No, the British countryside isn’t rooted in racism and colonialism

It is just over 90 years since a group of young workers, some of them communists, decided to stake a claim to the countryside by staging a mass trespass on Kinder Scout in the Peak District. Their legacy remains controversial, but they are credited by some with eventually improving access to swathes of Britain for ordinary people.

You might assume that the anniversary of this famous act of direct action would be cause for unfettered celebration on the Left. You would be wrong. Because, according to one initiative, it has simply shone a spotlight on another apparent “injustice”. The history of the countryside is rooted in colonialism and exclusion, particularly for ethnic minority people, you see, and “issues of inequality and inaccessibility still remain today”.

The group “Kinder in Colour” might think that it is aiding ethnic minorities by highlighting these “issues”, but all it is doing is transplanting our divisive race debate onto the British countryside, perhaps the final haven from our increasingly toxic culture wars. I wonder whether we should be insulted by the insinuation that the countryside itself is in some way racist, or triumphant at the thought that racial equality has progressed to such an extent that we’re left grasping at straws, finding prejudice in places where there is very little.

Of course, we want more ethnic minority Brits to visit the countryside. The data show that only a small number of us take advantage of it compared to white Britons. But surely this isn’t because the countryside somehow discriminates against black and brown people. No, it is simply because the overwhelming majority of ethnic minority people live in major cities. More than half of the black British population, for instance, live in London.

For obvious reasons, any child, white or black, growing up on a council estate in Dagenham is less likely to enjoy the countryside regularly than a middle-class child growing up in Kent. Only in a society such as ours, in which every debate is turned into one about race, are these nuances subsumed into a “diversity” agenda.

Worse still, these campaigns tend to remove agency from ethnic minority Britons: there may be cultural reasons why some communities prefer the bustling streets of cosmopolitan cities to the countryside, where multicultural events, places to eat and music can be few and far between.

We can seek to change people’s minds by encouraging younger generations, in particular, to go out and appreciate Britain’s natural beauty. That means expanding the horizons of some groups which have settled into comfortable pockets in cities. There is an argument that this might happen on its own anyway, as communities that assimilate and become more wealthy seek to disperse.

But the one thing that is sure to discourage ethnic minority people from visiting or moving to the countryside is to denounce it as “racist”, sending a message that people like me are not welcome there, when in fact, of course, it is as open to them as anyone else.

That is what we should be commemorating. The Kinder Scout trespassers, whatever you may think of their politics, sought to open access to land for all, regardless of class or race. If only the current generation of radical activists thought in a similar way.