REPEOPLING EMPTIED PLACES Centenary reflections on the significance and the enduring legacy of the Land Settlement (Scotland) Act 1919 James Hunter The Scottish Land Commission has commissioned a series of independent discussion papers on land reform issues to stimulate public debate. The opinions expressed in the papers are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Commission. © Cailean Maclean Jim Hunter is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of the Highlands and Islands. The author of twelve books about the Highlands and about the area’s worldwide diaspora, he’s also been active in the public life of the area. In the 1980s he was director of the Scottish Crofters Union, now the Scottish Crofting Federation. Later he served for six years as chair of Highlands and Islands Enterprise. In the course of a varied career, Jim has also been an award-winning journalist. His recent book, Set Adrift Upon the World: The Sutherland Clearances, published by Birlinn, attracted a Saltire Society award as Best History Book 2016. Jim’s latest book, Insurrection: Scotland’s Famine Winter, was published by Birlinn in October 2019. CONTENTS Foreword 02 Ulva 03 North Talisker 07 The politics of land settlement 15 Galson 27 Later phases of land settlement 35 Land settlement estates and community land ownership 41 West Harris 47 A future for land settlement? 52 01 FOREWORD Land is at the heart of Scotland’s identity, New collaborative approaches across economy and communities. The way sectors using a mixture of ownership and we own and use land is fundamental to governance models can help to stimulate realising Scotland’s ambitions for a fairer population growth. The momentum and greener economy. Land reform across for change is growing with a focus on both urban and rural land can unlock population challenges in the new Planning opportunities for delivering the healthy (Scotland) Act 2019 with a commitment and dynamic environments, economies to ‘increasing the population of the rural and communities Scotland wants. areas of Scotland’. Land availability in the right place at the right price, is core Land reform is not a new thing. to securing long term renewal of remote Scotland’s current pattern of land rural populations, and land ownership ownership, management and use is a is key to making this happen. product of years of evolving tradition, law and practice. This year, 2019, The way we own and use land is central marks one hundred years since the Land to big public policy challenges including Settlement Act in Scotland. The Act aimed climate action, productivity, and inclusive to resettle populations following the end growth. Reforms to both land ownership of the First World War through the and use are needed to unlock opportunities creation of smallholdings and crofts. for inclusive growth and to make the most As a result, a great deal of resettlement of our land for the benefit of all. was made possible in areas that had suffered population declines over previous I hope that in another hundred years, years. Among those was the settlement we see this as the pivotal moment to of 67 previously landless families from achieve the change that is needed. Harris and Lewis at Portnalong which transformed into a populated and thriving township. Now, when we are faced with declining populations within some of our most fragile rural communities, we have to look at the past to learn from the lessons and experience it has to show us alongside new and innovative solutions to tackling land issues. Looking at the personal stories in this book in parallel to the challenges rural Scotland is facing helps to open up the Andrew Thin debate for solutions and opportunities Chair land reform can provide. Scottish Land Commission 02 Ulva Ulva Parish Church © Crown Copyright: HES. On a Sunday towards the end of April The youngest of these residents, Matilda 2019 some 60 people are attending a Munro, aged eight, and her brother service in Ulva’s church. Such services Ross, five, are here with their father, Rhuri. are rare. When the church was built in And quite a lot of what’s said by minister 1828 and during the 10 or 20 years Johnny Paton – who, like most of his that followed, each Sunday would have listeners, has come over on the passenger seen Ulva’s minister, Neil MacLean, ferry from the adjacent and much larger mount a still-surviving pulpit to preach island of Mull – is being said to Ross and in Gaelic to a congregation drawn from Matilda. Johnny’s theme is renewal and more than 600 islanders. Then came revival. A first-rate storyteller, he blends evictions and deportations that emptied all sorts