Book review: The Book of Trespass: Crossing the lines that divide us
Key theme(s):
Media Type: Book
Title: The Book of Trespass: Crossing the lines that divide us
Author: Nick Hayes
Year of Publication: 2020
What’s it about?
To grossly oversimplify, this book is about land ownership and land access, and the distinction between them.
If you had to put this book into a category, it would probably be politics and/or political history. But really, it’s about power, and the relationship between power and land. And because the power that both emanates from and reinforces our legal and social conceptualisation of land ownership resulted from a long, complicated – and often downright disturbing – history, the book must also inevitably provide a potted history of land ownership. And I don’t use the term ‘potted’ disparagingly – there is no lack of detail or nuance in how that history is explored. Far from it, quite how Hayes managed to take such an enormously tangled web of law, lore and history and spin them into a convincing and readable thread, I’ll never know.
Structurally, the book narrates a series of trespasses that the author (might have) undertaken onto private land. This is used as a foil to explore the history (and present) of land ownership – sometimes focusing on a general principle/key moment and sometimes on how the ownership of that particular piece of land is rooted into a dark, violent, unjust past – connecting to injustices such as feudalism, colonialism, witch hunts, slavery, to name a few. The point, so far as I can see, is not so much to challenge the individual current owners’ right to own the land, but rather to expose the structures that created and maintains that right of ownership and to expose the flawed logic at the very heart of those structures:
Walls look like order; but more often than not a wall stands at the precise fulcrum of an imbalance in society. Most walls are only necessary as a means of defending the resources of those that have them from those that lack them. In this way, though they present themselves as mechanisms of security, they are in fact tools of oppression. (p. 95)
What’s the key message?
The way land ownership is equated with land exclusion in the UK is artificial, built on injustice, and at odds with a much deeper historical relationship between the people and the land.
The key word from the previous paragraph is really “created”. Our notions of land ownership are so deeply entrenched in our legal system and social structures that it can feel like they are inevitable, or natural. What this book reveals is that this is far from the truth. In fact, private ownership of vast swathes of land is the aberration – one that has to be maintained by an entire legal system and a constant retelling of the narrative of ownership. The fact that this does have to be constantly reasserted reveals how flimsy it really would be if not backed up by all the apparatus of the state and the legal system. Hayes frequently refers to this as a “spell” that has been cast on the public – an enchantment that creates the illusion of private ownership of land. And it is a spell that can be broken, because it is only sustained because we agree it is. Like so much of the way any society is structured, it follows Renan’s principle that a nation is a “daily plebiscite” – everything that we agree to by not rejecting it.
It’s important to be clear here that the argument is not necessarily that we need a mass expropriation of the land that was granted to wealthy private individuals by the UK Parliament through enclosure acts. Hayes makes a distinction between the right to own land and the right to exclude non-owners from that land. This is really the crux of the issue – there may be a right to own a vast area of open land, but that should not automatically imply the right to exclude everyone else from accessing it. In earlier times, these swathes of land may nominally have been owned by the local lord, but there was an understanding that the community that lived there was also entitled to access and use that land to sustain their livelihoods. We may no longer live in a country where most people live off the land, but that doesn’t mean that access to open, natural land is any less important the health of our society.
You should read this book if…
You’ve ever wanted someone to lay out clearly and logically why this country’s relationship with land ownership is the way it is.
It really is one of those books that you can’t un-read. Once the structures and logic that underpin the English obsession with land, ownership and exclusion have been laid out for you, you start to see the signs everywhere. And that’s because, as mentioned, a lot of the logic that underpins that relationship is a fiction, one that crumbles simply by being exposed. That said, it remains a relatively dense book, and one that did take me quite a long time to read – not because of the way it’s written but because it’s a lot to digest. So if you’re looking for a little light reading before bedtime, this may not be the book for you. But if you’re at a point where you’re ready to dive into this really crucial question, and you’re willing to follow all the complex ways that it connects to a huge number of other injustices, historical and contemporary, then I cannot recommend it highly enough.
