TARGETING THE VULNERABLE

Times are tough and we all have to make sacrifices. This does not include royalty, comic book collectors or millionaires buying a nice little pad in London of course. "Cuts to social care budgets have been blamed for an 11 per cent fall in the number of vulnerable people who have their care services paid for by their local authority, it was reported. .... Richard Humphries, a senior fellow at health and social care charity, The King's Fund, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the fall in people receiving free home care was a result of public spending cuts. "The result is that councils are responding to that cut, some by putting up charges, most by rationing care much more tightly and the net result is overall, that fewer people are actually getting the care that they need," he said. The Alzheimer's Society said the findings were "disgraceful"." (Daily Telegraph, 16 May) The disabled, the elderly and the poor are the first to feel the pinch. That is how capitalism operates. RD

A MAD, MAD WORLD

Socialists are always decrying the so-called values of capitalism. Here is another example of the madness of the profit motive society. "A 70-year-old Batman comic that originally cost 10 cents has been sold in Dallas for $850,000. The near-mint condition comic - from the first edition of the Batman series was published in 1940. Ed Jaster, vice-president of Heritage Auctions, said the seller had paid $315,000 for the comic about two years ago." (Independent, 12 May) A comic book collector nets $535,000 over a two year period while millions try to survive on less than $2 a day. Madness! RD

Hardie? Another Scottish Hero?

Hardie was born in Lanarkshire in 1856, Scotland, the son of a ship’s carpenter and a domestic servant. Hardie's first job came at the early age of 7, when he was put to work as a message boy for the Anchor Line Steamship Company. Formal schooling henceforth became impossible, but his parents spent evenings teaching him to read and write, skills which proved essential for future in his self-education. Hardie worked in the pits from the age of 10 and became a miners’ leader before he was 20. He was the founding Chairman of the Scottish Labour Party in 1888 and was then elected as an Independent Labour MP for West Ham in 1892. Hardie formed the Independent Labour Party (independent, that is, from the Liberal Party and the ‘Lib-Lab’ MPs) in 1893, and long time editor of The Labour Leader. Hardie had launched his paper (it remained his personal property until 1904 when it was taken over directly by the party). He played a leading part in the creation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, which became the Labour Party in 1906. He lost his seat at West Ham in 1895 but became an MP for Merthyr Tydfil from 1900 until his death in 1915. Hardie became the first Chairman and Leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1906. The early strongholds of the ILP were as one might expect in the old industrial regions of West Yorkshire and South Lancashire with considerable support in Leicester, Norwich and Merthyr Tydfil. Scotland, later known as the heartland of the ILP, was to develop later during and after the First World War.

The early ILP’s conception of socialism was a bit of a joke. In 1896 Hardie defined it as “…brotherhood, fraternity, love thy neighbour as thyself, peace on earth, goodwill towards men, and glory to God in the highest” (Justice, 6 June 1896).

The SDF, which was an organisation which sought to model itself on the continental Social Democratic parties which were committed to the class struggle, socialism and Marxism (and of which most Socialists in Britain were then still members), tried to commit the LRC to socialism and the class struggle, but not even Keir Hardie's ILP supported them. Hardie, in fact, always explicitly repudiated the class struggle. Hardie, who derived his “economics” from Jesus Christ, says in his My Confession of Faith in the Labour Alliance: “The Labour Party practices the Marxian policy of the Class Struggle”. Such a statement, of course, is utterly false. the alliance with the most bitter enemies of the working class such as the Liberal manufacturers, for the purpose of “getting in”, is certainly part of the class struggle, but the Labour Party take sides in that struggle with the masters.

Hardie mouthed socialist phrases but in practice pursued the interests of capital, and this included support for capitalism’s wars. Despite this wobbling the ILP should be acknowledged as the largest organisation in Britain in opposition to the war and both Hardie and MacDonald came out against the war. However its policy originated in a faulty concept of what the war was all about. After initially opposing the Great War of 1914-1918 he changed his mind:

"A nation at war must be united especially when its existence is at stake. In such filibustering expeditions as our own Boer War or the recent Italian war over Tripoli, where no national danger of any kind was involved there were many occasions for diversity of opinion and this was given voice to by the Socialist Party of Italy and the Stop the War Party in this country. Now the situation is different. With the boom of the enemy's guns within earshot, the lads who have gone forth by sea and land to fight their country's battles must not be disheartened by any discordant note at home." (Pioneer, Merthyr 15th Aug., 1914).

And again he writes

"We must see the war through, but we must also make ourselves so familiar with the facts as to be able to intervene at the earliest possible moment in the interests of peace" (Pioneer 15th Aug., 1914).

 Let no one be deceived by the mention of the "earliest possible moment" because for Hardie this was a very long way off and he was in fact prepared to support a long, drawn-out conflict in Europe. Hardie told his electorate in Merthyr:

"May I once again revert for the moment to the ILP pamphlets? None of them clamour for immediately stopping the war. That would be foolish in the extreme, until at least the Germans have been driven back across their own frontier, a consummation which, I fear, carries us forward through a long and dismal vista…I have never said or written anything to dissuade our young men from enlisting; I know too well all there is at stake. But, frankly, were I once more young and anxious to enlist, I would resent more than anything the spectacle of young, strong, flippant upstarts, whether MPs or candidates, who had the audacity to ask me to do for my country what they had not the heart to do themselves. Of all causes, this surely is the one in which actions speak louder than words. If I can get the recruiting figures for Merthyr week by week, which I find a very difficult job, I hope by another week to be able to PROVE that whereas our Rink Meeting gave a stimulus to recruiting, those meetings at the Drill Hall at which the Liberal member or the Liberal candidate spoke, had the exactly opposite effect." (Merthyr Pioneer, 28th November, 1914.)

Two weeks later Hardie was able to proclaim that he had obtained the recruiting figures for his constituency and was able to make good his boast. He set out his claim in this manner:

"(1) That for the five weeks before the Rink Meeting. recruiting had been steadily going down week by week; (2) that our I.L.P. meeting was held on Sunday, October 25th, and that for the next three weeks the number of recruits secured in Merthyr kept steadily rising. . . If Mr. Jones challenges this statement I shall produce the figures, though not inclined to do so for very obvious patriotic reasons. Unlike my colleague I am more concerned with aiding the army than with trying to take a mean advantage of a political opponent" (Pioneer, 19th Dec., 1914).

The myth about Keir Hardie's anti-war attitude is very persistent.

The war also saw the death of Hardie in late 1915 and the rise of a new Labour hero, James Maxton.

All an act

If you can pretend and play one part, why not others?

Ex-Scottish Socialist Party, now Solidarity [with] Tommy Sheridan was jailed for making up stories in court and Rab C Nesbitt creator Ian Pattison chose to write a play about the life of  Sheridan with Des McLean in the lead role. Previously in 2007, not one for modesty, Sheridan appeared on the Edinburgh Fringe, hosting a chat-show.

But now not to be out-shone, his ex-SSP comrade, Rosie Kane, who gave evidence against her one-time party leader at his perjury trial, will be taking to the stage in a show about her life.

Asked about the show, Ms Kane said:"I'm enjoying the opportunity because I'm not shy. If you stand up at parliament and you stand up at protests, then this is just another one of those things."




Both are stand-up comedians! Both led the workers a right song and dance.

