Is There a Right to Roam in England?

"I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler from Manchester way ... I may be a wageslave on Monday But I am a free man on Sunday" —From the 1932 song The Manchester Rambler by the English folk singer Ewan MacColl (1915–89).

The 1932 mass trespass of the Kinder Scout plateau in the Peak District, Derbyshire, was a catalyst in the fight for the public’s right to roam in England on land that had once been common land but enclosed, i.e., stolen and fenced, by centuries of Acts of Parliament for the enrichment of landowners. The direct action on 24 April, organised by the Manchester communist Bernard "Benny" Rothman (1911–2002), involved an estimated 400 ramblers aiming to reach the top of the plateau, then part of a private estate (Hey, 2011). Although turnout numbers on the day are disputed, the arrests of ramblers and the violent response of gamekeepers, employed by the landowner the Duke of Devonshire, highlighted the historical limits of the public right to access rural land for recreation and enjoyment.

The Ramblers’ Association, founded in 1935, continued the campaign for the right to roam, which led to the Labour government’s National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. In April 1951, the Peak District became the first designated national park under the 1949 Act—a fitting tribute to the ramblers of 1932.

Within a decade of the Act, in England, seven National Parks were created -considered by the National Parks Commission as "extensive areas of beautiful and relatively wild country" (quoted in Pelling, 1984, p.113)- with Northumberland (1956) being in the furthest north of the country, and Dartmoor (1951) the most southern. The Lake District, North West England, is the largest of today’s ten National Parks.

This article will discuss the historic campaign for the right to roam in England, beginning in April 1932 with the Kinder Scout trespass. The issue gained new impetus during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions on public gatherings and travel when the increased demand to access open country, designated by the Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act 2000, exposed the limited right of way in England.

Figure 1: A plaque at Bowden Bridge Quarry, Hayfield, Derbyshire, commemorating the mass trespass of Kinder Scout on 24 April 1932 (Floryan, 2007).

The Right to Roam

The sociocultural relationships between humans and the land throughout history—for food, health, and recreation—have shaped the development and well-being of societies (Alexander, 2008; Adam, 2023). While land evokes a strong attachment to nature (Anderson, 2007) and a sense of place, it is ultimately a source of wealth (Okon, 1989; Sténs & Mårald, 2020), a commodity to be bought and sold. In England, land ownership has remained concentrated in the hands of a small elite for centuries (Home, 2009). The right to roam, however, has redefined the bundle of rights—possession, control, exclusion, enjoyment, and disposition (Johnson, 2007)—associated with land ownership, requiring landowners and walkers to balance public access with private interests (Brinkmann, 2022). It ultimately poses the question of who owns the land. Only 8% of the land in England is designated as "open country" by the Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act 2000 (Ares et al., 2023), a legislation which gives the public a legal right to access mapped rural and coastal land on foot. The CRoW Act resulted from a hard-fought campaign led by the Ramblers’ Association for the recognition of access rights. However, the right to roam—unrestricted access to all private land for recreational activity (enjoyment)—remains the English public’s "forbidden fruit" (Ravenscroft & Gilchrist, 2011). While a significant step in curbing exclusion by "allowing more than one party to have rights in a particular piece of land" (Anderson, 2007), since the Act came into force in November 2000, the public is still excluded from 92% of England’s land. The public right to enter the open country is further restricted by the lack of footpaths through surrounding private land, risking prosecution for trespassing or damage.

Exclusion from the land is a core right of private property owners (Grear, 2003), disrupting the relationship between people and place. It is an action that prohibits the rights of others to access and use natural resources (Merrill, 1998; Rodgers, 2019), with wider physical and economic consequences such as social alienation and wealth inequality. By excluding, owners exercise their control over and use of a property (Klick & Parchomovsky, 2017) and thereby "disable human endeavors by controlling entry into a boundary-defined space" (Fennell, 2019, p.525). The right to roam is an endeavour capable of improving health, wellbeing, and knowledge, but lifting restrictions on certain popular outdoor activities, such as horse riding, cycling, and camping, requires long-term government review (DEFRA, 2018) and further excludes sections of the public. In England, centuries of Enclosure Acts gradually transferred millions of acres of common land into private hands by the beginning of the twentieth century, ending the open-field, arable farming system relied on by the many and creating enclosed private property, i.e., the "structural dominance of capitalism" (Ravenscroft & Gilchrist, 2011). The restrictions on public access and land use, justified as preserving resources by the landowners (Mennen, 2023), physically reshaped the English landscape and devastated rural communities and employment (Neeson, 1993). The surplus labour was forced to migrate to the growing cities, accelerated by the Industrial Revolution. A powerful landowning class, or gentry, was further enriched by private control of the natural resources, once accessible to all, of these new enclosures. As such, Mégret (2023) believes roaming is a reconnection to the lost "practices of mobility".

