Thread by @anthlawson1

Dartmoor was the only National Park in England where wild camping was legal – until today, when a banker called #AlexanderDarwall, who bought an estate 10 yrs ago with his hedge fund profits, overturned that right with help from barrister Tim Morshead KC...

This is what some of us do. We are born in industrial time, living in the freedoms that technology brings & with the painful knowledge of what has also been lost. Yet our unshakeable bond with the earth can still be felt, taking us out of linear time...

Putting hands in the soil to grow food does it. So does being in the wild: especially overnight. We lose ourselves, a piece of our humanity, if we can’t do this...

Anyone who sleeps out because they love the moor leaves no trace. If there really is a problem with how people treat the land, as he claims, then the money Mr Darwall has spent on lawyers to overturn our rights would be better spent on educating all who use this land...

This terrible decision is a reminder not only that we have to keep fighting for our rights, but that we have to spread more understanding of the truth of our interbeing - to use Thich Nhat Hanh's lovely phrase - with the wild...

What if we had a legal system that could take the wellbeing of a nation into account, instead of only the narrowly defined rights of *one person* who has paid his City profits to 'own' a massive expanse of granite, heather, bog, river and all the creatures that live there?...

I wonder what kind of investments Mr Darwall’s hedge fund has made, to pay for this feudal move?
I wonder what the judge, or Mr Darwall's legal team do to relax in their spare time. Do they know the freedom of the hills?
But we do know this:

The right to sleep on the wild earth pre-dates Mr Darwall’s money, & his sense of entitlement

The land & creatures of Dartmoor, of which humans are part, pre-date the long inequitable history of land distribution in this country called England...

And, as ever, there is work to be done: follow @Right_2Roam