The ladder is a fascinating piece of equipment: at its most basic it can be a simple wooden construction with no moving parts and yet the most intricate models can have locking, sliding and folding mechanisms, self-levelling feet and other safety features. Both types, and many in between, have been used to great effect by people seeking access to festivals, protest sites and other forbidden places.

The most famous fence and ladder interface is probably the Glastonbury festival. Every year people try to sneak into the festival over the fence and sometimes under it. However, since the perimeter fence has been dug several feet into the ground in recent years, the only way to pass it is with a ladder. Of course, there are creative ways to gain access to the festival and each year the ideas get more and more ambitious, leading to every portable toilet being searched, after a group of people hid inside the cubicles destined for the festival. People have been known the pose as stewards, technicians, emergency services, bands and just about every support team you can think of. They hide in vehicles, inside speakers, inside anything just big enough to crawl inside and break out of later. And of course, people get searched for ladders: extension ladders and rope ladders with hooks at the top are the favourites for scaling the Glastonbury fence. There are stories of people hiding ladders in the woods months before the event, ladders made from branches so they don’t stand out too much and extension ladders being buried near to the perimeter, so when the festival starts, the ladder can be dug up and put to use.

Ladders as a Form of Protest

At West Beach in Newhaven, Sussex, local residents used ladders to scale a fence erected by Newhaven Port around a popular sandy beach. Newhaven Port has cited health and safety concerns as the reason the beach has been blocked off to the public, but the community wants to see the land designated as a village green, allowing residents to use it. After the fence had been repeatedly vandalised and residents were using the beach during the day, the port authorities repaired and strengthened the fence, only for the campaigning group, including the Mayor, to employ ladders to scale it and hold a protest picnic on the beach.

Part of the aims of the Occupy movement (which started at Wall Street in New York) is to encourage people to reclaim public space from big corporations, which is exactly what the residents of Newhaven were doing. At Duarte Square in Manhattan, Occupy protesters used ladders to scale a chain link fence to access and reclaim unused land. The first person over the fence was Bishop Packard and he helped set up the descending ladder on the other side, as well as inspiring others to act, who may not have done so without the example he set.

It’s not just these stories which make the news that involve ladders as a protest tool: every action that involves gaining access will surely involve a ladder of some description. Something so simple, that many of us take for granted, has been the foundation and an essential part of some important protests and occupations.

Ladders and Escape

The ladder is also an essential tool for immigrants. During the partition of Germany, ladders were routinely used to help people cross the 14 foot high Berlin Wall from the East to the West side and sometimes for people going the other way, when they had family on the other side and wanted to be with them. Ladders were thrown over the wall to waiting parties, who were acting under cover of darkness and with the constant threat of border guards. People were shot many times trying to cross over the wall with a ladder or by other methods, and in total, 246 people died at the wall trying to cross it.

A group of mechanics devised a system of folding ladders, operated by pulleys and ropes, which allowed them to scale an electrified part of the wall without having to touch it. At another point, where there was a blind spot that neither side could see, people were able to swim across from East to West Berlin and a rope ladder was hung on the West side by British soldiers, hoping to help people escape to freedom.

In Texas, USA, some cattle ranchers have taken to putting up ladders at places along the USA/Mexico border fence. The border fence forms the boundary of their land in some places, so serves to keep the livestock in, as well as forming the boundary line. However, most of the Texas cattle ranches are so large that it is impossible to check the fences every day, and when people try to enter the USA illegally by cutting through the fence, they inadvertently let the livestock out into Mexico. Some ranchers have grown tired of having to repair fences and losing money when livestock goes missing, so they have erected ladders at points along the fence to discourage immigrants from causing damage. However, the ladders don’t always work, as immigrants think they are being watched and revert back to ripping down the fences instead. One rancher has electrified his section of fence to stop any crossing there at all.

So we see, the ladder plays an important part in fulfilling human desire, whether it is gaining access to a festival to see your favourite band, occupying a space to reclaim it for the common good, or escaping into another country in search of a better life.