Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit

[Charlie]

If it wasn't for walking, I wouldn't be here.

I suppose everybody could say that in a general sense, but my parents met on anti-Oswald Mosley protest march.

A few years earlier, in 1932, my father had taken part in the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass along with several hundred others who were defending the public's right to walk in the Peak District where landowners were trying to block long-used paths. When the police came to break up the protest, 6' 4" Tona Gillett (aged 20) was picked out among six so-called ring-leaders arrested and charged with assault and affray. Refusing to pay his fine, he spent some weeks in Leicester Prison until his father over-ruled him and paid to get him out.

Each Easter for four or five years in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I took part in the Aldermaston March, in protest against the UK's decision to manufacture nuclear weapons, entailing a four-day walk from the site of the town's atomic bomb factory to Trafalgar Square.

Each of these incidents shows up in Rebecca Solnit's fascinating book, Wanderlust, in which she approaches the theme of walking from many different angles - what it means for mankind to walk on its hindlegs, how towns are designed, how poems are written, how walking is an essential aspect of how we conceive ourselves, and how we use walking to make a point.

The San Francisco-based writer is expert in many fields, and she weaves her knowledge and insights into a fascinating series of essays.

Published in 2001 by Verso Books, London

www.versobooks.com

[howard male]

Fascinating.

My parents didn't meet on a walk, and weren't in any way, shape, or form, politically active. But they were physically active and spent much of their 'courting days' on long walks in the Lake District. So I could say that walking at least laid much of the groundwork for my being here today - to tap out this non-anecdote!

[NormanD]

There's at least one song about the 1932 mass trespass. I lifted the following from the Mudcat:

The Manchester Rambler - Ewan MacColl

I've been over Snowdon, I've slept upon Crowdon
I've camped by the Waynestones as well
I've sunbathed on Kinder, been burned to a cinder
And many more things I can tell
My rucksack has oft been me pillow
The heather has oft been me bed
And sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead

Chorus: I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler from Manchester way
I get all me pleasure the hard moorland way
I may be a wageslave on Monday
But I am a free man on Sunday

The day was just ending and I was descending
Down Grinesbrook just by Upper Tor
When a voice cried "Hey you" in the way keepers do
He'd the worst face that ever I saw
The things that he said were unpleasant
In the teeth of his fury I said
"Sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead"

He called me a louse and said "Think of the grouse"
Well I thought, but I still couldn't see
Why all Kinder Scout and the moors roundabout
Couldn't take both the poor grouse and me
He said "All this land is my master's"
At that I stood shaking my head
No man has the right to own mountains
Any more than the deep ocean bed

I once loved a maid, a spot welder by trade
She was fair as the rowan in bloom
And the bloom of her eye watched the blue Moreland sky
I wooed her from April to June
On the day that we should have been married
I went for a ramble instead
For sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead

So I'll walk where I will over mountain and hill
And I'll lie where the bracken is deep
I belong to the mountains, the clear running fountains
Where the grey rocks lie ragged and steep
I've seen the white hare in the gullys
And the curlew fly high overhead
And sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead.

The note adds:
"One of the earliest of MacColl's songs, written in the early 1930s, this is widely believed to be a traditional folksong. You can still hear walkers sing it in the pubs on rambles. It was written in 1932 for the mass trespass over Kinder Scout, Derbyshire, when 3000 unarmed walkers and hikers faced gamekeepers with clubs and police with truncheons. Many of the ramblers went to prison for their action. A plaque in the Edale Tourist Information office celebrates both the trespass and this song"

English roots, Charlie. I'm sure you're proud.

norman

[NormanD]

A few years earlier, in 1932, my father had taken part in the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass along with several hundred others who were defending the public's right to walk in the Peak District where landowners were trying to block long-used paths. When the police came to break up the protest, 6' 4" Tona Gillett (aged 20) was picked out among six so-called ring-leaders arrested and charged with assault and affray. Refusing to pay his fine, he spent some weeks in Leicester Prison until his father over-ruled him and paid to get him out.

And it was 75 years ago this week.....

