Kinder Scout mass trespass / Armenian Genocide began - April 24

On this day in 1932, hundreds of ramblers protested being denied access to open country by trespassing at Kinder Scout, a moorland plateau in England. / This day in 1914 is widely considered the beginning of the Armenian genocide, though Armenian massacres had occurred previously.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all, we're rerunning two episodes today. Enjoy the show
Welcome to this Day in History class, where we bring
you a new tip bit from history every day. The

(00:20):
day was a ninety two. About five hundred walkers, mostly
from Manchester, England, trespassed and walked from Hayfield to kinder Scout.
Their goal was to call attention to the fact that
walkers have been denied access to open country. The trespassed
marked an uptick in the right to rome movement. Centuries ago,

(00:43):
people could graze, cattle, cut lumber, and get water from
common lands, but in the fourteen hundreds, landowners began marking
the boundaries around their property. In the seventeen hundreds and
eighteen hundreds, enclosure acts turned millions of acres of common
land into land and privately owned estates. Some people, eager

(01:04):
to have access to land that was once common, snuck
onto the now private land. Trespassing began to have serious
legal consequences, even death. For a period of time, people
began demanding the right to rome, or the freedom to
walk through certain public and private land for recreation. In
eighteen eighty four, Parliament made its first demand for the

(01:26):
right to rome This attempt, and many ones to follow,
were unsuccessful. In the late eighteen hundreds, areas in northern
England were becoming more industrial. As a way to escape
the smoke and other environmental ills that industrialism caused, workers
from Manchester and other industrial cities would escape to the
moorlands and mountains and Peak District, an upland area in England.

(01:51):
In nineteen hundred, the Sheffield Clarion Ramblers became the first
Northern Workers Rambling Club. Ramblers or walkers would leave busy
cities and hit to more natural landscapes for better environs
and self improvement. By ninety two, industrial and mining areas
in the UK we're dealing with the Great Depression. Still,

(02:15):
workers traveled to walk on greener land. One place that
was particularly popular was kinder Scout, a moorland plateau in Derbyshire.
But too many people the walkers visits were more than
just innocent strolls through nature. Two landowners the ramblers were
somewhere they weren't supposed to be. The Duke of Devonshire

(02:39):
owned most of the reservoirs and mountains at kinder Scout,
and he wanted the land to be available for other
locals to shoot grouse. Walkers were warned not to traverse
the land. People in organizations began to see the right
to roam as a class issue. The British Workers Sports Federation,
which was affiliated with the Meanest Party of Great Britain,

(03:01):
began to play a role in advocacy for rambling. Benny
Rothman was an outdoors enthusiast and charismatic leader and the
Lancashire wing of the British Workers Sports Federation. At an
Easter camp for the organization, members were harassed by gamekeepers
on a walk to bleak Low and forced to head
back to their camp. This inspired the Ramblers to plan

(03:24):
a mass trespass. Advocating for land access. As a diversion,
the Ramblers distributed false information about a British Workers Sports
Federation rally in Hayfield. Instead, they met at a nearby
Corey via a route that cars could not use. Hundreds
of adults and children were in the crowd of Ramblers.

(03:45):
They walked north past the Kinder Reservoir and down an
established right of way to William Clough and Assent with
views of Manchester and Tesher From there, the Ramblers went
up to the forbidden kinder Moorlands. When they got there,
they had to fight off gamekeepers and they won those scuffles,
during which a gamekeeper had been hurt, but they still

(04:07):
had to face the police. At Hayfield. Several ramblers were arrested,
none of which were over twenty three years old when
they went to trial. All of the men were charged
with offenses related to riotous assembly and assault and given
jail time, but the sentences inspired greater movement in the
right to rome fight. People held rallies and more mass

(04:29):
trespasses the same year. Once the Second World War began,
the country's attention shifted and Ramblers joined the war. Are
remained active in the labor movement in other ways, but
once the Labor Party came to power in ninety land
reform became more of a focus. By nineteen forty nine,
the National Parks and Countryside Act passed, creating the National

(04:52):
Parks Commission. Soon the Peak District became Britain's first national park.
In two thousand, the Labor government past the Countryside and
Rights of Way Act, which implemented the right to rome
and land mapped as open country or registered common land
in England and Wales. I'm Eaves, Jeff Coo, and hopefully

(05:13):
you know a little more about history today than you
did yesterday. If you have any burning questions or comments
to tell us, you can find us on Twitter, Instagram
and Facebook at T D I HC Podcast. Thanks for
joining me on this trip through time. See you here

(05:34):
in the exact same spot tomorrow. Hey y'all, Um Eves
and welcome to this dand History Class, a podcast that
proves you really do learn something new every day. Just

(05:54):
a quick morning before we start the show today. This
podcast does contain content about genocide. The day was April
nineteen fifteen. The Armenian genocide began when around two hundred
and fifty Armenian intellectuals and politicians were arrested. Most of

(06:18):
the people who were arrested were killed in the following months.
The Turkish government refuses to recognize the deportations and massacres
that followed as genocide, claiming that the killings were necessary
and there was no official policy for killing Armenians. However,
most historians consider it a genocide since it was a planned,
in systematic effort to kill a specific group of people.

