Chapter Twelve

Mass Trespass

12.1 While the Thirlemere Defence Association failed to achieve its aim of saving Lake Thirlemere, it did pave the way for advances elsewhere in the preservation of sites of natural beauty in England. In 1884, just five years after the passing of the Manchester Corporation Waterworks Act, MP James Bryce started a campaign for public access to the countryside by introducing the first freedom to roam bill to parliament in 1884. The bill fails but the campaign had begun.

12.2 The English National Trust was founded on 12 January 1895 – the year after the Thirlemere Aquaduct celebrated its opening, by Octavia Hill (1838–1912), Sir Robert Hunter (1844–1913) and Hardwicke Rawnsley (1851–1920) all of whom had participated in the campaign to save Lake Thirlemere. “It proposed to acquire them itself. Lake District properties were among its earliest purchases, and over the years it accumulated much more Cumbrian territory than the Manchester Corporation ever owned.”   “Preservation of the entire area was an old idea: William Wordsworth had concluded his Guide to the Lakes by calling “the district a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy.” This visionary idea was more than a hundred years ahead of its time.

12.3 During the next few decades, there was a growing appreciation of the great outdoors, the benefits of physical exercise, and the feeling of freedom and of spiritual renewal gained from open-air recreation. It is a response to widespread industrialisation, the expansion of towns and cities and the on-going enclosure of land by landowners for farming or sporting reasons. Not surprisingly, conflicts emerge between landowners and public interest groups as the latter demand greater access to the countryside.

12.4 In 1931 a government inquiry recommended the creation of a 'national park authority' to select areas for national parks. However, no action was taken and public discontent grew, leading to the 1932 Mass Trespasses on Kinder Scout in the Peak District. Five men were imprisoned, but the parks were to be set free.

12.5 In response, groups of leisure activity enthusiasts and nature conservationists, including the Rambler's Association, the Youth Hostels' Association (YHA), the Council for the Preservation for Rural England (CPRE) and the Council for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW) rallied together to lobby the government for measures to protect, and allow access to the countryside, for the benefit of the nation. In 1936, they formed a voluntary sector Standing Committee on National Parks (SCNP) which argues the case for national parks and urges the government to act. The Council for the Protection for Rural England (CPRE) made the film below, which was shown in cinemas during the 1930s.

12.6 Public pressure continued to rise culminating in a 1945 White Paper on National Parks, produced as part of the Labour Party's planned post-war reconstruction. The government set up a committee under Sir Arthur Hobhouse to prepare for national park legislation, whilst the SCNP and Ramblers' Association keep up public pressure for national parks.

12.7 Finally, in 1949, the Labour government passed an Act of Parliament to establish national parks to preserve and enhance their natural beauty and provide recreational opportunities for the public. Lewis Silkin, Minister for Town and Country Planning, describes it as "... the most exciting Act of the post-war Parliament." The “vague and nebulous” ideas and aspirations of the TDA supporters, as RITVO describes them, are now enshrined in English law.

12.8 The first 10 national parks were designated in the decade following the Act, starting with the Peak District in 1951. By the end of the decade the Lake District, Snowdonia, Dartmoor, Pembrokeshire Coast, North York Moors, Yorkshire Dales, Exmoor, Northumberland and Brecon Beacons National Parks had been established.

12.9 In the Lake District, where the entire national park movement had its origins with the vision of one of its most famous citizens, the park owns only a small percentage of the land within its boundaries, but it regulates land use in an attempt to ensure that the area is maintained and developed in accordance with its goals of conservation and recreation. In doing so, according to The English National Trust, the English national trust set the example in preservation to the rest of the world.

12.10 By way of confirming the previous assertion, here is a list of the 10 National Parks in France and their dates of creation:

Vanoise, Savoie (home to Lake Annecy) 1963,
Port-Cro, Var, 1963,
Pyrénées, Hautes-Pyrénées, 1967,
Cévennes, Lozère and Gard, 1970,
Ecrins, Isère, 1973,
Mercantour, Alpes-Maritime 1979,
Guadeloupe, Guadeloupe 1989,
Guiana Amazonia Park, French Guiana, 2007,
Réunion, Réunion 2007,
Calanques, Bouches-du-Rhone 2012

12.11 However, the United States might object to the same assertion, given its own contribution. It has 59 protected areas known as national parks. The first, Yellowstone, was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872. followed by Rock Creek Park (later merged into National Capital Parks), Sequoia and Yosemite in 1890. The Organic Act of 1916 created the National Park Service "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."

12.12 Twenty-seven states have national parks, as do the territories of American Samoa and the United States Virgin Islands. California has the most (nine), followed by Alaska (eight), Utah (five), and Colorado (four). The largest national park is Wrangell–St. Elias in Alaska: at over 8 million acres (32,000 km²). The smallest park is Hot Springs, Arkansas, at less than 6 thousand acres (24 km²). The total area protected by national parks is approximately 51.9 million acres (210,000 km²). The most-visited national park is Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, with over ten million visitors in 2014, followed by Arizona's Grand Canyon, with over 4.7 million. Fourteen national parks are designated World Heritage Sites.

12.13 But even America would acknowledge its debt in the creation of this vast National Park infrastructure to two remarkable men, John Muir, born in Dunbar Scotland in 1838 and William Wordworth born a little further south, in Kendal in 1770.