All posts by Mark

Hull City Council allow “right to grow” on unused council land [Source: The Guardian]

Hull City Council’s ‘right to grow’ motion on unused council land is a UK first

Taken from The Guardian:
Hull set to allow ‘right to grow’ on unused council land in UK first
City councillors pass motion to let community groups, charities and neighbours cultivate fruit and veg
by Patrick Barkham, The Guardian
Monday 16th October 2023
Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/16/hull-allow-right-to-grow-unused-council-land-uk-first
Hull is set to become the first city in Britain to give people a “right to grow” on unused council land. Community groups, charities and even small groups of neighbours would be able to cultivate fruit and vegetables on suitable council land in what campaigners say will provide healthy local food, boost mental health and revive neglected spaces. Hull councillors unanimously passed the “right to grow” motion that means the council will produce a map of suitable land it owns and help those who want to grow food on it overcome practical obstacles such as insurance or provision of water for the plants. The motion, which will first go before the council scrutiny committee, follows a burgeoning local and national campaign for a “right to grow” on neglected urban land.

The waiting list for allotments in England has risen by 81% over the past 12 years as more than 150,000 people seek a place to grow fresh food.

“It will benefit Hull in many ways,” said Gill Kennett, a local councillor who backed the motion, which received cross-party support. “We are a deprived city and we do need cheap food. In terms of mental health benefits, growing food gives people something to do, it gives them confidence, it ticks so many boxes.”

Incredible Edible, a grassroots network of more than 150 community growing groups, is calling for a national “right to grow” law obliging all local authorities to keep a register of land that could be used for growing, and which people could apply to.

Campaigners say councils can meet the growing demand for places to grow in urban areas by stripping away bureaucratic obstacles such as growers requiring public liability insurance, which could be provided under councils’ existing insurance. Even land earmarked for development that sometimes lies unused for years could be cultivated for one or two harvests.

Pru Elliott of Incredible Edible said: “We need to see a change of rules and a change in the way land is used. If communities are given a right to grow they will use it. We just need to get rid of the red tape. If Hull can bring this to life I hope it will be an example for councils around the country that it’s something really tangible that they can run with. It’s about letting go of control a bit and trusting communities.

“It’s producing healthy food, it’s benefiting mental health, it’s reducing crime and antisocial behaviour – we’re seeing that councillors in more deprived areas get it. They recognise all these extra benefits that come with something as simple as people growing food in the local community.”

The Create Streets thinktank, whose chair is an adviser to the levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, recently produced a report calling for a “right to grow” as part of a greening up of British cities.

In Hull, the motion came about after Hull Food Partnership – a collaboration between local people, businesses, charities and the council – devised “food hustings” at the local elections, where councillors discussed how Hull could address local food issues from food banks to “food deserts”. Anna Route of Hull Food Partnership said: “Everyone should have the ability to access good quality locally produced food regardless of their background or income, and we want to remove as many barriers to feeding people well as possible.”

Darren Squires of Rooted in Hull, a social enterprise that grows food on former industrial land in Hull, said the benefits of growing food in urban spaces included providing fresh, healthy produce for food banks, boosting mental health, growing low-carbon food, and also providing wildlife-friendly green corridors in the city.

“People do want to grow but we don’t have the opportunity to unlock that land normally,” he said.

Squires said he hoped the motion would result in the council providing groups with public liability insurance under its own umbrella as well as practical help such as connecting up growers with sources of water for dry spells, whether harvested from nearby roofs or via mains pipes.

“I grow in a small yard and I can eat salad all summer and it costs me a few pounds rather than a few pounds every couple of days from the supermarket,” he added.

“There are some veg that no amount of money will get you the same quality as something you get when you pick and eat it the same day. You’ve not eaten French beans until you’ve eaten some you’ve grown.”

Simon Fairlie vs George Monbiot – ‘Mixed Organic Agriculture vs Vegan’ debate


This debate between Simon Fairlie and George Monbiot organised and hosted by the Dartington Trust was held at Schumacher College, Dartington earlier this year.

Simon and George have been debating meat eating, veganism, rewilding and now precision fermentation of food for many years. Both speakers offer very persuasive and different visions of where our food should, in their opinion, come from.

The Speakers:
GEORGE MONBIOT
George Monbiot is an author, Guardian columnist and environmental activist. His best-selling books include Feral: Rewilding the land, sea and human life, Heat: how to stop the planet burning; and Out of the Wreckage: a new politics for an age of crisis. George cowrote the concept album Breaking the Spell of Loneliness with musician Ewan McLennan. His viral videos include How Wolves Change Rivers (viewed on YouTube over 40m times) and Nature Now, co-presented with Greta Thunberg (over 60m views). George’s latest book, Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet, was published in May 2022.

SIMON FAIRLIE
Simon Fairlie worked for twenty years variously as an agricultural labourer, vine worker, shepherd, fisherman, builder and stonemason before being ensnared by the computer in 1990. He was a coeditor of The Ecologist magazine for four years until he joined Tinkers’ Bubble community in 1994 where he managed the cows, pigs and a working horse. He now runs a micro dairy at Monkton Wyld Court, a charity and cooperative in rural Dorset. Simon is a founding editor of The Land magazine, and he earns a living by selling scythes. He is the author of Low Impact Development: Planning and People in a Sustainable Countryside (1996) and Meat: A Benign Extravagance (2010) and a memoir, Going to Seed (2022)

This debate was about the sustainability of livestock farming in view of the environmental crisis and not limited to striking the balance between agricultural sustainability and maximising agricultural production capability. However, interesting perspective may be further obtained by cross referencing with an older article Can Britain Feed Itself? by Simon Fairlie published in 2007 in Issue-4 of The Land Magazine which, in posing the question of whether or not Britain could feed itself within its existing agricultural acres, compared different farming systems such as Chemical with Livestock (no good), Chemical Vegan, Organic Vegan, Organic with Livestock, Livestock Permaculture & a system (referred to as “Mellanby’s Basic Diet 1975”) in which the population would hypothetically be restricted in their consumption to a basic diet (less meat) based on the analysis by Scottish ecologist Kenneth Mellanby in his 1975 book “Can Britain Feed Itself?”