And again it, fooling the public once more with fanciful made-up tales. It is what Trotskyists do. But now it is political theatre, instead of electioneering deceit.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/former-msp-rosie-swaps-holyrood-for-the-theatre.17622402
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-17297993

Food for thought

A recent Toronto Star article divulged some interesting facts about the rise and fall of the 'Celtic Tiger', commonly known as Ireland, that spent the 1990s enjoying unprecedented economic growth. Housing prices quadrupled and unemployment fell from 17% to 4% and plasterers were making 2 000 Euros ($2 666 Canadian) a week and spending 200 Euros on a pair of pants'. In 2007, the housing bubble burst and the Bank of Ireland's stock plunged 75% in one year. Now Ireland has an official unemployment of 14%. No matter how well things go in the boom, the bust will follow and the bubble will burst. There is no security for the worker in capitalism.

Roper, North Carolina has a population of 617, so there are few officials -- just four, in fact, including a mayor who works for free, and its annual budget is $360 311. Roper's average annual family income is $20 600 or $2 000 below the poverty level for a family of four. When they can't pay their water bills, neighbour Dorenda Gatling turns it off. Some haul buckets from their neighbour's house but to prevent that, homes are sealed with yellow police tape to prevent entry. So the homeowners are waterless and homeless. In capitalism it's 'can't pay, can't have' no matter what the consequences are.

An article in The Toronto Star, March 4, called attention to the plight of non-unionized workers. A hotel worker had her part-time hours cut back to nothing for ten months in 2009 after she spoke at a rally in support of forming a union at her workplace, Novotel, in Mississauga. About a dozen other Novotel workers have been fired, disciplined, or had their working hours cut since 2008 when they began union organization. The fact that, legally, they had a right to unionize meant nothing to the management. It's like it was two hundred years ago when unionization began. This shows that nothing has changed in capitalism, which is an excellent reason to abolish it. John Ayers

Scottish? English? Who cared? Only family mattered

"Reive" is an early English word for "to rob", from the Northumbrian and Scots verb reifen from the Old English rēafian, and thus related to the archaic Standard English verb reave ("to plunder", "to rob"), and to the modern English word "ruffian" The reivers gave the words "blackmail" and "bereaved" to the English language. The idea of the Border Reiver has been romanticised over time making it sound like most people were involved in swashbuckling activities but it was bloody and it was frequently barbaric.


The Border Reivers

John Leslie, the Bishop of Ross, wrote of the Border Reivers:
"In time of war they were readily reduced to extreme poverty by the almost daily inroads of the enemy, so, on the restoration of peace, they entirely neglect to cultivate their lands, though fertile, from the fear of the fruits of their labour being immediately destroyed by a new war.whence it happens they seek their substances by robberies or plunder and rapine (for they are particularly averse to the shedding of blood) nor do they much concern themselves whether it be from Scots or English that they rob...They have a persuasion that all property is common by law of nature and is therefore liable to be appropriated by them in their necessity."

The Border reivers were raiders along the border from the late 13th century to the beginning of the 17th century. Their ranks consisted of both Scottish and English families, and they raided the entire border country without regard to nationality. There are 77 predominant family surnames who can claim to have been Reivers. Their heyday was perhaps in the last hundred years of their existence, during the time of the Stuart Kings in Scotland and the Tudor Dynasty in England. The border families can be referred to as clans, as the Scots themselves appear to have used both terms interchangeably using the word clan and chief to describe both Highland and Lowland families until the 19th century. The idea that Highlanders should be listed as clans while the Lowlanders are listed as families originated as a 19th century convention. Border families  practiced customs similar to those of the Gaels and although feudalism existed, loyalty to kin was much more important and this is what distinguished the Borderers from other Lowland Scots. Relationships between the Border clans varied from uneasy alliance to open deadly feud. There has been much cross-border migration families that were once Scots now identify themselves as English and vice versa.

During the wars between Scotland and England, the lives and  livelihood of the people on the borders would be devastated by the contending armies. Crops were destroyed, homesteads burnt and the people murdered or dispersed. Those living in places known as Liddesdale, Redesdale and Tynedale were the most affected as, for reasons of geography, the invaders regularly used these routes. Families on either side of the Border had a lot in common regardless of whether they were Scots or English. They both had to survive in this hostile environment. It is no coincidence that these people, having their crops regularly destroyed and their livestock stolen, looked for other means of sustaining themselves and their families. They took to reiving.

"The freebooter ventures both life and limb
Good wife, and bairn, and every other thing;
He must do so, or else must starve and die,
For all his livelihood comes of the enemie"

Even when the countries were not at war, tension remained high. Royal authority in either kingdom was often weak and there was little loyalty to a feeble or distant monarch. The uncertainty of existence meant that communities or people kindred to each other would seek security through their own strength and  and improve their existence  at the expense of their rivals. The  English and Scottish governments tolerated  or even indulged these fierce families as they served  the first line of defence against invasion from the other side of the border so the two nations found it expedient to have a standing army of Borderers and they were encouraged to suitably arm themselves and, in return, they received free land or land at a very low rental. But there was also often draconian and indiscriminate punishment when their lawlessness challenged the authorities.
A special body of customary law, known as Border Law, grew up. Under Border Law, a person who had been raided had the right to mount a counter-raid within six days, even across the border, to recover his goods. This Hot Trod had to proceed with "hound and horne, hew and cry",making a racket and carrying a piece of burning turf on a spear point to openly announce their purpose, to distinguish themselves from unlawful raiders proceeding covertly. Any person meeting this counter-raid was required to ride along and offer such help as he could, on pain of being considered complicit with the raiders. The Hot Trod puts one in mind of the posses of the old American west. The Cold Trod mounted after six days required official sanction.

The reivers, nick-named the "steel bonnets", were both English and Scottish and raided both sides of the border impartially, so long as the people they raided had no powerful protectors and no connection to their own kin. When fighting as part of larger English or Scottish armies, Borderers were difficult to control as many had relatives on both sides of the border, despite laws forbidding international marriage by punishment of death. They could claim to be of either nationality, describing themselves as Scottish if forced, English at will and a Reiver by grace of blood. They were badly-behaved in camp, frequently plundered for their own benefit instead of obeying orders, and there were always questions about how loyal they were. At battles such as Ancrum Moor in Scotland in 1545, borderers changed sides in mid-battle, to curry favour with the likely victors, and at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh in 1547, an observer (William Patten) noticed that the Scottish and English borderers were talking to each other in the midst of battle, and on being spotted put on a show of fighting. Indeed the Borderers had a much closer allegiance to their family than to their country. Raids were made, not in the name of Scotland or England, but in the name of their family or clan. A Border official, Thomas Musgrave said, "They are people that will be Scottishe when they will and English at their pleasure."

Their activities, although usually within a day's ride of the Border, extended both north and south of their main haunts. English raiders were reported to have hit the outskirts of Edinburgh, and Scottish raids were known as far south as Yorkshire. The main raiding season ran through the early winter months, Lammas  to Candlemas . The harvest had been gathered and and the cattle and horses fat from having spent the summer grazing and in their prime. Long hours of darkness provided ample cover, and at this time the courts were in recess giving the raiders a good chance of escaping detection and retribution until the courts reconvened three months later. The numbers involved in a raid might range from a few dozen, to organised campaigns involving up to three thousand riders

The End
By the death of Elizabeth I of England, things had come to such a pitch along the Border that the English government considered re-fortifying and rebuilding Hadrian's Wall. Upon his accession to the English throne, James VI of Scotland (who became James I of England) moved hard against the reivers, abolishing Border Law and the very term "Borders" in favour of "Middle Shires," and dealing out stern justice to reivers. He embarked on the so-called "Pacification of the Borders", purging the Border reivers. James  was determined to have a United Kingdom. He proclaimed that "if any Englishman steal in Scotland or any Scotsman steal in England any goods or cattle which amount to 12 pence, he shall be punished by death." The most blatant offenders were rounded up and served with what was known as "Jeddert Justice" - which was immediate execution without trial. Wanted men were hunted down and executed. All Borderers were forbidden to carry weapons and they could only own horses of a value up to 50 schillings, fortified tower houses destroyed. Reiving families were dispossessed of their lands the people scattered or deported many families rounded up and banished to Ireland where they partly made up those who became known as the Ulster-Scots.

