When the barbed-wire fence began to spread across the British countryside in the late 19th century, it was not met with equanimity. Huntsmen complained of terrible accidents resulting from their horses vaulting the unexpected wire, while members of the House of Lords railed that “nothing was more calculated to destroy the amenities of country life”. What reason was there, asked Lord Thring in 1893, “why a child wandering along the roadside picking cowslips and blackberries should be liable to have its hands lacerated and its clothes torn by these fences?”
Today, barbed wire is an accepted feature of the countryside; a misanthropic aberration faded into the background of daily life. It is the symbol of a sick culture that fetishises private property rights at the expense of all that is good, humane and beautiful. That’s why I and others have taken to mass trespass.
Until two years ago I kept thoughts about the exclusion of the public from so much of the nation’s land to myself. They remained a dimly expressed irritation as I shuffled through the public footpath turned spiked gauntlet into town. Or when I snatched a glimpse of my local river – almost entirely private – where the landowner had strung barbs across the body of the water itself, dispiriting the view. I ground my teeth at the nearby council sign enjoining litterers to “Keep the Town Beautiful”. It was pinned to a fence of razor wire.
Then I read an interview with Nick Hayes, author of The Book of Trespass. Trespassing is, Hayes argues, a mostly benign act undertaken by those whose imagination chafes against the narrow confines of property law. Trespassing is portrayed as antisocial, but what could be more antisocial than the Keep Out sign and the lacerating wire strung up to reinforce it? The real crime is not the wanderer, it’s the fence.
I realised my life had been lived under the shadow of a coercion I had neither the frame to acknowledge nor the language to describe. And with that came a more powerful realisation: that coercion was in my head. Despite the feint of a thousand signs warning the contrary, and Priti Patel’s best efforts, trespass alone is not a criminal offence. So long as I damaged nothing and did not obstruct anyone, I could roam. Not with rights, perhaps – but with confidence all the same.
I called an old schoolfriend for an unlikely caper. What if we pretended we lived in Scotland for a day, where the right to roam has been enshrined in law since 2003? What might we do? The answer seemed obvious – finally get to know the river.
We didn’t get very far – barbed wire, it turns out, is some deterrent – perhaps 5km upstream and 5km back. And yet a new world was opened to me. I discovered a beautiful spot a 10-minute cycle from my house, an old estate where the river is lined with mature ash. I’ve laid in it for hours since, watching dippers and kingfishers scoot past at frog’s eye view.
Connecting to the river also meant I started to look after it. I started to rummage around the local weir to collect the agricultural rubbish that gets trapped there. I’ve invested in a phosphate reader to start testing the river quality. Yes, sometimes the public drop litter too. But the flipside of disregard is guardianship.
Something else emerged, as well. The river ceased to be a mere backdrop to my life and instead became one of its central players. My mind would drift with its eddies, the water coursing fresh channels through my neural pathways. The river began to shape me, and I came to see that we have lost more than just access: we have lost the chance to belong.
Since formally joining the Right to Roam campaign, I’ve escalated my ambitions. I and 50 others hopped the wall of the 52,000 acre Badminton estate in Gloucestershire, owned by the Duke of Beaufort. Days later, I jigged towards the deer park of the 13,000 acre Englefield estate in Berkshire, accompanied by more than 100 musicians, artists and dancers. Both events were positive and lighthearted, but it was hard not to feel anger, too. I thought of my friends, exploited landworkers priced out of the counties in which they grew up, living without a hope of affording so much as one acre. Yet it is precisely their knowledge and skills we need if we are to turn Britain’s ecological crisis around.
Englefield is owned by Lord Benyon, who, without a hint of irony, is also the minister in charge of the English public’s access to nature. Both Benyon and Beaufort receive hundreds of thousands of pounds of public subsidy to manage their land. They’re less keen that the public visit what they pay for. Over a third of the land in England remains in the hands of aristocratic estates like Badminton and Englefield (the real figure is likely much higher but unknown). The elite culture represented by such places continues to be preserved through public largesse. Meanwhile, much of the popular culture of the countryside has been lost to repeated centuries of enclosure.
No more. It’s time to end the farcical privatisation that has left 92% of England off limits to the public (and a whopping 97% of its rivers). Right to Roam calls for people to respectfully explore the land hidden on their doorstep. Critics like to say England is too crowded to enjoy the same benefits as Scotland and many other European countries. But then they would think that – they’re all sharing the same 8% of it. England is not full, it just feels like it.
Jon Moses is a freelance writer and organiser for Right to Roam
