Our series on labour history and song continues with a Ewan MacColl classic on access to the land that still resonates today, as Hazel Perry remarks

The Manchester Rambler
Ewan MacColl (Ewan McColl, 1932)

I can’t remember the first time I heard The Manchester Rambler however, I did hear it many times when attending the ninetieth anniversary celebrations of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass in Hayfield in April 2022.

The Manchester Rambler is one of folk singer Ewan MacColl’s earliest songs. It deals with the subject of access to land and the right to roam for workers, after a hard week labouring. Like all good folk songs it contains a catchy chorus that one cannot help but sing along with. 

I’m a Rambler, I’m a Rambler from Manchester Way
I get all me pleasure the hard moorland way
I may be a Wage Slave on Monday
But I am a free man on Sunday

MacColl wrote the song about an infamous incident which took place in 1932; the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass. During the interwar period rambling was a popular pastime for young people who lived and worked in the big oppressive industrial cities of the north of England. Rambling became a popular pastime for people from Manchester and Sheffield who were able to escape into the quiet countryside of the Peak District or the Pennines. Yet throughout the period, it became increasingly difficult to roam unhindered by the gamekeepers. MacColl describes an encounter with a gamekeeper in The Manchester Rambler,

The day was just ending and I was descending
Down Grinesbrook just by Upper Tor
When a voice cried “Hey you” in the way keepers do
He’d the worst face that ever I saw

The mass trespass on Kinder Scout was arranged for 24 April 1932 when, after being blocked from Bleaklow, the British Workers Sports Federation, a group inspired by the communists, organised a protest. Kinder Scout was a ‘bleak moorland plateau’ high up in the Peak District, yet 400 people arrived to take part in the trespass. It wasn’t long after they set off before they came face to face with the Duke of Devonshire’s gamekeepers.

He called me a louse and said “Think of the grouse”
Well I thought, but I still couldn’t see
Why all Kinder Scout and the moors roundabout
Couldn’t take both the poor grouse and me

A scuffle ensued and a gamekeeper was slightly injured after which the trespassers victoriously carried on up to Kinder Scout. But when they descended into the village of Hayfield later in the day, the gamekeepers were waiting for them with members of the Derbyshire constabulary. six ramblers were arrested, and five were jailed for assault from two to six months.

The story of the trespass does have a happy ending, as it was largely credited with legislation to establish National Parks in 1949, the development of public footpaths such as the Pennine Way and eventually the 2000 Crow Act. However, right to roam campaigns continue today as grouse moors still remain, and access for ramblers to cross the countryside is still disputed, giving MacColl’s song a continuing relevance. 

He said “All this land is my master’s”
At that I stood shaking my head
No man has the right to own mountains
Any more than the deep ocean bed

Read more about my experience of attending the anniversary celebrations.

Dr Hazel Perry (PhD) is an independent researcher and historian of trade unions and social movements

References
Kinder Mass Trespass History, on the Hayfield Kinder Trespass Group website.
Right to Roam website.