The Wild Rover: A Blistering Journey Along Britain’s Footpaths by Mike Parker Page A

stick-wielding keepers, one of whom was slightly injured in a fall. The trespassers broke through and made it to the top of the Clough, on to the hallowed summit plateau of Kinder Scout. There they met a contingent from Sheffield who had walked unimpeded up the other side from Edale station, whereupon a short victory meeting was held, before the Manchester contingent returned to Hayfield. The police and keepers were waiting, and six ringleaders, Benny Rothman included, were picked off and arrested. At Derby Assizes three months later, five of them were imprisoned for a few months apiece, by a jury that comprised of two brigadier-generals, three colonels, two majors, three captains and two aldermen.
    Had they not been arrested and imprisoned, the mass trespass would probably have been remembered only by Ramblers’ Association archivists and local historians. But Kinder proved to be the inevitable flashpoint in a smouldering fire of resentment and agitation that had been building up since the end of the First World War. As is hinted on the famous Ellis Martin covers of OS maps of the time, this was the first great age of the rambler. Walking clubs were everywhere, from groups of well-to-do middle managers tramping the lanes and hills of the Home Counties to the great working-class mass movements of the north, furiously campaigning for access to their nearest open spaces. Inevitably, there was more mutual suspicion dividing the two than any sense of comradeship uniting them. No surprise, perhaps, for this huge chasm was not just circumstantial, but deeply ideological as well, and gave the Establishment press plenty of ammunition against the trespassers. In the Derby court case, the prosecution claimed that demonstrators had sung ‘The Red Flag’ (probably true) and chanted ‘Down with the landowners and ruling classes!’ and ‘Up with the workers!’ (probably not) as they clambered on to the moor. Counsel noted that a book by Lenin was found in the home of one of the defendants, to which the judge, Mr Justice Acton, responded. ‘Isn’t that the Russian gentleman?’ In a foretaste of much that has happened since, youthful naïveté and exuberance were portrayed as something much darker and more disreputable. And the case pandered to darker instincts still, for the fact that three of the six defendants had demonstrably Jewish names did not go unnoticed.
    Read any number of accounts of that distant April day, including first-hand ones, and they differ quite markedly, even in basic facts such as the number of participants. Benny Rothman claimed 600–800. The reporter from the Manchester Guardian , who accompanied the protest, stated it to be in the region of 400–500. The Daily Express went with 500 too, while the prosecution case at the trial in Derby put it at between 150 and 200.
    In the north-west, I’d heard a fair few disdainful things said about the Kinder trespass, and Benny Rothman in particular. He had a terrific, unabashed flair for promotion, self-promotion included, a tendency guaranteed to upset those of more oatmeal tastes, if only because of their secret envy of his showmanship and shamelessness. As he got older, though, he was treated increasingly as a holy relic and, almost until his death in 2002, was regularly wheeled out to inject a little Kinder stardust into ramblers’ meetings, rallies and photo-calls. And as I followed his footsteps up past the reservoir and into the William Clough, I looked up at the snow-smeared black pillows of the summit plateau, and any antagonism dissolved. Off to my right, the spray of water coming over Kinder Downfall was catching the wind and being blown upwards like smoke. An intoxicating jolt of freedom surged through my veins, and all I could do was thank him.
    I thanked him and his comrades again when I reached the top. Despite the wide-eyed warnings of some locals, it had been a relatively simple ascent, following an easy track up the side of a peaty brook. The