The latest episode of my Patagonia Europe Type 2 podcast with illustrator, graphic novelist, political cartoonist and author Nick Hayes was a real thought- provoker. If you haven’t heard it yet, listen here:
Our conversation took in everything from Englishness, westerns, Wind in the Willows, storytelling, how art has the power to save the world, and why Prince Harry is really an anti-monarchy sleeper agent.
We also discussed the Right to Roam campaign (Nick is a founder), specifically case involving landowner, hedge fund manager (and Conservative party donor) Alexander Darwall, who argued that the right to wild camp on our moors never existed, and at the time of writing has been successful in having the right to wild camp on Dartmoor removed.
In this Open Thread, open to free and paid subscribers, Nick is going to answer questions about our conversation and the Right to Roam campaign.
Massive thanks to my friends at Yeti who have offered a brand new soft cooler bag as a prize for the best question in the comments! Nick will pick a winner once the Thread is finished. (This contest is only open to paid subscribers, as will all future Open Thread contests featuring prizes from my pals at Stance, Db, Patagonia, Danner and Goodrays).
Hi Nick. I really enjoyed the podcast and your refreshing approach to access/environmental activism.
The Right To Roam campaign frequently refers to the access rights in Scotland as being a good model for England. I wondered what discussions the campaign has had in Scotland and from this what ideas have been built into the campaign for Right To Roam in England?
From an outside perspective it seems to differ in that the campaign to gain a Right To Roam in Scotland looked to turn the traditional "freedom" to take access to most land and water into a "right". Compared to the goal of the right to roam campaign to extend the CROW Act.
hey calum, yeh, we're in touch with various luminaries from the scottish movement, not least alistair macintosh, who wrote soil and soul, about the community buyout of an island up there, which has become the central bible for the morality of the land movement in england - yr bascially right, scotland looked to turn de facto access into a right, while in england we've been divorced from the land for so long, that even our de facto access has dwindled - so our job is a slightly tougher one!
Hi Nick. Really enjoyed the conversation you guys had on the pod, and now enjoying getting stuck into your book.
I really found the way you talked about ownership and anarchy really interesting - mainly around the visceral reactions we are hard-wired to have around those topics.
I feel there’s a huge gap in mainstream perception of anarchy, and your description in one of your answers below, so my question is how do we go about redefining and reclaiming what those concepts mean, without just scaring people away in a world where nuanced conversation is basically non-existent. As you mentioned with defunding the police, is that just something to chip away at?
hey man, god - i dont know - the anarchism i believe in is more colin ward style than kropotkin - small local acts of solidarity, perochial local supportive moves to rach out and build connections - lockdown was full of them, organised local schemes to provide hot meals to older people - but the moment lockdown is over, most of these disintegrate (using thw word at its most literal - we dis-integrated) - i wonder lot why why disaster and crisis bring out this urge in people more than stasis, and i always end up with advertising, which is so deeply seeped into our pores that we become like fish in water, unable to distinguish water (thats an old joke im ruining) - bascially, the end point, as i see it, is that capitalism relies on solipcism, (because youre worth it) and actually, community does for free what capitalism wants you to buy - on a practical level, the best goddamn publication out there, of anarchism, is DOPE magazine - not only does it feature really pithy articles (and great illustration) about anarchism, but it functions just like the big issue - giving homeless people a wad, and they keep the money - so it really is practical anarchism x
Thanks. Kinda like a small 'a' anarchism then, rather than the big A?
Just had a look at Dope actually – it looks fantastic and I'll def try and get a copy. Interestingly I have to admit I was a little dismissive when you talked about that kind of folk art being a way of communicating, (weird seeing as I'm a designer), but just comparing this mag to the Big Issue, it looks like it's trying to bring a fresh energy to that form of media. Anyway, thanks, appreciate the answer.
Hey Nick, big supporter of land access legislation here! Watching the Dartmoor discourse unfold North of the boarder, I was a little bit twitchy about some of the language used by the R2R campaign on instagram when the decision was made.
"Right to Roam goes to war" was the post. Understandably tensions and emotions where high, but that statement sat quiet uncomfortable for me and if I'm honest I think came across a bit tone deaf when you consider the amount of people who literally have to go to war every day to battle for resources to live and ultimately defend lands for common good (I'm think the Amazon specifically here) - it also seemed to strike a really different tone from what ultimately had to be a really collaborative caucus coming out of a new Holyrood and remain persistent against the challenges foot and mouth to finally get it over the line.
I'm guessing my question is, do you think direct and confrontational language is useful in the movement? Do you think it's useful to have the R2R communicated in this way? Or have a section of the community fight fire with fire? (which I guess you touched on in the podcast around matching aggression)
I'm genuinely interested around the language, it's not supposed to be a dig, but coming from a place of curiosity as someone who often wrestles with campaign communication.