The demand for the right to roam—thereby reclaiming common rights—would evolve into a working-class protest as land ownership became increasingly privatised (Bell, 2020, p.146, quoted in Mégret, 2023; Mennen, 2023), preventing it from being a source of recreation for the populations of England’s polluted industrial centres. The repeated failure at parliamentary reform, beginning in 1884 by the Liberal politician James Bryce MP (1838–1922), culminated in the direct action in April 1932 organised by the communist-influenced British Workers’ Sports Federation (BWSF), of which Benny Rothman was secretary. Although future campaigns would be conducted by the Ramblers’ Association, which opposed the Kinder Scout trespass (Hey, 2011), the right to roam had become politicised. The Rights of Way Act 1932 passed in July 1932, for example, mobilised many interest groups "to challenge the pre-eminence of landowners in decisions over access" (Gregory & Spooner, 2021).

Figure 2: In April 1951, the Peak District, Derbyshire, became the United Kingdom's first national park (Morgan, 2020).

National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949

The Kinder Scout trespass had been the catalyst for rural access rights (Hey, 2011), leading to the Rights of Way Act 1932 and the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. Food shortages during the Second World War (1939–45) prompted the need for sustainably managed land, protected from private development, as a resource for agriculture, reconstruction, and recreation. The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 demonstrated the post-war Labour’s commitment to land and social reform. The 1949 Act, though, would be just one of the Labour government’s landmark policies between 1945 and 1951. It recognised land as a social asset to be governed for the benefit of all, as opposed to the pre-war "economic do-as-they-please anarchy" (Labour Party of Great Britain, 1945, quoted in Waugh, 2024). Indeed, during the second reading of the Bill, the Minister of Town and Country Planning Lewis Silkin (1945–50) extolled the societal importance of National Parks by declaring: "This is not just a Bill. It is a people’s charter. It’s a charter for the open air, for the hikers and ramblers, for everyone who lives to get out in the open air and enjoy the countryside" (Hansard, 31 March 1949 col 1486).

By the end of the Second World War, Labour had abandoned its historic commitment to land nationalisation as winning the peace by addressing longstanding social and economic concerns took precedence. Instead, the management of National Parks would be a collaboration between private and public interests, thereby balancing "private rights, the expectations of the wider community, and a healthy economy" (Butler, 2018, p.318). Private landowners, however, would retain control of their land, which required agreements for access rather than guaranteeing it to the people (Jones & Yamaki, 2015; Mennen, 2023). The creation of National Parks had pre-war origins, beginning in April 1931 with the publication of the Report of the National Park Committee, also known as the Addison Report, after its chairman Christopher Addison (1869–1951). While the document acknowledged the social need for land as an "improvement of recreational facilities for the people" (quoted in Sheail, 2002, p.108), it proposed the land within the parks would still be privately owned, albeit with government oversight and thus established the "primacy of common law, private property rights" (Pontin & Jones, 2023).

The 1949 Act was a disappointment in advancing the right to roam (Jones & Yamaki, 2015; Pearlman, 2016; Hoyle, 2016), but it laid the foundations for public access to the open country and frameworks for environmental protection in England (Butler, 2018; Ogden-Jones, 2023). Today, since the Peak District was designated on 17 April 1951, ten national parks in England cover roughly 11% of the land area. Until the 1990s, the governance and status of National Parks outlined in the 1949 Act remained largely unchanged; the right to roam continued to be a contentious issue for longer.

Figure 3: In March 1949, the Minister of Town and Country Planning Lewis Silkin declared the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 a "people’s charter" (Unknown, 1945).

