Kmflett's Blog

24^th April 1932: Kinder Scout mass trespass. Militant action & the right to roam

Despite Parliamentary legislation much land in Britain remains private with no legal access for walkers. Progress has however been made and today is the 90^th anniversary of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass  on a grouse moor in the Peak District.

Led by Benny Rothman and others several hundred people asserted their right to roam. They were met with violent opposition from gamekeepers but six included Rothman were still jailed. Even so it set in train further protests where the authorities were more reluctant to intervene.

It was a success for militant action. The Ramblers Association, whose members have long benefited from what took place at Kinder Scout claimed the trespass would efforts to achieve a right to roam 20 years. It didn’t. Sometimes, as modern climate protesters sometimes underline, the only way to challenge and change a law can be to break it.

For socialist historians the politics of the trespass are an interesting if now long past period of left-wing politics. In the late 1920s the Soviet Union adopted a ‘class against class’ policy which saw social democrats as social fascists. The impact in Germany was disastrous (at best). In Britain there was less impact but some was felt in the sporting area where Communists had been part of wider sporting groups. The British Workers Sports Federation saw some football teams as ‘reformist’ and the Ramblers Association was criticised as being too modest in its aims. A particular concern was its dislike of singing on rambles…

Class against Class was dropped in favour of the Popular Front in the mid-1930s but Kinder Scout stands as an example of militant action working even if the politics behind it were very far from ideal.