hey lauren - bluntly, i agree - i raised that exact point with the others, behind the scenes - it was a real jarring edge to the rest of the tone of our campaign - we have tried to keep the comms wry not angry, not hate-fueled, but love filled, which i gotta say, has been tough when dealing with the patriarchal, unhugged world of the shooting lobby, hunt brigade and the like - anyway, i wrote an email saying to everyone that war was just a patriarchal ego play of hegemonic power systems destroying mainly working class male lives, and nothing to take so lightly - especially in the context of people that actually are at war, or have been at war - it was not nice as well to see an image of mine, covered in red, behind it - so i voiced that to our group, and some agreed, and some said it was a necessary move to get people activated - the guy that wrote it is one of my best pals on this campaign, and we do the comms stuff together - hes a gorgeous human being, i love him - and we still disagree about the point in question - he says it was necessary, i asked him to watch the recent movie called the square, where a young media PR team pull a not dissimilar stunt - but the reality of behind the scenes actvism is this - we are all, mostly, unpaid, and have been working right to roam as our main jobs, and sneaking paid jobs in the evenings and weekends - we have a huge responsibility to this work, because we know how much is at stake, but we're frazzled - on top of that, he may be right - i dont know, maybe it did give the sudden jolt to the status quo that was needed - activism like this needs to be horizontal power structured, and just because me and guy shrubsole founded the campaign, doesnt give us the right to veto the ideas of others - we have to go on the group decision - and simply because of timings, there was no chance to meet about it - basically, ive never personally been so enmeshed in the complicated front line of social tensions than in activism, and even more so when dealing with issues of land - its so linked to notions of belonging, ownership, property, privacy, community, history etc and its been sometimes unnerving to see what rage exists in england about land issues - its like its a sore wound that we've all forgotten about, gone septic, and suddenly we're prodding it again - so i recognise that we have a responsibility not to fire things up, and id say 95% of the time, we succeed - however, sometimes, like with the esme boggart campaign,. where an old aristocrat is no-fault evicting mates of mine from their home of 26 years, you just have to tell the fuckers to get fucked - thanks for your question x
Hi Nick, I really connect with a lot of the same ideas you talk about in the podcast and I very much look forward to reading your book. I live up here in the highlands of Scotland where land ownership is also a highly contested debate and even although in Scotland we do have access to the land as a people we are still very disconnected from it and from out natural selves as well. There are some great ideas from the author Silvia Federici that I have used to help me reflect on the themes of connection to self, others and nature, especially from her book Caliban and the Witch, Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation. The main point of the book being that as we lost access to the commons and to nature we also lost access to a relationship with ourselves and our bodies. Coupled with what I like to think of as the 'old' wisdom of the highlands that can still be found in the Gaelic culture and traditions, including the stories and names of of places and parts of the landscape, have led me to the position that thinking about healing the land and healing ourselves and helping each other from the perspective of a healer can go some way to helping start the conversation about change for the better. I am interested to hear how you think the perspective of the 'archetype' of the 'healer' might work alongside the 'archetype' of the 'warrior' to support the conversation around land use and land ownership all over the UK and how our very own indigenous myths, Scottish, English, Welsh, Irish might also help in this space?
as you will see from some of my other comments, im not a fan of the warrior archetype - there is no need or use in fighting the patriarchal machismo of land ownership with top down, masculine aggression - the answer lies in horizontal power, wit, puckishness, a kind of slippery intelligence that male dominated models find it very hard to know what to do with - check out our esme boggart campaign on twittewr, or my instagram account - creating a witch as the personification of an entire community, which was essentially what she was, and why she got persecuted by top down power systems - this next year, we will be asking people to raise the myths of the land froom the earth where they lay buried and forgotten, to remember a connection with the land that is older than any parliament passed act or law - the new law, we'll be saying, is folk law
Just throwing this one out there. I believe a lot of our issues are that we are still coupled with, and governed by some strange Victorian values system, which we’ve been unable to properly address as a society. And it’s this weird victorianess (is that a word?) that fucks us up, especially when it comes to land ownership and accessibility. How do we look at natures value, not in terms of “I own therefore I grant you access” to “we own or have, rights to access as a community, in a safe and reasonable manner?
hi chrsitian - i think yr right, the victorians have a lot to answer for, not least industrialisation and the apex of colonisation - i think the principle of exclusive ownership dates back to before victoria, but for me, its the myth making they did around a pure sense of englishness, the notion of supremacy too, which spills over into our sense of ownership, as the centre of the globe - but these insidious notions were only ever narratvies, concocted stories, and so our job is to provide new ones - this has only ever been a cultural revolution, the right to roam, p[resentiong people with an alternative story of belonging, rather than ownership, and we got some of the best english writers on our sdie, nicola chester, amy jane beer, jon moses, rob macfarlane, and our job is to provide stronger, healthier stories
Hi Nick. I’ve been following your work for a while now – your illustrations are beautiful and the R2R campaigns are so well researched, organised and promoted. Like you, I believe that time spent in the outdoors is unequally accessible to people in so many ways. My questions for you are tricky, but I’m not asking them to be provocative or petulant. They’re the things I can’t stop thinking about in relation to how you’re framing your arguments. (And which are different from questions I might have for R2R.)
Mostly, I wanted to ask a bit about how you’re arguing for access. I can see another question in this thread raise broader questions of colonisation and must say that’s a question I had too. We could never run a campaign like this one in Australia, because the debates about land rights, injustice and disconnection run so much deeper than a right for the public to go camping and a campaign against the wealthy locking up access. [I’m a White, Settler woman, for the record.] As we know from increasing awareness of histories of slavery, debates about colonisation aren’t separate from contemporary land access debates and infrastructure in the UK. In terms of R2R, are there discussions about how English folk can reckon with the effects of colonisation in the UK, in the ways we are (however slowly) in the remnants of the Commonwealth? For example, I’ve just been reading about how many trees wooden ships used in their construction, which was a volume that led to much, and unsustainable, deforestation; and the infrastructure of the phones and computers we use for protest and campaigning are interrupting the night sky of people across the world. (I’m thinking of this amazing piece of scholarship btw, which I think you'd find super interesting: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0962629818304086)
In a linked question, I’ve not read The Trespassers Companion, but I have read (most of) The Book of Trespass (which is very well written and cleverly structured!) and I got pretty frustrated with the absence of women in the book, which is why I’ve not finished it. On one sleepless night I counted the references to women in the index, and the number was limited number. The only other women-related entries I found with more page references than the Flowers sisters (who got a couple) were to “rape” and “witches and witchcraft”. That those two entries are the most prolific in relation to women and access to the countryside speaks both to a) questions of histories of safety and access and b) the ridiculing of women for engaging in the very forms of art, magick, and storytelling you’re drawing on today.
