The Book of
Trespass: Crossing the Lines that
Divide us, Bloomsbury
paperback, 2021 is a remarkable book
and a Sunday
Times Bestseller in the UK. The author, Nick
Hayes, is an illustrator, printmaker,
writer and, as the book notes, “currently
propagandarer-in-chief for the Land
Justice Network”. A summary cannot do justice
to this creative and informative
book. Each informal chapter contains a story
of one or more trespasses. The
title is simply the name of an animal in the
trespass, the first, “Badger”, and
the last, “Stag”. After the animal’s name are
phrases indicating the
information topics discussed. The book is
highly informative and includes personal
stories of trespass. As a trespass story is
being told the author seamlessly
feeds us blocks of information. Badger
(fires, tracks, lines, legislation) tells us
about trespassing. It is in civil
law – one cannot be prosecuted (criminal law)
for trespassing. However, that
situation was updated in the 1990s to allow
prosecution of “aggravated
trespassing” and to criminalize groups holding
gatherings. Each section of the
book has a sketch drawn by the author at the
place of his trespass – at some
country home with vast lands or on a right of
way waterway in an inflatable kayak
with gear and sketch book on board. Fox
(possession, property, power, dominion) takes
the reader to the US and the New
York courts in the 1800s and the questions of
property and ownership of a free
thing – a fox - shot by one and taken by
another. But there is also land. William
the Conqueror brought to England the idea of
ownership of land on a scale
suitable for horseback hunting. The author
joins those allowed into the grounds
of the Beaufort family’s Badminton House to
see the start of a now fox-less fox
hunt. He uses his entry to continue some 2
miles past the house itself telling the
reader about property and about fencing that
began in Tudor times. The author moves to
the UK National Gallery and a
Gainsborough picture of Mr. and Mrs. Andrews
in the country. The picture
features in Ways of Seeing by Thomas
Berger, BBC/Penguin 1973. Berger claims
the Andrews in the picture are flaunting
property. Hayes explores that further.
The author gets permission to visit the tree
under which the Andrews posed so
he can sketch. He finds Gainsborough has
twisted and tipped the landscape to
feature the full extent of the land and its
productivity. Henry VIII had taken possession
of a monastery and gave half the land to each
of two families – Mrs. Andrews’ family
and Mr. Andrews’. Mr. Andrews got his half of
the original monastery land when
his mother died and after his marriage to Mrs.
Andrews. The Andrews got all the
land of the two families – that is the
picture! There is another side. In
monastic days common people could glean this
land, gather firewood and catch
rabbits for supper. The people have lost that.
Mr. Andrews, holding his gun, symbolizes
a new age of land ownership with fences and
gamekeepers. Unlike the Andrews, the
author does enjoy the countryside and its
wildlife on his trespasses. Dog
(fixity, footpaths, gypsies and vagabonds)
takes the reader to accounts of common
land and fights for public rights of way
against vicious landowners bent on taking
land and doing their thing with it. And the
author walks a former fellow
activist’s dog in the rain on land whose owner
allows public use. Dog also tells
us of Black Death, labour shortages, labour
mobility and then laws restricting such
movement - laws against vagrants. Late Tudor
enclosures led to people robbed of
homes and thus vagrancy and then laws against
vagrants and against Roma people.
This was consequently a time of civil unrest. Sheep
(division, sedition, oppression, obedience)
considers sheep as a key to wealth,
but also a symbol of oppression and obedience.
He considers the Norman origin
of castles and large land grants. He writes
about walls and the “enclosure” of
land that increased 1725-1825 with a huge
impact on common people and their homes
and livelihoods. The author jumps the wall
that leads from Arundel Castle along
the roadside into lands of the Duke of
Norfolk. The author reflects on walls,
how they work and what they do, whether the
wall is in China or erected by Trump
in the US. The author leaves his perch on a
wall to go down a right-of-way after
a confrontation by two game keepers. Arundel castle and
Arundel cathedral top a hill. The
author notes Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas
Arundel was involved in burning heretics,
including translators of the bible into
English. Wycliffe used the authorized
Vulgate Latin bible. Tyndale went beyond
Jerome’s Vulgate to the original Greek
scriptures. Tyndale undermined the church’s
authority over-reach by improved translation:
“agape” became “love” rather than “charity”
which implied giving money. “Ecclesia”
became “congregation” rather than church
which implied the structure and hierarchy. The common people
of this time were not sheep who
just gave up their common lands. Some of the
enclosures were against the law. Armed
force was used to overcome the common people
despite their repeated uprisings
and organized protests. Those using the force
brought church support in tow. Cow
(cattle, chattel, property in humans) gives
important information about slavery.
The Great Wall of Dorset, surrounding the
Charborough estate is the longest
brick wall in the UK. The owner of the wall’s
ancestor, Sawbridge, married into
the Drax dynasty, gained titles and got the
splendid Charborough estate but also
got the business that made the Draxes top
league English landowners: sugar
plantations in Barbados. Just before the wall
was built in 1841 this ancestor received
a dividend from his slaves. The author and
friend climb over the wall at dusk
close to the former grand entrance to the
14,000-acre estate. Drax was on the
boat of those who claimed Barbados for James
of England, built a settlement and
called for workers. They received a steady
supply of vagrants – Irish prisoners
from Cromwell’s war, routed royalists,
remnants from Cromwell’s model army. Various
crops were tried before, in 1630, Drax
borrowed to buy the infrastructure to
produce sugar. He got hardware like vats, but
also slaves. Cost led to using slaves.