Some clans who had been active reivers hastily abandoned their reiver connections and sought and found favour with the king and joined in the subjugation of the old reiving families, often with great enthusiasm. Many were rewarded with gifts of land, and they prospered, acquiring the lands of their former friends and allies. Their descendants are now securely entrenched with their titles and vast holdings.

"..good triumphs and the villain bites the dust. If anyone believes that, the story of the Border Reivers should convince him otherwise. Its moral is clear: there is little justice to be had. The good man survives, if he is lucky, but the villain becomes the first Lord Roxburgh." George Macdonald Fraser from his book The Steel Bonnets.

 Feuds
When a visitor to Liddesdale found no churches, asked "Are there no Christians here?", he received the reply, "Naw, we's a' Elliots and Armstrangs."

When a man was killed his whole family became involved in a feud with the family who had done the killing. Reprisals were not just against the killer's immediate family but against anyone with the same surname. These feuds could last for generations. The Herons and the Kerrs were still at feud 60 years after the murder of Kerr at a truce day. The Maxwells and Irvines carried on a feud for 30 years. The principals in the feud had been long dead but the families continued their animosity. Some of the feuds could amount to pitched battles while others were settled in single combat. Families could be engaged in several feuds with several other families. The authorities were reluctant to get involved in feuds because it was their thinking that they could stand back and watch troublesome families kill each other and rid the authorities of problems with these families. One of the reasons the Borders was in such chaos was that many were afraid to kill raiders and invoke a vendetta. Their thinking was that it was better to lose a few cattle than to incur the wrath of a powerful reiving family and be involved in a feud. Mostly feuds were English against English and Scot against Scot. Some feuds did cross the border but it was feared that any such might lead to a full scale war between the two countries.

 The feud between the Maxwells and Johnstones was one of the bitterest feuds, with both families vying for dominance in the Scottish western border. During a battle called Dryfe Sands near Lockerbie the Maxwells and Johnstones clashed. It seemed an unfair battle because Maxwell had 2000 men and Johnstone only 400. However, the Johnstones knew they were fighting for their existence and cut the disordered Maxwell forces to pieces

The magnitude of feuding and the complicated way the feuding was interwoven among border families can be shown by this small list. The Bells, Carlislies and Irvines were on one side and the Grahams on the other; a year later the Bell-Graham feud was still going on, the Grahams were also feuding with the Maxwells and had joined the Irvines to fight the Musgraves; the Armstrongs joined in against the Musgraves and at the same time were feuding against the Robsons and Taylors; the Elliots were at feud with the Fenwicks and the Forsters with Jedforest; the Turbulls were at feud with the Debatable Land Armstrongs but not the Armstrongs of Liddesdale. They in turn were at feud with the Elliots of Ewesdale but not with the Liddesdale Elliots. The Scott family had feuds among the branches of the same family.

The Debatable Land
The Debatable Lands lay between Scotland and England, extending from the Solway Firth near Carlisle to Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway, the largest population centre being Canonbie, under which country's sovereignty it was disputed. Some twelve miles long and three to four miles wide,the boundaries were marked by the rivers Liddel and Esk in the east and the River Sark in the west. For over three hundred years they were effectively controlled by local clans, such as the Armstrongs, who successfully resisted any attempt by the Scottish or English governments to impose their authority and who could alone put 3,000 men in the field. They launched frequent raids on farms and settlements outside the Debatable Lands and the profits enabling them to become major landowners. In 1530, King James V broke the strength of the Armstrongs by hanging Johnnie Armstrong of Gilnockie and thirty-one others. In 1551 the Crown officers of England and Wales, in an attempt to clear out the trouble makers, declared that "All Englishmen and Scottishmen, after this proclamation made, are and shall be free to rob, burn, spoil, slay, murder and destroy all and every such persons, their bodies, buildings, goods and cattle as do remain or shall inhabit upon any part of the said Debatable Land without any redress to be made for the same."

Common Riding
Common Ridings are annual events celebrated in Scottish Border towns. There about a dozen border towns who share the tradition. They can be traced back to the 13th and 14th centuries when the border lands were in constant upheaval during the long wars with England and because of the tribal custom of reiving and cattle thieving,  that was commonplace amongst the major Borders families. In such lawless times, townspeople would ride their boundaries, or 'marches', to protect their common lands and prevent encroachment by neighbouring landlords. This land was not enclosed, the boundary being marked by a number of cairns. The annual Riding of the Marches has continued to this day and continues the tradition of those who rode around their town’s boundaries throughout the centuries checking for encroachments by neighbouring landowners. The Selkirk Common Riding is the largest mounted cavalcade in Europe with between 400 and 600 riders taking part in the Riding of the Marches and Selkirk is unique in that it still owns its own land and has no need to ask permisssion to hold the annual ride. Langholm's Great Day comes from the settlement of a legal dispute in the 18th century, which ensured Langholm people certain common rights (e.g. the digging of peat) within set boundaries. Every year, those boundaries must be re-marked to maintain the rights.

its an emergency

Major trauma, the commonest killer of children and adults under 45, accounts for 1,300 deaths every year in Scotland. Major trauma often involves patients arriving at hospital with multiple, complex injuries which could result in death or permanent disability, usually sustained in an accident such as a car crash or gas explosion, or from a violent situation such as a shooting or stabbing. More than half of all trauma patients have major head injuries.

Scotland is lagging behind other developed countries in its provision of care for victims of major trauma and needs to radically overhaul its approach. A report by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh said death rates for severely injured patients who are alive when reaching hospital is 40 per cent higher in the UK than in North America. But while England has reformed its healthcare policy to improve survival rates, the situation in Scotland has not yet been addressed.


Margaret Watt, chair of the Scotland Patients’ Association, said: “This is nothing short of scandalous. We have known for some time the health service in Scotland is lacking in specialist care. Trauma patients should have access to the best qualified, best doctors for the job. The report comes from specialists who work in the frontline and know what they are talking about. They can not be ignored. It will be no good politicians coming back and saying they will look into it. These recommendations are already long overdue. They should already be in place. They need to act now to ensure Scotland’s patients get the life-saving care they expect and deserve. Scotland used to be the world leader in health care – to lag behind the rest of the world is just not an option.”

Food for thought

The announcement in February that Target, the second largest US discount department store retailer, will be opening one hundred and thirty-five stores in Canada, starting in March 2013 brought a swift retort from the head of Wal-mart, Canada, Shelley Broader. 
She said, "When people ask me what our Target strategy is, I say we have a Wal-Mart strategy. That's about helping people save money so they can live better." 
That sounds a little strange from a company that pay their employees little enough to live on, let alone save. Even stranger considering how Wal-Mart force their suppliers to fire union employees lowering their standard of living; strange, too, considering the companies they have ruined in competition, hence more grief and unemployment. Socialists do not take sides in competitions between capitalists as they are all at the same game -- lowering labour costs for more profits -- and the only way to end this race to the bottom is to get rid of the profit system. 

