Access Denied
by John Stuart Clark

Off-roaders who have been following the debate and the ongoing opposition to the Criminal (In)Justice Act will have noticed a historical note creeping into the arguments. Pressure groups and commentators have started to slip in references to something called the 'enclosures'. At the risk of bringing back memories of fusty old classrooms and senile history teachers, it is time to explain.

As late as the 1800s, much of the central Midlands, north and southwest England, and the mountains of Scotland and Wales were still vast, unfenced wildernesses known as 'common lands'. Smaller ill-defined areas existed on local moors, around and within villages, and in pockets of poor-quality land between the large estates of the landed gentry. While there were plenty of 'rights of common' covering who could do what and where on the ground, the land was open country.

Between 1790 and 1810, tens of thousands of acres were gradually broken down into fields, 'enclosed' and allotted to landowners and farmers in proportion to their current holding or long-standing rights of common. In the process, thousands of miles of medieval roads and byways that meandered across the landscape had to be rerouted into new rights of way running between, rather than across, the now 'privatised' fields. Many of these roads were mapped with a ruler (because surveyors found it easier to work in straight lines) and changed direction at a high point (which made for easy alignment on a sighting post).

A classic example of this is Ashwell Street in Cambridgeshire. While carving a course as straight as a Roman road and having its roots in the prehistoric Icknield Way, the present line of the track owes everything to the 18th century enclosures and its width still conforms to the 30-40 foot standard of the period. But, in gaining a splendid new though-route from Ashwell to Melbourn, the people of Cambridgeshire lost a complex lattice of footpaths and byways to landlords whose ancestors now intensively farm the area simply to bolster the European grain mountain and their profits.

As with today's privatisation of public space, profit was always the driving force behind the enclosure movement. Prior to the 18th century, common land was the poor man's heritage for ages past. In the scratch-as-scratch-can economy of the agricultural worker, these open areas provided access to fuel, gleaning, grazing and what were called 'potato patches', allotments where the poor of the parish could supplement meagre larders and eke out a certain amount of independence.

Of course, there had always been land disputes, but prior to a parliament of landowners and lawyers legislating in favour of themselves, the collective memory of country customs and a peasant's family rights still held legitimate away. Amongst a population that was illiterate, inarticulate and yet to be franchised, traditional grazing rights handed down from generation to generation were legitimatised by the community's say-so, rather than the law's. But when it came to caving up common land, 'enclosurists' decided what was whose according to strict rules of property drawn up by lawyers.

Inevitably, as the fences went up so did the level of violence. In Cranbourne Chase, for example, gamekeepers were attacked when the new 'owner' of this sprawling forest ordered his staff to extract a tax (the 'cheminage') from anybody travelling through during the deer-hunting season. In the Chilterns, peasants rioted when the Lord of Pendley Manor erected fences across Wiggington Moor and simply called it his own. Across the length and breadth of the country, the dispossessed took up hay rakes and torches to defend their unwritten rights.

But there was a hidden agenda to the privatisation of common land. Thousands of peasants lived and travelled freely in these parts of the country, erecting hovels, tilling a garden, maybe working a season for the local squire before moving on. In their eagerness to have a settled population of cheap labourers totally dependent on the landowning class, MPs spread the lie that common land was a 'breeding ground for barbarians, nursing a mischievous race of people'. The ideology of social control was now added to the self-interest of the rich and powerful.

It should be no surprise if much of this sounds familiar. Two hundred years on and the battle for access is still being fought against the twin evils of social control and landed self-interest. On April 24th, 1932, Benny Rothman joined thousands of ramblers and rough-stuffers in the famous mass trespass if Kinder Scout. Back then there was no such offence as criminal trespass, so Benny served four months at His Majesty's pleasure for riotous assembly and violence (against property).

More recently, parliament, still top-heavy with landowners and lawyers, created the Criminal Justice Act and the charge of aggravated trespass.

According to Terry Howard of the Sheffield Campaign for Access to the Moors (SCAM), 80% of what in the 18th century was called common land has been stripped of all public rights of way. Martin Gillibrand of the Moorlands Association equates these vast tracts to somebody's back garden, ludicrously arguing like for like. "I'm sure you wouldn't be too happy if an army of mountain bikers went charging across your lawn." Of course, what is really at stake in these stolen wildernesses are the small fortunes generated from hunting, shooting and fishing rights.

Where access does exist, the battle is over the right to roam and it is 'mountain bikers' who are being targeted as the 20th century barbarians. Forget all the rhetoric about soil erosion and irresponsible riding. The hidden agenda behind laying stone tracks throughout The New Forest, for example, is our old friend, social control. So, what's new?

© John Stuart Clark
Cycling & Mountain Biking Today, August 1995