This documentary quietly reveals the level of privilege and self entitlement embodied in the English ownership of land. It presents the ideas of the group Right to Roam, that is campaigning to be able to roam freely and responsibly over the English countryside irrespective of who owns the land. This is a right already enshrined in law in Scotland.
The arguments against this from landowners varies. Some see it as almost their divinely given right to possess, bequeathed to them through sometimes centuries of ancestral ownership. Others that they are stewards of the countryside, and they are preserving and maintaining the countryside for our benefit. Irrespective of whether the rest if us can have access to it. Others recognise the need for people to have access to the countryside. To manage and accommodate that access, to limit, but channel the roaming through defined spaces and routes.
The Right to Roamers see land and having access to countryside as a fundamental right that has been robbed from the English people. Either handed to the French nobility by William the Conqueror, actively stolen from common land during the act of enclosure or bought with money made through slavery. Both campaigners and landowners both recognise the value of nature to them for their individual health and wellbeing. Some want access purely for themselves, whilst others want access to be for everyone.
The film endeavours to let the landowners state their case, but is primarily supportive of the campaigners argument. And in one landowner they found your archetypal posh - aristocrat who would seem a laughable caricature, until you realise he is a real person and this is what enshrined privilege really looks and sounds like. At root landowners tend towards seeing open access to their land as a fundamental assault upon their right to express their total personal ownership of that land. As one guy tellingly stated, they could have access to his land just so long as they were prepared to pay for it.
The Right to Roam make a quite simple request for responsible open access to the countryside. The landowners immediately turn this into an extremely complex issue, of checks, balances and qualifications. It really doesn't need to be that big a deal. The example in Scotland is that provided you make it clear to roamers how they are expected to behave as they roam, that people do respect the land the animals and your requests. It's not difficult or hard unless you make it so, by resistance to embracing it as the positive thing it could be.
Ultimately this becomes a matter of the law, and what the government and establishment will support. Both sides claim they have rights on their side. Rights of ownership or rights of access. However, both of these are based on idealised moral assumptions, that these rights are in some way innate and inalienable ones in relation to human liberty. When in reality these can only be granted because the law allows this to be so. The law decides whether the right of access to roam is theirs to give, or ours to have.
As a documentary this laid out the broad case and what issues from that. It's cogency flagged by the end, as it started simply repeating previously stated standpoints. It didn't appear to know how to draw the documentary to an end, by either concluding its arguments well, or providing a telling image or statement. If anything this documentary felt too gentle, middle class and respectful.
CARROT REVIEW - 5/8
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