Labour and the Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act 2000

Following Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979, the right to roam debate was reignited throughout the 1980s as resistance to land access was led by the landowning Moorland Association, formed in 1986, which had government sympathy (Parker, 1996). Thatcher’s drive for a property-owning democracy resulted in 10% of the British land mass transferring from public to private hands by 2018 (Christophers, 2019, quoted in Layard, 2019), with devastating socioeconomic consequences for communities. The right to roam was also affected by local authority oversight as ideologically driven budget cuts affected National Park oversight and maintenance (Charlot, 1991, p.93; Jones & Yamaki, 2015).

By limiting access to recreational activities on foot (walking and hiking, for example) (Brinkmann, 2022) and the extent of public right of way, the right to roam was not resolved by the Labour government’s Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act 2000, the last significant legislation to give statutory right of access in England. Although it modernised the right of way for the public to access designated open country of mountains, moors, downs, and common land, the Right to Roam Campaign has reported that access to these natural assets is possible in just over 100 of England’s 543 constituencies (electoral areas) of the UK Parliament. A significant consequence of the CRoW Act has been the creation of access islands of roughly 2,700 hectares of countryside surrounded by private land and inaccessible by footpaths, hindering the public right of way and leading to unintentional acts of trespass where routes are unclearly signposted. The right to roam, therefore, is considered by Breen et al. (2023) as "a misnomer which is uneven in scope and inclusivity".

Under the left-wing leadership of Jeremy Corbyn (2015–2020), the Labour Party became more supportive of the right to roam. It commissioned an independent report in 2019 titled Land for the Many: Changing the Way Our Fundamental Asset is Used, Owned and Governed (Monbiot et al., 2019) which proposed extending the right to roam to include other natural features on land and water (currently, a paltry 3% of England’s rivers are accessible) to serve the many, not the few—a radical departure from the compromise of past Labour environmental policies.

The right to roam in England is an emotive issue for landowners and the public, which questions the historic ownership of land and resources. Since the bravery of the hundreds who participated in the 1932 Kinder Scout trespass, strong protests and demands for rightful access to 92% of England’s inaccessible open country have highlighted the ingrained socioeconomic inequalities in British society and legislation, since 1949, in favour of England’s major landowners.

Bibliographical references

Adam, A.G. (2023). Systematic review of the changing land to people relationship and

co-evolution of land administration. Heliyon, 9(10), e20637. DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e20637

Alexander, R.M. (2008). Who are we, and what Is the land to Us? [Review of Understories: The Political Life of Forests in New Mexico; The Future City and the Inland Sea: A History of Imaginative Geographies of Lake Superior; This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal, by J. Kosek, E. D. Olmanson, & S. T. Phillips]. American Quarterly, 60(4), 1099–1111. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40068564

Anderson, J.L. (2007). Britain’s right to roam: Redefining the landowner’s bundle of sticks. Georgetown International Environmental Law Review (GIELR), 19(3). Retrieved from https://ssrn.com/abstract=997899

Ares, E., Bolton, P., & Sutherland, N. (2023, May). Debate on Public Access to Nature (CDP 2023/0107). House of Commons Library. Retrieved from https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2023-0107/CDP-2023-0107.pdf

Bell, K. (2020). Working-class environmentalism: An agenda for a just and fair transition to sustainability. Palgrave Macmillan.

Breen, T., Flint, A., Hickman, C., & O'Hara, G. (2023) Whose right to roam? Contesting access to England’s countryside. The Journal of Transport History, 44(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/00225266231174766

Brinkmann, M. (2022). Freedom to Roam. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 22(2). https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v21i2.1365

Butler, T. (2018). An overview of the National Parks system in England & Wales. Revue Juridique de l'Environnement, 2, 317-328. https://doi.org/10.3406/rjenv.2018.7466

Charlot, M. (1991). The greening of Mrs Thatcher. Revue française de civilisation britannique, 6(4). Retrieved from https://crecib.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/monica-charlot-2.pdf

Christophers, B. (2019). The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain. Verso Books.

Department for the Environment & Rural Affairs (DEFRA). (2018, May 27). Landscapes review: National Parks and AONBs. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/designated-landscapes-national-parks-and-aonbs-2018-review

Fennell, L.A. (2019). Property beyond exclusion. William & Mary Law Review, 61(2), 521-572. Retrieved from https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol61/iss2/4

Grear, A. (2003). A tale of the land, the insider, the outsider and human rights (an exploration of some problems and possibilities in the relationship between the English common law property concept, human rights law, and discourses of exclusion and inclusion). Legal Studies, 23(1), 33–65. DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-121X.2003.tb00205.x

Gregory, J. & Spooner, S. (2021). Public rights of way and countryside access in Norfolk 1880–1960. Journal of Historical Geography, 74, 10-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2020.06.009

Hansard HC Deb vol 463 col 1486 (31 March 1949) [Electronic version].

