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To Be Free and Independent: Crofting, Popular Protest and Lord Leverhulme's Hebridean Development Projects, 1917–25

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

John R. Gold  and
Margaret M. Gold
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Extract

The ‘land question’ occupies a central role in the history of Highland Scotland. The system of estate ownership and tenure introduced in the aftermath of the battle of Culloden (1746) commodified the land as private possession. In its wake came mass evictions of tenants in large-scale ‘Clearances’ designed to convert crofting-lands to other agrarian or sporting uses. During the main period of Clearances (1780–1855), protest by the crofters remained spontaneous and sporadic. It was not until the last part of the nineteenth century, especially during the so-called Crofters' War (1881–96), that a resurgent crofting community engaged in sustained protest. The threat of civil unrest prompted some ameliorative measures, most notably the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886. This stabilised the situation and gave protection from further mass evictions but did not restore lands to the landless population from which their ancestors had been displaced. The demand for restitution, therefore, remained a powerful rallying cry.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , October 1996 , pp. 191 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

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28. This is reflected by the fact that Leverhulme paid only £143,000 for the estates. Even together with extra payments for moveable property and rent arrears, his total outlay only amounted to £167,000.

29. Stornoway Gazette (henceforth SG), 14 March 1919.

30. SG, 25 July 1919.

31. SG, 12 October 1922.

32. Daily Chronicle, 15 January 1919.

33. SG, 25 July 1919.

34. SG, 3 December 1920.

35. Nicolson, The Lord of the Isles, p. 118.

36. SG, 24 January 1919.

37. Although it is worth remembering that subsidised light railways and tramways were built in East Anglia and other parts of Great Britain at the turn of the century to encourage rural development.

38. SG, 23 June 1919.

39. SG, 23 August 1919.

40. This was not simply part of a desire for grandeur. The original town hall and library had burnt down in March 1918 and needed replacing.

41. The Scotsman, 1 July 1919.

42. SG, 23 June 1919.

43. By mid-1919, for example, Leverhulme's wages bill on the island totalled £3000 per week, with 400 men employed on the Tolsta-Skegirsta Road alone. Leverhulme was by far the island's biggest employer.

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48. SG, 8 October 1920.

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