A recent study suggests retailers can increase yearly takings by almost $100 000 by employing people whose ethnicity reflects the local community. The study by Temple University, Rutgers, and Davidson College studied the theory at over seven hundred JC Penny stores. The extra take averages out to $630 per employee (wonder if they received any of it) and brought the company $69 million a year. Altruism is a wonderful thing, especially when it brings in millions. 
John Ayers

Celtic Communism, the Gaelic Commonwealth

 St Kilda

The remotest inhabited place in the British Isles lies some 110 miles west of the Scottish mainland, "on the edge of the world", a small cluster of islands known as St Kilda. St Kilda may have been permanently inhabited for at least two millennia and the population probably never exceeding 180.

In theory St Kilda was part of Scotland but it was effectively overlooked. The Inland Revenue never attempted to impose taxation, and the inhabitants of St Kilda were never invited to register on an electoral roll. No crime was ever officially recorded. No one from St Kilda was called up into the armed forces. Until the nineteenth century money was not used on St Kilda.

On the islands, consisting of 1575 acres of Hirta,  244 acres on Soay and  79 acres on Dun, the islanders had developed a self-sufficient communal economy based on seabirds (meat, oil & eggs), Soay sheep, fishing, and some small scale crofting. A form of primitive socialism prevailed on the island.

In 1838 Lachlan MacLean wrote "If St Kilda is not the Eutopia so long sought, where will it be found? Where is the land which has neither arms, money, care, physic, politics, nor taxes? That land is St Kilda. No taxgatherer's bill threatens on a church door-the game-laws reach not the gannets. Safe in its own whirlwinds, and cradled in its own tempests, it heeds not the storms which shake the foundations of Europe - and acknowledging the dominion of M'Leod, cares not who sways the British sceptre. Well may the pampered native of happy Hirt refuse to change his situation - his slumbers are late - his labours are light - his occupation his amusement. Government he has not - law he feels not - physic he wants not - politics he heeds not - money he sees not - of war he hears not. His state is his city, his city is his social circle-he has the liberty of his thoughts, his actions, and his kingdom and all the world are his equals. His climate is mild, and his island green, and the stranger who might corrupt him shuns its shores. If happiness is not a dweller in St Kilda, where shall it be sought?"

On the whole the people were left free to develop their own type of society. The outcome was a form of communism in which decisions affecting the whole community were taken in a collective manner (though only by the men), work was assigned on the basis of individual skills, and there was no private property apart from accommodation, furniture, and other personal items. The community made sure that those who were sick, disabled, or elderly could live at the same standard as anyone else.

A very large proportion of the communal work involved the catching of sea birds and the gathering of eggs. After a day capturing fulmars, for example, all the dead birds would be placed on a large pile, and then distributed to each family according to the size of the family. Men who returned with especially large quantities of fulmars would receive the same share as any other.

"To discover the socialistic principle you have only to toss a roll of tobacco—an ounce will serve the purpose as well—to the first man that accosts you. True to the apostolic theory of “all things common” this latter-day Ananias will share his spoil, to the last leaf, with every smoker on the island."

The men of Hirte (the only inhabitable island) would meet every morning in what was the daily "Parliament". It had no rules, no chairman and participants arrived in there own time.This was a meeting to share information, discuss current issues, resolve disputes, and make decisions, in particular in relation to work that needed to be done. Decisions were reached by consensus. "Often the proceedings are anything but harmonious, and the loud talking of the men at one and the same moment is suggestive of anything but a peaceful solution. However, when a decision is arrived at the malcontents readily give way, and co-operate cordially with the majority." Never in recorded history were feuds bitter enough as to bring about a permanent division in the community.

The social organisation of the people of St Kilda can be summed up as a form of feudal communism. It was  feudal  in the sense that the islands were the property of a wealthy laird. At the time of the evacuation the owner was Reginald MacLeod, at Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye who unverifiably claimed that the population of St Kilda had been "tenants of my family for a thousand years". He received his rent in kind and not in cash. The factor for St. Kilda took over 1,080 fish from its tenants in 1875. (Also in 1875 St. Kilda residents exported over 500 gallons of oil from seabirds, for use as medication).

Like the free workers of Jamaica that Marx describes in Grundrisse who, being "content to produce what was strictly necessary for their own consumption", and how they were portrayed by the plantation owners as idle and indulgent, so the St Kildans were similarly held in contempt by visitors and church-men for their production of use-value and their adherence to their home-grown version of socialism of simply satisfying needs.

The entire population was evacuated in 1930. Despite their reservations every member of the community came to the conclusion it would be right to leave. So ended perhaps the longest surviving "Communal Democracy" on British soil.

 On the mainland, several of them were particularly aggrieved at conditions in which they found themselves. They wrote repeated letters of complaint, a typical comment being that included in one letter from one John Gillies, saying "This home is worse than the cattle byre I had in St Kilda..."

sources
http://www.abandonedcommunities.co.uk/page40.html
http://www.grianpress.com/SKW/Connell/St_Kilda_and_the_St_Kildians.html

Celtic Communism, the Gaelic Commonwealth

Marx considered certain tribal societies  "in some ways, more essentially human and liberated than a clerk in the city and in that sense closer to the man of the socialist future". The early Celt’s system of communal organisation could perhaps be cited as an example

The word "clan"derives from the Gaelic form 'Clann', meaning "children" or "stock". When a clan occupied  a territory it belonged to the clan as a community.

Engels discussed the New Lanark experiment of Robert Owen and  suggests that the success of the New Lanark experiment was in part due to the fact that the Scottish "workers' were familiar to working in communistic way as a kind of cultural or socio-economic hangover from the Scottish clan system. Which as well as operating co-operatively, as far as the labourers were concerned, the Clan leaders were more sort of paternalistic than purely exploitative. So the story goes; the Clan leaders were viewed and viewed themselves rather like a father of the clan family and likewise had a responsibility towards the rest of the clan as his "children".  The clan leader would be also like a repository of culture and knowledge etc and a matter of civic or clan pride, as far as his up keep was concerned, and an impartial administrator of the production within the community and disputes."

John Maclean's call for a communist republic of Scotland was based on the belief that traditional Scottish society was structured along the lines of "Celtic communism". He argued that "the communism of the clans must be re-established on a modern basis" and raised the slogan: "back to communism and forward to communism". He wrote in  his 1920 "All Hail the Scottish Workers Republic!" that "The communism of the clans must be re-established on a modern basis. (Bolshevism, to put it roughly, is but the modern expression of the communism of the mir.) Scotland must therefore work itself into a communism embracing the whole country as a unit. The country must have but one clan, as it were – a united people working in co-operation and co-operatively, using the wealth that is created."
He reminded the Irish in Scotland that "communism prevailed amongst the Irish clans..." so that by allying with Scottish socialist republicans they would be "carrying forward the traditions and instincts of the Celtic race".

Many have criticised James Connolly as having betrayed socialism through an infatuation with Irish nationalism. He too cites the workers' forebearers socialistic tendencies in his book "Labour in Irish History" where he refers to "The Gaelic principle of common ownership by the people of ther sources of food and maintainence".