Reference:
Can Britain Feed Itself? by Simon Fairlie (2007), The Land Magazine
https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/can-britain-feed-itself

Open Letter to the Guardian – Response to the Guardian Editorial on Wed 15th February 2023 – “The Guardian view on Labour and antisemitism: two cheers for Keir Starmer”

Response to the Guardian Editorial on Wed 15th February 2023 – “The Guardian view on Labour and antisemitism: two cheers for Keir Starmer”
Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/15/the-guardian-view-on-labour-and-antisemitism-two-cheers-for-keir-starmer


On 28th February 2023, I sent the following letter in response to the Guardian Editorial mentioned above to Guardian Letters (guardian.letters@theguardian.com) for publication on the Guardian Letters page. One month on, the Guardian Letters’ Editor Rory Foster has confirmed it was considered but not published.

The Land Is Ours  28Feb23 letter to The Guardian:

The Guardian view on Labour and antisemitism: two cheers for Keir Starmer, 15 February stated that Jeremy Corbyn was “too slow and too defensive” in dealing with antisemitism in the Labour Party under his leadership. This is demonstrably untrue. Al Jazeera’s three-part documentary series, titled “The Labour Files: The Purge” exposed how rather than failing to build a functioning complaints and disciplinary process capable of dealing with allegations of antisemitism, the vast majority of cases reported were reported BEFORE Corbyn overhauled and re-organised Labour’s complaints and disciplinary process dealing with antisemitism. The documentary revealed Corbyn’s leadership team were undermined by officials within the party’s governance and legal unit.

The headliner being constantly repeated to paint Corbyn as having been responsible for antisemitism is that “the party under Corbyn broke the law and discriminated against Jews”. Whereas the statement broad and sweeping as it is is true, it is also misleading for the reasons just mentioned, but credit where credit is due. It is a smear which has been orchestrated quite brilliantly, to denigrate the reputation of a man who has spent his life fighting antisemitism and all forms of racism. Furthermore, of those who were investigated for antisemitism in the Labour Party, a disproportionate number were actually Jewish – in all cases for criticizing the conduct of the Israeli state. This whole episode may speak volumes about the extent of the reach of the Israeli state in influencing our politics. In 2017, a senior political officer at the Israeli Embassy in London was secretly filmed talking about how he would like to “take down” UK foreign office minister Alan Duncan, a vocal opponent of illegal Israeli settlement building in the West Bank. Food for thought.

Mark Simon Brown, The Land is Ours (UK landrights campaign)

Rent-Strike: Students at University of Manchester on Rent-Strike over cost-of-living crisis

Students at University of Manchester on rent strike over cost of living crisis

Organisers say they are seeking 30% monthly cut and that more than 150 people have signed up
Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jan/09/students-at-university-of-manchester-on-rent-strike-over-cost-of-living-crisis
The Guardian, Mon 9th Jan 2023

Hundreds of students in halls of residence at the University of Manchester are withholding their rent payments this month over the cost of living crisis.

The students are seeking to pressure their university into offering a 30% cut on monthly rent payments, including a rebate for fees already paid, which they claim have become unaffordable.

The organisers said: “We know that the university can do much more to materially help students deal with this crisis. The money is there to support UoM students without ripping us off.”
The organisers said that more than 150 students have signed up to take part so far, of whom some had already cancelled their direct debits while others would manually withhold their rent payment on the week of 19 January.

They said this amounted to more than £100,000, since average payments for the spring term are about £1,800, although the organisers are anticipating that more than £300,000 could be withheld.

A survey by the Office for National Statistics in November found half of all students in England were facing financial difficulties, with a quarter taking on additional debts and three in 10 skipping lectures and tutorials to cut costs.

Fraser McGuire, a first year history and politics student, said he was moved to help organise the strike after realising he would be left to live off £200 from his maintenance loan for four months after paying rent.

He said students felt “worried, stressed, angry and powerless”. “Lots are in a lot of financial difficulty. Out of a lot of people’s maintenance loan payments, 70, 80, 90% of that goes on rent. Students are working up to full-time hours to help get them through their studies,” he added.

He said the organisers had taken tips from the students who went on strike in 2020, securing a 30% rebate worth £4m from the university to compensate them for their dissatisfaction with their pandemic experience, and they were in talks with students at other universities.

Manchester students are also asking for no further increases in rent over the next three years, and for 40% of halls to meet the National Union of Students’ definition of affordability, which is 50% of the highest student maintenance loan. They believe that this could be funded through Manchester’s record £119.7m surplus.

The affordability of student accommodation is a problem across universities as rents have risen far more rapidly than inflation. Estimates by the NUS and the student housing charity Unipol suggest average costs have risen by 60% over the past decade to reach £7,347, surpassing the average £6,900 student maintenance loan.

