99% Invisible - 448- Katie Mingle's Right to Roam

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

We revisit Katie Mingle's Right to Roam episode as we say goodbyeIn the United Kingdom, the freedom to walk through private land is known as “the right to roam.” The movement to win this right was started in the 1930s by a rebellious group of young people who called themselves “ramblers” and spent their days working in the factories of Manchester, England.Right to Roam

There's a reason why I'm sharing my favorite Katie Mingle story with you, and if you absolutely can't wait to find out that reason, let's give a head 25 minutes or so. But it would be cooler if we just took this walk together. Come on, Rambler. Say it with me. This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. When producer Katie Mingle's dad retired, he began walking.

A lot. He'd always been a walker, but with all the new time on his hands, his walking took on a forest, gumpian, fervor. He started doing these really long, multi-day treks through the countryside. And even though he's American, he mostly preferred to walk in the UK. In fact, over the course of several years, he walked the entire length of Great Britain. And on one of these many trips in 2003. I was walking through this beautiful, rolling hills and wooded area and there were,

there were just literally hundreds and hundreds of pheasants and grouse along this trail and you'd walk along and they would fly up in the air. That's my dad, Jim Mingle. I walked and walked and it got later and later and I realized I couldn't get back to my B&B where I was staying. So I decided I would hitchhike back. Hitchhiking is dangerous, Dad, but go on. I stuck out my thumb and up pulled this Jeep, and I hopped in, and there was this guy sitting there, all dressed in sort of traditional,

tweed outfit. There was a funny cap, and there was a shotgun on the rack in the back, which you you never ever saw in Britain. And we got to talking and he said he was the gamekeeper for Madonna and Guy Richie. My dad had been walking through Madonna's private estate when he was picked up by her gamekeeper. Which is a thing a lot of wealthy landowners have in England, a person who manages the hunting activity on their land. Right, so this gamekeeper drove him back to the village where he was staying and dropped

him off. And no, his story doesn't end with him meeting Madonna. I wish it did too. And I ask about Madonna how he liked this gamekeeper-like working for her. And he said, he loved his job and he thought Madonna was just wonderful. Is your favorite Madonna song, Dad? Oh, I have no idea. I just like the idea of Madonna.

I'm not very good at remembering those kinds of things. Now that we've established that Madonna is wonderful and my dad can't name a single one of her songs, you might be asking yourself as I was. Dad, what were you doing in Madonna's backyard? I was walking most of the time across private property. I was walking from one field to the next climbing over the fence where they are through a gate and going on and this was this was permitted. It's true my dad walked the length of Great Britain and was on private property a lot of the time which is different obviously than the way we do things in the US. If you wanted to walk across this country you'd have to do it on a combination of public trails and roads, and you certainly couldn't cut across Madonna's property.

This right in Britain, to walk through private land, is known colloquially as the Right to Rome, and the movement to win this right was started in the 1930s by a rebellious group of young people dressed in army surplus shorts and hiking boots, carrying canvas and rucksacks and canteens. They called themselves Ramblers. Rambler is one of those quite old English words. I don't know where it came from really, but it means walking or hiking in the countryside. This is Rulie Smith, a Rambler slash journalist

who says his rambling forefathers and mothers were toiling away in the factories of 1930s Manchester. Manchester was a very grimy town, a very dirty, smoky, horrible environment, a product really of the industrial revolution. Outside Manchester was one of the most beautiful parts of England, an area known as the Peak District. So if you can imagine factory workers in Manchester and Sheffield could actually see these inviting mowers from their homes and their workplaces and they weren't allowed to walk on them.

It hadn't always been this way. For hundreds of years, an idea of the commons had existed in England. So the commons, they were an integral part of medieval life for the ordinary villager in England. That's Ken Ilguna's author of this land is Yerland, how we lost the right to Rome and how to take it back. All the land, it was owned by either a king or a lord, but the peasants had very substantial and real rights on these common lands. In this feudal system, kings and lords controlled all the land, and the manor grew enough food to support itself and its tenants. The peasants lived on the land, sometimes without written leases, but with assumed rights

to use it in exchange for various types of service. They could graze their cattle, cut lumber, they could draw water, they could collect peat, they could use it for a whole bunch of purposes. All of that began to change in the 1400s when wool prices rose across Europe. Landowners wanted it on the profits and in order to graze sheep more efficiently, they needed to fence off pastures. And that's when we began to see a period of enclosure. Landowners cleared entire villages of people making them homeless and put up little stone walls