It would indeed be wrong to follow either MacLean or Connolly and give the impression that it is by such means the workers will emancipate themselves. Engels had already pointed out that:
 "...the Celtic clans...In the course of time, under the influence of commodity production surrounding them, or arising in their own midst and gradually pervading them, and of the exchange between individual families and individual persons, they all lost more and more of their communistic character and dissolved into communities of mutually independent landowners."
The Communist Party would call MacLean supporters "claymore communists" for their nationalism and we too caution against any idea that implies socialism is possible in one country. We should not over-romanticise our history with such concepts as a brotherhood of the kilt but we can use examples and experiences from our past to demonstrate the potential for the future and that neither human nature nor national character stands in the way of achieving socialism  -  indeed, in many ways it is "back to communism and forward to communism"

THE DRIVE FOR PROFIT

Timothy Roth and three other American gas field workers were killed in a road accident. "Over the past decade, more than 300 oil and gas workers like Mr. Roth were killed in highway crashes, the largest cause of fatalities in the industry. Many of these deaths were due in part to oil field exemptions from highway safety rules that allow truckers to work longer hours than drivers in most other industries, according to safety and health experts. Many oil field truckers say that while these exemptions help them earn more money, they are routinely used to pressure workers into driving after shifts that are 20 hours or longer. " (New York Times, 14 May) In its ceaseless drive for more and more profits capitalism will go to any lengths, even if that means the risk of death for its workforce. RD

A NICE LITTLE WINDFALL

She was known to the media as "the peoples princess", but in case anyone has the foolish notion that meant she lived like the rest of us this item of news should disabuse you of that notion. "Prince William is due to inherit a £10million fortune next month but he and Kate plan to wait before deciding whether to invest in a country home. The second in line to the throne is to become a multi-millionaire when he turns 30 on June 21 after he inherits the money left by his mother, Princess Diana. ..... Diana left an estate of £21million but more than £8million was paid out in inheritance tax." (Daily Express, 15 May) RD

HOUSE HUNTING

Many newly married working class couples are desperately seeking accommodation, but with high prices and rising deposit rates it is proving very difficult. This is not the case for the owning class though. "It is a central London pied-a-terre with a price tag that only the world's richest can afford to pay. A lavish apartment at the Candy & Candy development One Hyde Park has come up for sale - one of only a handful of properties in the billionaire-friendly block to reach the open market - and it could be yours for a cool £65m. The five-bedroom flat, described on property finding website zoopla.co.uk as 'exceptional', has magnificent panoramic views of Hyde Park and Knightsbridge and has been fitted out to the highest specifications. Apartment C.08.1, marketed by luxury estate agents Aylesford & Co, appeared on zoopla four days ago and is already attracting a flurry of interest." (Daily Mail, 14 May) This "flurry of interest" of course is not coming from the working class. RD

Trigger happy stun-gun police

Tasers subject their victims to a 50,000 volt shock followed by 100 microsecond pulses of 1,200 volts. In theory, a Taser is intended to serve as a non-lethal method of control for law enforcement.

 Since 2001, more than 500 people in the United States have died after law enforcement officers used this weapon against them. A study published by the American Heart Association’s Circulation Journal confirms that the misuse of a Taser can cause sudden cardiac arrest and death.  

In the UK there have been three taser-related deaths since the stun-guns were first brought into widespread use in 2005. A Channel Four investigation  found that the frequency with which UK police officers are using their new kit is growing, highlighting that the number of taser discharges in the UK has risen collectively amongst forces by 70% from the previous year. The Daily Mail recently reported how police repeatedly tasered a terrified Alzheimer's sufferer because he didn't want to go into care.

Socialist Party Public Meeting

Community Central Halls

304 Maryhill Road

admission free

5 minutes from St. George's Cross Underground Station


Wednesday May 16 at 8.30 pm

"The Positive Case for Socialism":

Left to those who are making the revolution if and when it happens, and as dictated by circumstances? Analysing capitalism was a big enough job in itself: Marx & Engels never really got round to fleshing out their conception of socialism beyond the bare bones. To be fair, a materialist approach would suggest that the detail (the "recipes for the cookshops of the future", in Marx's oft-quoted phrase) should be.

But is this still valid 150 years on? Recent decades have by any measure seen a significant decline in positive support for capitalism amongst workers. They may still vote for it, reform it and complain about it, but the ideological mainstays of capitalism are weaker now. The Economist and the Spectator magazines acknowledge capitalism's failings. David Cameron and Warren Buffet join in the chorus of criticisms. But the great fall-back argument for the profit system is a simple one: "well, what are you going to replace it with?".

In response, we are seeing increased support for "funny money" currency cranks, and technological utopias (Zeitgeist's Venus Project for example). The Party's current position on this (the Socialism as a Practical Alternative pamphlet) is now 25 years old. This talk will argue that - while socialists still need to help workers understand capitalism and its failings - we need to continue developing arguments as to how a socialist society might look to organise itself.

• Who would decide what goods and services are produced?
• In the absence of money how would we know if production was efficient?
• What sort of jobs would no longer be needed?
• Would we need some form of vouchers as "payment" for work done?
• Would socialism mean sitting in committees and meetings all day?
• Would socialism have to increase production massively to feed the hungry?
• Would globalisation continue? Or be reversed?

A right proper Charlie, he was

A  diamond brooch once owned by Bonnie Prince Charlie is to be auctioned off.  The brooch is expected to fetch up to £300,000 in a sale in Geneva. The brooch features a 7.33-carat yellow diamond within a border of near-colourless “cushion-shaped” diamonds. Following the Battle of Culloden  he is thought to have offered the gem to the Corsini family in gratitude for their support.

The 1745 Rebellion has become part of the romantic heritage in Scottish history. But at the time there was little romance to it and the reality is far from the idealistic view portrayed through the mists of time and Hollywood films. It has been described as Highland versus Lowland, feudal Scotland against bourgeois Scotland, catholic against protestant, autocrats against democrats, as well as Scotland versus England. The reality was that it was a civil war, with many families divided. In the Stuart's Jacobite army, fro example, was Roderick Og Chisholm, youngest son of the chief of Clan Chisholm. On the opposing side were two of his brothers, James and John, who wore the uniform of St Clair's Regiment. It was Scot fighting Scot, Highlander against Highlander. In reality, Camerons, MacDonalds and Chattans fought Campbells, Munros and the many other clansmen that joined the ranks of the Argyll Militia. Some clan chiefs hedged their bets and sent sons off to fight on opposing sides. Nor was the '45 rising merely just a parochial civil war, it was also a part of the greater international politics of the period. War between Britain and France had been simmering below the surface since 1740. In order to divide the British further, the French encouraged the Jacobite plotting. The French defeat of the British at Fontenoy in May 1745 offered the perfect opportunity for a rising. 

Prince Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, The Young Pretender, C was born in Rome to a Polish mother where his father had been given a residence by Pope Clement XI. He spent almost all his childhood in Rome and Bologna. He spoke and behaved Italian. Charles was an instigator of the unsuccessful Jacobite uprising of 1745, which ended in defeat at the Battle of Culloden. In a battle that lasted less than an hour, thousands were slaughtered (Cumberland suffered only 300 dead or wounded). The Battle of Culloden went down as one of the bloodiest in Scottish history. It was not, as often portrayed, a battle between the Scots and the English: in reality the Scots on the Government side outnumbered those fighting for the Jacobites. There was no Geneva Convention in those days to protect the vanquished and the result was a ruthless victors' justice. Charles fled to the Isle of Benbecula where, it is reported, he met Flora Macdonald who helped him escape to the Isle of Skye, disguised as a maid. He escaped to France and never returned to Scotland. The Skye Boat Song was written almost a century later by an Englishman, and was for a Scot who spent just a year of his life in Scotland.