A University of Manchester spokesperson said the university had implemented a £9m range of measures to help students with the cost of living crisis, including £2,000 support payments, £170 for every student and cheaper food options.

He added that rents in university halls included bills and were lower than similar private sector accommodation, with increases in 2022-23 between 1.5% and 6%.

He said: “We will do everything we can to support students who are unable to pay their rent and urge anyone struggling to speak to us as soon as possible. We are not currently aware of any students refusing to pay their rent but are aware of recent online comments made by a small number of campaigners.”

Is Bill Gates TOO Powerful? asks Russell Brand

Russell Brand on YouTube
MUST-WATCH-VLOG – subject: “The Great Reset: Is Bill Gates TOO Powerful?”

A presentation/discussion by Russell Brand on the subject of the extent of the global asset ownership of Bill Gates – the 4th richest man in the world – in relation to the Global Food System. Brand gets his information from an article by Robert F Kennedy, Jr ‘Bill Gates & Neofeudalism: A closer look at Farmer Bill’. The extent of the global asset ownership of Bill Gates and the extent of power Gates now wields across numerous interconnected facets of what comprises the global food system is staggering. For instance, Gates owns 242,000 acres of farmland across the USA, holds in his grasp increasing concentrations of asset ownership across interconnecting sectors that comprise the structural make-up of the global food system such as large commanding shares in several of the largest food multinationals (Nestle, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Kelloggs, Kraft, General Foods) and chemical (& seed) companies such as Bayer and Monsanto plus investments in seeds companies including seed patents and GMO crops. His asset ownership and influence extends to further interconnecting interests such as aid-projects sponsored by the Gates Foundation – influencing development policies in the South, investments in AI technologies through front-companies such as Digital Green promoting new Green Revolution schemes (propagating the continuation of the predominant convention grounded in intensive agricultural practice, long exposed to cogent critique by the inadequacy of it’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ methodology) utilising cell-phone technologies, and commanding influence within media outlets such as those in big-tech (commanding stakes in Google, Facebook, Apple & Amazon).

Brand tries to unravel the subject, identifying actual consequences of some of the work Gates has been doing (such as poverty increases in Africa after the pursuance of Gates-funded aid-projects to boost agricultural productivity) and stopping just-short of speculating on Gates’ overall agenda. Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdv06jXloD4

See also: https://tlio.org.uk/5-globalfoodsystem/

 

Solutions:

  • Building a network of food coops, buying groups & other community food enterprises: https://www.sustainweb.org/foodcoops/
  • “Ourfield” – a cooperative co-farming/crop share investment collective grains movement: https://tlio.org.uk/introducing-ourfield-a-cooperative-co-farming-crop-share-investment-collective-grains-movement/
  • Sustainable Land-Based Solutions (south of England): https://tlio.org.uk/sustainable-land-based-solutions-3/
  • PM Johnson urged to extend Right-to-Roam

    Johnson urged to extend public’s right to roam over English countryside
    Letter signed by 100 people including Stephen Fry and Ali Smith points out freedom to roam only extends to 8% of country

    by Matthew Taylor, The Guardian
    Mon 30 Nov 2020
    Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/nov/30/johnson-urged-to-extend-publics-right-to-roam-over-english-countryside

    More than 100 authors, musicians, actors and artists have written to Boris Johnson urging him to extend the public’s right to roam over the English countryside.

    The letter, signed by leading figures from Stephen Fry to Jarvis Cocker, Sir Mark Rylance to Ali Smith, calls on the prime minister to give people greater access to nature to improve the public’s physical and mental health.

    “In the books we write, the songs we sing, the art that we make, we celebrate the essential connection that we feel with nature,” the letter states. “Our love for nature resonates with our millions of fans and followers, but in England, it is actively discouraged by the law. This is not only unfair; it is also untenable.”

    The authors point out that in England the public has “freedom to roam” over only 8% of the country, while “only 3% of rivers in England and Wales are legally accessible to kayakers, paddle-boarders and wild swimmers”.

    They are calling on Johnson to go further by extending right to roam to cover woodlands, rivers and green belt land.

    “Lockdown has demonstrated how vital it is for us to have access to green outdoor space, both for our physical and our mental health,” the signatories write. “There is now a body of scientific evidence showing just how essential nature is for our wellbeing.”

    The intervention comes on the 20th anniversary of the Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act, which created a partial right to roam in England and Wales. The letter was organised by the right to roam campaign, set up earlier this year by the authors Nick Hayes and Guy Shrubsole.

    Shrubsole said: “Extending right to roam would be a bold and far-reaching act by this government, and its effects would resonate for generations to come. Now, more than ever, the time is ripe to give people the freedom to reconnect with nature, for the sake of public health.”

    ‘Biggest farming shake-up in 50 years’

    £1.6bn subsidies for owning land in England to end, with funds going to improve nature

    by Damian Carrington, Environment editor, The Guardian
    Mon 30 Nov 2020
    Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/30/environment-to-benefit-from-biggest-farming-shake-up-in-50-years

    Wildlife, nature and the climate will benefit from the biggest shake-up in farming policy in England for 50 years, according to government plans.

    The £1.6bn subsidy farmers receive every year for simply owning land will be phased out by 2028, with the funds used instead to pay them to restore wild habitats, create new woodlands, boost soils and cut pesticide use.

    The wealthiest landowners – those receiving annual payments over £150,000 a year – will face the sharpest cuts, starting with 25% in 2021. Those receiving under £30,000 will see a 5% cut next year.

