Thomas (Tom) Criddle Stephenson Tom Stephenson, 1893-1987, born in Chorley was a British journalist and a leading champion of national parks, long distance paths and walkers' rights in the countryside. If you ask people who had a vision on Pendle Hill, most would not know, of those who give an answer it is almost always George Fox, the Quaker. Tom Stephenson had a dream on Pendle that arguably effected more people for the good than did the one Fox had (see appendix A). They had another thing in common as well as visions inspired by the view from the summit of Pendle, an aversion to war and the taking of life in its pursuit. If you also ask people who came up with the idea of the Pennine Way, of those who can give an answer most will say A.W. or Wainwright referring to A.W. Wainwright author of The Pennine Way Companion. (1) Tom not only fought for the introduction of the Pennine Way and the establishment of long distances paths, he also wrote the first guide to the Pennine Way
Tom started work at 13 at a calico printing works. He then moved with his parents to Whalley in the Ribble Valley. Tom said, “On the first Saturday after starting work I climbed Pendle Hill and from the summit, 1,831 feet above sea level, I beheld a new world. Across the valley were the Bowland Fells; and away to the north Ingleborough, Pen-y-ghent and other Pennine heights, all snow covered stood out sharp and clear in the frosty air. That vision started me rambling, and in the next sixty years took me time and again up and down the Pennines and further afield.� It is thought that this was the inspiration behind having a national long distance trail, in 1935 he had an article in the Labour Party supporting paper, The Daily Herald, calling for a Pennine Way.(2)
At 15 he started a 7 year apprenticeship but short time working gave him time to do more long distance walks of round trips over a couple of days covering 100+ miles. From 1910 an occasional guinea (£1 1shilling), earned by a published account of a walk, would enable him to take the time and cost to walk 40 to 50 miles in a day. He heard of evening classes in geology and related subjects at Burnley Technical School and managed to get 30 shillings (£1 10 shillings) to buy a second hand bike, enrolled as a student and for the next 4 years, cycled 8 miles each way 4 nights a week, during the 30 week terms after work, surviving on no more than 6 hours sleep a night. He won a scholarship to the Royal College of Science, London worth £60 a year plus free tuition. September 1914 he took up the scholarship as the First World War raged. He was a conscientious objector and when he was sent his call up paper in 1917, he ignored it and eventually served the best part of 3 years in prison, where he met Sydney Silverman, who was the Labour Nelson and Colne MP 1935 to 1968. Silverman was pivotal in getting the legislation through Parliament that ended capital punishment. 3) Stephenson joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP), later he worked as a Labour Party agent, working part-time from the age of 27 at a wage of fifty shillings (£2 10). Two years later in 1922 he accepted a post at the Labour Party headquarters in London, where he remained in post for 11 years and met many leading party members including Arthur Henderson, Labour Party Secretary and MP for Burnley1924-1931. Tom was active in the fight for access to the moors and countryside. In 1932 he said of the mass Kinder trespassers, he admired the courage of Rothman and his friends. (4) He addressed meetings across the country including one in London, where the London Federation of the Rambling Association (RA), “had always been lukewarm about access.” However a new Progressive Rambling Club formed in London by Phillip Poole organised a meeting of 1,000 strong demonstration that was addressed by Tom and future minister Lewis Silkin among others. (5)
Tom, (centre), with Benny Rothman, (on the left). Benny along with other members of the Young Communist League organised the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in 1932. Ewan MacColl was also on the trespass and subsequently wrote “The Manchester Rambler.” (See Appendix B) In 1933 Ernest Bevin invited him to leave Transport House (then Labour Party HQ) to become a journalist at The Daily Herald, writing a weekly article and editing a small Trades Union Congress (TUC) magazine called Hiker and Camper. In this role of editor he attended the 1933 annual meeting of the National Council of Ramblers’ Federations at Ilkley. This meeting was chaired by Thomas Arthur Leonard, a former Congregational Minister in Colne, who left the ministry to provide holiday opportunities for working people, and was national secretary of the Co-Operative Holidays Association (CHA). Leonard was another Pendle Radical who spent around 50 years campaigning for working people to have access to fresh air and open land. (6) Tom continued as a countryside campaigner and in 1934 he was a speaker