Good morning. Camping – especially wild camping, outside a designated site – is a fairly Marmite activity. For some, it is an adventure that connects them with the natural world. For others, it is a laborious, uncomfortable, unsanitary pursuit. Regardless of individual sensibilities, however, most people support the right of others to roam and wild camp.
However, this is not quite reflected in the current legislation. Only 8% of England is covered by the “right to roam”, an ancient custom that allows anyone to wander in open countryside, no matter who owns it. For centuries there has been a growing conflict between those who are in favour of it, and those who would like to restrict access to private land.
The latest skirmish in this battle came last week, when the court of appeal panel ruled in favour of ramblers on Dartmoor. The famous moors were the last place in England where the public could wild camp without permission from landowners, but the tradition was challenged in a year-long fight by Alexander Darwall, who owns acres of land on the moors. The news that Darwall had lost his claim was followed by a pledge from the Labour party to extend the right to wild camp to all national parks in England.
Campaigners and activists have been delighted by this turn of events – but see this as just the beginning. For today’s newsletter I spoke to Jon Moses, a campaigner for Right to Roam, about what this landmark victory means to activists.
Five big stories
Politics | MPs have been paid £10m from second jobs and freelance work over the past year, a Guardian analysis has found. The analysis looked at all MPs who made more than £1,000 in the past year, with the final tally largely driven by the size of Boris Johnson’s earnings as well as former Tory ministers taking up a slew of highly paid roles
Police | The only events for which Metropolitan police chiefs authorised the potential use of baton rounds in the past six years were black-led gatherings, documents show. The weapons, intended to be a less lethal alternative to regular firearms, have been cleared for use at Notting Hill carnival since 2017 and the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
Niger | The west African country closed its airspace on Sunday until further notice, citing the threat of military intervention from a regional bloc after coup leaders rejected a deadline to reinstate the country’s ousted president.
Film | Barbie has broken the US$1bn mark since its debut more than two weeks ago. Barbie is now the biggest movie to be directed by one woman, supplanting Wonder Woman’s $821.8m global total, and Greta Gerwig is the first woman to reach the US$1bn as a solo female director.
Sinéad O’Connor | A fleeting installation honouring Sinéad O’Connor has been unveiled on a hillside overlooking the Irish seaside town of Bray, where she is to be buried on Tuesday. A message in 30ft-tall letters spelling out “ÉIRE ♡ SINÉAD” appeared on Sunday.
In depth: ‘We’ve been disconnected from the land we live on for a long time – people don’t even realise what they’ve lost’
In the 2019 general election, the Conservative party promised in its manifesto to criminalise trespass, which would significantly impact ramblers and wild campers, as well as Traveller, Gypsy and Roma communities. Their efforts were met with a huge wave of resistance. However, this has not stopped some landowners from trying to prevent the public from accessing their land.
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Why the Dartmoor case mattered
Dartmoor is a unique case because of the historic technicalities in land law in the area. The right to open-air recreation was introduced in the Dartmoor Commons Act of 1985 and – for almost four decades – wild camping was assumed to be allowed under this law, making it the only place in England that allowed the public to camp without requiring permission from a landowner. “It effectively meant that Dartmoor ended up being this last bastion of the free rights to wild camp under the stars without risking someone coming along to tell you off and make you leave,” Jon Moses says.
This remained the case until last summer, when a landowner launched a legal fight against Dartmoor national park, claiming that there was no legal right to camp on Dartmoor. Alexander Darwall, a landowner and hedge fund manager, could not ban people outright from the moor, but his attempts at prohibiting wild camping were viewed as a way for him to do so, because some parts of Dartmoor are remote enough that visiting them on a day hike and getting home afterwards would be impractical for many people.
It seemed as though Darwall had triumphed when a judge ruled earlier this year that open-air recreation did not include wild camping. But last week, the court of appeal’s verdict came in, overturning the earlier judgment. The judge ruled that “open-air recreation”, as defined in the commons act, included the right to camp overnight, dismissing the argument that camping was not a recreational activity because, the lawyers said “sleeping is not an enjoyable activity”. This ruling however only applies to Dartmoor.
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The argument against right to roam
The argument made by landowners who do not support the right to roam is that they believe the public will cause significant damage to the environment, wildlife and crops. Moses is unconvinced by this: “The impact that people have on their environment is pretty minimal when you compare it to industrial agriculture and other practices that are destroying the ecology of the countryside”.
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Why is the right to roam important?
Recreational use is an important factor that brings people together to fight for more access to the countryside. However, for the Right to Roam campaign, it goes beyond afternoon dog walks and picturesque swims. “We see it as an ecological need,” Moses says. “The more that people are connected to their environment and to the natural world, the more they become its protectors”.
Indeed, such action has been seen elsewhere of late, with the tree felling protests in Sheffield and the demonstrations to highlight rising pollution in the River Wye in Herefordshire – acts of resistance which both came to fruition at least partly because local communities were connected to the natural landscape.