Anyway, this is tooooo long - sorry. I want to be clear that asking these questions doesn’t mean I don’t think your work is important. Of course I support the idea of dismantling systems of private ownership by super wealthy folk who block access by the general public and I think R2R is fighting for something super valuable and it's absolutely reasonable to ask for public access to these lands, woods, waters, and air to be restored. But since it's a Q&A...
hey rebecca - very up for answering your questions, but i couldnt find them. other than this, are there discussions about how English folk can reckon with the effects of colonisation in the UK, in the ways we are (however slowly) in the remnants of the Commonwealth? but in that, im not sure what yr asking me? with regards to references to women in the book of trespass, im sorry you got frustrated - land has been exceedingly patriarchal in its dominion, a point i was trying to make in chapter 6, spider - whereby it was owned by men, through primogeniture, and written about by men, through law and philosophy - the second book, trespassers companion was conceived as the antidote to the book of trespass, the what-to-do about it, and you will read a lot more first hand experiences of women in that - also, the right to roam campaign was started by two white men, and now has expanded to include much more diversity at the helm, including in terms of gender - let me know more specifically what youd like me answer, and i'll be glad to
Fair enough. I had hoped you would be able to see to what I’m trying to work through to ask. I’m dancing around things because your argument to make the commons available to everyone seems simple, but as always there is much complexity.
How land is managed in England (and beyond) has long been patriarchal, imperial, and unjust but this never stopped diverse people from having deep relationships to land, caring for land, or from being part of land rights debates. That’s what I was trying to get at regarding the absence of women writers in your book.
I think Lesley’s, Craig’s and Nick’s questions about different or shifting paradigms/ideologies/worldviews are getting at the same question as me in different (much clearer) ways. History is a big part of how you are framing rights, which feels sort of bucolic. But the past wasn’t great for everyone so how does this movement imagine a different kind of future? Is this a social and environmental justice movement as well a legal one?
hey, i think yr absolutely right, framing stuff historically does risk a sepia tinged nostalgia, and actually, we've avoided that for the campaign, talking mainly about health benefits and protection of nature - our analogy for inclusivity is that of the wild flower commons, full of diversity, queerness, mutability and fecundity - contrast this with the ploughed lines of a monoculture field, or a canalised river, everything meant to fit into its owners vision - not sure how far you got thru the book, but the hare chapter talks a fair bit about marginality and edward soja's concept of spatial politics - our next bookm, released as a group, will be centering these marginalised voices, race, class, gender, and borrowing indiginous wisdom from around the globe to set out the way forward - and yes, right to roam has always been more of a social justice movement for us, rather than grabbing new places for wealthy middle class people to walk with ski poles and has morphed very quickly into an environmental justice campaign too, highlighting the devastation of nature behind the walls that exclude us, and arguing for a closer bond between communities and nature in order that we might begin to viscerally care about the loss oof biodiviersity
What worries me about the Dartmoor situation is that all the decisions are made by people who have 0 investment or interest in the local community or the local culture. Those that brought the case aren’t local and it’s the high courts decision that ended the right to roam. Without sounding like some yokel, how do we ensure that the law is on the side of the community and natures interest? Right now it feels like the institutions and business (not all I know) that are there to protect and build community around nature, are either ring fencing it for themselves or destroying it! Thanks to the amazing work, mostly by volunteers we have some amazing stewardship going on, but how do we scale these efforts?
hi chrstian, check out The Stars are for Everyone - the dartmoor protest was organised entirely by local people and supported by right to roam - i agree, tho, that the new fad of rewilding has taken on the orthodoxy of fencing off land from the public to protect it, whilst further divorcing us from lived experience of nature - we belive in re-commoning, ie, investing local communities with the power to make decisions over their local landscape, and not allowing someone like alexander darwell to buy up a load of land, release pheasants onto it, to make a bit of petty cash, who then end up eating rare beetles from the SSSI woodland next door (all true) - access to land is the frist step to communities taking a real interest in the protection of its nature
The Dartmoor case has moved in pretty quickly since you chatted to Matt. How are you feeling about it now? How was the response to the events R2R organised in the wake of the court decision?
hi steve, the truth is that we couldnt have constructed a better PR stunt if we tried - suddenly, with the removal of the last vestige of our freedom to sleep out in nature, people across the country have felt what we have long forgotten - the removal of our access rights, and the deep pain that it will cause to be criminalised for doing something we love - when the history books are written, they will present the dartmoor case as the turning point in our campaign, the moment we went mainstream, the moment people woke up to the fact that things used to be so much diofferent, and with a little bit of people power, we can return our communities to where they belong, in a deep, and deeply significant relationship with the outdoor world
Hi Nick . I posted the observations below elsewhere on the site. You may like to respond. Thanks for the thought provoking podcast. I will read your book to better understand your point of view.
Like most people I have had experiences that have shaped my views about access to land and water. Three instances come to mind. Yesterday, my wife and I did a walk through some countryside in central Cornwall. We wandered along in steady "Cornish Sunshine” and came across blocked footpaths and boundary treatments that were clearly installed for the purposes of dissuading even the most ardent walker. We got home sodden , filthy but exhilarated that we conquered the obstacles. Secondly my parents were avid Ramblers for much of their lives, I have proud memories of them confronting land owners that blocked or diverted public rights of way, though at the time I have to admit that as a teenager I cringed. Thirdly in 1990 I found myself in the privileged position to be passing the islands of Namuto and Tavarua in Fiji. I was going to surf some reefs further down because only paying guests could surf the two aforementioned breaks. At the the time I felt resentful that my fellow travellers and I were blocked access to these hallowed places. Since then the Fijian authorities have allowed access to all comers. The reefs in this area were pristine beyond measure when I traveled through and I hope this is still the case. My fear however is that this environment will have been degraded by the largely unintended actions by the increasing flow of visiting surfers. Similarly one only has to look at the degradation of the landscapes in the Lakes and most other national parks for the unintended consequences of mass access.