and hedges to mark the boundaries of their property. In a county called Warwickshire, 61 villages were wiped out before the year 1500. Over the years, Parliament created more and more laws to keep people from using what was once common land. It all ramped up in the 1700s. There was nearly 4,000 acts of parliament between 1760 and 1870. That's a sixth of England that went from common lands to enclosed private property, destroying people's livelihoods in way of life. People were so desperate to continue hunting on this once common land that they came at night and covered their faces in soot for extra camouflage. They became known

as the blacks and in 1723 Parliament passed the Black Act. So this Black Act, it created 50 offenses that were punishable by death for people who were accessing this land. Eventually, the death penalty for trespassing was done away with, but the land remained closed to the vast majority of people. In the 1800s, Britain industrialized, and people found themselves indoors all day and unable to find places for recreation. England did not have a national park system at this time, and the trails that people could access were extremely limited.

Still, the people longed to be in the hills. They walked where they could and trespassed where they couldn't. They climbed over fences and tried to stay hidden from the gamekeepers. And all over England, so-called Rambling Club started to form. The Forest Ramblers Club, the Midlands Institute of Ramblers, the Manchester Rambling Club, there were tons of these walking groups in the late 1800s and early 1900s forming to fight for access and walking rights. They oftentimes had socialist sensibilities, but at the heart there was a love for walking

and a belief that it was there right. Access was no longer a matter of survival as it had been in the days when enclosure began. It was about recreation and getting away from the polluted industrial cities. Which brings us back to polluted industrial 1930s Manchester, a rambling club called the British Workers' Sports Federation. The British Workers' Sports Federation? And in this group was a charismatic rambler named Benny Rothman. A stocky little character, a very broad grin and great sense of humour. And a man of the highest principles but he was exceptionally short, he was about

five foot nothing as we say. Really actually got to know Benny later in life. He was a man who I very much looked up to although he was very short. So one day back in 1932, a few people from Benny's group tried to take a walk in the Hills near Manchester in that beautiful mountainous area near the city called the Peak District and they were chased off by a group of gamekeepers and when they got back to their camp Benny Rothman and others said you know if there was enough of us they couldn't stop us. So Benny and the other ramblers came up with an idea. Let's get a huge group together and walk onto this mountain called Kinderskout. Which was the biggest mountain in this peak district.

It was called the Forbidden Mountain. And this area, this was guarded by a whole bunch of gamekeepers. These were intimidating men. I mean, they would use telescopes to identify trespassers from afar. They carried these big sticks or clubs that they would sometimes use on trespassers. The British Workers' Sports Federation did not keep their plans to trespass a secret. They gave an interview to the local paper saying, we feel we cannot any longer submit to being deprived of the beauties of the

countryside for the convenience of the landowners. Wherever we claim we have a just right to go, we shall trespass in mass, and Sunday will be the opening of our campaign." Not everyone was on board. More conservative Rambling groups in the area wrote editorials denouncing their plan, saying it would hurt the cause for expanded access to the countryside. One editorial argued that trespassing was fine, but it should be done alone, or with just one or two people, quietly, neatly, and successfully. The police were well aware of the plans to trespass at Kinderskout and Benny Rothman's role

in all of it, and on the day of the event they tried to serve him with an injunction to keep him from going. The police knew he was coming and he arrived by bicycle and they all expected him to come by train so they were kind of hanging out at the train station. Rothman makes it to the trespass and finds about 400 other people are there too. Mostly young people below the age of 21, a lot of men, but some women too. They're wearing old army tops and multi-colored sweaters and khaki shorts and worn work boots. This is kind of the standard hiking garb of the day and for whatever reason they carry these enormous rucksacks they're considered like the thing to do at the time.

They co-opten wool bear eyes on the heads, so it was a very, very motley crew, I think. This motley crew of hikers gathered with their braze and rucksacks at the base of the mountain. And Benny Rothman gave a speech about taking back the rights they lost in the enclosure acts of the 17 and 1800s. And he emphasized that the trespass on Kinderskout was meant to be peaceful. And with that, the group set off of the 17 and 1800s. Any emphasize that the trespass on Kinderskout was meant to be peaceful.

And with that, the group set off of the mountain. The other thing they did was sing. They quite often sang when they went out rambling. And they were singing songs like the Internationali and that sort of thing. And that, of course, showed their political leaning as well. Communist. The Ramblers were in a good mood as they had.

They sang and talked. There were some police behind them keeping an eye on things and huffing to keep up with the pace of the young walkers. At one point, a group of gamekeepers approached them, wagging their sticks in a small scuffle ensued. One gamekeeper kind of rolls over and hurts his ankle. That's the extent of the scuffle. Eventually, the ramblers made their way back to the bottom. The trespass had been a success. They'd openly walked on Kinder Scout

and no one had been able to stop them. And it probably all would have ended right there with nothing much gained or lost on either side. if the police hadn't decided to make some arrests Rothman and five other ring leaders. They're arrested at this time. Trust passing wasn't even an arrestable offense So the police came up with another charge incitement to riotous assembly one rambler got off, but the rest were convicted. And they're given prison sentences from two to six months.