(06:43):
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Armenia came under control
of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was home to Christians, Muslims,
and Jewish people, but it was dominated by ethnic Turks.
Christian Armenians, as well as other Christian communities, were minorities
in the higher Armenians did have a strong sense of

(07:03):
community under Ottoman rule, but in the second half of
the nineteenth century, Turkish nationalism that favored ethnic and religious
majorities was on the rise, and Armenians were on the
receiving end of Turkish persecution. As the twentieth century approached,
political instability, economic issues, and military defeats weakened the Empire.

(07:25):
At the same time, Turkish nationalist movements were growing stronger.
Armenians were one of the largest Christian groups in the
Ottoman Empire. There were civically and economically successful, and many
Armenian elites were well educated and highly influential. Their prominence
inspired resentment among Turkish nationalists. Russian Armenians participated in the

(07:49):
Russo Turkish War of eighteen seventy seven to eighteen seventy eight.
After the Russian victory in the war, Russia insisted in
the Treaty of San Stefano that the Ottoman Sultan sold
to An ABDULHAMI the second reform Armenian administration. The Armenian question,
or the issue of the protection and rights of Armenians

(08:09):
in the Ottoman Empire, was a topic that was growing
in importance in Turkish politics. Young Armenian activists organized to
demand independence from the Ottoman Empire and to call for reforms,
but despite proposed European fact reforms that Ottoman authorities supposedly supported,
hundreds of thousands of Armenians were murdered in massacres from

(08:31):
eighteen ninety four to eighteen ninety six. By the beginning
of the twentieth century, there were somewhere around two or
two point five million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire,
but Ottoman authorities continued to institute oppressive measures against Armenians,
including putting restrictions on property ownership and religious practices, and

(08:52):
more Armenians were killed in riots and pogroms in nineteen
o nine. When the Young Turk movement seized power in
the Ottoman Empire in nineteen o eight, there was hope
that Armenians and other minorities would not face as much persecution,
but over time the Young Turks became more authoritarian. They
intended to Turkify the Empire and to resolve the Armenian

(09:14):
question violently. When World War One broke out in nineteen fourteen,
the Young Turks joined on the side of the Central Powers.
When they suffered defeats to the Russians, they shifted blame
to the Armenians, who sided with Russia and deemed them
a threat to the state. So Armenians serving in the
Ottoman Army were removed from active duty and transferred into

(09:36):
labor battalions, and on April nineteen fifteen, the government ordered
the arrest of two hundred and fifty Armenian intellectuals and
community leaders, mainly in the Ottoman capital, which was then
called Constantinople. The government then began to deport Armenians from
Eastern Anatolia, a move that was soon authorized by the

(09:56):
Ottoman Parliament. It confiscated arm Nian properties and businesses. It
sent Armenians on death marches across the Syrian desert to
concentration camps, with people dying of exhaustion and starvation along
the way. It kidnapped children, and it sponsored mass executions
of Armenians. The Ottoman empire failed in nineteen two, and

(10:21):
Turkey was formally declared a republic in nineteen twenty three.
By this time, many Armenians in the Ottoman Empire had died, fled,
or been expelled. That said, there's no consensus on the
number of people who died in the genocide. Some countries
sent aid to the Armenian people, but the perpetrators of
the genocide went largely unpunished. Law student Raphael Limkin was

(10:45):
influenced by the Armenian massacres to coin the term genocide.
Turkey denies the Ottoman government's role in the systematic killing
of Armenians and has instituted laws restricting discussion about the genocide.
Many other countries have avoided recognizing the massacres as a
genocide to keep from harming relations with Turkey. I'm Eve

(11:08):
Jeff Code and hopefully you know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. And if you have
any suggestions about episode topics or any comments, you can
send them to us via social media where at t
d I HC Podcast. You can also send us an
email at this day at I heeart media dot com.

(11:29):
Thanks again for listening to the show and we'll see
you tomorrow. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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(11:49):
listen to your favorite shows.