These three examples demonstrate my promiscuous relationship with attitudes to land and water ownership and access(and possibly echo much of the general public's). Closing in on a significant birthday I feel that I should by now have developed a more cogent response to these totemic issues for mankind. I cannot shake off the impression that Nick is pushing old arguments of the disenfranchised for access rather than asking what can be done for the Environment. If mankind had the time to work through some of this stuff I would not object however we do n’t. Rebecca Olive's ideas requiring people to ask what they can do for land and water seems more viable at this stage.
hi ben, thanks for these insights - yes, its tricky - the main spine of our debate is that without access to anture, how can people be expected to care for it, and further, to protect it - when we were excluded from nature, through enclosure, we were also divorced from our collective responsibility to maintain it - when we had the commons in england, it was everyones duty to upkeep their local nature as a matter of spirituality but also of pragmatism - no one person could destroy woodstocks, because everyone else relied on them for winter, not to mention their children and future generations - the commons were a paradigm of sustainability before the word became used in environmental debates - we are all about redesigning our cultural relationship with nature, so that we can recentre the community in the management and care of flora and fauna, rather than marginalising it from our lives, under the aegis of 'recreation' - we need nature for our own mental and physical health, but also, it needs us to care about it - the truth is, it is not the ramblers devastating our woodlands, or the wild swimmer poisening our rivers - it is the industrialisation of argiculture, the commodification of land that is the real culprit - and so much of this goes on behind the barbed wire and walls, that we cant see it happening - we have become used to parralelling paying for access with the notion of upkeep and stewardship, but we contend that the reverse is true - people must be embedded in nature for us to really sort out the threats to its survival
thanks for your considered response. You will have to bear with us on the trivialities of 'recreational activities', this is a podcast for people who like sliding on wheels and boards down hill. The two points about land use for unsustainable practices such as mono culture and the cultural , spiritual and pragmatic need for peoples contact with nature are powerfully made. However I still wonder if societies can rewind back to pre-enclosure times or will their responses to save our eco-systems have to be paradigm shifting in the way that industrialisation was. Unfortunately I do n't know what this would look like.
Hi Nick and thanks for doing the podcast. While agree with your base sentiments about free access being good for the people (undoubtedly), I can’t help but feel you strayed close to the line of crusty activism and ruling people for the sport of it.
The bit that made me question you was regarding Pippa Middleton. Her family have lived in Upper Bucklebury (Chapel Row more specifically) for a very long time and it’s where she grew up. She hasn’t just landed in some random Berkshire village with a pile of cash and fanciful designs - it’s her home. Now whether she’s evicting a load of deserving people and denying people access to Bucklebury Park Farm is another question and one on which I’m not informed enough to comment.
Anyway, my point being that you would benefit from presenting a better balance of both sides of the argument to maintain credibility. I fully support your cause, but I don’t want you to be undermined by not giving people the whole story. If it’s a solid argument, it’ll stand up on the evidence presented.
I’ve got a copy of your book waiting to be read and I look forward to it! As a Dorset boy, the Drax Estate bit sounds juicy 👍🏼
hi murray, thanks for your criticism, and largely i agree - we need to overstep simplistic them and us partitions in order to create dialogue, and if you read into our campaign, and the stuff we produce officially, it does exactly that - read the conclusion to my book of trespass, which says similar things - however, on a personal note, im several years into this campaign and sometimes get tired of the take-the-higher ground approach - i also grew up in bucklebury, or near enough, and the eviction of many of its residents to make way for a larger swimming pool - how, really, can you represent this as anything other than money trumping community? if you veer into anything like class politics in these debates, you get accused of wealth envy, or class war, but the simple fact of it, is that these biased laws (historically created by landowners in westminster) are destroying communities, and yeh, that makes me really fucking angry, simply because its not fair - if that allows you to dismiss the content of the argument by labelling me as crusty, then id ask you to look into what you really mean by crusty, because its a word that has been politicised by the like of paul dacre and piers morgan to dismiss climate activists or for example, the greenham women, by focusing on their unorthodox dress rather than the content of their points - to conclude, yes, by buying a 15million quid estate, and with those deeds of ownership now owning the right to uproot locals of up to 40 years, is deeply unjust and the requirement to remain calm and balanced is an inidication of how deeply we have absorbed this into our collectvie, national orthodoxy - all the best
Thanks Nick. It absolutely wasn’t meant as pure criticism - I was curious to hear your position and I’m grateful for your response.
As said previously, I don’t debate your cause or the underlying cultural landscape. I also am not dismissing you as crusty. I’m more suggesting that you need to present the whole argument in order to avoid such a label. Nobody wants you being dismissed in the manner you refer to with Greenham.
Either way, thank you again for the properly engaging debate - I’ll be delving into the book with renewed appetite.
Really enjoyed this episode and Nick sounds like he'd be a brilliant guy to natter with and to hang out with. But I was intrigued that Nick called himself an anarchist (twice I think), and not in a jokey self-deprecating way. To most people anarchy sounds like lawlessness and the opposite of stable democracy so I wondered how he squares that circle in the 21st century?
Totally agree that the current system of government and representation doesn’t work for the majority, but is it realistic to be campaigning to change society on a platform of ‘no more rules, we’ll all just play nicely and share equally?’ Or is that unfairly snarky?
hi tim, its not unfairly snarky, its just not an accurate representation of anarchism - its more like the way anarchism is dismissed by mainstream politics, in order to discredit it - it actually doesnt matter much to me what i am, in terms of political labels, but as an example, what you saw after grenfell, food queues and aid distribution by members of the community, sikh, muslim, jewish, christian, non denomenational , when the government literally did nothing - that was anarchism, though no one in the press will ever say so - anarchism is not about no rules, its about horizontal power sharing rather than relying on top down systems to hand out aid, or law and order - concepts such as defund the police, for example, seem incredibly radical at first, until you read into them, and you realise that they make a lot of sense, on a practical level - basically, if you have a visceral reaction to the word anarchism, its worth reading into the substance of it, and then considering where that reaction came from - who constructed it, and to what end?
Great episode team- really enjoyed it- I guess one thing it made me think about was how here in little old NZ we have a strong indigenous culture, and how this has somewhat informed our view of land and land ownership. Add to that the Department of Conservation estate (huge). Wondering if the UK could learn from these other world views?
hi craig - we certainly are learning from indiginous populations - concepts such as kinship rather than ownership, all spelled out in my latest book - maori philosophies especially, notably kaitiakitanga, where people have a responsibility towards nature, most famously in the whanganui river - also first nations of america and canada, with their concept of 'tending the wild' - basically, all these pre colonial ideas that belonging confers stewardship, and that ownership is simply a myth contrived by capitalists seeking to exploit natures reserves - thing is, we had that concept in england too, before enclsoure, and it was called the commons
Oh yes you mentioned that commons / enclosure aspect in the pod, will have to read the book to understand more about it. I guess where my wondering was going surrounds how far a population needs to shift to get to these different views, and that perhaps in places where indigenous world views of land are more prolific, then the general population is already on the journey to an alternative viewpoint to land ownership / use.
