Kate Ashbrook: 30 years in charge of the Open Spaces Society

A tireless campaigner for walkers’ rights today celebrated 30 years with Britain’s oldest national conservation body.

Kate Ashbrook, general secretary of the Open Spaces Society, said she spent the day following the proceedings of a Supreme Court case online.

She began her work with the campaigning group on 2 April 1984 and remembers she got off to a bad start, locked out of the Henley on Thames headquarters with no keys.

During her three decades with the OSS, she has taken on some mighty foes and well known adversaries, including Paul Getty, the Rothschild family, Princess Diana’s father Lord Spencer, Joseph Bamford, head of the JCB excavator company, and the notorious Nicholas van Hoogstraten.

Her collection of photographs mark altercations with the organisers of Henley Regatta and her scalps include musicians Andrew Lloyd Webber and Keith Richards, both of whom tried to get footpaths extinguished.

Ms Ashbrook, who is also currently president of the Ramblers, says in her blog: “In the last 30 years we have issued 1,675 press releases – not bad when, for the first half of that time we had to photocopy, stuff, address envelopes and post.

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“Issuing a press release was a day’s work. We got a fax machine in about 1992, but that didn’t make the process much quicker at our end. Similarly, in 1984, we addressed all the envelopes for Open Space by hand.

“The great thing about the OSS is that it can act swiftly; it is not bogged down in bureaucracy, so we can take on a range of battles at short notice.

“However, our role in the protection of commons and greens remains unique.”

On her first day in the job as OSS general secretary, Ms Ashbrook issued a press release headed: Young campaigner for old organisation.

She said: “I declared: ‘I intend that the Open Spaces Society will put the 1½ million acres of common land on the map.

‘Our principal aim must be to generate public awareness of the enormous value and vulnerability of commons and thereby to protect them from being preyed upon by voracious farming and forestry interests.

‘The Open Spaces Society will bring commons into the public arena and champion their cause in the corridors of Westminster.’

“History will judge whether we achieved that aim.”

You can read more about Kate Ashbrook’s 30 years at the OSS on her blog.