From the Guardian archive
Mass trespass on Kinder Scout

· Battle with keepers
· Police detain six men
(From our Special Correspondent)
Monday April 25, 1932 Guardian Unlimited

Four or five hundred ramblers, mostly from Manchester, trespassed in mass on Kinder Scout to-day. They fought a brief but vigorous hand-to-hand struggle with a number of keepers specially enrolled for the occasion. This they won with ease, and then marched to Ashop Head, where they held a meeting before returning in triumph to Hayfield. Their triumph was short-lived, for there the police met them, halted them, combed their ranks for suspects, and detained five men. Another man had been detained earlier in the day.

For a week past Hayfield has been looking forward with anxiety to to-day's events. Last Sunday members of the British Workers Sports Federation, which has no connection at all with the Ramblers' Federation, distributed handbills among Hayfield's usual Sunday population of ramblers urging them to "take action to open up the fine country at present denied us."

County Police Called In

This morning chalked notices on the roads, and leaflets distributed at the station, urged ramblers to meet on the Recreation Ground at two o'clock for a meeting before the much advertised mass trespass. Forewarned is forearmed, and the Hayfield Parish Council at its meeting on Tuesday had taken steps to stop this meeting. Numbers of Derbyshire county police had been called in, and special new copies of the by-laws, one of which prohibits meetings there, had lavishly been posted in the Recreation Ground. The Deputy Chief Constable of Derbyshire and Superintendents McDonald and Else came to see that this regulation was observed, and Mr. Herbert Bradshaw, the clerk of the Parish Council, was there to read the by-law publicly if the ramblers attempted to make speeches.

They thought better of it, and punctually at two o'clock the four hundred or more ramblers who had gathered there set off for Kinder reservoir and Kinder scout. As they marched they sang. They sang the "Red Flag" and the "International."

By the time we got to Nab Brow we saw our first gamekeepers dotted about on the slopes below Sandy Heys on the other side of William Clough. In a few moments the advance guard-men only, the women were kept behind -dropped down to the stream and started to climb the other side. I followed. As soon as we came to the top of the first steep bit we met the keepers. There followed a very brief parley, after which a fight started-nobody quite knew how. It was not an even struggle. There were only eight keepers, while from first to last forty or more ramblers took part in the scuffle. The keepers had sticks, while the ramblers fought mainly with their hands, though two keepers were disarmed and their sticks turned against them.

Keeper Injured

Other ramblers took belts off and used them, while one spectator at least was hit by a stone. There will be plenty of bruises carefully nursed in Gorton and other parts of Manchester to-night, but no-one was at all seriously hurt except one keeper, Mr. E Beaver, who was knocked unconscious and damaged his ankle. He was helped back to the road and taken by car to Hayfield and to Stockport Infirmary. He was able to return home to-night after receiving treatment. After the fight the police chiefs, who had accompanied the mass trespassers, left them alone to their great though premature relief. The fight over, we continued up-hill, passing on the way a police inspector bringing down one rambler, who was subsequently detained at Hayfield Police Station.

Soon we turned to the left and continued along the hillside towards Ashop Head, the summit of the public footpath from Hayfield to the Snake Inn on the Glossop-Sheffield road. Before we regained the footpath a halt was made for tea, and the Manchester contingent was joined by a party of about 30 from Sheffield, who had marched from Hope over Jacob's Ladder, from the top of which they had watched the battle with the keepers. The trespassers were urged not to leave any litter about, and to their credit it must be said they were particularly neat in this matter. On Ashop Head itself a victory meeting was held, and the leader who at an earlier stage had asked us to trespass in spite of all danger now congratulated us on having trespassed so successfully. We were warned that some ramblers might be unfortunate enough to be fined, and for their future benefit the hat was passed around.

The March Back

This done we made our way back to Hayfield, keeping religiously to the footpath this time. Near the Stockport Corporation Water Works we met the police once more. One policeman made a move as if to detain one of the leaders, but he immediately took to his heels and was closely followed by a large number of ramblers, who so crowded the way that the policeman could not have got near him if that had indeed been his intention.