Hi Nick. I really enjoyed the podcast and your refreshing approach to access/environmental activism.
The Right To Roam campaign frequently refers to the access rights in Scotland as being a good model for England. I wondered what discussions the campaign has had in Scotland and from this what ideas have been built into the campaign for Right To Roam in England?
From an outside perspective it seems to differ in that the campaign to gain a Right To Roam in Scotland looked to turn the traditional "freedom" to take access to most land and water into a "right". Compared to the goal of the right to roam campaign to extend the CROW Act.
hey calum, yeh, we're in touch with various luminaries from the scottish movement, not least alistair macintosh, who wrote soil and soul, about the community buyout of an island up there, which has become the central bible for the morality of the land movement in england - yr bascially right, scotland looked to turn de facto access into a right, while in england we've been divorced from the land for so long, that even our de facto access has dwindled - so our job is a slightly tougher one!
Hi Nick. Really enjoyed the conversation you guys had on the pod, and now enjoying getting stuck into your book.
I really found the way you talked about ownership and anarchy really interesting - mainly around the visceral reactions we are hard-wired to have around those topics.
I feel there’s a huge gap in mainstream perception of anarchy, and your description in one of your answers below, so my question is how do we go about redefining and reclaiming what those concepts mean, without just scaring people away in a world where nuanced conversation is basically non-existent. As you mentioned with defunding the police, is that just something to chip away at?
hey man, god - i dont know - the anarchism i believe in is more colin ward style than kropotkin - small local acts of solidarity, perochial local supportive moves to rach out and build connections - lockdown was full of them, organised local schemes to provide hot meals to older people - but the moment lockdown is over, most of these disintegrate (using thw word at its most literal - we dis-integrated) - i wonder lot why why disaster and crisis bring out this urge in people more than stasis, and i always end up with advertising, which is so deeply seeped into our pores that we become like fish in water, unable to distinguish water (thats an old joke im ruining) - bascially, the end point, as i see it, is that capitalism relies on solipcism, (because youre worth it) and actually, community does for free what capitalism wants you to buy - on a practical level, the best goddamn publication out there, of anarchism, is DOPE magazine - not only does it feature really pithy articles (and great illustration) about anarchism, but it functions just like the big issue - giving homeless people a wad, and they keep the money - so it really is practical anarchism x
Thanks. Kinda like a small 'a' anarchism then, rather than the big A?
Just had a look at Dope actually – it looks fantastic and I'll def try and get a copy. Interestingly I have to admit I was a little dismissive when you talked about that kind of folk art being a way of communicating, (weird seeing as I'm a designer), but just comparing this mag to the Big Issue, it looks like it's trying to bring a fresh energy to that form of media. Anyway, thanks, appreciate the answer.
Hey Nick, big supporter of land access legislation here! Watching the Dartmoor discourse unfold North of the boarder, I was a little bit twitchy about some of the language used by the R2R campaign on instagram when the decision was made.
"Right to Roam goes to war" was the post. Understandably tensions and emotions where high, but that statement sat quiet uncomfortable for me and if I'm honest I think came across a bit tone deaf when you consider the amount of people who literally have to go to war every day to battle for resources to live and ultimately defend lands for common good (I'm think the Amazon specifically here) - it also seemed to strike a really different tone from what ultimately had to be a really collaborative caucus coming out of a new Holyrood and remain persistent against the challenges foot and mouth to finally get it over the line.
I'm guessing my question is, do you think direct and confrontational language is useful in the movement? Do you think it's useful to have the R2R communicated in this way? Or have a section of the community fight fire with fire? (which I guess you touched on in the podcast around matching aggression)
I'm genuinely interested around the language, it's not supposed to be a dig, but coming from a place of curiosity as someone who often wrestles with campaign communication.
hey lauren - bluntly, i agree - i raised that exact point with the others, behind the scenes - it was a real jarring edge to the rest of the tone of our campaign - we have tried to keep the comms wry not angry, not hate-fueled, but love filled, which i gotta say, has been tough when dealing with the patriarchal, unhugged world of the shooting lobby, hunt brigade and the like - anyway, i wrote an email saying to everyone that war was just a patriarchal ego play of hegemonic power systems destroying mainly working class male lives, and nothing to take so lightly - especially in the context of people that actually are at war, or have been at war - it was not nice as well to see an image of mine, covered in red, behind it - so i voiced that to our group, and some agreed, and some said it was a necessary move to get people activated - the guy that wrote it is one of my best pals on this campaign, and we do the comms stuff together - hes a gorgeous human being, i love him - and we still disagree about the point in question - he says it was necessary, i asked him to watch the recent movie called the square, where a young media PR team pull a not dissimilar stunt - but the reality of behind the scenes actvism is this - we are all, mostly, unpaid, and have been working right to roam as our main jobs, and sneaking paid jobs in the evenings and weekends - we have a huge responsibility to this work, because we know how much is at stake, but we're frazzled - on top of that, he may be right - i dont know, maybe it did give the sudden jolt to the status quo that was needed - activism like this needs to be horizontal power structured, and just because me and guy shrubsole founded the campaign, doesnt give us the right to veto the ideas of others - we have to go on the group decision - and simply because of timings, there was no chance to meet about it - basically, ive never personally been so enmeshed in the complicated front line of social tensions than in activism, and even more so when dealing with issues of land - its so linked to notions of belonging, ownership, property, privacy, community, history etc and its been sometimes unnerving to see what rage exists in england about land issues - its like its a sore wound that we've all forgotten about, gone septic, and suddenly we're prodding it again - so i recognise that we have a responsibility not to fire things up, and id say 95% of the time, we succeed - however, sometimes, like with the esme boggart campaign,. where an old aristocrat is no-fault evicting mates of mine from their home of 26 years, you just have to tell the fuckers to get fucked - thanks for your question x
Hi Nick, I really connect with a lot of the same ideas you talk about in the podcast and I very much look forward to reading your book. I live up here in the highlands of Scotland where land ownership is also a highly contested debate and even although in Scotland we do have access to the land as a people we are still very disconnected from it and from out natural selves as well. There are some great ideas from the author Silvia Federici that I have used to help me reflect on the themes of connection to self, others and nature, especially from her book Caliban and the Witch, Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation. The main point of the book being that as we lost access to the commons and to nature we also lost access to a relationship with ourselves and our bodies. Coupled with what I like to think of as the 'old' wisdom of the highlands that can still be found in the Gaelic culture and traditions, including the stories and names of of places and parts of the landscape, have led me to the position that thinking about healing the land and healing ourselves and helping each other from the perspective of a healer can go some way to helping start the conversation about change for the better. I am interested to hear how you think the perspective of the 'archetype' of the 'healer' might work alongside the 'archetype' of the 'warrior' to support the conversation around land use and land ownership all over the UK and how our very own indigenous myths, Scottish, English, Welsh, Irish might also help in this space?