The Jacobite cause was supported by some Highland clans, both Catholic and Protestant. However, the majority of the Highland clans were Presbyterian, not Catholic like the Prince, and did not support his cause. 43-6% of the Jacobite Army came from the Highlands, 17-24% from Moray, Aberdeen and Banff, 17-20% from Perthshire, 7% from Dundee and Angus and 2.5% from Edinburgh and Hanoverian deserters with the balance being made up by the Irish Piquets, south and west Lowland recruits, the Manchester Regiment and the French Royal Scots. In the North, Mackays and Sutherlands supported the Government as some clans were openly Hanoverian, for example the Campbells of the Argyll Militia stood with the Regular Army against the Jacobites. Other clans were neutral. Had he gained the support of all the Highlanders, it is widely recognised that he would have access to nearly 50,000 fighting men, not 5000. These men who did fight for him were indeed brave and loyal highlanders, sadly being used by the prince for his own ends.

 Bonnie Prince Charlie was no hero. For most Highlanders he was the harbinger of doom. Charles' thanks for their unwavering loyalty and sacrifice was to blame his treacherous "mountaineers" for the failure of the rebellion until his dying day. He was a spoilt aristocrat who had no trouble with leading trusting men to their graves for his own personal ambitions. Nor did Jacobitism really stand for a noble cause for it sought to put the Stuarts back on the throne and they stood for the "divine right of kings" meaning that the king was chosen by god and should have absolute authority above all.

The pretender, in more ways than one, died in Rome in 1788, an obese, bloated and bitter alcoholic

Old, Sick and Broke

A person born today will be forced to work until they are 77 years old before they become eligible for a state pension, according to a new report. The report, by the world’s largest accountancy firm PwC, also states that people in their late 30s today can expect to work until they are 70 before they can claim their state pension. The prospect of 70 and 80-year-olds in the workforce will soon become a reality, according to Professor Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University Management School.

Alison Fleming, head of pensions at PwC in Scotland, said: “The era of retiring in your 60s is facing extinction with many people born today facing a future of work from 17 through to 77."

Age Scotland said that poorer people live shorter lives and so will have to sacrifice a larger portion of their retirement under the new plans.

Lindsay Scott, a spokesman for Age Scotland, said “Do not rely on the government to make provisions for your old age as you will be exceedingly disappointed...We face physical and mental decline, a loss of cognitive ability and if you are getting into a situation where you need treatment for your physical ailments and for your mental health, and you have no money, then you are in dire straits, because not only are pensions taking a beating, look what is happening to the NHS. I can think of nothing worse for your old age as to be old, sick and broke.”

A RARE FLASH OF TRUTH

Occasionally politicians have been known to tell the truth. This is such a rare occurrence that we feel we have to record it for posterity. "Education Secretary Michael Gove has attacked Britain's class divide between rich and poor children, branding the split 'morally indefensible' In a speech at private-school Brighton College, Mr. Gove told teachers and pupils that Britain 'has failed to tackle' the widening parameters between the country's social classes." (Daily Express, 11 May) "Morally indefensible" it may well be, but as an out and out supporter of capitalism and a Conservative MP he has aided the day to day running of this morally indefensible social system. RD

YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT

The columnist Paul Krugman paints a frightening picture about youth unemployment. "In Spain, the unemployment rate among workers under 25 is more than 50 percent. In Ireland almost a third of the young are unemployed. Here in America, youth unemployment is "only" 16.5 percent, which is still terrible — but things could be worse. " (New York Times, 29 April) Supporters of capitalism often laud its "efficiency" but it is difficult to think of anything more wasteful than bebarring young workers from taking part in the production and distribution of wealth. Half of all young Spanish workers on the dole. Some efficiency! RD

The Crofters' Wars

“The land under sheep and deer is my property and I can do with it what I like.” -  Lady Matheson

"Treasa tuath na tighearna." (The people are mightier than a lord) - Highland Land League slogan

The common people of the Highlands and Islands had been cleared from large areas of their ancestral lands. The Highland Clearances had crammed the surviving remnants  into crammed crofting townships on very small areas of land where they were very vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by their landlords. Many lacked even crofts of their own and became cottars and squatters on the crofts of other people. Landlords turned most of the land over to use as sheep farms and deer forests. The creation of sheep farms, often comprising large tracts of empty, uncultivated and often fertile land, which hemmed in the congested townships on their boundaries, created social tensions, which unavoidably led to revolt among the disadvantaged. The farms established on Tiree in the 1840s and 1850s, having been forcibly cleared of their original occupants were but a few of the farms designated by crofters as suitable for resettlement by themselves.  In addition, in the 1880s, the Highlands and Islands were ravaged by a decade of severe, occasionally chronic, agricultural depression. As wool prices collapsed, sheep farmers‘ profits and landlords‘ rentals fell back sharply from the heights they had reached in the balmy years of the 1860s and early 1870s. The poor harvests of 1881-1882 plunged the crofting population to a level reminiscent of the potato famine. Then on 1st October 1882 after prolonged rain in August and September came a severe southerly gale that destroyed the unharvested grain. In addition, the storm damaged or destroyed some 1,200 fishing boats, their nets and fishing gear

A mass movement for the reform of land laws erupted in the 1880s. Links formed by radical crofters in the Highlands and industrial workers in the Lowlands worried the authorities: and the crofters leaders who attended conferences organised by the Labour movement in Edinburgh were followed and hounded by police officers. It has been argued that the the Crofters movement of the 19th century was a catalyst for the formation of various working-class organisations in Scotland and it has also been suggested that the influences were the other way, both describe the organic links between the struggles for land and workers rights.

The association between land reform and those movements claiming to be socialist  had always been more marked in Scotland. Before the emergence of Keir Hardie the principal workers organisation in Scotland, which was for a time affiliated with William Morris’s Socialist League, called itself the ‘Land and Labour League’. Far from wishing to be a carbon copy of the Social Democratic Federation, the Scots were keen to establish their own separate national identity. This was why they named  their organisation the Scottish Land and Labour League. In Scotland the Scottish Land and Labour League severed its connection with the SDF to join the break-away Socialist League.

 "I was then a member of the Scottish Land and Labour League, in Edinburgh, Scotland. It must have been in the very early Eighties I guess in 1883. The Scottish Land and Labour League was the first body in Scotland to take up the "New" Socialism, that is to say, it was the first to study Marx. Das Kapital had not yet been translated into English; we studied it from the French translation. We had affiliated ourselves with the Socialist League in London." describes Thomas H Bell (the anarchist, not the later Communist Party Tom Bell)

John Mahon was a former engineer from Edinburgh and member of the Scottish Land and Labour League, who joined the SDF, served on its executive, and was to go on to be the first secretary of the Socialist League. Nevertheless the alliance between the "socialists" and the group interested primarily in the land question did not endure. They became involved in the same sort of conflict  the Socialist League as with the SDF.