Slavery led to racism. The enterprise required
lots of slaves. When Drax’s son
took over he turned the operation into mass
production dependent on slaves – who
were just a commodity as listed in the
how-to-do-it book produced for plantation
managers. Meanwhile,
trespassing on the Drax property in
England, the author and friend run into a
keeper. Since the friend is a
cameraman with equipment, this is an
“aggravated trespass.” They retrace their
steps then bike north along the wall, enter
again, establish a campsite and
prepare supper. Since plantation
owners were outnumbered by servants
and slaves, brutal capital punishment was used
to keep control. Law was made to
stop the mainly white Irish servants from
joining forces with the slaves. That law
essentially legalized white supremacy. In 1715
the Drax family pulled back to
England to play politics and sold the estate
to another UK family who had a plantation
in Jamaica -- Bleckford, whose son returned to
the UK, became Lord Mayor of London
and bought the Fonthill estate close to
Charborough. When the Fonthill house
burnt, Bleckford did a magnificent rebuild.
This was a time when slavers were
returning to the UK and buying property,
leaving plantations in the hands of
managers. About 300 manor houses were erected
around this time. The author and
friend now explore the grounds of Fonthill.
They explore the folly of the son, William
Bleckford. William inherited the estate
at age 18. It was the wealthiest in Europe
with a large annual income from Caribbean
plantations. William became an eccentric
recluse. Only since 2009 was the connection
between slavery and its impact on the UK
landscape investigated. It is now
searchable online. When slavery was ended,
records helped parliament pay the owners
for the loss of their slaves. The Abolition
Act was a massive victory - that is
a massive moneymaker- for slave owners. The
slaves got nothing. The author and
friend follow a path from the folly
to the lake and its jetty. They swim in the
lake and dry in the sun. William Bleckford
got through his inheritance and moved to a
smaller estate near Bath. The Abolition
Act cut the enormous profits from slavery, but
England continued to flourish. Fonthill
was purchased by Farquhar, a merchant from the
East Indian colonies. The author notes
that a footpath is democratic, made
by and for the many who use it. The local path
near the author’s home was stopped
short by a wall put up around Basildon Park –
a product of the profits from colonialism,
erected by Francis Sykes who made his fortune
working for the East India Company
in Bengal. When the company established its
first outpost in Calcutta, India was
famous for textiles, ship-building,
architecture, spices and porcelain and it
earned
about 1/3 of the world’s wealth. The Company
milked the cash cow. It imposed a
Tudor land regime and standardized laws of
ownership with no reference to local
custom, geography or climate. Rent was set on
land. The tithe on profits was
ended. When a drought came the rent could not
be paid and farmers were dispossessed.
Also, India was forced to stop its foreign
trade and to turn to monopolies. It
became a source of supplies to be shipped out
to England on the railways that
were “given” to India. The author visits
his mother who works at Basildon
Park, now a National Trust property. He
overstays his entry ticket to walk on into
the grounds at 5pm, closing time. The grounds
are beautiful and extensive and
were enclosed quite late, after the 1773
Enclosure Act. Before that it had survived
as common land and the author’s local path had
led through it. The new money
from West and East Indies flowed up the Thames
to Westminster as owners got
titles and became MPs. Sykes became a baronet
in 1781 and was an MP. In 1765
there were an estimated 40 MPs connected to
the West Indies and by 1784, 29
with East Indies connections. The money that
flooded England from the backs of
Africans and Indians was the money that
separated English commoners from their
livelihood and land. The scene the
author sketches is beautiful. He muses
that English manor houses were tremendous PR,
communicating not just power, but
rightful power – clean and pure icons
of Englishness as well as wonders for
tourists. The fliers and writings about them
seldom mention the other side of
the story. Yet in the impeachment hearings of
Warren Hasting Edmund Burke told
how the management of the East India Company
was responsible for “cruelties
unheard of and devastations without name …
crimes which have their rise in the
wicked disposition of men in avarice,
rapacity, pride, cruelty, malignity,
haughtiness and insolence.’ When the British
left India, the GDP had gone from
27% of the world to 3% and an estimated 29
million Indians had died of famine,
murder and organized genocide under the
colonial regime. Also 3.2 million
Africans were taken to British colonies, of
which number 400,000 never arrived
from malnutrition, disease or the sea. The
author finds few caveats about the
builders of the manors one can visit in the
UK. In some cases, like that of
Drax family, the family still owns the
original sugar plantation in Barbados and
visits the Jacobean manor there every year.
Without the whole story, the public
are being told a big lie. As Ta-Nehisi Coates
says, the lie is that people have
been brought up to believe they are white –
and that means, ‘of superior
monopolized power’. The cow theme ends
with thoughts from people in the
former colonies. Both Caribbean people and
Indians have indicated that a UK
apology would be a minimum – but nothing like
that has come yet. The author ends
“cow” with thoughts on how rural England is
not seen as belonging to English citizens
of African or Indian origin although many have
been English for decades. Spider
(wives, riches, spells, protest) begins at the
church with elaborate tombs of
Earls and Countesses of Rutland. The current
11th Earl lives in an apartment in
the nearby hilltop Belvoir Castle. Eleanor,
the 1st Countess had 11
children – 2 girls before her first 2 boys.
Anglo-Saxon women were equal partners
in a marriage. They could own and contract.
