Who are the trespassers

I don’t see myself as a radical, ’cause it’s not radical wanting what should be yours.

I come from a fairly left of centre family, a big one, solidly working class, with the belief that a fair day’s work deserved a fair day’s pay. My father was born in 1914, living through the disastrous management of the post-war economy, one so appalling in the UK, the Great Depression passed by without being noticed; it was just more of the same old. As a kid, he used to sit at the side of the railway line running from docks on the Thames to the shunting yards at Greenwich Station. Because of the frequent attempts to steal coal from the wagons, the trains had guards, although as they were paid starvation wages, most sold coal once their long working days were over. That’s an assumption, based on the guards having a higher than average living standard, despite appalling wages. Good luck to them.

They used to throw coal to the skinny kids sitting by the track, in theory keeping them away from the shunting yards but actually just because the kids would give the coal scraps to their mother to boil water and cook. When my father joined the army for the Second World War, he was shocked to find he had three hot meals a day, he not even experiencing two before. When my elder brother was born, he promised him he’d never go to bed hungry, a feature of my father’s childhood.

My family’s support for the status quo surprised me, despite it being lukewarm, after living through two world wars, losing sons to action and families to bombs. My father was one of 18 kids and my mother one of eight, so the Germans had lots of targets to aim for, and they hit a significant number. The Smiths remained generally, but not uncritically, patriotic; always willing to point out injustices, especially to nephews born just after the end of the war.

I was proud of one uncle who’d fought with the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, seeing his boat attacked, unsuccessfully, by German Stuka dive bombers. The British government were so incensed that he should have spent time hindering Germany, you know, the country we would be at war with a little while later, it tried to remove his citizenship, this from a man who, in the early part of the war, when his small coastal tramp came up the Channel and into the Thames, lay on the front deck and, when a dive bomber dropped a bomb, pointed in the best direction to steer. He said that, rather oddly, he’d continue pointing even when his boat was heeled over to avoid the bomb despite the chap on the helm probably not blinking since passing the Isle of Wight. He, and others like him I was told, wore the threat to their citizenship as a badge of honour. He was well read , particularly on history and would tell me of things not covered in my rather right-of-centre grammar school, ‘Love School’ chants seemed pathetic to me in consequence.

I learned of the historic, and later lost, rights of the peasants in pre-Norman England and how serfdom imposed by the Normans was de-facto slavery. He remarked on the justice of the Black Death, killing serf and aristocrat alike, which started the long road to a loosening of the chains for us unremarkables.

I was told, with controlled anger, of the Enclosure Acts, in my uncles’ minds the cause of the ‘Great Massacres’ of the working rural classes. Being barred from land for food, heating and way of life, forced them into the towns, and the vulnerabilities of slum life. They could not remain in the rural areas they called home as it would have meant starvation because of acquisitive landowners taking historic rights, to food no less. They were forced, probably intentionally, into the factories, and this shortened their life expectancy. I was given a well-thumbed copy of Cobbett’s Rural Rides. Not an easy read, but eye-opening and somewhat scary.

The abuse of historic rights carried on, and carries on into modern times, with enclosures occurring legally up to 100 years ago, with restrictions, and new ones to historic access, and rights of way, being imposed on a whim even today. The mass trespass of Kinder Scout, revolutionary as the whole movement was, changed little, as recently the then prince, and now king, Charles closed a massive area of Dartmoor for no apparent reason other than he could. If he upsets the likes of me, he should beware of the threat of tumbrils given how not everyone accepts so readily the abuse of unearned privilege. (There goes any hope of a knighthood.) 

I’ll throw another one in: the Charter of the Forest, issued by Henry III in 1217, allowed free men access to certain royal forests to collect firewood, graze livestock and cut turf. This didn’t apply to all men, but when you consider its Magna predecessor only applied to lords (hardly the great emancipation it is heralded as), it’s still pretty cool. Or was rather. Chas I, that’s the bloke whose head was removed, binned it ’cause he could, so perhaps not such a dastardly crime after all to take possession of a bit of him, one that was essential for life. He did it first. Chas merely did what his predecessors did, you know, ignore the rights of inferior people. Our rights stolen again.