of disparate elements into a all of Ulva’s 16 crofting townships and single narrative. It’s still the Easter season set in train a depopulating process and that season’s message is there. that’s ended in the island now having As is the fact that it’s springtime and just five permanent residents. so Ulva’s woodlands are newly in leaf. 03 There’s mention of the New Testament Eolusary, 4; Glaenagallan, 4; Ballighartan, account of the healing of a little girl who’s 4; Beannas, 4; Cuilinis, 5; Abas, 5; Sorata, brought back from the edge of death. Also 7; Achanatutha, 4; Tairi-nan-Ardraidle, 3; in the mix is the tale of Sleeping Beauty Upper Ardeallam, 2; Lower Ardeallam, 5; – cursed by an evil fairy and left to sleep Blar-nan-Corr, 2; Salen Buadh, 2; total, until, after 100 years, she opens her eyes on being kissed by a handsome prince. 73 families. Some of these evicted families were first removed from sufficient farms An island, Johnny Paton says, is asleep to smaller ones, then they were reduced when next to no-one lives on it. But just like to a house and grass for a cow or two, Sleeping Beauty, the minister goes on, Ulva then to nothing at all, and when they is at last being returned to wakefulness. would not clear off altogether some of The island’s equivalent of Beauty’s them had the roofs taken off their huts. handsome prince, he reckons, is the Scottish Land Fund which, in the summer Statement by former Ulva resident of 2018, made it possible for Ulva to Lachlan McQuarie to the Royal become the latest addition to the 600,000 Commission of Inquiry into the or so acres – in widely separated parts of Condition of the Crofters and Cottars Scotland – now in community ownership. in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, Tobermory, 10. Pencils are produced. A big sheet of paper’s pinned to a board. Perhaps, August 1883 Johnny* suggests, Matilda and Ross might jointly draw a picture of how Ulva, now that it’s once more on the move, might The successful bid to take Ulva into one day look. The children work while community ownership was organised by everyone else gets through a succession the North West Mull Community Woodland of energetically sung hymns. There are Company (NWMCWC), a locally controlled going to be more animals on Ulva it grouping whose members own and appears – cattle, sheep and one or two manage an area of plantation forestry less identifiable creatures. There are going – formerly the property of the Forestry to be more people too. And houses. New Commission – near Dervaig in the northern houses. Perched on top of a ladder shown part of Mull. To be shown something of leaning against one such house, someone Ulva by John Addy, one of the Woodland can be seen to be putting finishing touches Company’s directors and a retired marine to their roof. As far as Ross and Matilda biologist, is at once to sense his and his are concerned, wakened-up Ulva’s going colleagues’ commitment to making this to be a bustling place. again a peopled place. There are no roads on Ulva. But there is a network of tracks – all dating from the At a numerously attended meeting held island’s populated past and all signposted in the Temperance Hall, Salen, on the by newly installed way-markers carved by 7th of August [1883] … the following Rebecca Munro, Rhuri’s wife and Matilda list was given of townships cleared on and Ross’s mother. The track John takes is the island of Ulva … From Ormaig, one that leads, through a little glen between 7 families; Cragaig, 9; Kilvicewen, 6; low hills, to Ormaig on Ulva’s south coast. * Not many days after this Ulva service the Reverend Johnny Paton died while hill-walking. 04 To come down the steep path into Ormaig of, for instance, office accommodation for is to be aware, as always on Ulva, of the NWMCWC staff, holiday apartments and place’s relationship to other islands small an exhibition illustrative of Ulva’s past, and large; close-at-hand islets all named its present and its hoped-for future. The long ago in Gaelic; the slightly larger heritage aspect of this particular project Inchkenneth and Little Colonsay; Mull, will draw heavily on research conducted of course, Iona and, further to the west, by Emma McKie, Rhuri’s sister, who has the Treshnish Isles, Coll and Tiree. Today, been uncovering lots of detail about John Addy says, Ulva, especially from an individual islanders – people whose stories urban perspective, might seem peripheral, can be used to illustrate, and make more remote. But the island, he stresses, was meaningful, the wider history of an island readily accessible when people got about with which thousands of families, all mainly by boat.