What makes it effective?
It’s incredibly detailed, but also incredibly readable.
I mentioned above the level of detail that has gone into every part of the book. When a writer applies this level of rigour, there is always a risk of getting lost in the detail, of it all becoming a bit dry. But that is very much not the case in this book. The combination of structuring the book around the individual acts of trespass – which tie the historical descriptions to the present reality – and the sharp, occasionally biting writing style is incredibly effective. When I’m reading something that I know I want to write about, I tend to turn the corners down on pages that contained lines that I particularly enjoyed, whether for their wit or their originality. When I was reading this, I had to be quite disciplined over what I tagged for future reference, as there was at least one line on every page that I would quite happily put on a t-shirt.
But that’s not to say the book is a polemic – far from it. Though there’s plenty of slightly acerbic lines to prompt a little smile or phrases that you find yourself nodding along with, the overall tone of the book is one of conviction built on sound logic and a scrupulous marshalling of the facts. The narration thunders on like a freight train, with the irresistible momentum of channelled passion. It’s like being told an anecdote down the pub by that mate with the gift-of-the-gab – there’s enough little asides to keep you engaged but without distracting from the overall story. Honestly, it’s a masterclass in connecting history to present.
Is there anything that could be improved?
Improved? No. But one thing you won’t find in this book is a detailed blueprint for rebalancing the system.
I’m always loathe to critique a book that I so wholeheartedly agree with, in both letter and spirit. So instead of saying whether there is anything that could be “improved”, I would say there are two things that are not covered in detail in the book – and that are, in all probability, beyond its scope.
The first is a detailed plan for how to fix the problem. As a reader, you come away with an enormous sense of injustice and a desire to go out and do something about it. And unfortunately, that is a desire that goes largely unanswered. The final chapter does discuss two possible avenues to explore: drawing on the inspiration of Scotland’s “rights of responsible public access to land and the countryside” and rethinking the public’s relationship with the property owned by the Crown Estate. These are, however, only really mentioned in the final chapter, and not covered in huge detail. There are (at least) two responses to this criticism:
1) It’s not really within the book’s remit – the goal is, after all, to reveal the existence of the problem and explain how it has arisen. And, as the narrative reveals, it’s such a complex situation that to also propose a plan to fix the problem would probably double the length of the book. Besides, the book is ultimately about trespassing, and no publisher would ever put out a book that encouraged people to trespass.
2) Hayes has provided this, just beyond the confines of this book in the form of the Right to Roam campaign. This is, after all, a much more effective way of dealing with an evolving situation – to attempt to capture it within the static form of a book runs the risk of that book quickly becoming irrelevant.
The second point is, again, something that is covered in the book, but only briefly: Where exactly is the line between a piece of land that you should reasonably be entitled to enjoy privately and a piece of land to which the public should retain reasonable rights of access? I admit I’m playing into a strawman version of the argument here – the counterargument to this sort of move has always been that it would mean anyone would be able to ramble through anyone else’s private garden, where they might reasonable expect privacy. Again, the book points out that this right has existed in Scotland for many years already and has not been an issue, because the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 that created the right includes a requirement to maintain a reasonable distance from private areas. This question has also been addressed elsewhere by Hayes:
Too many times has the issue of land ownership been conflated with people’s personal and private sanctuaries. The issue is not opening up your back garden to the general public to stroll through. The issue is the vast amount of open spaces, the vast amount of blue space that we have in England that can give so much in terms of mental and physical health benefits to the public. We’re not looking for a revolution, we’re not looking for an upheaval of the state. What we want is for the public to see the open spaces of England as the Natural Health Service.
The issue here is not one of principle, but of detail. And there is plenty of low-hanging fruit here that could be opened up without risking compromising the privacy of any reasonable individual or family.