Skip to main content

FROSTY’S RAMBLINGS High point of Young Communist history   

PETER FROST reminds us of the real story of the Mass Trespass at Kinder Scout in Derbyshire

IT WAS so good to see members of the Young Communist League (YCL) pictured in Monday’s (August 3) Morning Star scaling the heights of Kinder Scout in Derbyshire to celebrate the famous Kinder Trespass 89 years ago. That trespass started the campaign for the rights of ordinary people to enjoy the British countryside.

One reason I am so pleased is that despite some elegant airbrushing of history it was the Young Communist League that organised the original trespass. More specifically, it was a large and active branch of the YCL from Cheetham in Mancester.

At the time most ramblers and hiking groups — mostly middle class — totally opposed such militant actions as proposed by the Manchester Young Communists and their leader Benny Rothman.

This is how today’s Ramblers charity rewrites history on its current website: “Access to the countryside, however, was becoming more of a challenge … In 1931, six regional federations representing walkers from all over Britain joined to create the National Council of Ramblers Federations, a body that could advocate on behalf of walkers’ rights at a national level. 

“During the following year, 400 walkers took part in the landmark Kinder Scout Trespass. Although not all members of the Ramblers Federations were in favour of the trespass, the event added considerable momentum to the campaign for walkers’ rights.”

So that’s all right then. Although respectable ramblers’ organisations wanted nothing to do with the Young Communists’ trespass then, today’s Ramblers are happy to take as much of the credit as they can.

Wikipedia is more truthful: “The mass trespass of Kinder Scout … was an act of wilful trespass by ramblers and members of the Young Communist League, the youth branch of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) … The trespass was largely organised by Benny Rothman secretary of the British Workers’ Sports Federation.”

So let’s see if we can sort out some facts. Rothman was indeed main organiser of the trespass. He was also a leader of Cheetham YCL.

At the time he became the prime organiser of the trespass, Rothman was a 20-year-old apprentice in the motor trade — Jewish by descent, tiny in stature at less than five feet tall but full of fiery argument.

He had the two main commitments in his life. One was the great outdoors, the other left-wing politics. 

In the summer of 1925 he biked to north Wales and the summit of Snowdon. 

“I was the only person up there. It just hit me, that great open view with the sea all around.”

In 1928 a fellow apprentice invited him to one of the Sunday night political debates held in Manchester’s Clarion Cafe.

Here Rothman first met local communists and it wasn’t long before he joined the Young Communist League. 

The YCL and its outdoor organisation, the British Workers’ Sports Federation (BWSF), organised weekend camps in Derbyshire using first world war army tents.

It was around the campfires here that Rothman and many of his young comrades first learned the basics of Marxism. 

They also realised how for centuries the ruling class had stolen the countryside for their own private enjoyment, usually shooting the wildlife.
    
The mass trespass grew out of an earlier incident. London comrades from the BWSF had come to camp in Derbyshire. Rothman used his local knowledge to lead them on a walk. The group were set upon by a group of gamekeepers. 

“It was not at all unusual for ramblers to get very, very badly beaten by them,” Rothman explained to the Londoners, “and of course, if you are working class there is nothing you can do about it. Back at the camp we decided that if, instead of six or seven, there’d been 40 or 50 of us they wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

The Kinder Scout Mass Trespass took place shortly afterwards, on April 24 1932, it followed a rally at the quarry at Hayfield. 

Many of those present were members of Cheetham YCL. The rally had been advertised in the Daily Worker (forerunner of the Morning Star).

A couple of hundred police were on the scene. Rothman had to step in when the advertised speaker was frightened away.  

He challenged the official rambling movement for its inactivity, insisting that if concessions were to be won, it would need direct action. 
 
With a cry of “follow me, comrades!” he led the 500 Young Communists and supporters onto Kinder Scout — Rothman knew only too well that they were all trespassing.

Singing and laughing, the trespassers scrambled up towards the plateau. Here they met up with comrades from Sheffield. This group had set off that morning, crossing Kinder from Edale.

On the summit the mood changed dramatically. Waiting for them were the Duke of Devonshire’s gamekeepers armed with sticks. Protecting the keepers were the police.

It all took off when one drunken gamekeeper sprained his ankle as he attacked a trespasser. Other gamekeepers weighed in with heavy sticks. The police defended the gamekeepers and five trespassers, including Rothman, were arrested.

They were brought to trial. Rothman had a previous conviction — he had been jailed earlier for chalking slogans welcoming the Daily Worker when it was launched in 1930.

All the arrested were remanded to be tried at Derby assizes, where the carefully selected jury consisted of two brigadier generals, three colonels, two majors, three captains and two aldermen. 

The judge drew attention to the fact that three of the defendants were obviously Jewish. 

Five of the accused were found guilty and were jailed for between two and four months. Rothman received the longest sentence.

The arrest and subsequent imprisonment unleashed a huge wave of public support. Previously other bodies like the Ramblers and Holiday Fellowship had strongly opposed militant action and the trespass. Now they claimed they had supported militant action all along.

The harshness of the sentences was headline news in local and national newspapers, resulting in the issue gaining public attention and sympathy. 

This led, just a few weeks’ later — with the convicted trespassers still in jail — to more than 10,000 ramblers, the largest number in history, taking part in an access rally in the Winnats Pass, near Castleton. 

The pressure for greater countryside access grew and grew. It would never again be stopped.

In 1949 came the first legislation of its kind — the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act — which established Britain’s first national park in the Peaks. This led directly to the Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) legislation. 

Coming out of Leicester jail, Rothman moved to Burnley to help workers organise an important textile strike. 

When that was crushed by violent police action, he returned to Manchester where he remained active in both communist and outdoor politics. He campaigned against the 1933 Bill to outlaw wild camping.

However, darker clouds were on the horizon. Manchester’s large Jewish community was a focus for Sir Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts. 

When Mosley held a rally at Belle Vue, Rothman was violently manhandled out of the hall.

Rothman took many jobs in engineering, including at AV Roe's aircraft factory and at Metropolitan Vickers in Trafford Park. These jobs often resulted in political victimisation and the sack.

Rothman volunteered as an ambulance driver for the International Brigade in the Spanish civil war. 

He was turned down for the army in 1939 as engineering was a reserved occupation. 

When in 1979, Maggie Thatcher started her multifaceted attack on the working class, attacks on countryside access were among them. 

Rothman’s role in winning concessions to the water privatisation Bill cannot be exaggerated.    

Rothman remained a communist, trade union activist, conservationist, campaigner and lifelong supporter of the Daily Worker and the Morning Star until his death, aged 90, in 2002.

Another key figure in the trespass was Ewan McColl, communist, actor and folk-singer. He was YCL press officer for the trespass. 

His song, Manchester Rambler, written to celebrate the trespass, has become an anthem for all those demanding more and better access to the countryside. It is still being sung today:

I’m a rambler, I’m a rambler, From Manchester way.
I get all my pleasure the wild moorland way.
I may be a wage slave on Monday,
…but I am a free man on Sunday.

Those of us who care deeply about the British countryside and the ability of ordinary folk to enjoy it owe a huge debt of gratitude to those brave trespassers and the Young Communists that led them. That fight must continue today as the YCL demonstrated just last weekend. 

OWNED BY OUR READERS

We're a reader-owned co-operative, which means you can become part of the paper too by buying shares in the People’s Press Printing Society.

 

 

Become a supporter

Fighting fund

You've Raised:£ 13,288
We need:£ 4,712
3 Days remaining
Donate today