Posted on 01/23/2002 2:27:13 AM PST by Arkle
IT all sounds so reasonable, so unthreatening. This is no Mugabe-style land grab. This is about freeing a downtrodden peasantry from centuries of drudgery and despotism. Or so its proponents tell us.
The trouble is that "it" is very definitely not reasonable and most definitely is threatening, because "it" is Scottish land reform - the three-pronged attack on property-holding by the Labour/Lib Dem coalition that runs devolved Scotland.
Hailed by the ostensibly moderate Donald Dewar as changing for ever the nature of land tenure in Scotland, the Land Reform Bill - or, as it might more accurately be called, the Class War Bill (Remaining Stages) - plans to give "communities" the right to buy the land on which they live when estates come up for sale.
Landlords will have no choice but to sell to such groups, although the Bill insists that they will be paid full market rates, fixed by an independent valuer. Critics, however, ask that if the market is effectively to be abolished, how long will it be before prices plummet? Property values are already being "blighted" by the plans, they say.
The Bill also allows crofters - Highland smallholders - the right to buy the fishing rights on rivers that come into community ownership schemes. At present, crofters can buy their crofts for 15 times their annual rent, often as little as £5 a year. But, under the new plans, they won't even have to spend their own money on the buy-outs - they can use ours.
Until now, they haven't been able to buy the fishing rights, often costing hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of pounds. Under the Bill's most draconian provision, riparian owners will be forced to sell to crofting communities.
And the third aspect of the Bill is to provide a statutory right of access to land in Scotland. A proposal to impose criminal sanctions on ramblers and others who entered land at times when landowners wished to keep them out - such as at lambing time - has now been dropped, after protests from the Ramblers Association and others. Instead, only landowners will now be taken to court, for withholding access rights.
And underwriting this whole affair, surely one of the most ambitious pieces of social engineering ever undertaken in these islands, are the ordinary people of Britain. Their money will be used to buy the land and the rivers - not from their taxes, but from the money they spend on lottery tickets. It may not be "public" money, as such, but it is most certainly the public's money.
The Scottish Land Fund was set up with £10 million of lottery cash to fund the buy-outs and has already spent £6 million on 60 pieces of land acquisition, including the £3.5 million handed out to the islanders of Gigha. And this before the new legislation is even enacted.
Although there is "only" £4 million left in the kitty, nobody in Scotland is in the slightest doubt that the land fund will be topped up by the lottery as and when required. Applications to buy land are already running at 20 a week.
The Bill is being examined by three committees of the Scottish Parliament, and, at a recent session, Jim Hunter, chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise - the body charged with regenerating perhaps Britain's most beautiful region - uttered a raft of soothing and emollient words about the plans.
"This is precisely the opposite of a quasi-Marxist approach," he purred at the Rural Affairs Committee. "It is about liberating people to take entrepreneurial decisions on their own account." What could possibly be wrong with words such as these? Nothing, except that Mr Hunter is talking about plans that will revolutionise property owning.
It should be no surprise, either, that Mr Hunter supports these moves by the Scottish Executive, or that he should be so dismissive of those who oppose them. He is, after all, one of his native land's foremost advocates of land reform. The only possible surprise might be that, having spent most of his life trying to right the perceived wrongs of the Highland Clearances, he was made chairman of the high-profile HIE in the first place.
What is also evident - as if it was ever in doubt - is that laird-bashing is third only to whisky and football in the Scots' pantheon. A flavour of this sentiment is available at parliamentary committee meetings. Leading the charge at a recent Rural Development Committee was Alasdair Morrison, the Western Isles MSP, who was sacked two months ago as minister for the Highlands.
The Gaelic-speaking son of a Free Presbyterian minister, Mr Morrison is easily the most vocal supporter of the land reform proposals. He demanded to know why landowners and others were "systematically denigrating" those crofters who have already bought estates and salmon fishings - forcing the Scottish Landowners' Federation to apologise, almost, for something they hadn't said.
Mr Morrison sees opponents of the land grab as "a Right-wing alliance". This ignores the fact that many river workers - water bailiffs, ghillies and the like - fear for their jobs and are fighting the plans. And if it is Right-wing, then I am astonished that Mr Morrison - who, other than on this issue, is one of the most Right-wing politicians I have ever met - is not part of it.
Not content with the existing proposals, the Ramblers Association would like to amend the Bill to allow a right to roam everywhere in Scotland - even on golf courses. Some nationalists want the right to buy extended to tenant farmers; a number of local authorities believe they should have the right compulsorily to purchase land on behalf of communities. In the face of this onslaught, landowners and their supporters seem hesitant and almost apologetic in their opposition.
Although this is a wholly Scottish measure, affecting only Scottish land, there will be landowners throughout the United Kingdom, as well as overseas, forced to sell their property against their will when it becomes law.
And while absentee landlords may have few friends, there is a principle at stake - the right of individuals to sell their property to whomever, and whenever, they choose. This right is about to be abolished in Scotland. Does anyone care?
Mind you, what's new about that?
In any case, if the Highland clearances are the reason for this, shouldn't the right to buy the land go to the descendants of the original evictees (many of whom now live in America) rather than the current tenants (many of whom are English hippies)?
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