But when the sentence was handed down by the judge, that actually united the ramblers' cause, and they all thought this was terrible, you know, just for walking on the more as people being sent to prison. Suddenly, there was this huge amount of awareness in the general public about walking rights. This was like a national news item at the time. And people were sympathetic. And it would set in motion changes that would transform how England thinks about private property. It's been described as one of the most successful acts of civil disobedience ever in the history

of this country. The whole thing is even memorialized in song. There was a guy on the trespass named Jimmy Miller. He eventually became a pretty well-known folk singer in England and changed his name to And you enroute the song based on the Master's Press called The Manchester Ambla. Do you know the words? You're not going to ask me to sing it, are you? I actually, yeah. I really want you to sing it. I can sing the chorus, but I think you should get a recording, really.

I'm a Rambler, I'm a Rambler from Manchester Way. I get all my pleasure, the heart maul and way. I may be a wage slave on Monday, but I have my freedom on Sunday. The day was just ending and I was descending. It is the anthem for the trespasser in this country and it'll be played at my funeral. After the trespass, the Rambling Groups continued to push for expanded access. There were more trespasses. In 1951, when Britain opened its first national park,

it was in the peak district where the Kindre Scout trespass took place. This was no accident. Years of negotiations between the Ramblers and the landowners and legislators in the area had paved the way. But it wasn't until the year 2000 that the Ramblers got what they'd always wanted. An act of parliament that opened up huge swaths of the country, where people could roam free.

The countryside and rights of wayact, and that opened up mountains, moors, heaths, downs. Those are just kind of fancy English words for unimproved grassland. And now we do have the right to roam in open country which is what those lads in 1932 were fighting for. The 2000 act opened up about 7% of the land in England and 21% in whales on which you are free to roam, meaning you don't even have to stay on a trail. You can truly just wander around and 7% may not sound like a lot. But between that and other designated trails, where there are more restrictions, you can

now pretty easily walk across England, just like Katie's dad did. A small footnote. The year after my dad rambled across Madonna's property, she actually sued to keep people from wandering around out there. The government ended up allowing her to close off a lot of her estate, but did keep some small amount of it open to ramblers. Madonna wasn't the only person with concerns about ramblers. When the countryside and rights of way act past,

a lot of landowners feared the worst. You know, everyone was worried about people sniffing glue out on the countryside and people being mowed down by tractors and wildly fornicating. Like, this was all in the newspapers. Like, people were really worried, but none of that stuff turned out to be true. In addition to Britain, a bunch of other European countries also have partial right to Rome systems. Meaning some, but not all private property, is accessible to walkers. But then there are countries where the right is even further expanded.

Norway, Finland, Sweden has this thing called Alamansrotten, which means every man's right. And this means you can walk over Kauppästjö, this means you can walk over cow pasture. This means you can walk through the woods. This means you can access virtually the whole countryside. In the United States, we have a system of national and state parks, but we don't have any rights to wander through private property. And in some places, you might even get shot for doing it.

The idea of opening up private land to the public seems almost un-American, but this wasn't always the case. Yeah, this is kind of like a forgotten chapter of American history. Americans who were uninslaived, we had the right to roam from the colonial days up until the Civil War. In the early days of this country, it was common practice to hunt and fish on private land if it wasn't enclosed by offense. In fact, the Pennsylvania delegation to the Constitution even tried to get this enshrined

in the Bill of Rights. That's how important this was to early Americans. Nearly a century later, in an 1862 essay entitled Walking, Henry David Thoreau wrote that he feared that one day, quote, walking over the surface of God's earth, shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman's grounds. This day may have come even sooner than Thoreau feared. Kenogunas says our concept of private property began to change just a few years later after the Civil War, partly because of the end of slavery.