After 1066, William the Conqueror’s
Norman law made the woman a chattel of her
husband and established the primacy
of the first-born male. The author bicycles to
the castle grounds and enters them
by wading along a concrete and mud river
conduit under a bridge, continuing hidden
by a single row of trees. Behind the leaves,
the high castle watches - a means of
control. Women were freer in
the commons than at court. William
Tyndale was burned for translating the bible
to English, but the ideas had
leaked to give rise to Quakers, Anabaptists
and others who set aside church doctrines.
Women were an active part of these groups. And
women were active with men in
pulling down fences erected around common
land. Common women spun wool together,
talked with midwives and learned to use plant
cures. In 1540 Henry VIII chartered
the Company of Barber Surgeons whose licensing
of medical advice began the male
dominated medical profession. The author
follows the river under a final road bridge
with multiple spider webs hanging down into a
more open and pleasant part of
the grounds. Clever women were suspect of
witchcraft. In 1613 the two
young sons of the 6th
Earl fell mysteriously ill. One died. A widow
with two daughters who had worked
at the castle was suspect. She didn’t go to
church and ‘she knew her herbs.’
When the 2nd son took a turn for
the worse, someone claimed the
women had laid a curse on the boys. They were
rounded up and faced ‘examinations’
by the most powerful men in the county. The
trial was set with a panel of
all-male titled judges picked by the king. The
accused woman died on the way.
The daughters were found guilty and hanged -
slowly. It was a woman, Elizabeth
I, who reintroduced the death penalty for
witches! Patriarchy began with the
church who put the father at the power apex.
To this day allusions to feminism
are used to be pejorative. Spider takes a
time-leap to 20th century women
of action – a long march in 1981 opposing
nuclear weapons from the manufacture
in Wales to deployment of cruise missiles at
Greenham Common in Berkshire, then
a US air base. Today the common is open for
dog walking and cycling. The
control tower is a tea room. Forty miles east
a more recent protest camp at Sipson,
just outside Heathrow Airport, is against
climate change. The camp aims to be
off-line and self-sufficient and on land where
a third runway was planned to
go. ‘Grow Heathrow’ is open to anyone and the
author goes for a workshop on
ceramics by Jessica. Re-commissioned sheds are
on palettes. There is a tower
and wind turbine that heats water for showers
below. There are wood chip paths.
There is no leader, no hierarchy. Concerns
that intersected formed a web and a
web became the symbol. The Greenham
women’s strategies were for creative,
artistic, non-violent direct action. The last
of the Greenham women left in
2000. In 1987 Reagan and Gorbachev signed the
Intermediate Nuclear Weapons
Treaty. Two years later the missiles started
leaving Greenham. In 2010, women of
Liberate the Tate began activities that led to
the ending of the connection of
BP Oil to the gallery. Green Heathrow was
given an eviction order in 2012. Then
a court of appeal ruled that the plans for a
third runway at Heathrow were
inconsistent with the Paris Accord on climate
change. Pheasant
(peers, parvenus, perquisites, peasants)
contains a deadly attack on aristocracy.
It begins with the captivating beauty and
opulence of the TV show’s Downton
Abby: “the costumed melodrama that exports
England’s foremost export and delusion:
class”. Downton is modelled on Highclere
Castle in Hampshire, home of the 8th
Earl of Carnarvon. The writer of Downton Abby,
Julien Fellowes, is “Baron Fellowes,
lord of the manor of Tattersall, Deputy
Lieutenant of Dorset” whose children go
to the same school as the Carnarvon’s. Following a deer,
the author and friend climb until the
castle appears and “its design communicates
classical splendour, the touch of
God and also, very clearly, an aristocratic
authority upon the land it controls”.
The aristocracy are hereditary landowners
“titillated by their own fancy dress”
and obsessed with fashion. Their titles are
‘fashioned’ and the lords are ‘styled’.
Different levels wear different numbers of
stipes of ermine on their robes. They
put on coronets in a hierarchical order after
the monarch. It is the world of
the sanctity of the done thing. The concept of a
superior class goes back before William
the Conqueror who replaced the Saxon elite
with his military allies, 180 barons.
The land belonged to the Crown. With time,
land was parcelled out to new titles
‘fashioned’ by a new Crown. After Magna Carta
the barons had more power and became
self-sufficient. There is make-believe – like
the knights of the garter seemingly
modelled on the King Arthur legend. Perks are
or were real. Before 1949 a peer could
only be tried by other peers, could not be
arrested for debt and got free postage.
Significantly, in 1774 the whole village of
Highclere was uprooted and forcibly
cleared to make way for the Earl’s house and
gardens. The power is less in the
age of human rights and there is no free
postage. The author turns to
the book Democracy needs
Autocracy by Peregrine Worsthorne in
search of a rationale for an aristocracy.
The Greek word means rule-by-the-best. It is
“a governing class that emerged out
of military conquest of other nations
(including England) and has been embedded
in the land since the Middle Ages. The House
of Lords evolved from the king’s
closest advisors …” For Worsthorne the
main reason for giving them special
influence on the laws of the land is their
experience ruling their own fiefdom.
Second, as a result of privilege, they have
the best education and are used to
high-minded thinking. They are not working for
a living so have time to look
through old tracts and think philosophy. Third
is noblesse oblige. They
are brought up with a sense of responsibility
for an estate and, by extension, for the
nation. Worsthorne, notes: ‘if
equality of access is to be regarded as
essential for any morally acceptable system
of recruitment into the political elite, the
old way does not pass the test.’
The author notes “equality of access” is a
bridge between the concepts of
privilege and class, and of access to the
land. The aristocratic
vision is of layered supremacy justified
by a delusion of the greater good in that.
