“From The Diggers to Extinction Rebellion”

The essays and resources on this website are being entirely revised. What you have here was developed for the 90th Anniversary of the 1932 Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout. The essays were put together very quickly as a general introduction to some complex historical, political and cultural issues which have a bearing on our understanding and appreciation of the Trespass. They were the starting point for a symposium on the Mass Trespass organised by the Working Class Movement Library in April 2022. The symposium re-visited the Communist Party politics which informed the Mass Trespass and explored the resonance of those politics in the 2020s in relation to current access issues / campaigns – urban and rural – and the wider Red-Green politics of the Climate Justice movement.

By all means make such use as you wish of the reflective essays and the information about the symposium. In the fullness of time I hope to be in a position to make available a richer, more diverse and more critical set of writings and resources which will inform both our historical understanding of the Mass Trespass and our evaluation of its resonance for the politics of access to land / landscapes in the context of the political imperatives of the Climate Emergency.   

Julian Batsleer. February 2024