as you will see from some of my other comments, im not a fan of the warrior archetype - there is no need or use in fighting the patriarchal machismo of land ownership with top down, masculine aggression - the answer lies in horizontal power, wit, puckishness, a kind of slippery intelligence that male dominated models find it very hard to know what to do with - check out our esme boggart campaign on twittewr, or my instagram account - creating a witch as the personification of an entire community, which was essentially what she was, and why she got persecuted by top down power systems - this next year, we will be asking people to raise the myths of the land froom the earth where they lay buried and forgotten, to remember a connection with the land that is older than any parliament passed act or law - the new law, we'll be saying, is folk law
Just throwing this one out there. I believe a lot of our issues are that we are still coupled with, and governed by some strange Victorian values system, which we’ve been unable to properly address as a society. And it’s this weird victorianess (is that a word?) that fucks us up, especially when it comes to land ownership and accessibility. How do we look at natures value, not in terms of “I own therefore I grant you access” to “we own or have, rights to access as a community, in a safe and reasonable manner?
hi chrsitian - i think yr right, the victorians have a lot to answer for, not least industrialisation and the apex of colonisation - i think the principle of exclusive ownership dates back to before victoria, but for me, its the myth making they did around a pure sense of englishness, the notion of supremacy too, which spills over into our sense of ownership, as the centre of the globe - but these insidious notions were only ever narratvies, concocted stories, and so our job is to provide new ones - this has only ever been a cultural revolution, the right to roam, p[resentiong people with an alternative story of belonging, rather than ownership, and we got some of the best english writers on our sdie, nicola chester, amy jane beer, jon moses, rob macfarlane, and our job is to provide stronger, healthier stories
Hi Nick. I’ve been following your work for a while now – your illustrations are beautiful and the R2R campaigns are so well researched, organised and promoted. Like you, I believe that time spent in the outdoors is unequally accessible to people in so many ways. My questions for you are tricky, but I’m not asking them to be provocative or petulant. They’re the things I can’t stop thinking about in relation to how you’re framing your arguments. (And which are different from questions I might have for R2R.)
Mostly, I wanted to ask a bit about how you’re arguing for access. I can see another question in this thread raise broader questions of colonisation and must say that’s a question I had too. We could never run a campaign like this one in Australia, because the debates about land rights, injustice and disconnection run so much deeper than a right for the public to go camping and a campaign against the wealthy locking up access. [I’m a White, Settler woman, for the record.] As we know from increasing awareness of histories of slavery, debates about colonisation aren’t separate from contemporary land access debates and infrastructure in the UK. In terms of R2R, are there discussions about how English folk can reckon with the effects of colonisation in the UK, in the ways we are (however slowly) in the remnants of the Commonwealth? For example, I’ve just been reading about how many trees wooden ships used in their construction, which was a volume that led to much, and unsustainable, deforestation; and the infrastructure of the phones and computers we use for protest and campaigning are interrupting the night sky of people across the world. (I’m thinking of this amazing piece of scholarship btw, which I think you'd find super interesting: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0962629818304086)
In a linked question, I’ve not read The Trespassers Companion, but I have read (most of) The Book of Trespass (which is very well written and cleverly structured!) and I got pretty frustrated with the absence of women in the book, which is why I’ve not finished it. On one sleepless night I counted the references to women in the index, and the number was limited number. The only other women-related entries I found with more page references than the Flowers sisters (who got a couple) were to “rape” and “witches and witchcraft”. That those two entries are the most prolific in relation to women and access to the countryside speaks both to a) questions of histories of safety and access and b) the ridiculing of women for engaging in the very forms of art, magick, and storytelling you’re drawing on today.
Anyway, this is tooooo long - sorry. I want to be clear that asking these questions doesn’t mean I don’t think your work is important. Of course I support the idea of dismantling systems of private ownership by super wealthy folk who block access by the general public and I think R2R is fighting for something super valuable and it's absolutely reasonable to ask for public access to these lands, woods, waters, and air to be restored. But since it's a Q&A...
hey rebecca - very up for answering your questions, but i couldnt find them. other than this, are there discussions about how English folk can reckon with the effects of colonisation in the UK, in the ways we are (however slowly) in the remnants of the Commonwealth? but in that, im not sure what yr asking me? with regards to references to women in the book of trespass, im sorry you got frustrated - land has been exceedingly patriarchal in its dominion, a point i was trying to make in chapter 6, spider - whereby it was owned by men, through primogeniture, and written about by men, through law and philosophy - the second book, trespassers companion was conceived as the antidote to the book of trespass, the what-to-do about it, and you will read a lot more first hand experiences of women in that - also, the right to roam campaign was started by two white men, and now has expanded to include much more diversity at the helm, including in terms of gender - let me know more specifically what youd like me answer, and i'll be glad to
Fair enough. I had hoped you would be able to see to what I’m trying to work through to ask. I’m dancing around things because your argument to make the commons available to everyone seems simple, but as always there is much complexity.