There is a certain nostalgia that
things were better when people knew their
place and when the ruled respected the
rulers. But this ignores working class history
and the tearing of down of fences,
marches, protests and the witch hunts,
killings and transportations. The author is
walking through long grass, feeding
bins for pheasants, and ladders up trees to
sighting perches. Hunting was the
beginning of the cult of exclusion. Working
class hunting became poaching.
Working class food became game. The hunting
ritual is particularly special at
Highclere. The noisy elimination of pheasants
is combined with luxurious
accommodation, grand dinners and liberal
daytime boozing. Over the years laws
limited hunting pheasants to the owner of the
land, then the wealthy. Law in
the Middle Ages required “lawing” the hunting
dogs of the poor – having the
toes of the front paws chiselled off. In the
18th century discreet poaching
became violent protests for equal rights.
Groups of working-class men and women
on foot or horseback would cross fences and
kill deer stock, taking some but leaving
carcases. Known as Blacks, they would fight.
The Black Act 1723 created 50 new capital
offences. The author
scrambles to hide from an approaching 4x4
and then continues in a glowing gold sun to
the famous folly of three brick
arches known as Heaven’s Gate. From there
Hampshire is laid out: a sea of woodland
with the castle at its centre. The arches give
the aristocratic vision of
England: glorious and empty. But to the East
and West are roads choked with the
traffic of the lower orders crawling home from
work, descendants of those cleared
from the land. They are the dark side of the
Downton Abby masthead, classified
into lower orders down to bigotry and the myth
of the undeserving poor. Those who
share the workless day of the aristocrat are
called idle benefit scroungers. The
land, now enclosed, was their early welfare
system. The aristocrats
avoid tax as well as work. They lobby
hard. The House of Lords voted down the
People’s Budget of 1909 that contained
a tax on the value of land - just 0.3% of the
tax burden. Many houses like Highclere
have deals for tax cuts in return for keeping
this or that path open to the
public certain months. Many have registered
their land to businesses offshore.
The follies, sculptured parkland, crated
pheasants and near-empty houses are
props in theatre sets made to create the aura
of natural supremacy. Pomp and
flummery disguise the wealth system: land is
enclosed; resources monopolised,
and rights of use sold back to those who can
afford them. It is basic rentier capitalism.
A third of Britain is owned by the
aristocracy, and 24 non-royal dukes own
almost 4 million more acres among them. Many
receive farm subsidies which are
not capped or means tested as is welfare.
Perquisites of land ownership include
rental of rights, tax avoidance and state
subsidies. [Aristocrat welfare bums.] The author takes us
to the Packhorse Inn on the
Yorkshire Moors above Hebden Bridge. By mid-18th
century the Blacks
had been hanged or transported but violence in
working-class protest continued.
George III added another Enclosure Act and
penalties. The Walshaw Moor was sold
to a local tycoon who set about improving the
yield of grouse thirtyfold and
debate began on how land should be used and
who gets to decide. This is now no
longer just the aristocracy. Rough heather in
wild remote areas is the locus of
intensive game farming. Grouse hunting is a
game sport for the nouveau riche. The
number of birds brings risk of infection and
so the population is medicated. A third of the
moors are locations of blanket moss (sphagnum
moss) – a long living excellent absorber of
carbon. Yet every year the moors
are burned to increase the green shoots of
heather because grouse need heather shoots.
To keep the productivity of the moor high,
heather growth is maximized. However,
burning the moor destroys the moss
and dries the peat. It releases large amounts
of carbon – increasing climate
warming. Beyond this, moor drainage was
constructed, and also car parks put in
for grouse hunts. Some secret agreement was
reached with “Natural England” for undescribed
“higher stewardship” in which taxpayers pay
the owners! Hebden Bridge sees
little of the wealth of the
Walshaw Moor because money is taken at the
owner’s moorland facilities away
from the people. The town experiences flooding
and links it to the moors. Burning
the bog effects flooding but the extent is
fought by the Moorland Association. Payments
for flood damage have been less than the
public subsidy for the “higher stewardship”!
Hebden Bridge is affected yet excluded from
what is done to the moor by the
owner to “develop it”. The author points
out that land value increases from
public investment. A new subway line increases
the land value for a long string
of owners. Although they all benefit, they pay
nothing. Only tax payers pay. The
proposed Land Value Tax of 1909 would have
changed that. Also, the author
notes, it is not possible to limit the
environmental impact of activity on or under
a property. This does not stop at the fence.
Others are affected. Cockroach
(nouns, nations, values) begins with drowning
migrants, called cockroaches in
the Sun newspaper and on to the Daily
Mail sensational tabloid
then edited by Paul Dacre. Sensation sells and
Dacre, a self-declared self-made
person, now owns several huge properties as
well as the estate in Sussex where the
author is fighting his way through an
overgrown right-of way. He passes a
rotted gate, goes through brambles, around
barbed wire and over an electric
fence. The author climbs a fence and sees
hidden under the trees the river
Lumsden that runs across the Dacre estate.
Beside the river is the lost path. The newspaper
article on migrants as cockroaches unlocked
“a seam of resentment”. As had been the case
with Tudor era vagrants, migrants
are considered a single coordinated unit
threatening the nation. When a human
is referred to as a despised object, ill
treatment like extermination can
follow. The nouns – objects – are preferred by
conservatives to describe other people.
