The Highlands & Islands of Scotland suffer from many ailments often fragile rural communities operating in a low-wage economy with a drastic shortage of affordable social housing.
Historically in the period following Culloden its people were persecuted and cleared, their language and customs trampled and their land , transferred from what we would now call ‘community ownership’ into one of the most concentrated systems of private ownership in Europe as the former clan chiefs became private landlords and entered the ranks of the Anglo-Scottish elite.
These events are historic in nature but they must be understood as to a large extent their legacy is the reason for many of the ills the region faces today. A legacy which continues to force many young highlanders to the central belt and beyond – no longer at the point of a British bayonet, but simply to give themselves more opportunities than are available at home.
There is one issue which underlies all those others, and is central to building a better future for our children here in the highlands; Land Reform, and the lack of access to land for the people.
Now, we believe that a fully-fledged land reform policy would need to cover a whole range of policy areas such as maximum landholding sizes, land value taxation, land use and much more, but that is not the scope of this short paper which is confined by the limits of the Scottish Governments review of current Land Reform legislation.
The way we see it communities are prevented from realising their full potential and becoming masters of their own destiny, despite the land reform legislation as currently constituted.
In those communities where the people have managed to regain control over their land a very real and tangible difference can be discerned in the terms of the confidence of the people, increased economic activity which in turn can stabilise fragile, marginalised populations but also reverse historic terms of depopulation.
Through such economic development as community owned renewable power generation schemes rural communities could benefit not just from reaping the financial returns which would otherwise be accrued by private landlords but also from affordable domestic energy prices, again helping to safeguard marginal communities where fuel poverty is an increasing concern.
Such steps are not possible under the existing framework, which, IF the landlord decides to sell, and IF the community has registered an interest previously, forces the community to buy the land at free market value, thereby acting effectively as a subsidy to the landlord class. This saddles remote communities with huge amounts of debt, as land in the Highlands does not conform to normal economic rules of supply and demand but is seen more as a status symbol by absentee owners or faceless tax-dodging trusts, and so does not reflect the productive value of the land.
However under current legislation less than 2.4% of Scotland is under community ownership. Clearly something needs to change in order to provide a basis for a real, radical land reform to meet the aspirations of the Scottish people.
We believe that this situation can be rectified by changing the Land Reform Act to extend the right currently held by crofting communities to force a sale without waiting for the land to be offered for sale on the market under section 3 of the Act to all rural communities.
This extension would revolutionise the effects of the act. It would immediately take speculators and other spivs out of the market for land in Scotland, thereby bringing the artificially high prices down to a value which reflects the true value of the land.
Such a move would increase the availability of land to be brought into use particularly in terms of local communities trying to meet the demands for affordable social housing within their area, as well as creating access to land for a new generation of crofters & smallholders, not to mention the possibilities for the development of other industries, most notably in the returns from small scale community owned green energy generation. It would also form the basis for the creation of new communities built on the basis of co-operation and collective ownership of resources, and the exploitation of these resources for the common good.
If the people had the power to reclaim what is rightfully theirs it could finally close the page on some of the darkest days of our nation’s history and herald the beginnings of a new era in highland history.