A milestone anniversary of radical legislation which killed off the Highland Clearances and vastly improved the lives of tens of thousands of people was celebrated on Friday.
One hundred and twenty five years ago the Crofters’ Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 became law.
The seminal landmark in the history of the Highlands and Islands ended the dark days
of the clearances by halting the injustices of families having their homes burned
and thrown off their land -
A conference in Stornoway marked the occasion and discussed the breakdown of community
life -
The original reform law gave, for the first time, security of tenure and a system of ensuring fair rents for crofters.
Crofting has served the Highlands and Islands well, providing a subsistence living by growing their own food, raising livestock and cutting peat for fuel.
It kept a vibrant population in rural communities when, across Europe, families left the land in droves in the face of intensive, mechanised farming, some rural areas like Barvas in the Western Isles were the mostly densely populated outside urban towns.
And though the Western Isles unemployment rate was equally as high, crofting held off the extreme poverty suffered by the Jarrow Marchers who protested to Westminister about their dire deprivation in 1936.
But now crofting is under threat again with a generation of young people seemingly oblivious to the harsh struggle their forefathers had to win the land.
Murdo Macdonald is a rare breed -
He said: “People here didn’t have the rights to the land. It was very difficult for them and they fought a lot of battles to get crofts.”
He believes the current generation do not realise the huge struggles their grandfathers fought to secure the land and thus “don’t appreciate crofting as they did.“
Donnie Macdonald, crofter and conference organiser says European rules and bureaucracy is strangling modern crofting and putting people from entering the sector. He is one of many who suspect civil servants see crofting as an archaic nuisance and want to kill it off.
He said: “Crofting activities were the glue which kept communities close-
“They gave us the oral tradition of handing down stories from one generation to another. People visited each other’s homes on a regular basis and exchanged the latest news or gossip. In every village they knew each other so well that even youngsters could rattle off the family trees of their neighbours.”
Anniversary of radical legislation which ended Clearances 3/10/11
Murdo Macdonald is one of just a few young people interested in crofting