Nouns take away any nuances whereas adjectives
allow flex. Used to describe
migrants, the noun defines them and, as the
Latin root of define implies, it
fixes them. Calling migrants cockroaches is
dangerous. The author follows
the lost path and tunnel of trees
to where it opens out to a track between
deciduous trees on one side and a pine
plantation on the other. Finally, there is an
old steel gate wrapped in barbed
wire with a sign on the other side. He climbs
over. The sign reads “Private
Woodland”. The author returns
to a migrant camp in Calais known
as “the jungle”, where he had volunteered 3
years ago, a camp since removed.
That last time he had driven on the ferry with
a caravan to donate. This time
he arrives by train past a corridor of steel
and barbed wires. In
2002 a Red
Cross camp of 1,500 people near Calais was
closed. The people went into tents
or huts in the woods - hence the name jungle.
Aid agencies were banned, so manufacture
of chip-board huts, feeding and clothing was
done by volunteers like the author.
By 2015 there were about 5,000 people in the
jungle. Each day the author opened
a chip-board hut and served lunch to a line-up
of migrants. Lunch was delivered
to the hut whenever other volunteers were able
to get past checks and other obstacles.
The author has a
sharp memory of being invited to visit
the family hut of a volunteer – a migrant - he
worked with. He was shown photos
taken in a different country showing a smartly
dressed woman, whom he recognized
as the person in Wellington boots and faded
dungarees he worked with. It had
been taken just a month before. The author got
caught up in a protest of refugee
youth and the CRS, the French police reserve.
The CRS is in riot gear and with
tear gas. He is forced to ask for refuge in a
migrant family’s hut. He notes a
parallel between his situation and that of the
migrants. The author is shaken
by the attack and the tear gas thrown among
migrant youth in the name of a boundary
that the French and English can freely move
around. The English border is here in
Calais before boarding a train for England. George Orwell said
nationalism is the habit of assuming
humans can be classified like insects and that
blocks of several million can be
confidently labelled good or bad. Freud
described nationalism as collective
narcissism.
This narcissism sees the attraction of England
as so great as to pull people
into the muddy camp, obscuring the reality
that it is war that is pushing them
from a home where safety is no longer
possible. The devastation of war becomes
a “migrant crisis”. [I would add that the
newspapers do not call for an end to
the war.] A nation is not
only defined by borders, but by a
language and values and by newspapers that
reinforce communities of like mind.
Repetition of a perspective creates something
believed to be self-evident in a
community and the Daily Mail perspective on
migration does that for a significant
fraction of England’s population. Subjectivity
is cloaked as objectivity and nationalism
presents class supremacy as a self-evident
given in England. The Daily Mail’s
commitment to nationalism hides double
standards. The owner is a type of migrant
according to Inland Revenue. He lives
with his family in Wiltshire but his father’s
registered home is France and he
is “non-domicile”. He pays no tax on off-shore
income and capital gains unless they
are brought into the UK. The Daily Mail parent
group’s trust is registered off-shore
in Bermuda. Paul Dacre, opponent of the
something-for-nothing culture and welfare
state, received taxpayer CAP handouts for
estates in Scotland and Sussex
between 2011 and 2015. But then, the owner is
the right sort of migrant and
Dacre receives the right sort of hand out! Land-owning MPs
have said England is full of people.
The author challenges that – he walked through
the empty estate on the inside of
the Dorset wall. After WWII, in 1947, the
Atlee government was aware that all
those who had fought for their country
deserved to see value in it – hence it
created social security and national health.
Initially Atlee planned a people’s
charter for the open air and a report proposed
the full right to roam over uncultivated
land. Landlords and Lords lobbied against it.
The compromise was the National
Parks Act creating the Lake District, the Peak
District, Snowdonia and Dartmoor
parks. The view developed that the newly
mobile public were a threat to the
countryside and the “swarms of holidaymakers”
could best be directed to special
areas or “honey pots” without disturbing the
old order of land ownership. Cockroach ends with
the author reaching the edge of
the Dacre property, discovering a derelict
cottage surrounded by barbed wire,
reminding readers that cockroaches are linked
to homes, and adding a last word
on the Daily Mail and the right wing’s love of
family values. Three judges ruled
that Brexit required the approval of
parliament. That brought a headline calling
them “Enemies of the People” in the Daily
Mail. The author claims the nation as
a “family” would be expected to include
judges. But the article in question goes
on to make the point that one of the judges
was ‘an openly gay Olympic fencer’.
Dacre decides who is inside the family line. Hare
(Commons,
carnival,
space and rave) talks about some remaining
commons and their management
and about fairs and festivals. The author lives in
London and introduces readers to
his streetscape, weekend tourists and goings
on including events and police
action. He sets off into the underground
[subway] to get out for his weekend - heading
for Loughton. London social
figures at the end of the 1800s began the
new push for the Commons. The story of a
family caught lopping off branches of
trees in Epping Forest, now partially falling
within the acres of Woodford
Hall, Loughton, and recently enclosed, grabbed
the attention of social society
London. The family was sentenced to hard
labour and one member died. This was
for doing something allowed in the commons.
London was cluttered and the
effects of limited space
on people was
an issue at the time and a cause developed
against taking away the beauty of
common lands from the people. Among the
socialites, Octavia Hill felt that space
affected the well-being of a person and that
the poor should have places where
they could get space, natural beauty and clean
air. She began the Commons Preservation
Society – now Open Spaces Society. She
supported a legal case with the family
charged in Epping for preserving the rights of
Common Land but that didn’t succeed.