    Some of the biggest recipients of the existing scheme have been the Duke of Westminster, the inventor Sir James Dyson, racehorse owner Prince Khalid bin Abdullah al Saud and the Queen.

    Farmers will also get grants to improve productivity and animal welfare, including new robotic equipment. The goal of the plan is that farmers will – within seven years – be producing healthy and profitable food in a sustainable way and without subsidies.

    The environment secretary, George Eustice, acknowledged the damage done to the environment by industrial farming since the 1960s and said the new plans would deliver for nature and help fight the climate crisis. Farming occupies 70% of England, is the biggest driver of biodiversity loss and produces significant greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution.

    The radical changes in agricultural policy are possible due to the UK leaving the EU, whose common agricultural policy is widely regarded as a disaster for nature and even critics of Brexit see the changes as positive.

    Farming and environment groups largely welcomed the plans but said more detail was urgently required. Brexit is looming at the end of December and uncertainties remain over food tariffs and trade deals. Many groups are also concerned about the potential import of food produced to lower animal welfare and environmental standards.

    “[This is] the biggest change in agricultural policy in half a century,” said Eustice. “It makes no sense to subsidise land ownership and tenure where the largest subsidy payments often go to the wealthiest landowners.

    “Over the last century, much of our wildlife-rich habitat has been lost, and many species are in long-term decline.

    “I know many farmers feel this loss keenly and are taking measures to reverse this decline. But we cannot deny that the intensification of agriculture since the 1960s has taken its toll. Our plans for future farming must [also] tackle climate change – one of the most urgent challenges facing the world.”

    The total of £2.4bn a year currently paid to farmers will remain the same until 2025, as promised in the Conservative manifesto. Currently, two-thirds of this is paid solely for owning land, but the proportion will fall to one-third by 2025 and zero by 2028. Funds for environmental action will rise from a quarter of the total to more than half by 2025, with the remaining funds used to increase productivity.

    The new green payments will be trialled with 5,000 farmers before a full launch in 2024. But the level of payments for work such as natural flood defences and restoring peatlands and saltmarshes has not yet been set. Nor has the likely cut in carbon emissions been quantified.

    The president of the National Farmers’ Union, Minette Batters, said: “Farming is changing and we look forward to working with ministers and officials to co-create the new schemes.”

    But she added: “Expecting farmers to run viable, high-cost farm businesses, continue to produce food and increase their environmental delivery, while phasing out existing support and without a complete replacement scheme for almost three years is high risk and a very big ask.”

    The cuts are expected to reduce the income of livestock farmers, for example, by 60% to 80% by 2024, Batters said.

    Kate Norgrove, of the WWF, said: “Our farmers have the potential to be frontline heroes in the climate and nature emergency, and this roadmap starts us on the right path. It must see increased investment in nature as a way to tackle climate change.”

    Tom Lancaster, principal policy officer for agriculture at the RSPB, said: “This is a make or break moment for the government’s farming reforms, which are so important to both the future of farming and recovery of nature in England. [This plan] provides some welcome clarity, but faster progress is now needed over the coming months.”

    But Craig Bennett, CEO of the Wildlife Trusts, said: “We are deeply worried that the pilot [environment] schemes simply cannot deliver the promise that nature will be in a better state. Four years on from the EU referendum, we still lack the detail and clarity on how farm funding will benefit the public.”

    Other measures in the government plan include funding improvements in how farmers manage animal manure – slurry is a major polluter of both water and air – and a scheme where farmers seeking to leave the sector can cash out all the subsidies payments they are due up to 2028 in 2022, part of efforts to help new farmers enter the sector.

    The government said it would be cutting “red tape” for farmers, with warning letters replacing automatic fines for minor issues and more targeted – though not fewer – inspections.

    In July, the government said rules about growing diverse crops, fallow land and hedges would be abolished in 2021, claiming they had little environmental benefit. Farming policy is a devolved matter and other UK nations have yet to bring forward firm new plans.

    Government set to pass new ‘hostile’ anti-Traveller laws this autumn

    Taken from the Traveller Times
    Date: 22 July 2020
    Ref: https://www.travellerstimes.org.uk/news/2020/07/government-set-pass-new-hostile-anti-traveller-laws-autumn

    The Travellers’ Times can reveal that lawyers and campaigners are ready to act after the government recently announced that new ‘hostile’ anti-Traveller laws, which could include the criminalisation of trespass, will be delivered this autumn.

    The laws are set to follow the Government’s consultation on unauthorised camps and sites late last year and the Conservative Party’s 2019 General Election manifesto promise to criminalise trespass.

    Traveller law experts are already set to challenge any new laws in court, say lawyers.

    “At the time the consultation was in progress we made it clear why we felt that the Government’s proposals were discriminatory and unlawful,” a senior lawyer from Community Law Partnership told the Travellers’ Times.

    “If the Government bring in these proposals, then we are already instructed to take forward court challenges.”

    Last week, Home Secretary Priti Patel told MP’s that new laws based on the 2019 government consultation on unauthorised Traveller camps and sites would be brought forward in autumn.

    Earlier this month, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Leader of the House of Commons, told MP’s that the Government intended to deliver on its election promise to make trespass a criminal offence.

    The consultation on unauthorised camps and sites was announced on November 5th, three days after the general election was called, prompting many Gypsy, Traveller and Roma campaigners to complain that the Government were using them as a political football to win votes.

