Friday 27th to Monday 30th August 2021 – SCOLT HEAD, NORTH NORFOLK COAST – Bank Holiday Camp on disputed land

TLIO Bank Holiday Camp in support of Scolt Head & District Common Rights Holders Association (SH&DCRA)

Friday 27 – Monday 30 August 2021 – SCOLT HEAD, NORFOLK

Bank Holiday camp on disputed land in support of Scolt Head & District Common Rights Holders Association (SH&DCRHA)
http://shdcra.org.uk/objectives/

Scolt Head & District Common Right Holders Grapevine

Traditional common rights on the North Norfolk coast are being eroded in an underhand fashion.

First half hour of Tony’s podcast Friday 27 August 2021 all about Scolt Head commons with Chris Cotton, Stephen Bocking and Pete Bickell

Holkham Estate the Royal West Norfolk Golf Club, National Trust, and others keep grabbing common land. They know that commoners risk losing their homes and hundreds of thousands of pounds by taking these land-grabbers to the high court. They have refused to negotiate with those whose traditional legal rights they’re stealing.

We want that to stop. We want to see respect for and restoration of one another’s legal rights, and to see the talking resume.

Please come equipped with tent, rollmat, sleeping bag, kite and anything you’d expect to find. Further details from Tony on 07786 952037

PUBLIC TRANSPORT – train and bus

  • Train to Kings Lynn leaves hourly from Kings Cross £40 return.
    Main other rail connections to Kings Lynn are via Peterborough on the East Coast Main Line, or Ely.
  • Then a five to ten minute walk almost due west through the centre of Kings Lynn to the bus station.
  • Thence the 36 Coastliner bus to Brancaster which leaves at half past the hour and takes about 90 minutes to trundle around the coast to The Ship Hotel, pub, Brancaster for £8.40 return.
  • Now it’s a 20 minute walk from the bus stop. Go about 100 yards back West on the A149 and turn right, north. With St Mary’s Church on your right, head toward the coast up Broad Lane for a little under a mile. That’s a 20-30 minute walk to our camp by the Brancaster Beach Car Park.

Link to more on that 36 ‘Coastliner’ bus, operated by ‘Lynx’. It goes on East via Wells-Next-The-Sea and terminates at Fakenham https://www.lynxbus.co.uk/bus-routes/343536/36/

Local info

If you get lost please call or message Stephen for directions on 07469 233401. We also hope to pin a note, in nearby Brancaster Staithe, on the Fish Shed (local produce shop) nearly opposite the White Horse pub. Fish Shed & White Horse are three bus stops East of The Ship on the A149 coast road.

Why are we on the Scolt Head commons?

The Land Is Ours was founded in the 1990s by XR guru and Guardian columnist George Monbiot. Our aim is to further the public debate over land in an age where private property rights are encroaching on, or enclosing, so many of our valuable shared spaces.

In our towns and cities libraries, pubs, clubs and other places we congregate are being closed, sold off for private use. Anna Minton in her 2012 book ‘Ground Control’ drew attention to the privatisation of city centres through shopping malls, streets formerly patrolled by police, now by private security.

Along the North Norfolk coast private landowners have been extending their boundaries into the Scolt Island commons. Legally they must compensate rights holders if they want to use registered common land but they are refusing to meet local residents or even reply to letters. This disrespect for local laws has proliferated alongside spiralling property prices with wealthy second and third home incomers forcing the younger generation out of the area.

New laws being introduced by Home Secretary Priti Patel this Autumn mean gypsies and travellers who have stayed on our roadsides for thousands of years will be criminalised, their homes confiscated, they and their children jailed.

‘The Earth Is A Common Treasury For All’ was the cry of the English Civil War ‘Diggers’, and they were right. Land can never be absolute ‘property’ in the same way as, say, a car or a television. It’s a free gift to mankind and we all need, to a degree, to share it to survive.

Back in the 1990s The Land Is Ours helped start a national debate which led the the Blair government’s Countryside and Rights of Way Act (2000).

This time our ambitions are smaller. We simply want to see private landowners along the coast, including the National Trust, show respect for their common right holder neighbours, and for the rule of law.

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