However the City of London took up the issue
and in 1879 parliament passed the
Epping Forest Act protecting the forest from
[further] enclosure and preserving
it for the recreation and enjoyment of the
people. The Society went on to save
Hampstead Heath and Wimbledon from development
and to allow public access to Hampton
Court, Regent’s Park and Kew Gardens. In 1895
Octavia Hill co-founded the
National Trust. The author gets to
Loughton, meets friends, buys
provisions and heads for Epping Forest. They
follow a stream to the main path
and branch onto a faint path that they know to
a spot with signs of their previous
fires – an area surrounded by earthworks - an
Iron Age camp of early tribes. There’s
a brief introduction to “Third Space”
philosophy that the author thinks is like
the Commons. Wood is gathered and a fire
started. Readers are introduced to
magic mushrooms and told they can be found.
The group pass around tea from a flask
as they sit by their fire. Thanks to Octavia
Hill, there are about a million
acres of Common Land. The terms and conditions
and rules and responsibilities are
voted on by users and overseen by a reeve.
Before enclosure, local communities
did that and some areas are still tied to a
community. Modern areas tend to
fall to the internet and are run rather like
Wikipedia. Around the beginning of
Black Lives Matter, Twitter served as a Common
or Third Space to allow marginalized
and their concern to reach the mainstream of
society. The tea brings the
author enhanced perceptions. The author wakes
several months later to shrieks and
screams of a funfair with a background of
thumps from heavy bass. This is in Wychwood,
the old realm of the Anglo-Saxon Hwicce tribe,
and an area popular with the “hunting
tribe” after William the Conqueror forested
120,000 acres as a deer park. A
large part has now been lost; only 0.5%
remains. The Royal Forest including
Wychwood was officially out of bounds to
commoners. The author is there
for “Wilderness” a four-day
music and cultural festival now held in
Cornbury Park. This year 30,000 are
camping and raving within temporary iron
fencing. It is upscale. Use of the area
began as an annual Methodist picnic in 1790
and it became a fair until 1830
when it was cancelled. It was restarted in
1835 and finally ended in 1855 when the
area was sold to the Duke of Marlborough,
Winston Churchill’s grandfather. The
costly festival on the land today follows the
model of cheaper UK festivals
like Secret Garden Party. It has music and
theatre at its heart surrounded by a
number of hairbrained eccentricities to fill
gaps. The author has been given a ticket
to hear author Jay Griffiths read her book Pip
Pip: “… wilderness is a
ferocious intoxication which sweeps over your
senses … here nature has a lean
and violent waking grandeur …” Spontaneous
gatherings
on common land have always been a threat to
the status quo. But Wilderness
has quality performances and excellent
facilities. The author meets
friends and jumps the wall of the
parking lot for a trespass in the ancient
Wychwood – at home in nature as Olivia
Hill would have wished. The author says that
the 1994 Criminal Justice and
Public Order Act ended freedom in the
countryside. This traces back to the
growing use of Stonehenge in the 1980s when
the site belonged to the National Trust
and English Heritage, that obtained an
injunction banning 83 named people. In
1985 a group of hippies drove to set up a
festival at the stones and met a road
block and police in riot gear. The riot, seen
on ITV, sent 8 police and 16 travellers
to hospital. One of the largest mass arrests
followed. The hippies are now allowed
to gather at Stonehenge twice a year to see
the sun rise on the solstice. Toad
(fluidity, transparency, binary opposition) is
about the effect of land
ownership on waterways in England. The author
is in a kayak trip down the river
Kennet that begins in Wiltshire and runs to
Reading where it joins the Thames. It
is declared by anglers non-navigable. The
Thames since 1623 fell under a
Navigation Act. Of the 42,700 miles of river
in England there is right of
access to only 1,400 miles, 3%. Shore property
rights extend to the centre of
the river, and can be leased to angling
associations – or to organizations
needing to build a bridge to access their
property from the other side. The author’s kayak
slips past the Englefield Estate with
tall iron fences to private fishing ponds. The
leasing of riverside to angling
clubs causes friction with kayakers. Since
there is no means of charging at
every property line, kayaking is a vernacular
sport. Kayakers, like ramblers on
land, are said to interfere with wildlife. But
fish spawning is not affected by
kayaking, rather it is industrial agriculture
that has had the biggest impact
on animal and bird life. In the 50 years since
WWII the destruction of 121,000
kilometers of hedgerows was by landowners –
not ramblers. Approaching
Reading, the kayak passes a string of
eccentric English riverside gardens then a
path with anglers as he nears the
centre. He feels an intruder. Through Reading,
the river bank becomes concrete,
foliage disappears, then comes the grubby zone
of the Oracle shopping centre, barges,
and out into the dizzying width of the river
Thames. A 2004 Master’s
thesis set off a furor by tracing a
right of public access to all rivers 1189 –
1600 CE. The Angling Trust
commissioned its own report from David Hart QC
who found that in order to have
public access 1) the river had to be navigable
and 2) the river had to be used
since ‘time immemorial’. Another argued that
Magna Carta article 33 provided
that rivers were always open access until
privatized – like land and enclosure.
Interestingly, the Kennet Navigation Act 1751
is clear that there is free
passage. Yet there is no sign to this effect!
The author has not trespassed
yet, but he will do so if he plucks a blade of
grass from a shore. Trespassing on
a huge number of properties becomes easy! He
sees teenagers splashing in the
water - and not trespassing. There is a
footpath and the law provides that when
a right of way leads to water the right
continues into it. The Angler’s Trust
has proposed what it calls a
compromise to paddlers. It assumes that common
law gives priority to right of property.