    In the consultation the Government threatened to:

    • Make trespass a crime – resulting in prison, a fine or your vehicle being taken from you.
    • Make it a crime for you to stop alongside or on the road – they will be able to move you along.
    • Make it so police can act when there is two vehicles, instead of six. A car, a trailer and a van would count as three vehicles. A horse drawn wagon would also count as a vehicle, say lawyers.
    • Make it so police can force you to go to a transit site in another county.
    • Make it so you are banned from an area for one year instead of three months.

    The Conservative 2019 election manifesto promised to:

    • Tackle unauthorised traveller camps.
    • Give the police new powers to arrest and seize the property and vehicles of trespassers who set up unauthorised encampments, in order to protect our communities.
    • Make intentional trespass a criminal offence and also give councils greater powers within the planning system.

    The Conservative Party won a thumping 80 seat victory in the November 2019 election, meaning that there is very little opposition parties can do to stop the Government making new laws.

    However, The Scottish Government will not be bringing in any new laws that make life harder for Travellers’ – as revealed in the Travellers’ Times last year.

    Abbie Kirkby, Advice and Policy Manager at Friends, Families and Travellers, told the Travellers’ Times that the prospect of yet more ‘hostile’ anti-Traveller laws was worrying.

    “At a time where we are seeing discussions of race inequality ignited, we are faced with hostile Government proposals to criminalise Gypsies and Travellers,” said Abbie Kirkby.

    “Over the years there have been countless reports and evidence highlighting how Gypsies and Travellers face some of the most severe inequalities but what do we see? – The prospect of more draconian powers to penalise families because they live in different kinds of homes and have a nomadic way of life.

    What’s so baffling about this is that there are some very simple solutions available that are workable for all communities,” added Abbie Kirkby.

    At the time of the Government’s 2019 consultation, Friends Families and Travellers organised a campaign that generated 10,000 responses – all of them against the new threatened laws.

    “We were overwhelmed to see so many allies submit their views into the Home Office consultation so for Government Ministers to be talking about the proposals as a done deal is worrying to say the least,” said Abbie Kirkby.

    “We will be seeking legal advice as soon as the Government publish their response to the consultation, to ensure the views of the community and allies have been given full consideration as part of the consultation process.”

    The UK’s Gypsies and Travellers have a cultural heritage of travelling, and many families still travel to look for work, go to fairs, visit relatives, and attend funerals and weddings. Many Travellers also travel and set up unauthorised camps because they prefer to do so or because they have nowhere else to go.

    The fight against the new laws that could effectively smash all nomadic ways of life could unite all Traveller groups, say campaigners.

    The threatened new laws are also raising concerns among New Traveller and Van Dweller groups.

    Critics also say that the criminalisation of trespass and the other threatened laws could also criminalise homeless camps and protest camps and is an attack on the civil liberties of everyone – not just Gypsies and Travellers.

    Writing in the Guardian, campaign journalist George Monbiot said that the new proposed laws were a trap and could affect everyone – not just Gypsies and Travellers:

    “The harder you look, the more disguised powers appear to be lodged in this consultation. Even if new trespass laws are aimed only at those residing on land, they will affect not only Gypsies, Roma and Travellers, but also rough sleepers.

    Any new laws are also likely to be used against protesters. We’ve seen how previous legislation – such as the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act, the 2000 Terrorism Act and the 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act – has been immediately deployed against peaceful protest, in some cases after the government promised that it would not be used for this purpose.”

    [end]

    Forgive us our trespasses: forbidden rambles with right-to-roam campaigner Nick Hayes [Observer article]

     
    Forgive us our trespasses: forbidden rambles with a right-to-roam campaigner

    The law excludes ordinary people from 92% of English land, but that doesn’t stop activist, artist and writer Nick Hayes

    by Rachel Cooke, The Observer, 9/8/2020
    Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/09/forgive-us-our-trespasses-forbidden-rambles-with-a-right-to-roam-campaigner

    As Simon Jenkins notes in his book England’s Thousand Best Houses, were it not for the fact that it sits in 400 acres of historic parkland, Basildon Park house in west Berkshire might almost be a Piccadilly terrace: big, but not gargantuan; elegant and harmonious, but too straightforward to be entirely flashy. Glimpsed through trees on a warm summer evening, its magnificent portico crested by golden sunlight, it rises like a beacon, a sight from which it’s hard to tear the eyes. Even when I’m walking away from it, I keep turning my head to check that I didn’t only imagine it; that it hasn’t suddenly vanished into thin air.

    But bewitchment is in the air tonight. This place is ours. Though the National Trust reopened these grounds to visitors in June, those who booked tickets for today are long gone now, it being past five o’clock. Circumnavigating the estate’s flinty, tumbledown perimeter wall, we barely saw a soul – only one mountain biker, doggedly following the same bridleway as us – and since we slipped inside the park itself, having finally found a gap just wide enough to allow us to do so, we’ve encountered no one at all. We stride, willy nilly, utterly free, grasshoppers leaping at our feet, the soft wind in the branches above us. What leafy seclusion. It’s so enveloping, and so soothing, I jump halfway out of my skin when a pheasant shrieks in the undergrowth.

