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Sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of Witness History from the BBC World Service.

It's exactly 90 years since a historic mountaintop protest in the north of England, which galvanized public support

for access to the countryside.

I'm Simon Watts and this is the story of the Battle for Kinder Scout.

It's the early 1930s and a protest movement is forming in the Northern Industrial City of Manchester. Workers like George Haig want the right to escape to the country and walk up any

mountain they choose.

I was 16 coming on to 17. don't forget that.

And I had a job indoors in a bleaching and dying firm

and to get out in the countryside weekend was an absolute must.

I was very keen on the right to ramble and who couldn't at that particular time because there were always these

keepers sending you back. They had sticks and I know in a number of occasions I'd seen a shotgun leaning around, you know, within easy reach.

I'm a rambler from Manchester Way I get all me pleasure the heart molland way I may be

a way slave on Monday, but I am a free man on Sunday.

At the time, the Peak District, a region of wild country on the edge of Greater Manchester Manchester was used largely as private shooting estates.

Gamekeepers even controlled the desolate but beautiful plateau on top of Kinder Scout, the

area's highest mountain. On April the 24th, 1932, the tension spilled

...