at a demonstration demanding access to the mountains at Winnats Pass in the Peak district and felt slightly “panicked” at the thought of addressing 3,000 ramblers “seemingly glued to a perpendicular hillside.” Phil Barnes and G.H.B. Ward were also at this rally and they with Tom along with Edwin Royce (described as an eloquent champion of access to the mountains) and Stephen Morton became chief campaigners for access, “united in a common cause but differing fiercely at times on tactics.” The Monday after the demonstration he told the editor of the Daily Herald of the enthusiasm for the right to walk and the creation of National Parks. Thereafter he had free rein in boosting the aims and activities of the RA as long as nothing he wrote was contradictory to Labour Party policy. By April 1943 he had left the Herald and had joined the new Ministry of Town and Country as press officer and been elected onto the National Council of the Ramblers. He described the Ministry as a cheerless place with a fear of publicity, with the only kindred spirit being John Dower and publicising Dower’s national
parks report (1945) as one of the most satisfying tasks he had ever had. However, the climate of the time was clear, with some planners seeing no reason for barring motorways from the proposed national parks and when Tom spoke of the rights of ramblers they were a “featherweight against the rights of property.” A small Pennine Way exhibition he placed in the entrance hall of the ministry attracted considerable attention and press comment. This led one assistant secretary to complain that all this publicity about a Pennine Way might lead to a ‘demand that something actually be done about it.’ The election of a Labour Government gave Tom the opportunity to progress matters. Lewis Silkin became the minister for the department, and was surprised to find that an ILP colleague of some 20 years before was his press officer.(7) Tom said,” We spent an afternoon in informal discussion on legislation the RA was seeking. Silkin promised that he would, at the first opportunity, receive a deputation from the RA, which he did in December 1945. With his authority Tom issued a press statement quoting the deputation as saying that some of the finest scenery in all the country could only be enjoyed by trespassers. There must be facilities for access to the wild, uncultivated parts of Britain, drastic revision of footpath law and the creation of national parks and long distance paths such as the Pennine Way. The minister said he was in full sympathy with almost everything that had been said. He hoped to introduce the necessary legislation and would be happy to seek the advice of the RA at a later date. He, of course had a member of the RA national council, Tom, as his press officer. Tom also served as honorary secretary of the RA for almost 21 years from 1948 onwards. We must not assume that Tom had an easy job getting legislation on National Parks and long distance paths from Silkin despite Silkin’s previous stand. People in power often become far more cautious. For example, Ramsey MacDonald who was a self avowed trespasser, “was no more prepared to release Rothman and his friends (who had been jailed for their part in the Kinder Trespass), than he had earlier been prepared to make a reality of his forthright support for access.(8) After the 1945 election had put the Labour Party into government with its biggest ever majority, a public committee, known as the Hobhouse Committee was appointed which stated, “The freedom to wander over mountain, moorland and rough grazing, and other uncultivated land will be of the upmost importance.” (9)
Tom Stephenson still remained apprehensive and hit upon the novel, yet quite characteristic, idea of taking a number of prominent members of the Labour government on a three day walking holiday at Whitsuntide 1948, on (what is now) the Pennine Way between Middleton-in-Teesdale and the Roman Wall. Among the 5 MPs was Barbara Castle MP for Blackburn. (10)
Tom Stephenson famously led a group of MPs along the proposed route of the Pennine Way in May 1948 in a high profile publicity stunt. They are pictured here at Birkdale Farm in Upper Teesdale (left to right): Barbara Castle, Fred Willey, Arthur Blenkinsop, George Chetwynd, Tom Stephenson, Hugh Dalton and Julian Snow. (photo: The Dalesman)
Tom was right to be apprehensive; efforts were made to delay the introduction of a bill which would be beneficial to walkers. The 1949 National Parks and Access Act was passed and the Hobhouse Report had stated: “we consider that in National Parks public access as of right should be established over all suitable land.”(11) Despite being a supporter of access, Lewis Silkin, on assuming office,was reluctant to implement this. “After all,” he said, “in the existing state of society and the law, a person’s land is his land. I think it is wrong to give the public an automatic right to go over all private land of a certain character.” (12) Tom carried on lobbying, cajoling and advising ministers and politicians to open up the countryside to walkers and secured many advances on the previous situation. The opening of the first National Park was in the Peak District where the