    There are bylaws around respecting National Trust land but I do not feel deep down that I’m doing much wrong by being here. What harm is there in enjoying such loveliness? I’m a paid up member of the Trust, so this is no embezzlement. Nevertheless, I don’t suppose I would have wriggled through that tempting space had I been alone. I see walls, literal and metaphorical, and often wonder what’s to be found behind them, but I’m too timid, often, to climb them. On this occasion, however, I have courage in the form of company. I’ve been led astray by Nick Hayes, the author of The Book of Trespass, a powerful new narrative about the vexed issue of land rights and a volume that he hopes will both refocus the ongoing campaign to reform the 2000 Countryside and Rights of Way Act by encouraging more people to do as we are doing right now, to walk on privately owned land, and to help build protest against the Conservative party’s plan – a manifesto commitment – to make trespass a criminal offence. Not only is Hayes practically a professional trespasser these days, no sign too forbidding to be ignored, no fence too high to be climbed. In my case, he’s like a naughty younger brother, egging me on, urging me blithely to step over whatever impediment happens to be in my way. “They can’t do anything to us,” he says, cheerfully. “They can ask us to leave, but we can’t be prosecuted. Trespass is a mechanism for seeking redress for damage, and it would be absurd to suggest we are damaging anything.” (Trespass can be actionable through the courts, whether or not the claimant has suffered damage – but such cases are rare, and usually only brought to deter persistent trespassing, or where there are boundary disputes.)

    This is the part of Berkshire, not far from the River Thames in Pangbourne, that inspired Kenneth Grahame to write The Wind in the Willows, and Hayes, who likes to kayak, knows it intimately. He grew up a few minutes away, in the village of Upper Basildon, and it was there, 10 years ago, that the seeds of his book were sown, when he came home from London to live with his parents while he worked on his first graphic novel (he makes his living mainly as an illustrator). One day, he and his mother were walking together after lunch. They were, he says, having the kind of heart-to-heart that could only really happen in “the easy chaos of the countryside”, wandering towards a spot that, at the time, was the sole place he’d ever seen a kingfisher. But they never made it. Suddenly, a quad bike came chugging over the paddock, and parked itself, just a little too close for comfort, in their way.

    The gambit of the landowner or his agent to the trespasser is often a facetious “are you lost?” But this guy was more direct. “You’ve no right to be here,” he said. “You are trespassing.” Hayes and his mother reflexively apologised and promptly left. Only later did he consider the astonishing effect just a few words had had on them; it was as if they were two puppets, and this stranger had simply yanked their strings. “We were doing such a lovely thing,” he says. “So to be interrupted in such a gruff manner… This invisible force came over us. Outwardly, it was just decency [on our part]. It would have been indecent for us to argue; that would have spoilt our day. But his ability to turn us on our heels through 180 degrees felt like power to me, and it’s quite rare for a white, straight, middle-class man [like me] to feel the operation of power like that. There was this feeling of shame – as though I’d done something wrong. And that didn’t square at all with my inner morality.”

    After this, Hayes began strolling on private land more and more often. This wasn’t, he insists, a political act, or even just a two-fingers to those types who like to border the land they own with signs that read “Keep out”. “It was more a case of wanting to support my feeling intellectually that it’s the wall that is the crime, not the climbing of it,” he says. “I wasn’t going to stop trespassing, but I also came to realise that it’s all right for me. This is something I can do. I’ve got quite a posh voice, I’m white, I’m a big enough dude not to be physically submissive; I don’t flinch when someone comes at me. The book grew not only out of my own trespassing, but out of a desire to try and make the countryside more available to people without my privileges.” England, he would go on to discover, is still owned by a relatively small number of wealthy individuals and institutions: by the law of trespass, we are excluded from 92% of the land and 97% of its waterways. How can this be? The feeling grew in him that change must and can come. When The Book of Trespass is published later this month, he and Guy Shrubsole, the activist author of Who Owns England? (which came out last year), will together launch a new campaign, the primary focus of which will be the fact that the nation’s mental and physical health would be improved immeasurably by increased access to it. “I don’t believe property is theft,” Hayes says. “That’s a ridiculous proposition, one that ignores human nature. This isn’t the politics of envy. All we’re asking is that the lines between us and the land are made more permeable.”

    This doesn’t mean, however, that political history is of no interest to him. Quite the contrary. For Hayes, Basildon Park house serves as one symbol among many of the way, down the centuries, land was effectively stolen from the people, its grand estates constructed on the back of their exploitation. Built in 1776 by John Carr of York, it was designed for Francis Sykes, a wealthy member of the East India Company, who returned home with fingers that were, as Hayes puts it, “sticky from the colonial cookie jar” (Sykes himself explained the bleeding dry of India as a basic choice of “whether it [the wealth extracted under British rule] should go into a black man’s pocket or my own”).. Hayes doesn’t disapprove of the National Trust; he’s largely supportive of both it and English Heritage. But he wonders why, given the history of Basildon Park, some of its 400 acres could not be given over to, say, local allotment holders. And what about those who cannot afford its ticket prices? “I think the vision of Octavia Hill [the social reformer, and one of the three founders of the National Trust] for the working classes has gone a bit wayward. It does seem very white and middle class. It holds some of our cultural soul, and it could change the narrative if it tried.”

    We walk on. The preternatural quietness holds. The atmosphere is almost muffled. The cows, it seems, can’t be bothered to low at this hour, in this heat. But just as we’re on our way back to our entry point, we meet a woman on the path. She has long, silver hair and a black spaniel, and a manner that, though polite, expresses a certain dismay at our presence. Do we work for the National Trust? No. Then why are we here? We tell her that we’re merely enjoying the park, and then we turn the tables, asking her a few questions of our own – which is how we find out that she is the wife of a National Trust warden, and that she lives in a house in the woods. Also, that she is Dutch. Do people have the right to roam in Holland? No, she says. It’s worse there than here.

