Later
...nclosures, the landowners’ main interest was sheep rearing; today, as in 1932, it is the business of grouse shooting, the sport of a tiny section of wealthy people. 1932 was a grim year in Britain. Unemployment had reached peak proportions and particularly hard hit were the big industrial areas of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Manchester, Salford, Sheffield and the dozens of smaller towns and villages in the counties were deserts of bricks, mortar and cobblestones. Living conditions were very bad with bug ridden and verminous1 houses. Not many had gardens, there were very few trees, shrubs or flowers in the soul-destroying waste. The only way to enjoy a little fresh air and sunshine was to escape to the countryside. Even though public parks existed in towns, these were no substitute for the real thing. Rambling and cycling were mass sports. Cars were too expensive for most people. The railway companies competed for the custom of ramblers. Rambling clubs and federations and associations together with railway companies organised special rail tickets for walkers … Town dwellers lived for weekends when they could go camping in the country. They scrambled up the steep bank off William Clough and on to Kinder Scout. Hundreds of ramblers on the Mass Trespass shook hands and congratulated each other. They had overcome their first hurdle. They were standing on forbidden land, tantalizing glimpses of which they had seen from time to time in their rambles along the well-trodden paths around Kinder. Today, anybody with a good pair of legs and lungs, and the will to do so, can go to Kinder Scout at most times of the year, apart from a few days during the shooting season, and on rare occasions when drought conditions and fire risks cause the moorland to be closed. In 1932 this was not possible. The fifteen square miles of Kinder, although encircled by paths, was not crossed by a single public footpath. Kinder itself contained spots of outstanding interest and rugged beauty and was a challenge to every rambler. It is not remarkable that the Mass Trespass of 1932 happened. The trespassers were attacking the injustice of the Enclosure Acts, imposed on the public a century earlier, which confiscated common land and handed it in parcels to landowners. At the time of the original ...