The Land War

432 people own half of Scotland’s private land, ten per cent owned by 16 individuals or groups while 0.025 per cent of the population owns 67 per cent of Scotland’s rural land. In terms of distribution of ownership, Scotland is one of the most unequal countries in the world.

Dr Jim Hunter, historian and land reform expert, says:

“There’s nothing like that anywhere else in Europe, and the reason for that is based in history. If you go back a couple hundred years, the pattern of land ownership was very similar, it would have been roughly the same concentration across Europe – the difference is that other European countries have at various times in the last hundred years had sweeping land reforms, which has changed the pattern completely, sometimes in the shape of revolution, sometimes through legal or constitutional reform. In Denmark, for example, land ownership was reformed over 200 years ago before they had democracy – the monarchy decided to take land ownership away from the aristocracy and give it to its tenants, in an owner-occupier system.

He continues: “Land reform in Europe has almost always meant shifting ownership from the landowners – in Scotland, historically, aristocrats – to their tenants, though in Scotland the move has been more towards community ownership, which is quite different. The idea of reforming land ownership was started by the Tory government, then pushed on by the Labour-Lib Dem administration in Scotland, but interestingly, since the SNP took power, the steam has gone out of the reform. In fact up to now they’ve done nothing at all.”