    But she won’t be put off so easily. We should go. Soon, this spot will be dangerous for us. In half an hour, hunters are coming to shoot deer, which must be controlled. “Well, they’re not going to shoot us, are they?” says Hayes, breaking into laughter. She doesn’t fully smile at this – though whether this is because we outnumber her and she feels vaguely intimidated, or whether because she simply believes we’re being foolhardy, I can’t quite tell. Either way, though, I’m momentarily chastened: I experience what Hayes calls, in his book, a “mind wall” – an invisible barrier rises, over which I feel I must now hop as quickly as possible to the side where I rightfully belong.

    My fellow trespasser and I do most of our talking in a hay field belonging to someone known to him as Farmer Ambler, a man who eventually appears, carrying long stems of ragwort (ragwort is toxic if eaten by cows), but who speaks to us gently, and doesn’t tell us to scram.

    Hayes wasn’t what you might call a child of nature. “We came up to the rec to smoke hash as teenagers,” he says. “Sometimes, a couple of woods on from where we’re sitting now, we made fires and messed around. But we weren’t there for nature; it was just free space.” After public school and Cambridge University, he did an art foundation course and eventually, after a series of jobs working in communications for charities, he began working full time on his first graphic novel, The Rime of the Modern Mariner, a take on Coleridge’s famous poem. He has since published three more.

    The Book of Trespass is his first non-graphic book – though the text is punctuated by his marvellous illustrations, linocuts that bring to mind the Erics, Gill and Ravilious – and in it, he weaves several centuries of English history together with the stories of gypsies, witches, ramblers, migrants and campaigners, as well as his own adventures. Its sweep is vast. Among the places he trespasses, sometimes camping out overnight, are Highclere Castle in Hampshire, home of the Earl of Carnarvon and now best known as the real Downton Abbey; Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire, the seat of the dukes of Rutland; on the Sussex estate of Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail; and on land, also in Sussex, owned by the property tycoon Nicholas van Hoogstraten. He also kayaks on the River Kennet from Aldermaston, in west Berkshire, to the point near Reading where it meets the Thames – a journey that takes him through the estate owned by Richard Benyon who, until 2019, was the richest MP in Parliament (Benyon lives in Englefield House, which dates from 1558, and which passed to his family by marriage in the 18th century; some of their money was made via the East India Company, too).

    His book begins with the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in 1932, an act of civil disobedience that may be one of the most successful in British history (it led to the creation of our national parks). But then he tracks back: here is William the Conqueror, seizing England with “both his hands”; here are the Tudor barons, frantically enclosing common land in what amounted to a kind of rural gold rush; and here, much later, is the Public Order Act of 1994, a piece of legislation, triggered by a rave at Castlemorton Common in Worcestershire, that Hayes regards as “the final nail in the coffin” for freedom in the countryside, and that has a great deal in common with vagrancy acts of earlier centuries in the way that it targets particular groups of people, notably Travellers. Along the way, he also explores more nebulous territory. Why, he wonders, do we quietly accept the limits to our freedom – the signs and the barbed wire, the CCTV cameras and the walls – when we’re out and about? Where does such obedience come from? Nationalism, he believes, suits the landowning classes – Paul Dacre, who also owns a 17,000 acre grouse farm near Ullapool in Scotland, now among them – because it gives people a sense of ownership without their actually owning anything at all.


    Source: The Guardian (The article is reproduced in full here)

    Our green and pleasant land. Except it isn’t – ours, I mean. A third of Britain is still owned by the aristocracy; 24 non-royal dukes alone own almost 4m acres of it (in 2016, 17 of these men together received farm subsidies worth £8.4m). Then there is the new aristocracy, the self-made millionaires who can afford to buy up the land: men like Richard Bannister, the retail tycoon who bought Walshaw Moor in Calderdale in 2002, and whose “management” of this rare habitat brought him into conflict with Natural England – until, that is, the agency dropped its claim, settling out of court (Bannister now owns some 16,000 acres of the valley). Finally, there are the offshore companies, which in 2015 owned 490,000 acres of England and Wales, meaning that an area larger than Greater London can legally avoid stamp duty and inheritance tax (the largest swathe of English land registered to offshore companies is the Gunnerside estate, whose 27,258 acres of North Yorkshire moorland are registered in the British Virgin Islands and which, over the last decade or so, received some €430,000 of taxpayer handouts in the form of agricultural subsidies). According to Hayes, there are “good landowners”: he would single out the Crown Estate and Sir Julian Rose, the owner of Hardwick House, also in Berkshire, whose farm is run on ecological principles and who allows a nonprofit group to run outdoor activities for children with disabilities on his land. But these people are, in his view, in the minority.

    Was he, as he researched The Book of Trespass, surprised by the numbers? “No. In a way, I was almost encouraged by them. They’re so stark, they do the arguing for you. The orthodoxy is that land campaigners are very unreasonable – that they’re people who want to overturn civil society, who have this mad communist desire to overrule people’s private sanctity. But if you look at the figures, it’s clear that it’s not at all unreasonable for us to require greater access to the land.” He’s surely right about this – and in Scotland, people already have the right to roam; none of the walks in his book would count as trespass north of the border. But it also raises the question: why does it still matter so much to landowners if people cross their land? Why does it make some of them so furious?