Yet the same common law in Australia is
interpreted to grant a right to
navigate a navigable river, but not to fish.
That is the law in the US, a
bundle of European countries and Scotland. At Henley, the
author paddles past the green lawns
of the long slim Temple Island with its 1771
mock temple fishing lodge that is leased
to the Henley Regatta. The author paddles into
the trees, finds a cove and
beaches the kayak for the night. In the
morning a fog conceals the land. This
is appropriate because the land is invisible
to English tax. Fawley Court Farm,
inspiration for Toad of Toad Hall belongs to a
company in the British Virgin Islands,
BVI. The land of Cherrilow Ltd. is owned in
Jersey. Other lands are owned in
the BVI. The author’s journey continues. The author sees
joggers, a sign he is approaching
suburbia. Without riverside walls, one gets a
rare view into properties whereas
so much about property is hidden. There have
been five attempts to create a
census of land and its use: the Doomsday Book
of 1087, and 4 between 1830 and
1941. The full facts on land and its use are
important. Each town hall in
France has maps of the local land ownership
available. In the US, land
ownership of Montana, for example, is online.
The UK Companies House went
online in 2014 for corporations, but the Land
Registry has still not been
opened up to the public. Private Eye has
worked to create a map of offshore
ownership and also to put the Doomsday Book
online as well as a series of other
useful maps. Interestingly, after 1980,
landowners who wanted to protect their
land from claims of rights of way had to
expose its parameters. From this the anarchist
map makers were able to map ownership bit by
bit. The author is
approaching Windsor Castle and passes
the grand estate of Cliveden, where he stops
on stone steps out of the water to
eat his lunch sandwich. Two keepers appear and
the author attempts conversation,
learns his destination Runnymede is 4 hrs away
and pushes off. He’s never met
an owner in any trespass but the somewhat
fierce approach of gamekeepers seems
to fit tort law. It falls within the civil law
that governs trespass and casts trespass
as an act of aggression. Trespass is the same
whether it’s on a private patio
or in dense woodland on a huge estate. It
creates a defensive paranoia. Many
estates have a sense of seclusion – silence
and emptiness. The river becomes
busier with a variety of life as
Windsor Castle appears and the author passes
Eton College. Few families have
walked the castle’s corridors. As the river
passes Windsor it curves past the back
of the castle. Here is Home Park, former
common land walled to create private
gardens for Queen Victoria. There are signs
warning it is a protected site and
trespass here is a criminal offence. Somewhere
in the park is the Herne Oak
commemorating Herne the Hunter, Berkshire’s
greatest pagan deity. The sun has set
when the author reaches Runnymede, and finds a
small cove on land co-owned by
the National Trust to go onshore to sleep. There is an account
of the 2015 ceremony commemorating
the signing of the Magna Carta taking place
here and behind that place is the
land occupied by the Diggers in 2012. They
were an offshoot of the Occupy movement.
The Diggers built an alternative community
with a meeting hall and gardens for growing
food and stayed until they were evicted and
their site razed. The logic of property
has moved beyond Locke who deemed enclosure of
common land by use and
improvement was only justifiable “so long as
there was enough and as good left
in common”. The author reflects
how people are more complex than
being simply on one or the other side of a
land fence. The land have nots are
criminalized in attempts to use land and the haves
are vilified as if
their personalities were to blame for the
current system of private properties.
Thomas Beckford was the richest man in Europe
on account of the Africans his father
had enslaved, but to the gay community he is a
hero. The 5th Duke of
Portland, a reclusive mole, is regarded as a
benevolent landowner, creating
employment opportunities for the people in his
manor who were living in abject
poverty. This
leads to a meeting of the
author to discuss his issues with his parents’
MP who is a major landowner in
whose estate the author trespassed as a boy.
He goes to an open MP “surgery”
hoping to move from public rights on the river
Kennet, to public rights on rivers,
through public rights, to the value of land,
to the right to roam. After a
polite encounter, but mention of a resource in
the lands, the scene descends to
awkward tension and the MP’s departure
exclaiming that the New Era Estate had
damaged his family and he never wanted to
revisit it. The kayak paddles
under the M25 motorway bridge
where wilderness gives way to lawns then neat
flats. The account ends at the small
D’Oyly Carte Island owned by a Hong Kong
company, populated by guard dogs, and
sporting a Swiss Cottage plus lawns and wild
foliage into the river. Stag
(stories,
rights
and crimes), picks up the story of the Herne
Hunter and its connection
with Hampton Court. The 14th
century tale of Herne is that he saves King
Richard’s life but is wounded by a stag, is
saved by a wizard-poacher but hangs
himself from an Oak in Home Park. He appears
to other hunters and at the wizard’s
instigation leads them on a wild deadly hunt
in the park. He is said to appear
in times of national emergency. The author travels
back to Home Park and the Thames
with his portable kayak, finds a cove and
pushes off alongside Home Park with
Windsor Castle in the background, dating from
1070 and William the Conqueror.