“We’ve been disconnected now from the land we live on for a long time, and in the last few hundred years, our rights have become more and more restricted,” says Moses.“It’s happened in such a way that people don’t even really realise what they’ve lost any more”.
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What’s next?
In Scotland, much of the countryside doubles up as a campsite, as the right to camp and roam is enshrined in the Land Reform Act of 2003. The Right to Roam campaign and other groups view this universal access in Scotland as a model for England to follow.
“We can’t rely on freedoms to be protected by these flimsy and arcane bylaws. We need really clear statutory legislation that protects people’s rights to access the natural world, expand those rights and we need to make sure that that is as comprehensive as possible,” Moses says.
Alex Sobel, the Labour shadow minister for nature recovery and the domestic environment, has pledged to introduce a Scottish-style right to roam law in England if Labour wins the next general election, though they have been hazy on the specifics. In September, Moses and his team will be going to the Scottish border to nail down exactly what an English version of the Land Reform Act could look like with their Scottish counterparts.
The issues around easy and reliable access to the countryside may seem pretty low stakes to some, but Moses believes that if activist groups succeed in their campaign, it will represent one of the biggest transformations of the relationship between the land and the people living on it in this millennium. “There’s a physical health crisis, a mental health crisis, there’s a crisis of belonging, and there’s a crisis of ecology,” he says. “All of those things are connected and rooted fundamentally in our ability to relate the environment that surrounds us”.
• In Friday 4 August’s newsletter, we referred to Dr Agnes Ayton as vice-chair of the eating disorder faculty at the Royal College of Physicians. She holds that position at the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
What else we’ve been reading
ICYMI: I loved Daisy Jones’s piece on the perplexing formula that makes Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That both cringe-inducing and thoroughly watchable. Hannah J Davies, deputy editor, newsletters
I could not stop reading this article by comedian Michelle Brasier who wrote about her experience of becoming friends with a man who tried to scam her. Nimo
Tim Jonze’s interview with boxing champion Tyson Fury takes a good look at the man behind the larger-than-life, headline-grabbing persona. Hannah
Film star Mark Ruffalo is in the pages of the Guardian stressing the importance of the upcoming Amazon summit (the forest not the giant tech company). “In July, thanks to action by the new Brazilian government, deforestation fell by at least 60% compared to the same month last year,” writes Ruffalo. “Now we need them to commit to recognising Indigenous territories and protecting 80% of the forest now, in line with scientific recommendations.” Nimo
“We found a highly organised counterfeit factory in a shed”: I really enjoyed Morwenna Ferrier’s piece about the experts sniffing out designer knockoffs. Hannah
Sport
Football | The US have crashed out of the Women’s World Cup, losing on penalties in front of more than 27,000 fans in Melbourne. The current champions lost 0-0 against Sweden after Lina Hurtig’s spot‑kick sent the Scandinavian team to the quarter-finals. It is the first time in the tournament’s history that the USA have been eliminated this early.
Cycling | The oil and gas activists This Is Rigged claim to have disrupted the 271km UCI Cycling World Championships men’s road race in Scotland, forcing the peloton to stop for almost an hour on the approach to the Crow Road, near Glasgow.
Gymnastics | Four-time Olympic champion Simone Biles made a triumphant return to gymnastics after a two-year break, winning the US Classic. Biles soared to victory in her first meet since the Tokyo Games, with an all-around score of 59.100 which was five points better than runner-up Leann Wong.
The front pages
The Guardian starts the week with an exclusive story: “MPs defy anger over second jobs with outside earnings of £10m”. The FT reports on the plight of foreign businesses in Russia with “European companies’ Russian units suffer €100bn hit from Ukraine war”.
The Telegraph leads with “Bosses who hire illegal migrants ‘face ruin’” with the threat of new fines for businesses. The Mail carries an exclusive on a proposed “plan B” to the government’s Rwanda scheme with “Remote island plan for channel migrants”.
The i headlines “Secret lab’s vaccine plan to prevent bird flu pandemic”. The Mirror reports on the outcome of an “exclusive poll”, with “74% demand action on danger dogs”.
Today in Focus
How can we escape burnout?
Why are so many of us struggling with burnout and how can we deal with it? Cary Cooper, a professor of organisational psychology at the University of Manchester, tells Hannah Moore why recessions and pandemics increase the likelihood of the phenomenon, and why companies should take it seriously.
Cartoon of the day | Edith Pritchett
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The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
This week’s A new start after 60 column profiles Joanna Barthorpe, who embraced her inner need for speed and took up motorcycling, much to the surprise of her family. Barthorpe, now 67, went on to join the Women’s International Motorcycle Association (WIMA), which led her to the Women Riders World Relay. She was due to participate in their globe-spanning event when, in October 2018, she broke her pelvis in a bike crash.
Getting back in the saddle came with a sense of nervousness, but – less than a year after her accident – she participated in the next relay. “I can go anywhere I want, any time I like,” she says. “The kids say to me, ‘Mum, you’ve turned into a teenager!’ and I tell them: ‘No, I’ve just become the person I used to be.’”
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Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
