Orban Wallace’s film about the right-to-roam movement shows us a campaigning group with a simple, reasonable aim: to give walkers in England and Wales the same rights that people have in Scotland, courtesy of the Scottish Outdoor Access Code, brought into being by the Land Reform (Scotland) Act of 2003. There, walkers have the right to temporary, non-motorised access – which is to say walking, cycling and camping, carried out responsibly – to most land, public or private. These rights have now existed for some time without the apocalyptic end to the countryside as we know it.
Whether some in the right-to-roam movement in England want something more than that, or are prepared to protest more vehemently than simply organising peaceful mass trespass events, is another question. The film interviews landowners such as Francis Fulford, who has long been the media’s favourite outspoken reactionary toff, a sort of posh version of Viz Comic’s Farmer Palmer, snarling “Get off my land”. There are other, more thoughtful landowners, including Hugh Inge-Innes-Lillingston, who cheerfully admits how silly his name is, and is open to developing new ideas about managed access. As far as profiteering goes, I found myself thinking of a remark made by Tara Palmer-Tomkinson: “Land doesn’t really bring in a lot of money until they build a motorway through it.”
Among the opposition, there are bacchanalian incursions involving morris dancers and people frolicking about in Wicker Man outfits. You can watch this whole film waiting for a flashpoint – a clash between the heroic trespassers and the wicked landowners – but there isn’t one. Perhaps the landowners saw the cameras, and prudently avoided anything of the sort. Then again, if Wallace had wanted a scene like that, he could have used concealed cameras and sought out a confrontation.
This is a film that ranges across a lot of ideas, and perhaps some moments are more to the point than others. Pheasant shoots, for example, have a hate-watch fascination for many, but are surely irrelevant compared to the issues involved in large-scale agribusiness – an issue not much emphasised here. As for the accepted footpaths, these are concessions that have had to be insisted on. Ramblers are justified in keeping the pressure up and the take-home message is: opening up the glories of the countryside and nature itself to everyone is a universal good.
• Our Land is in UK and Irish cinemas from 8 May.
