Leave No Trace: Class, Race and Belonging in UK Hiking Culture
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Leave No Trace: Class, race and belonging in UK hiking culture by Tom Bennett 13131673 This dissertation is submitted as partial fulfilment for the Degree of: MA Culture, Diaspora and Ethnicity at Birkbeck, University of London Research Dissertation Word count: 11252 I certify that the work submitted herewith is my own and that I have duly acknowledged any quotation from the published or unpublished work of other persons. Signed: Date: 9th September 2019 1 Acknowledgements I would like to express thanks to Yasmeen Narayan and Luke de Noronha, who have both provided invaluable tuition that has been both challenging and inspiring. To my peers that have provided discussion and solidarity throughout; thank you. Thank you to my parents, Wendy and Raymond Bennett for their continuous support, and Hannah Lee for her endless encouragement and belief in my abilities. 2 Abstract As a collection of auto-ethnographic observations, this dissertation is concerned with the performance of middle-class and rural nationalisms, and the constructed ‘normativity’ of their traditions as an active component to British hiking culture that has assisted in the silencing of other communities within UK National Parks. By walking the land, I have shown that it is within this cross-section that the problem lies, and to diversify our rural landscapes as truly ‘spaces for all’, is a matter of rebuilding our concepts of what it means to truly ‘belong’. 3 Contents 0.! Acknowledgements p2 1.! Abstract p3 2.! Maps p5 3.! Introduction: Edale p7 4.! Methodology p12 5.! Literature Review 5.1! Introduction p17 5.2! UK hiking culture p18 5.3! Rurality and middle-class performativity p21 5.4! Land-ownership and empire p25 5.5! Conclusion p29 6.! Findings 6.1! Crowden Clough and Sandy Heys p30 6.2 William Clough and Hayfield p37 6.3 Edale Cross and the Woolpack p43 6.4 YHA Edale and Back Tor p48 7.! Conclusion: Peveril Castle and Hope p52 8.! Bibliography p56 All photographs within ‘Findings’ are the authors own, taken onsite during his time spent in the Peak District in July 2019, unless stated otherwise. All maps found within ‘Findings’ are taken from the online Ordnance Survey maps found here: 4 bing.com/maps last accessed 09/09/2019 Maps: Day One Key Edale Station: 1 Crowden Clough: 2 Sandy Heys: 3 William Clough: 4 Hayfield: 5 The Woolpack: 6 YHA Edale: 7 5 Maps: Day Two Key Back Tor: 8 Peveril Castle: 9 Hope: 10 6 Introduction: Edale I’m sat on the 08:02 train from London St Pancras to Sheffield, regretting my decision to get such an early departure. I am however, feeling grateful that a First-Class ticket was only £3.00 more expensive than a Standard one, allowing me the luxury of ample legroom, a free cup of tea, and a charging point for my phone. I had to change at Sheffield from Platform 2 onto Platform 4 to get the train to Manchester, stopping off at Edale right at the heart of the Dark Peak. The second train was packed and stuffy, consisting of several families, a stag group who had started on their tins of beer early, a collection of individual hikers with oversized rucksacks (myself included), and an assortment of OAP’s surprisingly generating the most noise, as they chatted loudly above the ambient sounds of the train. There were several stops before Edale, but people rarely got on or off. It felt as though the train passing through each stop was a hindrance for everyone's commute from city to city, and people got audibly frustrated at the crawling pace of the train. They needed to get to Manchester, and these small villages and large hilltops were preventing them from getting there as quickly as possible. I spotted a poster advertised on the train: 7 Get the kids climbing the hills not the walls - Kids travel half price by train. The poster aims to bring families into the hills of the Peak District, encouraging those onboard to escape the frustrations of their homes and explore the open landscape the ‘hills’ have to offer. Ironically, the frustrations emanating from passengers on the train felt targeted towards the surrounding countryside landscape as opposed to the city ‘walls’ at their departure or destination sites. A young male audibly tutted as a revised ‘expected arrival time’ was announced over the tannoy due to a fallen branch on the track further down the line. Train posters embracing outdoor recreation and hiking practices have been commonplace in the UK since the inter-war period, to encourage perceptions of ‘the rural landscape as collective property, free for the public to roam at leisure’ (Blanchard et al, 2019:77), but I would challenge this statement. Despite 8 it being ‘free for the public to roam’, does everyone actually feel as though the National Park landscape is a space where they feel comfortable in occupying? Audrey Weber’s (1936) ‘Conducted Rambles, Summer’ presents an idyllic