How land is managed in England (and beyond) has long been patriarchal, imperial, and unjust but this never stopped diverse people from having deep relationships to land, caring for land, or from being part of land rights debates. That’s what I was trying to get at regarding the absence of women writers in your book.
I think Lesley’s, Craig’s and Nick’s questions about different or shifting paradigms/ideologies/worldviews are getting at the same question as me in different (much clearer) ways. History is a big part of how you are framing rights, which feels sort of bucolic. But the past wasn’t great for everyone so how does this movement imagine a different kind of future? Is this a social and environmental justice movement as well a legal one?
Anyway, again, toooo long on my part!
hey, i think yr absolutely right, framing stuff historically does risk a sepia tinged nostalgia, and actually, we've avoided that for the campaign, talking mainly about health benefits and protection of nature - our analogy for inclusivity is that of the wild flower commons, full of diversity, queerness, mutability and fecundity - contrast this with the ploughed lines of a monoculture field, or a canalised river, everything meant to fit into its owners vision - not sure how far you got thru the book, but the hare chapter talks a fair bit about marginality and edward soja's concept of spatial politics - our next bookm, released as a group, will be centering these marginalised voices, race, class, gender, and borrowing indiginous wisdom from around the globe to set out the way forward - and yes, right to roam has always been more of a social justice movement for us, rather than grabbing new places for wealthy middle class people to walk with ski poles and has morphed very quickly into an environmental justice campaign too, highlighting the devastation of nature behind the walls that exclude us, and arguing for a closer bond between communities and nature in order that we might begin to viscerally care about the loss oof biodiviersity
What worries me about the Dartmoor situation is that all the decisions are made by people who have 0 investment or interest in the local community or the local culture. Those that brought the case aren’t local and it’s the high courts decision that ended the right to roam. Without sounding like some yokel, how do we ensure that the law is on the side of the community and natures interest? Right now it feels like the institutions and business (not all I know) that are there to protect and build community around nature, are either ring fencing it for themselves or destroying it! Thanks to the amazing work, mostly by volunteers we have some amazing stewardship going on, but how do we scale these efforts?
hi chrstian, check out The Stars are for Everyone - the dartmoor protest was organised entirely by local people and supported by right to roam - i agree, tho, that the new fad of rewilding has taken on the orthodoxy of fencing off land from the public to protect it, whilst further divorcing us from lived experience of nature - we belive in re-commoning, ie, investing local communities with the power to make decisions over their local landscape, and not allowing someone like alexander darwell to buy up a load of land, release pheasants onto it, to make a bit of petty cash, who then end up eating rare beetles from the SSSI woodland next door (all true) - access to land is the frist step to communities taking a real interest in the protection of its nature
The Dartmoor case has moved in pretty quickly since you chatted to Matt. How are you feeling about it now? How was the response to the events R2R organised in the wake of the court decision?
hi steve, the truth is that we couldnt have constructed a better PR stunt if we tried - suddenly, with the removal of the last vestige of our freedom to sleep out in nature, people across the country have felt what we have long forgotten - the removal of our access rights, and the deep pain that it will cause to be criminalised for doing something we love - when the history books are written, they will present the dartmoor case as the turning point in our campaign, the moment we went mainstream, the moment people woke up to the fact that things used to be so much diofferent, and with a little bit of people power, we can return our communities to where they belong, in a deep, and deeply significant relationship with the outdoor world
Hi Nick . I posted the observations below elsewhere on the site. You may like to respond. Thanks for the thought provoking podcast. I will read your book to better understand your point of view.
Like most people I have had experiences that have shaped my views about access to land and water. Three instances come to mind. Yesterday, my wife and I did a walk through some countryside in central Cornwall. We wandered along in steady "Cornish Sunshine” and came across blocked footpaths and boundary treatments that were clearly installed for the purposes of dissuading even the most ardent walker. We got home sodden , filthy but exhilarated that we conquered the obstacles. Secondly my parents were avid Ramblers for much of their lives, I have proud memories of them confronting land owners that blocked or diverted public rights of way, though at the time I have to admit that as a teenager I cringed. Thirdly in 1990 I found myself in the privileged position to be passing the islands of Namuto and Tavarua in Fiji. I was going to surf some reefs further down because only paying guests could surf the two aforementioned breaks. At the the time I felt resentful that my fellow travellers and I were blocked access to these hallowed places. Since then the Fijian authorities have allowed access to all comers. The reefs in this area were pristine beyond measure when I traveled through and I hope this is still the case. My fear however is that this environment will have been degraded by the largely unintended actions by the increasing flow of visiting surfers. Similarly one only has to look at the degradation of the landscapes in the Lakes and most other national parks for the unintended consequences of mass access.
These three examples demonstrate my promiscuous relationship with attitudes to land and water ownership and access(and possibly echo much of the general public's). Closing in on a significant birthday I feel that I should by now have developed a more cogent response to these totemic issues for mankind. I cannot shake off the impression that Nick is pushing old arguments of the disenfranchised for access rather than asking what can be done for the Environment. If mankind had the time to work through some of this stuff I would not object however we do n’t. Rebecca Olive's ideas requiring people to ask what they can do for land and water seems more viable at this stage.
hi ben, thanks for these insights - yes, its tricky - the main spine of our debate is that without access to anture, how can people be expected to care for it, and further, to protect it - when we were excluded from nature, through enclosure, we were also divorced from our collective responsibility to maintain it - when we had the commons in england, it was everyones duty to upkeep their local nature as a matter of spirituality but also of pragmatism - no one person could destroy woodstocks, because everyone else relied on them for winter, not to mention their children and future generations - the commons were a paradigm of sustainability before the word became used in environmental debates - we are all about redesigning our cultural relationship with nature, so that we can recentre the community in the management and care of flora and fauna, rather than marginalising it from our lives, under the aegis of 'recreation' - we need nature for our own mental and physical health, but also, it needs us to care about it - the truth is, it is not the ramblers devastating our woodlands, or the wild swimmer poisening our rivers - it is the industrialisation of argiculture, the commodification of land that is the real culprit - and so much of this goes on behind the barbed wire and walls, that we cant see it happening - we have become used to parralelling paying for access with the notion of upkeep and stewardship, but we contend that the reverse is true - people must be embedded in nature for us to really sort out the threats to its survival
Hi Nick
thanks for your considered response. You will have to bear with us on the trivialities of 'recreational activities', this is a podcast for people who like sliding on wheels and boards down hill. The two points about land use for unsustainable practices such as mono culture and the cultural , spiritual and pragmatic need for peoples contact with nature are powerfully made. However I still wonder if societies can rewind back to pre-enclosure times or will their responses to save our eco-systems have to be paradigm shifting in the way that industrialisation was. Unfortunately I do n't know what this would look like.