more militant walkers of the northern towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire had long fought for the right to roam. Other National Parks were opened and 1965 saw the launch of the Pennine Way. However, Tom did not see this as a life’s work finished and he continued fighting for the right to roam which was more fully achieved a few years after he died when the Labour Government under Tony Blair’s leadership enacted the Countryside Rights of Way (CROW Act) Bill. Mike Harding, writing a personal memoir to Tom in 1988, for the book, Forbidden Land said, “Tom always insisted that he wanted no memorial, plaque or hagiography after his death. He objected forcefully to the idea of a bronze statue at either end of the Pennine Way because, as he said, it would turn it into a mausoleum.” Mike goes on to tell how, Tom in his ninety third year was still angry and concerned of the lack of access to the Bowland Fells and he had got Mike to photograph him stood behind one of the many ‘PRIVATE. KEEP OUT.’ Tom had a huge grin on his face standing next to the sign with both feet trespassing. Mike also talks about Tom being the last of a long line of northern autodidacts, men and women who worked 60 or more hours in the mills and factories and still managed to educate themselves. This was the case with many of the Pendle Radicals, including, of course, Ethel Carnie. Finally Mike concludes his memoir by saying, “Perhaps the greatest memorial to Tom is his work. The Pennine Way, the effort he put into the formation of the national parks (he personally saw to it that the southern end of the Howgill Fells were included in the Yorkshire Dales Park) and the fight for the North Pennines AONB (Area of Outstanding Beauty)”. In 2016 that work was built on when the Northern part of the Howgill Fells was part of an extra 161 square miles of land that was added to the Yorkshire Dales National Park, linking it with The Lake District and the North Pennines AONB. His achievements are many and his interest in walking and campaigning for open access to the countryside were inspired by that first trip up Pendle as a 13 year-old.
Tom Stephenson He wrote the first official guidebook for the Way, published shortly after it was at last officially opened on 24 April 1965, when Stephenson was 72. The guide to the Pennine Way, wrote by Stephenson, was published by HMSO for the Countryside Commission in 1969. He was also a long-serving committee member of the Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society (now the Open Spaces Society). He complained to close colleagues that the Society’s committee was boring, but that it was necessary to maintain a strong presence to prevent it from caving in to landowners’ interests, as had happened in the 1930s under the Access to Mountains Bill (subsequently repealed). What created the climate to generate the Pendle Radicals? In A Monument to a Movement, authors Stan Iveson and Roger Brown point to a number of things (pages 12-13), including what could be paraphrased as Methodism and Marxism, and the distinct mill system in Nelson known as “power and loom.” (13) However, one reason that stands out to those who have walked the beautiful and often rugged countryside, is the very landscape also shapes us and in many ways. Being a soft water area in a damp, wet climate on top of the Burnley coalfield gave all the resources for cotton manufacture to thrive. Our area was at the cutting edge of the development of the factory system that brought conflict between capital and labour. The need for labour to power the factories pulled in people from around the country and created a “move with the times ethos,” a frontier town feel (14) The desire to access the countryside and breathe clean area, when much of the land was deemed private was another source of conflict. The tough, rugged environment also produced strong people and the demand for women workers in the mills produced strong, confident women who fought a large number of political, trade union and social battles including the right to roam. (1)
A.W.Wainwright was born in Blackburn (17 January 1907 – 20 January 1991) and lived in poverty, starting work at 13 years of age. He developed a love of walking (including trips up Pendle Hill) and produced many Pictorial Guides of the Lake District. Wainwright followed the Pictorial Guides in 1968 with the Pennine Way Companion, applying the same detailed approach to Britain’s first long-distance footpath. This was for many years a leading guide to the Pennine Way, rivalling the official guide book by Tom Stephenson. Started in 1968, it took AW and 4 helpers around four years to get the book to print, foot and mouth outbreaks contributing to delays in mapping.
