Roy Hattersley: The land belongs to us

Life peer and former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Roy Hattersley recalls a century of political struggle for public access to the countryside that surrounds his Derbyshire home…

We hear very little about Mr Pankhurst. His wife and daughters are exalted as pioneers of progress. But Richard’s contribution to the creation of a civilised society – admittedly not as great as Sylvia’s, Christabel’s and Emmeline’s – is forgotten. He deserves better. A hundred years before the ‘right to roam’ was established in law, Richard Pankhurst was honorary counsel to the Peak District Preservation Society, which campaigned to establish a right of way over Kinder Scout. After his premature death in 1898, his dedication to fresh air and healthy living – and insistence that true radicals pursued both – was recognised at his funeral. His coffin was carried by hikers from the Independent Labour Party and the cortege was accompanied to the cemetery by a guard of honour, made up of socialist cyclists from the Clarion Wheelers. It was another 50 years before the hiking public had legal access to Kinder Scout. Twenty miles away in Sheffield, I was brought up on stories of the famous ‘trespass’ and the men who, at the insistence of the Duke of Devonshire, were imprisoned for challenging his right to drive them from his grouse moors. In those early post-war days, hiking – we never called it rambling, which sounded too haphazard a name to describe so intense an activity – seemed to be an essential adjunct of our high-minded, low-income socialism. Health and ideology went hand in hand. The land belonged to the people and staking our claim to breathe its clean, God-given air was a pleasure and a protest which could be enjoyed free of charge. It was not by chance that the first national park was created in the Peak District. Lewis Silkin, Minister of Town and Country Planning in the Attlee Government, certainly wanted to preserve rural England from the ribbon development which, between the wars, had spread along so many country roads. But the first park that he created had a second social purpose. It was located along the backbone of England, almost equidistant from Sheffield and Manchester, with Leeds only 25 miles away. What we in South Yorkshire had called the ‘beautiful frame around the dirty picture’ was described by a new metaphor. It became ‘a lung’ – the green and pleasant land to which workers could escape from the dark, satanic mills. Occasionally –during the early 1960s when I was chairman of the Sheffield City Council Housing Committee – I had doubts if the workers’ interests were uppermost in the minds of the national park’s management. Under the influence of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, the Peak Park Planning Board resisted all attempts to build within its boundaries – even though there were slums to clear and a homeless waiting list of 130,000. Happily, times and values have changed. The Peak Park now accepts – perhaps even welcomes – the development of affordable housing. Indeed, the park authority wants rural England to be part of modern Britain. There is always a temptation – with anything with a title as elevated as National Park – to believe that its every aspect has to be protected from time and change. But the national parks are living, growing places with men and women who need jobs and services. To treat them like rural theme parks is to diminish them. But to allow parts of them totally to change character is, or could be, their literal destruction. The Peak is not alone among the national parks in suffering for its geology – the availability of stone that is suitable aggregate for road building. It has been quarried under the provision of ‘permissions’, which were granted before men with picks, shovels and the occasional stick of dynamite were replaced by giant excavators. And whole hillsides are being ripped away. We need a new National Parks Act that ensures both progress and preservation. In the meantime, the hiking goes on. And the hikers increase in numbers. They turned out in New Mills two years ago to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Kinder Scout trespass and marched past the old police station in which the trespassers had been held. The pioneers were exhibiting one of the higher forms of patriotism – the belief that they belonged to the land and the land belonged to them. Now the Ramblers, which inherited their cause, is celebrating its 75th anniversary. Long may it continue with its work to ensure the public’s right of access to our land, and among it some of the best walking country in the world. Roy’s book In Search of England is available from Little, Brown (£18.99, ISBN 9781408700969)