[Protesters stormed a U.K. national park, demanding the freedom to
camp anywhere on public land.]
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THE PEASANTS ARE SEIZING THE COMMONS (AGAIN)  
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Charlotte Elton
May 25, 2023
In These Times
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_ Protesters stormed a U.K. national park, demanding the freedom to
camp anywhere on public land. _

"Right to Roam" protesters gather on the edge of Dartmoor National
Park in Cornwood, England on Jan. 21, 2023, to demonstrate against a
recent court decision banning wild camping in Dartmoor., Adrian Dennis
AFP

 

DEVON, ENGLAND —A ghostly rider on a skeletal horse is said to roam
the windswept moors of southwestern England. According to legend,
​“Old Crockern” [[link removed]]
guards the sprawling expanse of Dartmoor from those who would try to
close it off from commoners.

In January, more than 3,000 locals invoked Old Crockern’s spirit in
one of the United Kingdom’s largest-ever countryside access protests
[[link removed]].
To beating drums and cheers, they hoisted a massive puppet of the
ghostly rider as they marched across the estate of a wealthy
landowner, protesting a court decision that would further shrink
access to England’s already endangered commons. 

In medieval England, landless peasants shared usage rights over
millions of acres of land. But in the 16th and 17th centuries,
landowners fenced off these areas to create vast farm estates.
Subsequent rebellions were brutally crushed, and millions of
impoverished peasants poured into Britain’s pre-industrial
cities — creating a vast workforce with no choice but to work
for meager wages. Marx described this mass dispossession as the
​“basis of the capitalist mode of production.”

Today around 1% of people own roughly half the country’s land. Even
in the 10% of England and Wales that are national parks, access is
limited. Most British park land belongs to farmers, estate owners and
conservation organizations, not the government. Activities like
camping and canoeing are often heavily restricted.

Dartmoor was exceptional among English national parks in permitting
the practice of wild camping — the ability to pitch a tent
anywhere in the park. But things changed in December, when Alexander
Darwall — a hedge fund manager and the park’s sixthlargest
property owner—filed a lawsuit
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over Dartmoor campers’ alleged littering and ​“antisocial
behavior.” In January, the English High Court decided in Darwall’s
favor, ruling that Dartmoor campers can now only pitch tents in
a limited number of designated areas.

The ruling prompted an outpouring of public grief. Nature lovers on
social media variously described the news as ​“devastating,”
​“insulting” and ​“gutting.” Sarah Fan, a 32-year-old
local who regularly walks the moors, says she used to camp at Dartmoor
with her late father and still goes every year to remember him.
​“I guess I won’t be able to do that anymore,” she says.
Chris Parker, dad of two, mourns for the next generation.
​“Planned to go camping with my kids at Easter — not sure
what to tell them,” he says. ​“We have lost something
truly special.”

But campers are putting up a good fight. The Dartmoor National Park
Authority — the local government body in charge of managing the
park — is appealing the decision, with crowdsourced funding from
local environmental organization Dartmoor Preservation Association
(DPA). ​“Public access to the natural world should not be granted
at the whims of landowners,” a DPA spokesperson tells _In These
Times_.

The Dartmoor case has ignited a wider debate about unequal land
access in England. Lewis Winks, a campaigner with land access group
The Stars Are for Everyone, sees the court decision as ​“the
latest act in a long history of land enclosures and the slow erosion
of the commons.”

​“Old Crockern symbolizes … our history of connection to place,
[which] runs far deeper than the modern legal frameworks that govern
access,” Winks says.

Even the limited access rights enjoyed by people in England and Wales
were hard-fought. In 1932, hundreds of working-class walkers hiked up
Kinder Scout, a plateau on the Duke of Devonshire’s land. Several
spent months in prison for the act. The act of mass trespass helped
pave the way for a 1949 law that created national parks and enshrined
a modicum of public access to nature.

The ongoing Dartmoor campaign builds on this legacy. January’s
action attracted thousands of campaigners, students and retired
birdwatchers, all of whom hiked side by side and spent several hours
on Darwall’s land. The action inspired others across the country to
wild camp at their local parks, sharing posts captioned #SaveDartmoor
[[link removed]].

While Dartmoor landowners have offered minor concessions, campaigners
are thinking big — they want to overhaul English land access law
completely. Current law guarantees access by foot to about 8% of the
countryside that’s ​“mountain, moor, heath or down.” Just
north of the border in Scotland, however, the right to roam, boat and
wild camp across all open land has been protected since 2003. In
Scandinavia, such privileges are protected by the _allemansrätten_
(the ​“everyman’s right”), which enshrines public access
to nature.

Campaigners want a similar model in England, and their demands are
gaining traction. The Labour Party has promised to pass
a Scottish-style right to roam act if it wins the next election.
​“The court decision has been a catalyzing moment,” says Daniel
Davy, founder of the campers’ collective Dartmoor Wild Camping
Action Group. Winks agrees: ​“It’s added fuel to a fire
that’s already lit.”

As Dartmoor protestors showed in January, Old Crockern is rising.

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CHARLOTTE ELTON [[link removed]] is
a journalist based in London.

* UK Land Protests; Right to Roam; Land Access;
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