Working Class Hero #2

Tom Criddle Stephenson (1893–1987)

Born in Whalley, Lancashire, Tom Stephenson, like Benny Rothman, fought all his adult life for the rights of the people of England to have access to the countryside. He devised England’s first long-distance trail, The Pennine Way, and, like John Muir in the US, was a great mover and shaker when it came to the formation of the UK National Parks.

Tom became a good friend to me and my family and came to stay with us in the Dales many times towards the end of his life. His hill walking days were over, so I used to drive him on days out around the Yorkshire Dales and North Pennines visiting places he’d rambled as a younger man. He was always great, and wise and witty company. The photograph above is one I took on one of those days out. It shows Tom in the Trough Of Bowland on the edge of privatised moorland that was once common land, free to us all, but is now largely owned by the Duke Of Westminster, purportedly the richest man in England, (another massive chunk is owned by a privatised water company.)

Tom was born into a poor working household and went to work in a cotton mill aged thirteen. He began his rambles on Pendle Hill and beyond as a way of escaping from a troubled household; his father was a violent alcoholic. He was a socialist and a pacifist all his life and like many working class men and women had a deep thirst for knowledge which he recognised as the only way the working class would ever raise themselves up out of servitude.

As a late teenager, while still working in the mills, he developed an interest in geology which led to him winning a scholarship to a London university. But during WW1 he spent 3 years in jail in Wormwood Scrubbs during WW1 as a conscientious objector. This meant that, because he now had a criminal record, he was unable to take his degree. My wife and I took Tom, not long before he died, to Lancaster University where during a graduation ceremony he was given an honorary doctorate by Lancaster and where the public orator made a fine tribute to Tom saying this was “a small way of righting a terrible wrong.”

Tom was a journalist, a socialist, was a massive force for good within the Labour Party, was an unsung hero who did so much for The National Parks and for access to open country. He was hated by land owners because his knowledge of land-law and his sharp analytical mind tied them in knots at many a meeting. He told me how, at one meeting, when the first national parks were becoming a reality, Lady McMillan, wife of the Prime Minister turned and said loudly to her lawyer “Does this mean people will be able to walk across our land?” The lawyer replied, “I’m afraid it does m’lady.” “Humph!” she muttered '“This is like Russia.” As Tom said in a way this was true because, though he hated communism, it was none the less true that apart from military areas people in Russia did have more freedom to roam than in the UK.

I spent many hours talking to Tom about the hills he loved, and recorded some of what he said on tape. One afternoon, sitting in the sun outside our house Tom was in full flow when a curlew in a nearby field gave its soulful call; Tom stopped talking to listen, and, when the bird stopped singing said, “That is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world.” I loaned the tape to the BBC and never saw it again.

Right to the end his mind was pin sharp and his memory incredible. He was a self-effacing man who dictated that there should be no fuss when he died. He was cremated quietly and his ashes scattered by a friend in a quiet and well loved spot. Tom left his house and books and what little money he had to the Ramblers Association and said that there should be no monuments erected to him on the Pennine Way. He said that would spoil it.