The right to roam

by Ben Soton

Contested Commons – A History of Protest and Public Space in England by Katrina Navickas; Reaktion Books, London 2025; 384 pp. Hbk £20

The pages of the New Worker are full of articles and stories about protests be they progressive reactionary or anything in between.  But what of the places, usually outdoors spaces, where protests take place? 
Sometimes these places are the subject of protest themselves.  In Contested Commons, Katrina Navickas provides the story of these places.  Her book covers the history of public spaces and their role in popular protest.
A book like this should be welcomed at a time when the right to protest is under attack. 
First of all it challenges the “myth of the commons” – the idea that at some point in time we all had access to common land which was later on stolen by the landowners. The problem is that no such Golden Age existed.  Although enclosures of common land did become widespread from the Tudor times, there is little actual evidence that any such Golden Age ever existed. Another theme is the concept of Enclosure versus Commoning.  For instance in her section covering the anti-roads protests of the 1990s, Navickas sees the road builders as enforcing enclosure and the anti-road protesters as defending the ancient commons.     
The book is written in two halves.  The first concentrating on the rural man-made landscape; with chapters including Commons, Waste and Verges.  This section begins with examples of enclosures of common land in the 18th Century as well as the mass Kinder Scout Trespass protest in the 1930s and the Right to Roam.
The second part of the book covers urban protest with chapters named after street furniture such as, Railings, Pavements and Barricades. Railings is a reference to the protests during the  Second Reform Act of 1867, (which enfranchised urban, male property owners) where protesters used the railings surrounding Hyde Park to defend themselves from attack by the police. Barricades is a reference to the Battle of Cable Street when the people took to the streets to beat back the Mosleyites on the streets of London’s East End in 1936.  Later chapters cover events such as the Battle of the Bean Field in 1985; an event that took place during the miners’ strike which the author makes no mention of.  And it ends with coverage of the New Age Travellers of the 1990s, which she refers to simply as New Travellers.  
In a recent article in the Morning Star Ian Sinclair points out that “92 per cent of land and 97 per cent of rivers in England” are not legally accessible.  Subsequently, a book that covers issues of land ownership and common land is to be recommended.  Whilst with the legitimate right to protest under attack it is reminding us of the long history of protest in the country.