perception of supposed bygone rural culture as farmers distribute hay over a sun- kissed pasture from a horse and cart, pitched as a spectacle for city dwellers to witness if they were to take a Southern Railway train and head off rambling in the hills (image 01). There is an apparent nuance in how we understand rural class demographics based upon this image, as the countryside transitions from a site of working-class labour to middle-class leisure, for those able to afford access. This understanding has been maintained since the interwar period and into contemporary conventions and can be seen reflected within the Peak District National Parks visitor index. It states that the typical identities of their present visitors are: • aged 45-65 • in employment • are from non-BME populations • have access to a car Image 01: Weber, A., 1936, • from ‘comfortable’ communities Constructed Rambles, Summer, Southern Railway poster, Image sourced from: • ‘affluent achievers’ collecting20thcruralculture.blogspot.com Last accessed 09/09/2019 9 More interestingly, non-visitors are also described as: • under 24 years old • having low incomes • are from BME populations • having no access to a car • living with health inequalities (Peak District National Park, 2015:6). By portraying the marginalised BME population as outsiders to the Peak District borders and maintaining ‘non-BME’ (read white) populations inside, they are not just highlighting the social-class divide but reinforcing the stale perceptions of the rural landscape being a ‘collaboration between whiteness and national identity’ (Cloke, 2004:23), directly linking the rural geographies of the UK to the ideals of the English middle-class who predominantly occupy its space, habitually or otherwise. By hybridising the rural in this way, the countryside becomes a space that replicates and reproduces cultures of white middle-class normativity and embraces the performative nature of associated cultural ‘traditions’ and their factitious imperial histories. This in turn marginalises and excludes certain communities from 10 occupying outdoors space and denies any sense of ‘freedom to roam’ that is advertised via National Park or public-transport marketing, past or present. By observing these behaviours within the Peak District landscape first hand, I hope to challenge the classist and racist legacies of the land (and its people) that helps create a false sense of ‘belonging for all’ in present day hiking culture. My observations and analysis all contribute to the wider scholarship on cultural belonging within the rural landscape. In the proceeding chapters, my focus is split as follows, based on their chronological unveiling as I walked the Peak District: In Chapter One, I analyse the ‘rural’ as a racialised landscape, favoured by the middle-class and retained as a predominantly white environment through performed normativity that deflects the cause of racism onto the ‘urban’ or the marginalised ‘other’. Chapter two highlights the class conflict between hiking communities during the mass-trespass of Kinder Scout in 1932, that demonstrates how the middle-class can leverage their hegemonic capital to silence and erase the histories of the marginalised few by rewriting it as their own. Chapter Three contributes to this argument, by studying the foundation of the National Park system we are able to unveil its ties to Empire and the prevailing legacies of power it continues to maintain today. And lastly, Chapter Four concerns the omnivorous nature of ‘elites’, able to consume culture as a form of capital in order to champion space and superiority regardless of whether they belong or not. As a collection of auto-ethnographic observations, my dissertation is concerned with the performance of middle-class and rural nationalisms, and the constructed ‘normativity’ of their traditions as an active component to British hiking culture that has assisted in the silencing of other communities within UK National Parks. 11 Methodology By employing an autoethnographic approach, I will be combining my theoretical research with a chronology of observations and thoughts recorded in early July 2019 whilst hiking in the Peak District National Park over two days. Four chapters will be determined by these observations, influenced by particular geographies, people and objects that featured throughout my hike. To help provide a visual representation of the landscape, I have included labelled route maps of both days prior to my Introduction on pages five and six, as well as photographs and alternate maps, placed alongside each chapter for ease of visual consumption. I would encourage you to follow along with the maps as you read, so you can get a better sense of nearby villages and towns, or indications of heavier populated trails and local amenities that may affect your interpretation of the spaces I simultaneously occupy and discuss. I have decided on using autoethnography for several reasons.