One perfect example of this is in 1865, it's the Louisiana legislature, and after the war they passed this resolution, they acknowledged the end of the war and they also do something else. They criminalize trespassing. Now why would they do that right after the Civil War? I think I know why. They did that because now you had a whole bunch of free and independent black people. There were other reasons as well. As Native Americans were forced onto reservations, land grants to the railroads and the Homestead act of 1862 turned great swaths of public land to private ownership

and then came barbed wire. Fences became a lot cheaper, so you could put fences up for livestock, so suddenly a whole bunch more of the country is enclosed. You have a diversified economy, so people are no longer relying on the land for hunting and fishing and gathering as much as they used to. So when people start chipping away at access rights, you don't have an impassioned group of proponents fighting to

maintain their access rights. But Kennell Gunes thinks we should be fighting for recreational access in this country, where a lot of our public land is concentrated in places that are hard for most people to get to. For instance, Alaska has 329 million acres of our public land. That's 41% of all public land. You look at the five states with the highest percentages of public land. That's Alaska, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming. All this land is in states where there aren't that many people. Ilgunas believes a right to roam system could help connect all these disparate pieces of public land and give us a sense of ownership.

I think if we bring in a system like the right to roam, you know, we're still going to look at the land as if it's someone's. and give us a sense of ownership. I think if we bring in a system like the right to roam, you know, we're still going to look at the land as if it's someone's. But I think we'll also begin to look at it as if it's sort of hours. And for what it's worth, my dad agrees. He says there's something really special about being able to walk wherever you want. I thought the whole concept of being able to walk wherever you want. I thought the whole concept of being able to walk respectfully across private land was extraordinary. And it was something that just doesn't exist here.

We have a lot of public land where you can walk in the US, but this seemed very different. There were so many routes and trails to choose from. It felt like the whole country was open to you. These days, if you ramble across the open grasslands of England or Wales, you'll see the remnants of enclosure, the stone walls and fences. And you'll also see the things meant to help you get past these barriers, the styles which are step letters to help you get over fences, the so-called kissing gates, which are these shaped openings that people can walk through, but livestock cannot,

because the fences aren't there to stop you anymore. You just hop over and continue on your way. you just hop over and continue on your way. Kady talks about where she's roaming to after seven years of being with NaNiPi after this. So I'm back with Kady Minkle and one of the things that is really like significant about you, in addition to you being just a person that I adore, is that when I hired you, it was the first moment that the show became like a real show. Like I was really nervous because there was a grown woman, like a professional adult who was leaving a job somewhere to come across the country to work on this show,

which there to for had been basically kind of a glorified project. Right. Like, and so do you remember what you were thinking as you were traveling out to come, and then it was just like me and Sam, and Avery was the intern at the time, and what you were thinking?

Oh man, I mean, I was so excited because I think I already knew that the show would become something even bigger than what it was at the time. Although I don't think I could have quite imagined what it's grown into. I remember my dad being kind of like, what is this little podcast? Like what? Like is this actually a good career choice for you? But you know, but it was so exciting.

And I know it's nervous because I didn't necessarily feel like I had to produce stories in the way that I would need to for the show. Like, and I just didn't totally know if I could do it. I had done a handful of my own stories for sure, and then up, but most of what I'd done was produce resound, which you know, because you also produced resound, but was kind of curating other people's documentaries and designing these sound collages that like went in between each piece. And so it wasn't a ton of like making my own work. And so

that was going to be new. And like I thought I could do it, but I wasn't positive. So yeah, I was nervous and excited for sure. So the big news for you is you are leaving the show after seven years, but what acts as a solve to my heart is where you're going, because it's really well suited to all the skills you develop doing according to needs. So where are you going to go work? Yeah, so I'm going to work with serial productions, which is the company that makes serial, along with other podcasts in more recent years. They did Estown. Most recently, they did the

Improvement Association. Nice white parents is a serial production. They were recently acquired by The New York Times, but the show remains very close with this American life and shares staff back and forth. But yeah, I'm so excited and nervous. In a lot of the same ways I was nervous to come work for you. It's just like, so it's a new thing and I hope I can do it and I think I can but yeah, but yeah, I know you can and it just seems like a really good fit for what you're interested in right now Yeah, and and all the things that you get to do and I'm so excited for you. It feels so right Thanks, Roman like I don't even know like if this means you're gonna do cereal like original season four or five or or if you're gonna do something brand new and I don't even know if you know. I don't know if you can tell me who the killer is before it starts because I could do really well in a betting pool if that happened or what I just don't know. But I think it's pretty exciting.

Yeah, I don't really know what I'm going to be working on. I think they have a few kind of leads on stories that need someone to go out and see if there's really anything there. So, it's just like do some initial reporting on, like spend a couple of months just like chasing leads. So I get the feeling it'll be something like that, but I have actually no idea what they have got. And I think they try to keep that stuff pretty secret. But yeah, I'm so excited.