At the first beginnings of the village the ramblers were met by a police inspector in a "baby" car. At his suggestion the ramblers formed up into column and marched into Hayfield, still over 200 strong, singing triumphantly, the police car leading the procession. It was their last happy moment. When they got properly into the village they were halted by the police. Still they suspected no ill, and it was not until police officers, accompanied by a keeper, began to walk through their ranks that they realised they had been caught. Five men were taken to the police station and detained. The rest of the now doleful procession was carefully shepherded through Hayfield while, as the church bells rang for Evensong, the jubilant villagers crowded every door and window to watch the police triumph.

[HughBarker]

I thought Wanderlust was a terrific book - I like the way she brought together all the different kinds of walking, from solitary flaneurs to rural hacks to mass protests, and made some kind of sense of it all as a basic human need. Also, the history of how walking came to be a romantic or leisure activity was something I'd never really thought about. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it.

[Charlie]

In today's Guardian, a report from the Manchester Guardian, 76 years ago:

-----------------------------------------------------

Derby, Thursday. The hearing of charges of riotous assembly and assault against six Manchester youths in connection with the "mass trespass" on Kinder Scout on April 24 was concluded before Mr. Justice Acton at Derby Assizes to-day.

The defendants were: John Thomas Anderson (21), cotton piecer, The Quadrant, Cemetery Road, Droylsden; Bernard Rothman, storekeeper, Granton Street, Cheetham; Julius Clyne,(23), machinist, Elizabeth Street, Cheetham; Harry Mendel (22), machinist, Townley Street, Cheetham; Anthony Walter Gillett (19), student, Banbury Road, Oxford; and David Nussbaum (19), labourer, Red Bank, Cheetham. Rothman, Clyne, and Nussbaum were also charged with incitement.

Mendel was found not guilty and discharged. The other five defendants were convicted of riot, Rothman of inciting to riot and assault, Nussbaum of inciting to cause an unlawful assembly, and Anderson of occasioning bodily harm. Rothman was sentenced to four months, Nussbaum to three months, and Clyne and Gillett to two months' imprisonment, and Anderson to six months' imprisonment.

Only two defendants, Anderson and Gillett, who were represented by Mr. Winning, went into the witness-box. Anderson asserted that he neither hit nor struggled with [a keeper]. Six or seven keepers armed with sticks, he said, rushed down the hill to resist a crowd of 300 ramblers.

Gillett said that while he approved of the aims of the British Workers' Sports Federation he did not favour violence, and not advocate it on this occasion or hear it advocated by any of the other defendants. On his mentioning that he was a Quaker, Mr. Jenkins (prosecuting) inquired: "Did you quake on this occasion?" Gillett replied "No."

From the dock Rothman explained that he was the Lancashire secretary of the federation, [which sought] to induce ramblers to join in direct action to force landlords to concede access to beauty spots.

"The demonstration was peaceful from the start," he claimed, "and neither by action nor words I did urge the crowd to violence."

In [his] summing-up the judge said liberties could not be exercised in such a way as to amount to riot or unlawful assembly or to disturb the public peace and strike terror and alarm into the hearts of the King's subjects.

[In 1982 Benny Rothman unveiled a commemorative plaque near the Kinder's Scout plateau to honour a protest which helped eventually bring a legal "right to roam".]

[David Flower]

Anthony Walter Gillett (19), student, Banbury Road, Oxford

so your dad was a student at Oxford then? A long way from the north-east otherwise. Was this a first in your family? (no pun intended)

[Charlie]

Anthony Walter Gillett (19), student, Banbury Road, Oxford

so your dad was a student at Oxford then? A long way from the north-east otherwise. Was this a first in your family? (no pun intended)

Technically, he was a student 'of' Oxford, ie his parents lived there, but he was actually at Manchester University at the time, hence his proximity to the Peak District in Derbyshire where all this action transpired.

[Just for the record: later, as a married adult, he joined ICI who 'posted' him to Tees-side, which is how I came to be brought up there. Your instinct was right, it would have been unusual for a Tees-side boy to have gone to Oxford or Cambridge in his time; and still was thirty years later, except for the boys whose parents sent them to 'public' (ie, private) schools]