I appreciate the time you have taken .
Hi Nick and thanks for doing the podcast. While agree with your base sentiments about free access being good for the people (undoubtedly), I can’t help but feel you strayed close to the line of crusty activism and ruling people for the sport of it.
The bit that made me question you was regarding Pippa Middleton. Her family have lived in Upper Bucklebury (Chapel Row more specifically) for a very long time and it’s where she grew up. She hasn’t just landed in some random Berkshire village with a pile of cash and fanciful designs - it’s her home. Now whether she’s evicting a load of deserving people and denying people access to Bucklebury Park Farm is another question and one on which I’m not informed enough to comment.
Anyway, my point being that you would benefit from presenting a better balance of both sides of the argument to maintain credibility. I fully support your cause, but I don’t want you to be undermined by not giving people the whole story. If it’s a solid argument, it’ll stand up on the evidence presented.
I’ve got a copy of your book waiting to be read and I look forward to it! As a Dorset boy, the Drax Estate bit sounds juicy 👍🏼
hi murray, thanks for your criticism, and largely i agree - we need to overstep simplistic them and us partitions in order to create dialogue, and if you read into our campaign, and the stuff we produce officially, it does exactly that - read the conclusion to my book of trespass, which says similar things - however, on a personal note, im several years into this campaign and sometimes get tired of the take-the-higher ground approach - i also grew up in bucklebury, or near enough, and the eviction of many of its residents to make way for a larger swimming pool - how, really, can you represent this as anything other than money trumping community? if you veer into anything like class politics in these debates, you get accused of wealth envy, or class war, but the simple fact of it, is that these biased laws (historically created by landowners in westminster) are destroying communities, and yeh, that makes me really fucking angry, simply because its not fair - if that allows you to dismiss the content of the argument by labelling me as crusty, then id ask you to look into what you really mean by crusty, because its a word that has been politicised by the like of paul dacre and piers morgan to dismiss climate activists or for example, the greenham women, by focusing on their unorthodox dress rather than the content of their points - to conclude, yes, by buying a 15million quid estate, and with those deeds of ownership now owning the right to uproot locals of up to 40 years, is deeply unjust and the requirement to remain calm and balanced is an inidication of how deeply we have absorbed this into our collectvie, national orthodoxy - all the best
Thanks Nick. It absolutely wasn’t meant as pure criticism - I was curious to hear your position and I’m grateful for your response.
As said previously, I don’t debate your cause or the underlying cultural landscape. I also am not dismissing you as crusty. I’m more suggesting that you need to present the whole argument in order to avoid such a label. Nobody wants you being dismissed in the manner you refer to with Greenham.
Either way, thank you again for the properly engaging debate - I’ll be delving into the book with renewed appetite.
I think this is a fair point. For there to be a resolution, stereotypes have to be dropped on both sides.
Really enjoyed this episode and Nick sounds like he'd be a brilliant guy to natter with and to hang out with. But I was intrigued that Nick called himself an anarchist (twice I think), and not in a jokey self-deprecating way. To most people anarchy sounds like lawlessness and the opposite of stable democracy so I wondered how he squares that circle in the 21st century?
Totally agree that the current system of government and representation doesn’t work for the majority, but is it realistic to be campaigning to change society on a platform of ‘no more rules, we’ll all just play nicely and share equally?’ Or is that unfairly snarky?
hi tim, its not unfairly snarky, its just not an accurate representation of anarchism - its more like the way anarchism is dismissed by mainstream politics, in order to discredit it - it actually doesnt matter much to me what i am, in terms of political labels, but as an example, what you saw after grenfell, food queues and aid distribution by members of the community, sikh, muslim, jewish, christian, non denomenational , when the government literally did nothing - that was anarchism, though no one in the press will ever say so - anarchism is not about no rules, its about horizontal power sharing rather than relying on top down systems to hand out aid, or law and order - concepts such as defund the police, for example, seem incredibly radical at first, until you read into them, and you realise that they make a lot of sense, on a practical level - basically, if you have a visceral reaction to the word anarchism, its worth reading into the substance of it, and then considering where that reaction came from - who constructed it, and to what end?
Thank you Nick, that's a good explanation. As an old punk I guess I should have known that it would smell as sweet by any other name!
Great episode team- really enjoyed it- I guess one thing it made me think about was how here in little old NZ we have a strong indigenous culture, and how this has somewhat informed our view of land and land ownership. Add to that the Department of Conservation estate (huge). Wondering if the UK could learn from these other world views?
hi craig - we certainly are learning from indiginous populations - concepts such as kinship rather than ownership, all spelled out in my latest book - maori philosophies especially, notably kaitiakitanga, where people have a responsibility towards nature, most famously in the whanganui river - also first nations of america and canada, with their concept of 'tending the wild' - basically, all these pre colonial ideas that belonging confers stewardship, and that ownership is simply a myth contrived by capitalists seeking to exploit natures reserves - thing is, we had that concept in england too, before enclsoure, and it was called the commons
Oh yes you mentioned that commons / enclosure aspect in the pod, will have to read the book to understand more about it. I guess where my wondering was going surrounds how far a population needs to shift to get to these different views, and that perhaps in places where indigenous world views of land are more prolific, then the general population is already on the journey to an alternative viewpoint to land ownership / use.