In the early 20th century the land agitation had become a vital force uniting farmer and crofter, miner and smallholder, and Highlander and Lowlander. To understand why the land question was of even greater importance in Scotland than in England, we must direct attention to the strength of feudal legislation in Scotland. An old Act of 1621 was still in force, for instance, which penalised farmers, miners, crofters since no-one could kill game unless he owned a ploughgate of land (about 100 acres). Moreover, even a farmer could be convicted of being “unlawfully on his own farm at night for the purpose of killing game.” The 19th century Trespass Act and the various Game Laws that legitimised the rights of landowners to restrict the movement of citizens wishing to gain access to uncultivated moorland and mountain in Scotland created a powerful sense of public grievance. In addition to restricting many traditional rights that the rural population had enjoyed they created a great deal of resentment amongst the growing urban membership of amenity groups and recreational clubs. Climbing and hill walking clubs were particularly active in campaigning to have the concept of freedom to roam enshrined in law. In the 1880s and 90s members of these clubs in conjunction with key figures from the Land League spearheaded a public and parliamentary campaign to have the Trespass and Game Laws altered. The campaign for freedom to roam was unsuccessful but during the following decades the number of people going to the hills increased as did the membership of walking and mountaineering clubs. The tension between hill goers and sporting estates during the grouse and deer stalking seasons was a constant reminder of unfinished business.

At the 1885 and 1886 General Elections a group of candidates, The Crofters Party, who described themselves as representatives of the crofters contested some of the Highland constituencies of north-west Scotland with almost complete success. The group had varying degrees of links to the Highland Land League which had been established to independently promote the interests of crofters and their specific land rights. The League never seems to have made a clear statement of its ultimate objectives. Although, as will be seen, it made use of Henry George for propagandist purposes, it was not a ‘Single Tax’ organisation. While some of its leaders spoke at times of "the necessity of abolishing landlordism" and "the restoration of the land to the people" – stock phrases of Henry George advocates – they appear to have had peasant proprietorship more in mind.

The discontent of the crofters had mounted to the point of revolt in the early 1880s. Although the days of the notorious Clearances were over, they had no security of tenure, the rents of many of them had been raised several times during the preceding decade, not a few were living in extreme poverty, and evictions seem to have been frequent. Many had recently been moved to less fertile holdings to make way for sheep-grazings or sporting preserves; some were still in the process of losing common grazings to their landlords. While a large proportion did not hold written leases, but were entirely dependent upon the goodwill of their landlords, without even the protection of recognised custom,  many of the written leases that did exist appear to have been merely annual. One of their main grievances was their inability to increase the size of their holdings, most of the plots being quite insufficient for the support of a family. Bitterly resenting being dealt with according to commercial, profit-making considerations – with the growth of luxury in England due to the increase in industrial productivity, the shooting rights of Highland estates rose in value much higher than crofters’ rents – they accused the lairds of abusing a sacred trust in their management of the soil, which they claimed was really the traditional property of the clans. Predictably the problem of landlessness was most acute in areas where the crofting population was at its most dense. In Tiree and the Outer Isles, it was not uncommon, as the Napier Commission noted, to find "crowds of squatters who construct hovels, appropriate land, and possess and pasture stock, but pay no rent, obey no control, and scarcely recognise any allegiance or authority".

An important source of disaffection, the first notable demonstration – the so-called ‘Battle of the Braes’ – took place in April 1882. It occurred at the foot of Ben Lee, in Skye. In protest, perhaps in part inspired by events in Ireland, the Crofters War began against an attempt by Lord Macdonald, their landlord, to deprive them of some pasturage to which they claimed a right, some of the crofters were refusing to pay their rents – a measure that was becoming widespread at this period. When an attempt had been made on 7th April to serve summons of ejection upon them, they had responded by burning the summonds and mildly assaulting the sheriff-officer’s assistant. Then, on 17th April, a force of fifty Glasgow police, sent to the area to effect the arrests of six ring-leaders, was set upon, when making the arrest,by some hundreds of crofters with sticks and stones. It succeeded in withdrawing the prisoners, no major injuries being suffered by either side. In February, two months previously, a gunboat had been sent to Skye to facilitate the arrest of three crofters in another district, Glendale, for their part in a similar instance of deforcing a sheriff-officer. One of these men, John Macpherson, known thereafter as the ‘Glendale Martyr’, became a leading figure in the movement, an impassioned speaker at Land League meetings throughout the Highlands.

Over the next few years there were numerous such incidents in various parts of the crofting counties. Invariably sympathisers in the towns and cities – Portree being particularly notable in this respect – found bail for imprisoned crofters or otherwise saw to their interests and comfort.  In November 1884 a number of gunboats were sent to Skye and a force of marines made several marches over the island; this action, however, had been taken as the result of some fabricated reports of disturbances sent to the press by a landlord’s official, and no disorder either preceded or followed this action.

The Napier Commission published recommendations in 1884 but  fell a long way short of addressing crofters' demands, and it stimulated a new wave of protests. The ensuing Act of 1886 applied to croft tenure in an area which is now recognisable as a definition of the Highlands and Islands established the Crofters Commission which had rent-fixing powers. Rents were generally reduced and 50% or more of outstanding arrears were cancelled. The Act failed however to address the issue of severely limited access to land,

In October 1886 a further force of marines and police went to Skye to enforce the collection of rates: both landlords and crofters had been refusing to make payment, with the result that the schools were on the point of closing, and the banks were declining to meet cheques for the Poor Law Officers. On the landlords’ part this action was, of course, a demonstration in protest against the refusal of the crofters to pay their rents – and it was their default which had precipitated the crises, since their share of the arrears of rates formed by far the largest proportion of the total amount. As soon as the expedition reached the island the landlords gave way; but there were a number of ugly scenes when the authorities distrained the personal effects of crofters who professed themselves unable to pay. At about the same period two hundred and fifty marines and fifty police were sent to Tiree (Argyllshire) when the Duke of Argyll Greenhill farm was occupied by over 300 men who at once proceeded to divide the farm among crofters and cottars from nearby townships. Confronted at Greenhill by a force of men and youths armed with sticks and clubs, the police – outnumbered by about six to one – were obliged to withdraw to the relative security of the inn at Scarinish, their mission unaccomplished. On the morning of 22nd July, Scarinish Inn was surrounded by the men responsible for the seizure of Greenhill. The police contingent, it was demanded, should immediately withdraw from Tiree. They left that afternoon. With the police in full retreat and the Duke of Argyll complaining that Tiree was "under the rule of savagery", military involvement became inevitable. On 31st July 1886, a detachment of fifty police escorted by five times that number of marines was landed on the island from the naval ships HMS Ajax and HMS Assistance. Eight crofters were promptly arrested and conveyed to the mainland where they were subsequently found guilty of mobbing and rioting as well as of deforcement – five being sentenced to six month‘s imprisonment, the others to four months.

In later years, there were still isolated cases of deforcements. Plus there were still demonstrations – at the ‘Pairc Deer Raid of Lewis’,  in November 1887 the crofters organised a deer-hunt (the venison distributed to the needy.) in protest at their treatment by The Matheson’s, landlords of the Lewis Estate. The authorities panicked and sent a contingent of police and marines to quell what they thought was a full-scale rebellion. Six were arrested and sent to trial in Edinburgh but all were acquitted. Today, most of Pairc is still a sporting estate in private ownership.

 And then there was the ‘Aignish Riot’, also in the Lewis, in January 1888, crofters, despite the presence of a force of marines, drove stock from a large farm. It took the bayonets of the marines and the arrival of company of the Royal Scots, however, made them realise there was little more they could do and to keep them at bay. Eleven prisoners, were escorted aboard HMS Jackal, and taken to Edinburgh where they were  found guilty of the crime of mobbing and rioting and sent them to prison for periods ranging from twelve to fifteen months.”