(2)
Large parts of this article are adapted from Forbidden Land, the struggle for access to mountain and moorland, by Tom Stephenson, published and edited by Ann Holt after Tom’s death and with a personal memoir by Mike Harding (former president and now a life vice president of the RA) (3) Read a biography of him here, http://spartacus-educational.com/TUsilverman.htm (4) Page 62 of Freedom to Roam by Howard Hill, an activist in the right to roam campaigns and a former member of the National Council of the RA. (5) Ibid page 74 (6) Read more about him here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Arthur_Leonard (7) In 1945 Lewis was made Minister of Town and Country Planning in Atlee’s Labour Government. He held this position until 1950 and piloted three major pieces of legislation, the New Towns Act of 1945 which created our new towns to provide houses fit for heroes, the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947, which created the modern framework for all our planning law and The Access to the Countryside Act of 1949, which created our National Parks. (8) Freedom to Roam page 74 (9) Ibid page 87 (10) Ibid page 89 (11) Report of the National Park Committee, England and Wales (HMSO cmd 7121, 1947), paragraph 291 (12) Freedom to Roam bottom of page 91 to page 92. This book gives a detailed account of the fight for access to the countryside. (13) Monument to a Movement, the story of the ILP Clarion House at Roughlee and its connection with Nelson ILP branch is available from the Clarion House. (14) Ibid
i)
Further Reading The Pennine Way’s 30-year fight for access to England’s northern hills, https://www.cicerone.co.uk/the-pennine-ways-30-year-fight-for-access-toenglands-northern-hills
ii)
https://trailblazer-guides.com/book/pennine-way/about-the-pennine-way
iii)
This link will take you the Ramblers Association section of the National Archive where among other things some of Tom’s paper are listed. http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/download/GB2259%20RA
Tom Stephenson and Fred Willey, Minister of Land and Natural Resources, at the opening of the Pennine Way on Malham Moor, 24th April 1965. (photo: YPN Yorkshire Post)
Appendix A National Park name
Year of designation
Population
Scheduled ancient monuments
Visitors a year (million)
Brecon Beacons
1957
32,000
268
4.15
Broads
1989
6,271
14
8
*Cairngorms
2003
17,000
60
1.5
*Dartmoor
1951
34,000
1058
2.4
Exmoor
1954
10,600
202
1.4
Lake District
1951
41,100
281
16.4
*Loch Lomond and the Trossachs
2002
15,600
60
4
New Forest
2005
34,922
622
Not available
Northumberland
1956
2,200
424, including 1 World Heritage Site
1.5
North York Moors
1952
23,380
840
7
Peak District
1951
37,905
469
8.75
Pembrokeshire Coast
1952
22,800
4.2
National Park name
Year of designation
Population
Scheduled ancient monuments
Visitors a year (million)
*Snowdonia
1951
25,482
359
4.27
South Downs
2010
120,000
700
Not available
Yorkshire Dales
1954
23,637
199
9.5
*These visitor numbers and visitor spend figures have been taken from STEAM reports, mostly from 2009. Figures for all other national parks were updated in October 2014.Source, http://www.nationalparks.gov.uk/students/whatisanationalpark/factsandfigures .Over 70 million people visited one of our National Parks in 2014, all of which have been created since the first, The Peak District, in 1951. According to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers, there were “In 2012, there were 377,055 adult Quakers, with 52% in Africa.�
Appendix B I've been over Snowdon, I've slept upon Crowdon I've camped by the Waynestones as well I've sunbathed on Kinder, been burned to a cinder And many more things I can tell My rucksack has oft been me pillow The heather has oft been me bed And sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead Ch: I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler from Manchester way I get all me pleasure the hard moorland way I may be a wageslave on Monday But I am a free man on Sunday 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 things that he said were unpleasant In the teeth of his fury I said "Sooner than part from the mountains I think I would rather be dead"
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 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
I once loved a maid, a spot welder by trade She was fair as the Rowan in bloom And the bloom of her eye watched the blue Moreland sky I wooed her from April to June On the day that we should have been married I went for a ramble instead For sooner than part from the mountains I think I would rather be dead
So I'll walk where I will over mountain and hill And I'll lie where the bracken is deep I belong to the mountains, the clear running fountains Where the grey rocks lie ragged and steep I've seen the white hare in the gullys And the curlew fly high overhead And sooner than part from the mountains I think I would rather be dead
Ewan MacColl