    “Because, under a certain philosophy of property, one we’ve had since the time of William the Conqueror, something is only yours if you own it exclusively; a park doesn’t really belong to you if you can’t throw someone out of it. Counter to this, of course, there is another philosophy, one that says that you don’t leave this world with anything in your pockets, and you don’t come into it with anything in them, either. At best, you borrow the land from your children; you’re a custodian. Unfortunately, these are entirely opposing definitions of property.” Chewing idly on some grass, I wonder aloud why some people need so much. Hayes looks at me as though I’m slightly stupid. “It’s not about use,” he says. “The rich man wants more. You know that.”

    There are, he tells me, groups out there who are interested in the idea of reparation; who believe that if more people knew the stories behind places like Basildon Park, they would be more exercised over the issue of land rights. But he would rather concentrate, in campaigning terms, on the future rather than the past. “If I had two minutes on the Today programme, I would talk about the science involved in the relationship between nature and mental and physical wellbeing, and about a future where landowners aren’t robbed of anything at all, except the right to exclude the mass public. Douglas Caffyn [a canoe campaigner] speaks about the Magna Carta when he makes the case for access to our rivers. But we can either argue about historical precedent, or we can clear the table of that, and discuss why, say, rivers are so essential to people.”

    He is not – again, he tells me – looking for a revolution. “The one thing I think is a genuine and valid concern [on the part of landowners] is vandalism and litter. But this is why we need an early and visceral relationship with nature. Children need to learn about dragonflies by having them land on their noses so that as adults they will find it abhorrent to see a Wispa Gold wrapper next to an orchid.” He and his fellow campaigners are looking to “rewrite” the Countryside Code. “It asks too little,” he says. “It shouldn’t only tell you to take your litter home; it should tell you to pick up any litter that you find. We would like it to be more moral, to incorporate how we should be together – because the way we treat nature is the way that we treat each other.”

    So what happens next? “We want to engage all the people who are already sold on access – the fathers and mothers, the ramblers, climbers and kayakers – and tell them that something is happening, and get them to join us. Then we need to persuade all the people who don’t have much access to land why their lives would be improved if they did. And then, we need to lobby MPs.” His book, he believes, is the beginning of something, not the end. “We will say to people: come trespassing with us!” He grins. “Our hashtag will be #extremelynonviolentdirectaction. There’ll be animal masks and botany, picnics and poetry. But if someone asks us to leave, that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

    See righttoroam.org.uk

    The National Trust bylaws can be seen here: https://nt.global.ssl.fastly.net/documents/the-national-trust-byelaws-1965.pdf

    • The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes is published by Bloomsbury (£20). To order a copy for £17.40 go to guardianbookshop.com. Postage charges may apply.

    Walkers urged to help save historic footpaths before 2026 deadline

    The Ramblers have launched the Don’t Lose Your Way online mapping site to find and map thousands of miles of lost historic paths across England and Wales. An estimated 10,000 miles of historic paths are thought to be missing from maps & if not claimed before a 2026 government-deadline, they’ll be lost from maps forever. The new mapping tool divides the maps of England and Wales into 154,000 one-kilometre squares, which users can select to compare historic and current maps of the area side-by-side. Simply select a square, do a quick ‘spot the difference’, mark on any missing paths and click submit. It takes just a few minutes to check a square.

    The Ramblers Association are asking people to join the search to save thousands of miles of lost historic paths before a 2026 government-deadline with the launch of their new Don’t Lose Your Way online mapping site.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

    Walkers urged to help save historic footpaths before 2026 deadline
    Lost paths must be identified by government deadline to be added to official record

    by Patrick Barkham, The Guardian, 11th February 2020
    Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/feb/11/walkers-urged-to-help-save-historic-footpaths-before-2026-deadline

    Walkers are being urged to help identify 10,000 miles of historic footpaths that are missing from the map in England and Wales and could be lost for ever.

    All rights of way must be identified before a government deadline of 2026, after which it will no longer be possible to add old paths to the official record.

    The walking group Ramblers is calling on walkers, historians and map enthusiasts to use its new mapping site to identify missing footpaths.

    The online tool divides the official map into 150,000 1km squares so users can compare historic and current maps side by side, spot any differences and submit missing paths.

    Once mapped, Ramblers will recruit volunteers to make applications to restore paths to local authorities before the 2026 deadline.

    Jack Cornish, the project’s manager, said: “Our paths are one of our most precious assets. They connect us to our landscapes – ensuring we can explore our towns and cities on foot and enjoy walking in the countryside – and to our history and the people who formed them over the centuries.”

    If we lose our paths, a little bit of our past goes with them. This is our only opportunity to save thousands of miles of rights of way and time is running out.”

    Some lost paths are still in use, while others have become overgrown, but all were omitted from the “definitive” maps of 140,000 miles of paths that councils were required to draw up in the 1950s.

    Some walkers are already applying to local authorities to recognise lost paths but fear there are many more than the government’s estimate of 10,000 miles: a survey in Cornwall alone identified 3,000 paths that had fallen out of use.

    Paul Howland discovered a lost path called The Markway, in Hampshire, which ends abruptly in some undergrowth. The path was temporarily blocked during the second world war and by the time it was reinstated in 1956 it was overgrown and forgotten.

    Howland has calculated that in his area he would need to make two applications a week to register all the paths before 2026.

    Under English common law, rights of way do not expire but the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 required all rights of way to be recorded. The Ramblers are calling on the government to extend the deadline for registering historic paths by at least five years.
    [end]

    Read also: Ramble on: the fight to save forgotten footpaths & Memory lanes: the ramblers trying to save 10,000 lost footpaths