'In All Our Footsteps? Rights of Way and the Battle for the Land after the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act' at the IHR

'In All Our Footsteps? Rights of Way and the Battle for the Land after the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act'

RHS Lecture with Professor Glen O'Hara (Oxford Brookes)

6.00pm BST, Friday 25 September 2026

Institute of Historical Research, Wolfson Suite

Senate House, University of London

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About this lecture

The post-war Labour government had a plan for the land, just as did for welfare and industry. Development would be controlled and its profits nationalised; National Parks would be established; access agreements reached; most importantly, the whole country would be opened up for everyone, everywhere, via a Definitive Map containing every right of way in England and Wales. This lecture will detail the long struggle to realise those plans, and their uncertain fate as successive governments argued and puzzled over how practical and desirable that expansive vision really was.

About the speaker

Professor Glen O'Hara is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History in the School of Education, Humanities and Languages at Oxford Brookes University. He is author of New Labour, new Britain? How the Blair governments reshaped the country (2026) and The politics of water in Post-War Britain (2017).

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