Hey, D. (2011). Kinder Scout and the legend of the mass trespass. The Agricultural History Review, 59(2), 199–216.

Home, R. (2009). Land ownership in the United Kingdom: Trends, preferences and future challenges. Land Use Policy, 26(1), S103-S108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2009.08.013

Hoyle, R.W. (2019). Opposition to the creation of national parks: The case of the Yorkshire Dales. Agricultural History Review, 67(2), 283-314. Retrieved from https://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/67_2_Hoyle.pdf

Johnson, D.R. (2007). Reflections on the bundle of rights. Vermont Law Review, 32(2). Retrieved from https://lawreview.vermontlaw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/johnson2.pdf

Jones, T. & Yamaki, K. (2015). Changing access and conservation mechanisms in the National Parks of England and Wales: A review of five policy milestones. Journal of Forest Economics, 61(3), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.20818/jfe.61.3_1

Klick, J. & Parchomovsky, G. (2017). The value of the right to exclude: An empirical assessment. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 165(4), 917-966. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/106882

Labour Party of Great Britain. (1945). Let Us Face the Future: A Declaration of Labour Policy for the Consideration of the Nation. London.

Layard, A. (2019). Privatising land in England. Journal of Property, Planning and Environmental Law, 11(2), 151-168. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPPEL-03-2019-0009

Mégret, F. (2023). Roaming rights and/as global mobility - Reimagining movement for a nomadic age (MOBILE Working Paper Series, No.26). Copenhagen, Denmark: MOBILE - Center of Excellence for Global Mobility Law, University of Copenhagen. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/fst3a

Mennen, K.M. (2023) One movement, three clusters: The national parks movement in England and Wales, 1929-1949. Contemporary British History, 37(2), 266-300. DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2023.2196409

Merrill, T.W. (1998). Property and the right to exclude. Nebraska Law Review, 77(4). Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nlr/vol77/iss4/7

Monbiot, G., Grey, R., Kenny, T., Macfarlane, L., Powell-Smith, A., Shrubsole, G., & Stratford, B. (2019). Land for the Many: Changing the Way Our Fundamental Asset is Used, owned and Governed. London: Labour Party.

Neeson, J.M. (1993). Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820. Cambridge University Press.

Ogden-Jones, R. (2023). Narrative and story-telling in Darwall & Anor v Dartmoor National Park Authority. Journal of Environmental Law, 35, 437-444. https://doi.org/10.1093/jel/eqad026

Okon, E. (1989). Land law as an instrument of social change. Journal of the Indian Law Institute, 31(2), 194–209. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43951231

Parker, G.P.D. (1996). Citizens' Rights and Private Property Rights in the English Countryside: A Study of Countryside Recreational Access Provision (published PhD thesis). University of Bristol. Retrieved from https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/34495177/361166.pdf

Pearlman, J.J. (2016). Jews and the English countryside: Some notable contributions to conservation, access, and order. Jewish Historical Studies, 48, 200–224. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48733410

Pelling, H. (1984). The Labour Governments, 1945-51. Macmillan Press: London.

Pontin, B. & Jones, J. (2023, June). A Legal Review of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act (1949). Cardiff University. Retrieved from https://www.bluemarinefoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/NMP-LEGAL-REVIEW.pdf

Ravenscroft, N. & Gilchrist, P. (2011). Outdoor Recreation and the Environment. In Bramham, P. & Wagg, S. (Eds.) The New Politics of Leisure and Pleasure. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230299979_4

Rodgers, C. (2019). Towards a taxonomy for public and common property. The Cambridge Law Journal, 78(1), 124–147. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26851018

Sheail, J. (2002). An Environmental History of Twentieth-Century Britain. Palgrave.

Sténs, A. & Mårald, E. (2020). "Forest property rights under attack": Actors, networks and claims about forest ownership in the Swedish press 2014–2017. Forest Policy and Economics, 111, 102038. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2019.102038

Waugh, E. (2024, December 1). The Green Belts of England. Retrieved from https://www.byarcadia.org/post/the-green-belts-of-england

Visual sources