English 
At the end of 2020, Nick Hayes released ‘The Book of Trespass’, trespassing his way across the country as he delves into the history, the stories and the issues that underly land ownership and access. In this blog, Kat Wall offers her thoughts on the book and reflects on some of the central themes and threads that flow through the book.
The spell
‘The birds now are loud, and the trees either side of me are a chaos of song, a wild, dissonant ringing chorus which reflects off the surface of the river with the first light of the day. I feel the touch of the sun as it rises over the tops of the leaves…And I feel, in more ways than one: the land is awakening’
In ‘The Book of Trespass: Crossing the lines that divide us’, Nick Hayes seeks to awaken us from a spell. This spell is a spell that has divided us from nature, from each other. It is a spell that makes us believe that the lines that divide us are real and true. As we work our way through the book, we come to see how they were made, constructed and enforced by the powerful and those who serve them. We come to see how the spell of land ownership was cast and how it can be undone…
“These signs conjure a spell, words that trigger my conscience and change the chemicals in my blood. Out of nowhere I feel as if I am doing something wrong”.
This history of ownership
Throughout the book, the reader is taken on a journey through history. Threads of stories, that have often been hidden from view, are picked up and woven together. Together these threads show the hold ‘ownership’ has had over this land from the moment humans turned to a settled agricultural existence, through occupation and conquest, enclosure and colonialism. Ownership of land was and has always been about power. It requires possession and therefore dispossession. And through the creation of inequalities, domination and oppression of people, of the more than human world, of the earth itself.
Resistance
And yet, where there is oppression there is and has always been resistance. Hayes uses each chapter to tell the stories of different forms of oppression and the struggles of those who have struggled and fought back. From Gypsies and Travellers who refused to be confined to one place, to the witches and the women who maintained their knowledge of healing safe from the flames of modernity that sought to destroy them. The peasants who resisted enclosures that forced them from the land to the enslaved who rebelled the British plantation owners and eventually brought the system of slavery to its knees. To the landworkers and the ramblers, the ravers and the activists of today who continue to challenge the systems and the structures that divide us and work to build a new world in the shell of the old.
Where now?
The book ends with a call to extend the Countryside and Rights of Way Act in England, expanding our Right to Roam, no matter who owns the land. This is obviously a worthwhile endeavour as long as it is a part of a much wider movement that also looks to challenge the power of the vested landed interests of this country, dismantle the lines that divide us and repair the deep wounds those lines have caused. The Book of Trespass is a beautiful, powerful call to know our many histories, the struggles that have gone before, and offers a powerful awakening from the spell of ‘ownership’. Read it, let it galvanise you.
The Book of Trespass is available now. Where possible please buy from your local independent bookshop or buy from this link where 10% of the price goes to support a local bookshop and 10% goes to the LWA.