The Queen owns 6.6 billion acres of land
around the world, 12,000 times more
than the runner up. She profits from 1/2
million acres in 3 packages: Duchy of
Lancaster 45,600 acres commercial residential
and agricultural land across
Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire,
Staffordshire, Lincolnshire and a slice of
London; Duchy of Cornwall 130,000 acres across
Cornwall, Devon, Herefordshire,
Somerset and most of the Isles of Scilly; and
the Crown Estate 336,000 acres
fine farmland, 14 retail parks and Regent
Street in London. Lancaster and Cornwall
generated around £20 million tax free annually
each of 2017 and 2018 for the
Queen and Prince Charles respectively. The
Queen takes 15% of the profits – up to
25% at the time of writing for palace
renovations. Windsor Castle and Home Park
are Crown Land. The author paddles
recounting the history of bridges
and ferries onto the now private Home Park –
private only since 1848 and still
used by “ruffians” trespassing in 1850. The
kayak has travelled along a row of
plane trees along the bank to the end of Queen
Elizabeth’s Walk, an avenue of
lime trees leading into the park along which
the Herne’s Oak stands. The oak
features in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Tourists do not come for
authenticity or reality, but for magic – such
as the Herne’s Oak or Juliette’s
balcony! And Herne is a close cousin of the
Green Man or Bacchus or Odin. The
ancient tales of death and rebirth are all
linked to Spring but are also linked
to real local history - the Stag and the Oak
are symbols of Berkshire. The author
is caught up in the magic and wants to touch
the tree – to trespass – but the
fine here is a year in jail, so he puts it off
until dawn. The author turns to
his memory of a retired Sheffield
head teacher known as Gandalf pictured with 5
or 6 friends linking arms around
a lime tree on Rivelin Road, Sheffield.
Arboriculturists stand aside as private
security try to remove them. Gandalf is carted
off in a police van and a
healthy 100-year-old-lime is felled. In 2012 Sheffield
contracted with Amey for highway, pavement
and street lighting renewal for streets. Part
of it required dealing with dangerous
diseased dying or dead trees. These were cut.
Additional work was dealing with trees
that had root systems that disrupted the line
of the kerb or interrupted the passage
of the street. These trees were being cut too
but that should have been last
resort. The contract named 14 alternatives but
these were a cost to Amey in the
contract – cutting was cheaper. An independent
survey by residents found 84% of
trees earmarked for felling were healthy. The
residents mobilized. The company
hired private security, set up fences around
trees called in the police so
blocking the cutting became criminal. The
residents formed a city-wide Sheffield
Tree Action Groups – STAG - and people defied
Amey. In the end STAG won. The issue
became national. And Sheffield citizens earned
the right to have a say in what
happened on their streets. Gandalf was
radicalized – he got to the systemic
roots of the problem. And he went on to help
with a similar problem in Barnsley. Trespass, jumping a
wall into an enclosed space,
breeches the accepted norm that land belongs
to those who own it, not those
around who need it. It questions the castle
that built the wall, the law that
defends it and the elite power that defines
and confines the freedoms of the
wider community. Trespass shines a light on
the unequal rights and power, it
raises questions of communities’ rights in the
land and it questions whether
the existing order is as it should be. A
related example is Extinction Rebellion
that blocks traffic on bridges. The mindlessly
rolling traffic is part of an ongoing
capitalism’s pumping out of gas that is
killing the planet. When a naturally
accepted truth is questioned, it becomes just
another construct with roots in
private interest. The cult of exclusion in
England is fragile because
alternatives surround it. In Nordic, Baltic
and Central European countries the
freedom to roam the countryside and camp is a
common right and in many it is coded
in law. The author gently
leads us into something hidden
throughout the book. He begins telling us that
in Scotland the 2003 Scottish
Land Reform granted rights of access to the
vast majority of the land to
non-motorised activities – walking, camping,
canoeing, etc. Alongside this
right come the responsibilities of the
Scottish Outdoor Access Code. And there
is law against littering and law protecting
the environment. The England and
Wales Countryside Rights of Access that began
in 2000 allows walking on 10% of
the land. Scotland’s code is
reasonable says the author! It protects
private property and personal space – a
dwelling and immediate surroundings.
Internationally this can be up to 150 metres.
In Scotland your camp fire
shouldn’t intrude on the enjoyment of owners
of a house. Finally, we learn that
the author has been following the Scottish
right of access and its code. Although
he has trespassed and enjoyed himself, the
privacy of house and immediate garden
was respected, as were the litter and tidy up
provisions. The author risks
lighting a fire at his camp near Victoria
Bridge at Home Park. He reflects on how the
England and Wales Access might be expanded
and made accessible to more citizens who use
public transportation. Meanwhile,
he notes that similar concepts to England’s
history of land enclosure continue
around the globe in hydroelectric dams, mines,
and oil and gas installations.
There is no international human right to
access land, but ecology now sees
humans as part of nature and the environment. The author
introduces Henry George,1879 author of Progress
and
Poverty, who questioned how there could
be economic and technological
growth with increasing poverty and inequality.
He saw the great inequality in distribution
of wealth as caused by inequality in land
ownership. His thinking was influential
in 1909 and the proposed budget with a wealth
tax that was defeated. The author
sees the various inequality causes as tied to
the land. The author paddles
off next morning. The Herne myth
and the temptation of trespass into Home Park
to touch the Herne oak and risk
the criminal charge create some suspense. The
Land Value Tax returns as an
important part of the response to the role of
land in England’s inequality. Then
again, Labour’s 2019 Land for the Many report
created hysteria. The Crown
Estate represents an easier alternative for
better land management with its open
transparent accounts. Its ownership of the
coastline to 12 miles out has
allowed it to become a leader in renewable
wind energy. And the Crown Lands
contribute to the common purse. In theory they
belong to the monarch, but in
practice belong to the state, giving value to
the citizens. Perhaps these lands
could be added to the Countryside Rights of
Access. After this final proposal,
the crisis passes. Instead of risking a year
in prison, the author takes a few
blades of waterside grass and flowers, a
trespass, and turns back into the
warming morning.