In Glasgow, in 1909, a second Highland Land League was formed as a political party. This organisation was a broadly left-wing group that sought the restoration of deer forests to public ownership, abolition of plural farms and the nationalisation of the land. Also they resolved to defend crofters facing eviction by their landlords and they supported home rule for Scotland. During the First World War politicians made lavish promises about reform which would follow the war, and of course many croftsmen lost their lives in the war itself. After the war the words of politicians did not translate into action, but croftmen returning from the war were in no mood to accept government inaction. Land occupations began again. In January 1918 in Tiree a number of cottars from Cornaigbeg took possession of a 13-acre field on Balephetrish farm and at once proceeded to prepare it for a spring planting of potatoes. The Balephetrish raiders were all old men – two at least being in their seventies – and all had sons on active service. But none of that prevented them from being sentenced to ten days‘ imprisonment as a result of legal proceedings initiated by the Duke of Argyll.

When faced with new land seizures the government responded by giving the Board of Agriculture the money and powers to do something like what had been promised. The Board's work was assisted by a downturn in the profitability of sheep farming and, by the late 1920s, perhaps 50,000 acres of arable land and 750,000 acres of hill pasture had been given over to establishing new crofts.

 In August 1918 the new Land League  affiliated with the Labour Party, with four candidates for the 1918 general election being joint League-Labour. By the 1920s they had fully merged with Labour, under the unfulfilled promise of autonomy for Scotland were Labour to gain power in the forthcoming years. Land League members were then key to the formation of the Scottish National Party in 1934.

The Crofters Act of 1886 was not the remedy. It gave the remaining Highlanders security of tenure but froze the crofters on the marginal land to which they had been driven. In the forty years between 1891 and 1931, on the other hand, in a period in which it was virtually impossible under Scottish law to evict a Highland crofter from his holding but singularly easy to evict a Lowland farm labourer from his cottage, the population of the Highlands & Islands counties fell by 26%, that of the Lowland group by only 16%. The law seems to have done nothing to slow down the drain of men from the Highlands. Some twenty-three Not-for-private-profit organisations own, lease or manage by agreement around 5 percent of the Highlands and Islands’ land area – some 506,725 acres. The state sector (Forestry Commission , Scottish Natural Heritage, Dept. of Agriculture, etc) whose land holdings comprise just over 14 percent (1.4 million acres) while the private estate sector owns some 80 percent (8.1 million acres).

Campaigners, radicals and social reformers of the 19th century attempted to implement a number of practical schemes based upon self-reliance and mutual assistance. Community ownership in the region in the 20th century commenced in 1923 with the Stornoway Trust. A resurgence of interest in the concept of community land ownership in the early 1990s has enabled new groups to form and re-discover older initiatives. This recent upsurge has resulted in a variety of different types of community landowners emerging in the region. Bill Aitken, the Conservatives' chief whip in the Scottish Parliament, along with Mohamed al-Fayed, Harrods owner, describes the 2003 Scottish Land Reform Act granting crofters the right to buy estates as a "Mugabe- style land grab" and the Conservatives' rural affairs spokesman, Alex Ferguson declares that it undermines "the principles of private property and freedom of contract which underpin a free society". Peter de Savary, who is chairman of Skibo Castle, where Madonna and Guy Ritchie were married and the destination of choice for the world's rich and famous said the Bill could have been drawn up "in Cuba or North Korea" !!

Scotland as a whole has one of the most concentrated patterns of land ownership in Western Europe. Some 50 percent of the country’s land area is controlled by just 600 (or even 343, depending on source) owners. In the Highlands, this pattern of ownership is even more extreme with some 85 privately owned estates accounting for about a third of the total land area. This results in various barriers and obstacles being placed in the way of development. Examples of these include difficulties in obtaining land for housing, industrial use, community facilities and recreational access to river, woodland, moor and hill. Only when land is commonly owned by the people who inhabit and work it, as opposed to private ownership, leasing or renting, can a community master its own destiny.

Under the clan system of land tenure, the land within the area occupied by a clan, belonged to the clan as a whole collectively, romantically described by some such as John McLean as "celtic communism". The clan chief had no exclusive rights in the clan lands. He was given nominal control of the land for administration purposes, on behalf of the clan. The clan chief’s position was not hereditary but by the consent of the clan, and there was nothing to stop the clan from replacing their chief at any time, if necessary. The clan system was  a communal social system albeit organised on military lines. The old social order in the Highlands disintegrated and the clan chieftains were encouraged to assume control of the clan lands as private landowners. Then they proceeded to oppress their own clansmen. The real philosophy behind these events was the unrestricted accumulation of wealth in the hands of the privileged few, by exploiting the land as well as any other basic resource available. These changes in Highland society introduced a new class division of privileged and servile. Gone forever was the sense of kinship and loyalty to a patriarchal leader. But an emotional attachment to territory – an attachment stemming ultimately back to the clan land of the ancient kin-based society of the Highlands – continues to be prevalent among crofters.

The social ownership sector can trace its history back to the first organised efforts of crofters and land re-settlement schemes just over a 150 years ago. Only with the creation a people’s organisation representing the aspirations of community organisations across the country can there be the necessary counter-power to that of the existing landed establishment and which can challenge the dominant position in Scottish society of the Scottish Landowners Federation, that has for almost 90 years exercised power on behalf of the landed elite and other powerful rural interests.

Making Real Films

The radical movie-maker Ken Loach has a new film - The Angels’ Share. It is a bittersweet  a comedy. Robbie (Paul Brannigan), a young Glaswegian labelled as much by his criminal record as the chib mark on his face, wants to change his life. He wants away from the violence and the feuding, he wants a job and a future. But it’s not easy to escape your past and there aren’t many people who will help you to do it. The Angels’ Share is about people being given a chance. Loach practices what he preaches. Paul Brannigan is an ex-prisoner.

 If you ask Loach why he wanted to tell this story, he’ll tell you it’s because last year the number of unemployed young people in Britain reached more than a million. He’ll tell you that he wanted to give a voice to the young people in this country who face what he calls an “empty future”. It’s a theme he’s explored before.

“We did a film called Kes,” - regarded as amongst the best British films ever made – “which is about a lad with a talent that nobody can recognise, or that nobody chose to recognise. The system wouldn’t allow for it to be recognised because there was a demand for semi-skilled or unskilled labour, that’s what the school system produced; that was the point of the 11 plus.”

“Now again it’s the economic system which cannot provide a decent life for a large number of people,” he says. “It won’t provide security, it won’t provide a decent job. We’re denying that to a huge number of kids. And even the ones who are allegedly in work are in temporary work or on short-term contracts or hired by the day. People become humiliated. They don’t have any defining, dignified sense of who they are through work. What strikes me – we’re apparently at the mercy of an economic system that will never work and the big question is, how do we change it, not how do we put up with it.”

Paul Brannigan, knows first-hand about the struggles his charater Robbie faces. He explains “If you ask any young boy what they think of the Scotland national team, they’ll tell you they’re shite. Scotland are shite at all sports. That starts from a very young age and that’s not only about sport, it’s about life in general: ‘Ach you’ll never get a job here, it’s shite.’ It goes back to young boys having problems at home which means the only family they feel they’ve got are their friends, gangs they’re in. When friends are shoplifting, stealing, fighting, stabbing, slashing, shooting – whatever it might be, selling drugs – they feel they need to do it because that’s all they’ve got and they’re scared to say no. It’s feeling that you belong to something but not realising that belonging to that isn’t going to get you anywhere other than into prison, into trouble or dead.”

Definitely sounds like a film worth watching when it eventually comes to the screens.

 http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/film/interview-ken-loach-director-of-the-angels-share-1-2292242