And Julie Snyder, who, gosh, what is her actual title over there? President? She runs the show. She runs the show, yeah. And she was a long time editor at The American Life. But she was such a great cheerleader of according to me. I called her at the very beginning of the project and asked if I could ask some questions about,

basically about how they made serial season three because I always felt like season three, which is the one about the criminal justice system in Cleveland and the sort of municipal court system there and all these like criminal cases that were going through that system. I always felt like maybe that was the closest kind of model that I could imagine for according to me, just that it would be a story about a system and about like a very large thing

that probably didn't have like a single narrative over all the episodes, it was probably going to be several stories that helped you understand this big landscape. And so, yeah, Julie was just so generous, letting me ask questions about how they made that, and then occasionally, throughout the process, we would check in. And so I'm so excited to work with her. She seems like a great, great boss. Not as good as you, I'm sure. I know, I know, of course. It goes to the same. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. I don't know what else to say. I'm just like excited and so kind of humbled by it. Yeah.

Well, I think it's great. And once you get a taste for doing that long form thing for a couple of years, like I don't think you really could go back to doing like a bunch of pieces for us. Like one of the things that happened during the period of time where you're with a coordinator in need working on it. You know, he's spent two years

just going out talking to people, building relationships, doing that sort of stuff that reporters do. And we definitely would strive to accommodate like doing that again and doing that with more like spin-offs of nine IPI. But there's just something about going to the team that is just so excellent at that in particular,

like really hones in on that. And learning from them, which I just think it's so exciting. So I am unbelievably pleased for you and I can't wait to hear what you make. As soon as I am to see you go and not see you on the meetings and you can still show up in the meetings and be on the slack if you want to. I'm really going to miss our slack. I feel like especially in the last year when we haven't gotten to see each other, the Slack is just like, yeah. I think Avery used to say that it was her favorite social media and it's like, I basically

feel that way too. Totally. But head and shoulders, my favorite social media, honestly. So before you head off to cereal and do your long form investigative piece, is there anything that you want to talk about in terms of your time here or talk to the audience about or anything that you want to reflect on? I think it's hard to imagine any other show where

the audience felt like such a community that was sort of in on it with us. Like our audience has been just such a nice group to make work for. You know, and a group of people that like gets in touch to tell us what a good job we're doing or how much they like to something. I just, I don't know if another, well, I guess I haven't worked on many other shows, but like, it feels kind of unique to us. I think it's a, I've worked on other shows and I think there's something special about it. I think there's something like, there's a way in which they take in and interpret the stories that we tell and bring it into their lives in a way that I've never experienced on

another show. Yeah, but that's felt so nice. And the show for me has just been such a great place to get to kind of find my own voice and play and try new things. And I feel like we've done such a great range, and I've gotten to do a great range of like these kind of smaller, joyful stories, sort of like the right to Rome and then these like bigger sprawling like epics. Like the couple episodes I did on the Belmer Mirror, the housing development in Amsterdam and then obviously like according to need, but it's been such a great place to figure out who I am as a producer and I think that's always changing or I think it should always be changing.

But yeah, I just, I just, like, loved my time here and loved creating work for our audience in particular. Yeah, yeah, it's really, I think it's very special. And I can't imagine the show without you in a lot of ways. I mean, you just gave so much heart to what we did and so much rigor to what we did. And even though, like, I think you're innate interest and architecture was pretty low. But you'd always bring characters and bring story and stakes and stuff. And I think it raised all of our games so much. And then like this development of doing according to need as this really compelling and character driven look at a system,

it was just like groundbreaking and beautiful. I've always wanted to create a place for you know, people to do their best work and feel comfortable and feel supported and that involves moving on. So I think this is a bittersweet moment, but a really good moment. And so I'm really, really happy for you. And we will figure it out without you, but we definitely will suffer from your absence. So take care. Okay. Bye. 99% Invisible was Produced This Week by Katie Mingle. The Right to Rome episode was originally broadcast in June 2018, mixed by Sheree Fusef, music by our director of Sound, Sean Rihau. The Lany Hall is the executive producer, Kurt Colesette, is the digital director.

The rest of the team includes Christopher Johnson, Emmett Fitzgerald, Joe Rosenberg, Vivian Leigh, Christopher Rubay, Loshamadon, Sophia Klotzger, and me Roman Mars. We are part of a stature and serious exam podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north, in beautiful, uptown, Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars in the show at 9.9 P.I. orc, or on Instagram and Reddit too.

You can find other shows I love from Stitcher as well as every past episode of this program, including according to need Katie Mingles, Magnum Opus. If you happen to have skipped it just because you're like, oh, this isn't regular 9-9-PI, you should listen to it because it really is amazing. You can find it at 9-9-PI.org. I'm a rembler, I'm a rembler, when I'm listening to pods still no sting from Stitcher or Sirius? Despite all the odds. Ta-da.