remembered today with pride.
But younger generations enjoying the freedoms of the Peak District and other green areas of the countryside may have little knowledge of how hard-won these rights were. The short film, 'Mass Trespass' by WellRedFilms, helps set this right.
It tells the story of the mass action lead by a group of ramblers, including Benny Rothman, a 20-year-old Communist activist from Cheetham in Manchester.Benny was the son of Romanian Jews, an errand boy in the motor trade who lost his job after selling copies of the Daily Worker and was mprisoned for 4 months.
It shows wonderful old footage from the mass trespass itself and discusses its significance with local environmentalists today, including some relatives of the original trespassers. One narrator describes how young people working long hours in the factories of the surrounding cities longed to get out onto the green hills of the Peak District.The young men and women who took part in the Kinder Scout mass trespass on 24 April 1932 were escapees from a world we can barely imagine now. Workers and labourers in the grim factories and mills of Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, they saw the moors and fells of the Peak District as their weekend salvation: a land of greenery, fresh air, big skies and freedom.
The main target for generations of campaigners was Kinder Scout, the dark, brooding plateau of rugged moorland lying between the industrial conurbations of Manchester and Sheffield. It was this proximity to large populations of young and politically aware factory workers that made Kinder the symbolic battleground for the struggle between the feudal landed gentry and a militant working class, a struggle that began in earnest in the late 19th century and continues to this day. Individuals had long trespassed on the moors, often walking long distances from Stockport and the outskirts of Manchester just to get to the hills, desperate to enjoy these open spaces, during their precious time away from the factories and furnaces. Rambling as a national pastime arose out of this desire.
Yet there was a problem. Ever since common land was appropriated by the rich landowners of England during the 18th and 19th centuries under a succession of Enclosure Acts, the upland moors of the Peak were largely prohibited, mainained by wealthy landowners and reserved for the privileged few who used them for a dozen days each year for the short grouse-shooting season. The rest of the year they were deserted, save for a few gamekeepers, ever ready with sticks and sometimes guns to repel any commoner who might deign to step on to the hallowed peat uplands.
Lengthy negotiations had been taking place between the Ramblers Association and the landowners, but many were becoming impatient with this process. Members of the Communist Party British Workers’ Sports Federation in Manchester became increasingly frustrated and decided to force the issue. The video shows how Benny Rothman stepped up to the plate. In the presence of police he urged the 400 protesters to set off for the top of Kinder, thus breaking the law. Once they reached private land higher up, gamekeepers employed by the Duke of Devonshire , and armed with sticks were waiting to block their way. The leader of Hayfield parish council also attempted to read the Riot Act, while police focused on what would be called ‘kettling’ the trespassers to prevent them gaining access to the Kinder approach routes. But the walkers managed to break through and streamed across Hayfield cricket pitch and onto Kinder Road, ‘singing the Red Flag and the Internationale’.The police were much less fit than the trespassers and unable to keep up with their pace, allowing them to regroup in a quarry at the foot of Kinder, they then marched past the reservoir, onto the slopes of Kinder and into the history books. Six of the leaders, including Benny, were arrested and charged with affray.
The trial of Benny Rothman and the others is convincingly re-enacted in the video in black and white, giving a sense of the arrogance of the ruling class and landowners of the time. Rothman's court speech defending himself is the highlight of the video. His words, are as inspirational today as they were more than 80 years ago. Indeed it was the court case, rather than the act of mass trespass, that focused nationwide attention on the denial to workers of access to the countryside.
Rothman said: “We ramblers, after a hard week’s work in smoky towns and cities, go out rambling for relaxation, a breath of fresh air, but we find, when we go out, that the finest rambling country is closed to us, just because certain individuals wish to shoot for 10 days a year.
“Our demonstration on April 24 was a peaceful demonstration to gain support for our contention of the right of access to mountains.”
After his term of imprisonment in Leicester, Rothman was jobless. The arrests and imprisonment of the activists however proved to be a turning point in public opinion. Ordinary members of the public were horrified at the sentence and were swayed in the trespassers’ favour.
The Kinder Scout trespass was one of the most audacious and important direct actions in British labor history. Its cultural and political impact was profound. Over the following days and weeks much larger trespasses were held and three weeks after the trespass, some 10,000 ramblers held a protest rally at nearby Castleton; the right-to-roam movement was on the march. Mass Trespass records how the working-class ramblers’ defiance of the law led to the creation in 1951, to the creation of the first national park. Fittingly, it was the Peak District, described as the "lungs of the industrial north". In 2000, freedom-to-roam legislation was passed, in the Countryside Rights of Way Act finally making lawful what Rothman and his comrades marched for.Thanks to these pioneers we can now all enjoy the right to access our Peak District National Park.
But decades later there is still a distance to walk in the battle against landlordism and enclosure. As Benny Rothman himself was fond of saying, democratic rights are like public footpaths — if you don’t use them, they become hidden, get ploughed up or fenced off, one day to be built over and vanished.
The film makes the point that we can never be complacent about the rights won by the mass trespass and its aftermath. Benny's son, Harry, says that if his father and friends were alive today they would be campaigning against fracking below our green spaces and joining the fight for clean air and against other threats to our environment.
The 20 minute film, is punctuated in parts by folk singer Ewan MacColl singing one of his most famous songs, ‘The Manchester Rambler’, 'I may be a wage slave on Monday/ But I am a free man on Sunday’ he also acted as the self-proclaimed press officer, ensuring full coverage in the Manchester Evening News and Manchester Guardian.
An inspirational moment in a continuing struggle as the film doesn’t just tell the story of how Rothman and around 400 ramblers from industrial Manchester and Sheffield defied gamekeepers and the police to walk as free people on the moors and hills of Derbyshire’s Peak District for their recreation. It’s also about now, about the attempted industrialisation of the countryside for profit by the likes of fracking firms ,also rightly warns us how those rights won in the past are under threat today, there still remain significant areas of the country where access is restricted, threatened or resisted, with landowners such as the Duke of Westminster fighting every inch of the way.Lest us forget that today around 0.6% of the population owns over 70% of the land. Over a third of this is in the hands of the aristocracy – a legacy of the Norman Conquest. The issues of land inequality still so important, and the message in the film so relevant urging us to continue to fight for the land we want, after all this land is ours. .