As they will be again.

I’m a royalist in the sense I reckon a monarch is less of a problem than a president. We only have to look across the Atlantic to see my preference explained. I wish the mid-Atlantic ridge grew faster than its current rate of fingernail speed. However, the use of Chas’ limited powers, and much greater influence, is infuriating. Not in the same league as Trump, but the difference is not of kind. More fuss was made when an uppity wannabe aristocrat pair closed the area of Dartmoor they had bought, to wild campers. Why the difference in response? A rhetorical question of course. We should have been more restrictive on what we allowed William and Mary. It’s almost as if kings, as an uncle put it, didn’t get bitten in the arse by insects; a Black Death reference.

I enjoy walking in areas less frequented. It’s not that I don’t like people, at least not all of them, but I feel uncomfortable in crowds. There are some areas where, if you have the same disinterest I have in groups, they can be avoided with care, but a greater choice would be better, and should be ours by right.

Those signs keeping people out of woods and walks are so challenging.

The suggestion by those who wish to stop access to the land they own, that there will be masses of walkers, all abusing the countryside, is nonsense. The Lake District hosted over 18 million tourists in 2024. I can’t see that many making their way to some field in the middle of the Cotswolds. Take Ditchling Common. It’s scarily situated near Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill, and just a short train ride from the mass conurbation of Brighton and Hove city, yet it’s possible to walk in spots where you won’t see anyone other than an occasional dog walker. If solitude is important, there are a few walks for that as well. Cross Folders Lane East (after watching out for electric cars – I won’t make that mistake again, and nearly wasn’t able to) and you’re in the South Downs Country Park, so the Common is hardly off the beaten track.

An uncle praised those who trespassed on enclosed areas of woodland, and indulged himself on occasion. His father had fought and was crippled in service of his country in World War I and my uncle refused to be excluded from much of it on the whim of some bloke who’d either come into possession of the land through inheritance or exploiting those who’d been too quick for the German machine-gunners.

As a kid, I used to roam. Fences were something to climb over. Bombed houses were play areas, particularly when it was raining. I was young, fast and if they could catch me . . . none could. When I moved to Kent, I went on walks, and paths to me were paths, whether right of ways or not. When on a bridleway near my village, I saw a local farmer repeatedly driving his tractor by a style so as to block access to the likes of me. I was stopped only once, around Chevening, after accidently wandering into woods north of the Park when some person, important in their own mind, was staying there. Two prot. officers, with mud over their shoes and trouser bottoms, were unable to tell me the shortest way to a public footpath or road. My, ‘So you’re lost too then,’ went down about as smoothly as you’d expect.

I wish I’d had the time to trespass more. We should have the right to roam. Clarkson, I’m told, said, in defence of a rant about users of footpaths (right of way on foot) on his farm, the one he bought as a tax dodge he said, ‘no one wants people walking in their garden’. It’s a farm. At least, it’s a farm if he wants his heirs to claim relief from death duties. That should be somewhere to plant wheaty stuff and not only a café. In essence, a factory. He is particularly frustrated by walkers who, when injured, are rescued by, one assumes, the people who would rescue injured visitors to his pub.

Who are the trespassers? Those of us who only wish to exercise our ancient rights, and not many of those, or the descendants of those who restricted access or sold their gains on? I’ll give you a clue to whom I think it is: it’s not the former.

The current (2025) government promised us the right to roam freely, just like the Scots have, although landowners there are fighting to regain ill-gotten gains. Just as well I didn’t hold my breath.

They hang the man and flog the woman, That steals the goose from off the common,

But let the greater villain loose, That steals the common from the goose.

Folk poem; author unknown (probably died from malnutrition).

Keeping vast areas of land away from the general public, who want to enjoy access to their country, should be an anathema to everyone’s morals. It should be a right. It used to be. Demand it from your MP, and again when they ignore you.