Access to land has never been more important than it is today.
We have an obesity crisis we have a mental health crisis,
we have a desperate need to connect with nature,
and yet old archaic laws are preventing us from this.
The public are forbidden from 92% of the land in England,
and 97% of the rivers and canals.
Whereas just over the river Tweed in Scotland,
the situation could not be more different.
People still own the land but the right of the public to access it supersedes,
the right of the landowner to exclude them.
The Conservatives are now set under Priti Patel to criminalise trespass,
the ostensible reason for the criminalisation of trespass,
is to target the travelling community who have for centuries been
discriminated against because of their nomadic lifestyle,
something which the laws of property just can't get a grip on.
This is something that we should all be very concerned about,
because this will criminalise wild campers, make criminals of any
rambler, paddle boarder, kayaker, who steps over the line,
into land that they don't own.
The idea that we're not allowed to go somewhere has become so normalised,
that we seem to have forgotten what we've lost.
We've lost that inner childhood desire to go full pelt into an open field,
and let our imagination and our enthusiasm take us where it will.
Just after lockdown the first time that I was allowed out with my kayak,
I went to the River Loddon in Hampshire and was yanked out of the river,
verbally by the Duke of Wellington's men.
It was one of those situations where it was a:
'repeated threat of reasonable force'
Two hours on the train down from London 3 minutes on the river,
and then about half an hour of an aggressive dialogue,
which eventually persuaded me there was nothing that i could do.
I was causing no harm but the laws of property once again sent me on my way.
The issue of class is of course prevalent in land ownership,
and specifically with the Duke he owns seven and a half miles of this river
and the bailiff said: 'You the public gave it to the Duke of Wellington
following the Napoleonic wars'
Of course whilst the duke was given the land the soldiers that actually
fought in the Napoleonic wars tens of thousands of men were left
to come home to England and given absolutely nothing,
in return for their service except for the 1824 vagrancy act
where they were all rounded up and put in the workhouse.
The issue of land ownership doesn't just affect our ability to access nature,
there are over 200,000 empty homes across the whole of England,
and yet our politicians and the landowners are constantly
telling us that this country is full.
This country is full of empty space and empty homes.
It's just the logic of private property that forbids these houses to be used,
by the people that desperately need them.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in London,
where we have a crisis of homelessness and yet luxury apartments
are bought and kept empty for the purposes of land banking.
Even the places and the spaces owned by councils have been gradually sold off,
what this means is that private individuals or the companies
have the right to turf us off their land regardless of what we're doing
if it's something that they don't agree with.
Most ostensibly of course this affects protest,
the Occupy movement outside St Paul's were camped out on land
owned by Mitsubishi enterprises they were able to use the basic law
of trespass to remove them from the land and silence their protest.
Too many times as the issue of land ownership being conflated,
with people's personal and private sanctuaries,
the issue is not opening up your back garden
to the general public to stroll through.
The issue is the vast amount of open spaces the vast amount of blue space,
that we have in England that can give so much in terms of mental
and physical health benefits to the public.
We're not looking for a revolution,
we're not looking for an upheaval of the state,
what we want is for the public to see
the open spaces of England as the Natural Health Service.
We need a situation where access to nature
is not seen as a crime but as a human right.
Access to land is one of the most pressing issues in England today,
but access to information is just as vital.
What's vital is to have these conversations and these
conversations enter the mainstream.
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