Everyone has a personal concept of what a National Park should look like. For many in the United States it means the grandeur of Yosemite, with everything from El Capitan, to 'Old Faithful' in Yellowstone (dedicated, 1872) or the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (1934), with its magnificent stretches of forest and beautiful mountains. For others, it means the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, with seemingly endless herds of wildebeest and other exotic wildlife on its 5,000 plus square miles of rolling grasslands.
Whatever you might have thought, Britain came very late to the idea of National Parks, and the main reason was - people. You see, Britain was full of beautiful countryside, with many unique geological formations and rare flora and fauna. The main problem was that it was, for the most part, inhabited (or farmed or forested or used as a shooting preserve) and had been so for thousands of years! The US model of buying up land with Federal funds or soliciting private donations would simply not work. With a small, crowded island, a new way would have to be found - yet it MUST be found, or the last areas of unspoilt natural beauty would be lost.
With the social pressures in the industrialized cities of the North of England reaching boiling point in the Depression years of the 1930s, something had to give, and the Peak District provided the flashpoint. For the better part of a century, wealthy aristocrats had maintained the high moorlands, and their beautiful heather ecosystem, as grouse moors, for the enjoyment of their guests and their many shooting parties. On the 24th April, 1932, a party of over 400 ramblers - mostly from the British Workers Sports Federation, a left wing group from nearby Manchester - had set out from Bowden Bridge Quarry, near the little town of Hayfield, Derbyshire, to specifically trespass on the high moorlands of Kinder Scout. This was a heather-clad plateau at over 2,000 feet high, which was kept as a grouse moor. They were joined by others from Sheffield, and fights broke out between gamekeepers and police and various group of ramblers; this resulted in jail sentences for the 'ring leaders'. This mass action lead directly to pressure for legislation.
However, the Second World War intervened, and it wasn't until the rise to power of the Labour Party in 1945, under Prime Minister Clement Atlee, that the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 was passed. The Hobhouse Report had designated 12 suggested areas of England and Wales in 1947 as being possible National Parks. It was no coincidence that many of these were like the Peak District, moorland or hill country, where the value of any agricultural land was low. The National Parks Commission (its modern day functions are undertaken by the Countryside Council for Wales, the Commission for Rural Communities and Natural England) was tasked with negotiating rights of way, access to open land, and the boundaries to each Park.
It so happened that The Peak District was easily defined (mostly in Derbyshire, but also parts of Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, South and West Yorkshire), had been subject to court battles regarding access and had many millions of people living in nearby large industrial cities. Consequently, it became the first National Park to be declared, in 1951. As I mentioned, the land inside its boundaries is mostly still held by the original owners, although the charitable body the National Trust has bought up around 12% of the area, and the management authority for the Park, the Peak District National Park Authority, owns about another 5%. How, then is the character of the National Park maintained? By a peculiarly British compromise whereby the Park Authority exercises control via planning permissions, which even extend down to the type of materials to be used in any new houses or industrial activities, strict control of mineral extraction (probably the biggest economic activity in the Park after farming and tourism) and control of marketing and development. It IS a compromise, but it works!
The formation of Britain's National Parks took place at a very particular moment in the political life of Great Britain. It occured at a time when a near Socialist government was swept into power, post-War, on a wave of social reform. The National Health Service, National Insurance, State Pensions and all the trappings of the Welfare State along with wholesale Nationalisations of the coal, steel, and railway industries, as well as much more, came to pass in the period between 1945 and 1951. Ever since the fall of that Labour Government, there has been a slow and steady 'roll-back' of that particular Left-wing vision.
The photograph you can see above is one I took from half-way up Mam Tor, 'the shivering mountain', and is of a collapsed reef of Carboniferous limestone which now forms Winnats Pass; the road through the Pass, and out of Castleton, heads towards the ancient Roman town of Buxton (the Peak District has a complex, and very interesting geology).
Oh, and what of the rest of the planned National Parks, you say? Well, in 2009, more than 50 years after the Peak District National Park was opened, the very last of the original 12 areas of England and Wales mentioned in the 1947 Hobhouse Report was opened as the South Downs National Park!
http://www.peakdistrict.gov.uk/
http://peoplesmosquito.org.uk
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