150 years after historic crofter victory, MSPs are about to side with landlords

The trial at Stornoway Sheriff Court arose from an episode in which the people of the island of Bernera resisted eviction notices served on 56 families. It was the final straw in the conflict between the crofters and their nemesis, the estate owned by Sir James Matheson who made his fortune in the vile Chinese opium trade.

Matheson operated through a factor, Donald Munro, and the trial turned into an exposure of a cruel regime. Charles Innes, who represented three “rioters”, told the court: “Had Mr Munro, instead of being Chamberlain of Lews, been an agent in either Connaught or Munster, he would long ago have licked the dust he has for years made the poor of this island swallow.”

Charles Innes secured not guilty verdicts and his name is revered to this day. The case attracted national attention and is seen as a turning-point which led to the Crofting Acts which gave security of tenure. So a tale from history with a happy ending? Well, not really – for there is no ending.

For over a decade, the Bernera community has been trying to buy the land on which it lives. They have faced intransigent, and so far successful, opposition from a landlord in Germany who has barely set foot on Bernera. For all the huffing and puffing, the reality is that the power of landlordism continues to prevail over vast tracts of Scotland.

Land and democracy

Does that matter to anyone other than those directly affected? Is “land reform” a romantic cause on the political fringe? Or is Scotland failed by a refusal to recognise that land ownership and control are fundamental indicators of democracy or otherwise?

Scottish island divided over future with calls to 'heal' rift of islanders

Land matters for practical as well as ideological reasons. Anyone who tries to plan for population growth or housing in Scotland starts with one hand tied behind their back. How many could be living in beautiful places, if they were not run as private kingdoms? How much environmental damage is perpetrated by those now guzzling at the trough of carbon credits?

At a time when there is no money for anything, the bottomless pit of landowner subsidy remains immune. The case of the Brewdog hipsters is one of the few to make headlines. They bought an estate and were awarded £1.2 million of public money to plant trees and greenwash their credentials. Within a year, half the trees were dead, although some have been replanted. The case is far from unique.

Trees on peatland

The admirable people who try to track these scandals are pursuing the case of Muckrach estate within Cairngorm National Park where the Birmingham-based landowners were given £2.5 million to plant trees. Nick Kempe, of Parkswatch Scotland, writes: “The stupidity of the contract agreed with Scottish Forestry should be apparent to anyone taking a closer look at what was happening on the ground. Mounds of peaty soil had been excavated to plant trees among an extensive area of recent natural regeneration.  

“It appears that Scottish Forestry never bothered to inspect the land to check whether forking out £2,581,220 to plant trees was good use of public money. But then, all Scottish Forestry are now interested in is meeting the Scottish Government’s targets for planting trees.”  

The only real expert on land issues ever to set foot in Holyrood, Andy Wightman, described it as “another gross waste of public money”. Campaigners want a halt to these grants until there is rational scrutiny of what they are achieving, other than lining the pockets of landowners and their agents. 

Missed opportunity

But who in the Scottish Government is likely to heed that call when they are all complicit in having created a market which achieves the precise opposite of its stated aims? Far from encouraging “land reform” in any democratic sense, the policies pursued have driven up land values, driven out hill farmers and taken control even further away, if that is possible, from communities which subsist in these areas. The same theme runs through everything related to land that the Scottish Government touches. Unto them who have, even more shall be given.

An Agriculture Bill has just completed its Holyrood passage. Here was an opportunity, post-Brexit, to transfer agricultural support towards smaller producers to sustain rural communities. Not a bit of it. The top ten per cent will continue to receive half the funds. Meanwhile, Scotland’s Rural College warned that “complexity and compliance costs….  may lead to further withdrawal from support structures and activity, particularly for small-scale producers”. Via Holyrood, the meek inherit neither the earth nor the subsidies.

Stain on Holyrood’s record

There is no shortage of legislation, each piece more bland than the one before. Another Land Reform Bill is currently trudging through Holyrood committees. Andy Wightman has warned that due to “the nature of the land market in Scotland, the complexities of the Right to Buy and the absence of a public-interest test, the Bill is unlikely to have any meaningful impact on the pattern of landownership in Scotland”. So why bother?

There is also a Crofting Reform Bill which is similarly useless, while the uniquely Scottish system of crofting tenure is disintegrating at a rapid rate due to the weakness of regulation and the absence of any apparent will to defend it.

From any remotely radical perspective, there is no bigger stain on the record of the Scottish Parliament than its failure, apart from the early days, to make any meaningful reform of Scottish land ownership, other than to reinforce it. The progress of these Bills can confirm or begin to contradict that dismal record – and at the same time, show a little respect for struggles of the past.