THE RIGHT TO ROAMERS

 

2023: A CROW'S EYE (RE)VIEW

Dear Roamers, As the cosmic scale tips from darkness towards light, it’s time to look back over another wild year with the Right to Roam campaign.    YEAR IN REVIEW   Dartmoor It’s an irony of campaigning that the biggest breakthroughs are often the result of apparent defeats. So it proved right from the start of 2023, with the court victory of a landowner called Alexander Darwall who was successful in revoking the long-standing right to wild camp in Dartmoor – the last place in England it had been lawfully possible.    From that sad, selfish act an exuberant, spirited movement was formed. The issue caught the public imagination like nothing else the campaign has witnessed and exploded Right to Roam into the mainstream. Our inbox was stuffed with press requests. Political parties hurried to make new access commitments. Rallies outside the Royal Courts of Justice and in Princetown, organised in tandem with our partner organisation, The Stars Are For Everyone, culminated in a giant protest on Stall Moor (owned by Mr Darwall), where a giant avatar spirit of  Dartmoor called Old Crockern was summoned to the high moor’s defence.   In a feat of logistical legerity still evident in our team’s receded hairlines, we managed (just about) to pull it all together with a week’s notice. Thousands turned up to the tiny village of Cornwood to ensure Old Crockern’s message was heard.    In July we heard the result of an appeal against the court decision: we had won. The right to sleep under the stars on Dartmoor was restored, and with it an emboldened movement for wider land access in England.    Borderlands But simply defending our existing rights has never been the campaign’s focus: we want the cake, not the crumbs! We spent the rest of the year upping the pressure on politicians to make good on their commitments to introduce bold, comprehensive access reform to England (and now Wales too) – and developing the policy proposals and background research which demonstrate how it can be done.  To highlight the possibilities, in September we danced the hokey cokey along the Anglo-Scottish border to highlight the absurd difference in access law between the two nations, which meant one foot could be accused of ‘trespass’ while the other lawfully exercised its right of access. You can see coverage of the event by Channel 4 here and the Guardian here. To back our case we also conducted our first polling with YouGov, which demonstrated that every age group, region and political affiliation in the country supports England adopting a similar approach to Scotland by overwhelming majorities. And undertook research showing how limited in extent existing access provision is (we’ve since found out it’s even worse than we thought: more on that next year).    Local Groups   This year has not just been about what we’ve up to, it’s about what you have all been doing too. The issues and opportunities of access are both national and highly localised, so in 2023 we’ve sought to decentralise the campaign, building up the confidence and capacity of local groups around the country to start taking action on their own. Now, groups around the country are challenging restrictions on the right to swim (teaming up with our friends at the Outdoor Swimming Society), venturing forth on vast swathes of excluded land and successfully overturning fresh attempts to restrict access to local people – a phenomenon we term ‘micro-enclosures’ (of which we’re seeing more and more around the country). In 2024 we’ll be exploring how we can better integrate all this amazing energy into the national campaign and ensure the fight for the right to roam is as connected as it is broad.        UP NEXT YEAR   Wild Service    Somehow amid all the frenzy this year we managed to… write a book! Wild Service will be published this April by Bloomsbury. We’re really excited to share it with you (and will hopefully be lining up some pre-order discounts for our community…). Right to Roam is blessed to have a bunch of talented writers (and a cracking illustrator) within its team - highlighted when both Guy and Amy won the Wainwright Prize in their respective categories this year! - and across the wider campaign family. So trust us when we say: it’s a gorgeous piece of work.    Wild Service is our vision of what access is for: to restore a culture of connection and care for nature which atrophied as we came to be separated from the land. We tell the story of how that disconnection happened, and how we can make it right again. It features accounts of the wild service already happening across the country and how we turn these enterprising acts of grassroots ecology into a collective culture which can nurture our spirits and turn the tide of our ecological crisis.  We’ve already been planting the seed of this idea this year with our Love Your River event on the Yorkshire Derwent and a series of Right to Healing workshops held in collaboration with Peaks of Colour, as well as a ‘Landscapes of Health’ event held in a private woodland just outside Birmingham. Next year we hope to nurse those shoots so they can burst through the soil…    Save the Date: February 24th We’ll be kicking off a fresh run of national campaign events on February 24th, where we’ll revisit Dartmoor to highlight one of the more absurd ways our current access model is unfit for purpose.    Want to join? Keep February 24th free in your diary. More details to come in the new year: it’s going to be a good’un.    HAPPY WITH OUR WORK? HELP KEEP US GOING! Everything we’ve achieved this year has been made possible by the donations you provide to keep the campaign running. We work as hard as we can to make those contributions count.     Next year is going to be hugely important for the campaign as we enter a General Election season: especially as we’re already seeing the likely future government begin to backslide on previous access commitments under pressure from the landowning lobby.    Our opponents include some of the wealthiest people in Britain. They’re used to getting their way and contribute millions of pounds to lobbyists to ensure they get it. People power is one of the few means we have to even the fight.   We know times are tough but if you can afford to support us, please consider it. We estimate we need around 500 new subscribers to make the campaign sustainable and we’re about 30% of the way there.    You can donate by clicking the button below or by visiting: righttoroam.org.uk/donate   What finer gift this Christmas than the chance of a true right to roam?