• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Then Ainsworth bit back. On the morning of the third demonstration – the next Saturday this time, to appease Sunday worshippers – his land agent trotted around Bolton in a hansom cab, doling out writs against ten named men from the first trespass. Nervousness about getting nabbed, combined with the inevitable tailing off of interest by some and another day of terrible weather, reduced the numbers to around 5,000. Another 32 writs were served, which only made the central core of organisers dig in deeper, returning to Winter Hill the very next day to do it all again. Joseph Shufflebotham, a leading light of the SDF and one of the original ten pursued by Ainsworth, was scathing in his assessment of his fair-weather comrades: ‘On Sunday I took my wife and three children . . . but about 200 were afraid of losing their names, and turned back – but of course, they were not socialists. No socialist can be afraid of paper warnings.’

Winter Hill, and the impending trial of those Ainsworth had named as the agitators, became a cause célèbre in northwestern socialist circles. National names came to the town to speak, and Justice, the journal of the tiny SDF, could barely contain its excitement: ‘Bolton is now an A1 Lancashire town for socialist propaganda . . . hurrah for the revolution!’ You’ve got to love the eternal optimism of the hardcore left in the face of all the evidence – and still it goes on. Every demo I’ve ever been on has been full of excitable activists from the Socialist Workers’ Party and other even tinier Trotskyist off-shoots, convinced that this rally against the poll tax, the Iraq war, government cuts, tuition fees or whatever is the start of the revolution. Meanwhile, the demonstrators happily accept the free placards, and just tear off the words ‘Socialist Worker’ from the top.

The trial of the original ten protagonists began in Manchester on 9 March 1897, Ainsworth’s aim being to prevent them ‘trespassing’ on his estate, the moor in particular, at any point in the future. The 44 witnesses for the defence were largely older locals who recalled using the path unhindered across Winter Hill in their youth; the 33 witnesses for the prosecution were almost all employees of Ainsworth. Nonetheless, it went his way. The ten men had injunctions served against them, and the two who were seen as ringleaders were ordered to pay costs of over £600.

Having been such a bright flash in the pan, the Winter Hill protests – amongst the largest access demonstrations ever seen in Britain – soon faded from memory, and it wasn’t until 1982 that local activist and historian Paul Salveson unearthed the story from a brief paragraph in Allen Clarke’s book Moorlands and Memories. By this time, far smaller protests – most notably at Kinder Scout in 1932 – had reached near mythological status, and there was much feeling in Bolton that they should claim their proud place in the saga of the ongoing march towards open access to our moors and mountains. Meetings were held, talks given, a play written and performed outside the Wimpy Bar in Bolton town centre, and a commemorative march planned for the first weekend of September, the ‘Winter Hill 1896 Trespass Anniversary’ as the leading banner had it. True, though unusual to make such a splash for the 86th anniversary.

Paul Salveson expected a couple of hundred to come on the march, but in the event nearly 2,000 made it, confirming Bolton’s historic ability to mobilise numbers when needs be. Benny Rothman, the public face of the Kinder protest, came along, as did Labour MP Andrew Bennett, a brass band and Mike Harding, comedian, folk singer, soon-to-be President of the Ramblers’ Association and all-round professional Lancashire Lad (the title of his first album). Further celebrations were held in 1996, the centenary of the mass trespass, including the long-awaited dedication by the local council of Coalpit Lane as an official right of way. Having been so strangely forgotten, Winter Hill 1896