(VIDEO) Alwyn Edgar - The Highland Clearances

 

Clans and Clearance. The Highland Clearances Volume One

If you go to the Scottish Highlands now, you will find many valleys almost without people. Yet we know from history and archaeology that many people lived in the Highlands for thousands of years. What happened? Between about 1740 and 1900, the Highland landlords decided to clear out the people and establish great sheep farms instead. Five volumes will tell the story, starting with volume one – “Clans and Clearance”.

In Highland histories, some beliefs (though clearly at odds with the evidence) re-appear regularly, all these, and other, misapprehensions are dealt with in “Clans and Clearance” e.g -

* There was an enormous Highland population increase in the century after 1750: this never happened – the highest possible increase is 37% in the years 1750-1840 – during which time food production doubled or trebled.*. Some figures in original documents are clearly inaccurate, but have been accepted by writers who feel that documents cannot lie; they claim that Highland parishes averaged 400 square miles. This is clearly wrong, and can be disproved by anyone who has an atlas and a ruler: the average was about 100 square miles.
* The clearances were carried out by “the English”. In reality they were carried out by the clan chiefs, after the Lowlanders and the English conquered the Highlands, following the Battle of Culloden, 1746. The British state forced the private-property system onto the Highlanders; the clan chiefs were made into landowners, who suddenly realized they could make themselves rich by driving out the clans folk and letting the land to large farmers.
* Most of the Highlanders were Catholics. In fact, 96% of the Highlanders were Protestant.
* The old Highlanders were “crofters”. In fact, the Highlanders were hunter-gatherers, with a second ample food source in their vast flocks and herds. The crofters appeared only after the clearances, when some of the evicted were kindly allowed to try growing potatoes in an acre of two of barren, waste ground.
* The clan chiefs were tyrants, jailing and executing clans folk indiscriminately. No, the chiefs had no state apparatus – police, soldiers, lawyers, courts, jails, torturers, executioners etc – so had to rule with the general approval of the clans folk.
* The Highlanders’ cattle lived under the same roof as the Highlanders. No, the herds far too large; this only happened after the clearances, when Herds no longer had enough pasture for their great flocks, and therefore had very few animals left – and very little grazing, so the cow had to be housed in the same building.
* The clans folk were wildly licentious, drinking enormous quantities of whisky, while at the same time they fervently believed in a strait-laced religion. No, both these opposite convulsions appeared as extreme reactions to the social misery caused by the clearances.

Clans and Clearance. The Highland Clearances Volume One – Theory and Practice

Comments on “Scottish Highland Clearances”

Sorley MacLean, frequently called “the greatest Gaelic poet of the 20th century”, to whom the author had sent part of the work, wrote on 29 August 1994: “Your ‘MacKinnon clearances’ fills me with hope that I will live to see your whole history of the Clearances published in parts or as a whole. It will supersede everything written on the Clearances at all times and places.”

Andrew Simmons, Editorial Manager, Birlinn publishers: “It is an extraordinarily impressive work.”

Emma Brennan, Manchester University Press: [There is a] “clear authorial voice through which a real enthusiasm for the subject is very effectively communicated”.

Dr Lester Crook, I. B. Tauris publishers: “I appreciate that so many years of detailed and meticulous research and huge reading have gone into this project, also deep consideration of history and much reflection.”

David Paterson, Photographer, author of “Glens of Silence” (with David Craig, Birlinn, Edinburgh): “May I first congratulate you on your extraordinarily scholarly, open-minded and thorough approach to The Clearances.”

The author’s blog

742 pages. Available in hardback and eBook

Hardback: ISBN 978-0-9956609-9-1
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Audio Talk

The Highland Clearances – spgb.net (worldsocialism.org)

The Socialist Party - The Anti-Exploitation Party

 

You have read that socialism will result in the loss of individual liberty; that all power would be surrendered to the state or the government, and a harsh bureaucracy would regulate our lives and enforce blind obedience.

The truth is that socialism rejects the state. Socialists hold with Karl Marx that "The existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery."

How then, in the name of common sense, could socialists wish to glorify the state and surrender to it? Where there is socialism, there can be no state, and where there is a state, there can be no socialism. Socialist society will rest on industrial democracy. All power will reside in the hands of the people. Socialism would offer incentives to all. Instead of fearing the loss of their jobs as a result of improved methods of production, workers would know that every such improvement would mean more leisure and more of the good things of life. Thus, socialism would give an unprecedented impetus to incentive on the part of all the members of a free society.

You have been told that socialism means nationalisation or government ownership and control of industry.

The fact is that socialism rejects nationalisation or government ownership of industry. State control and intervention in the economy are long-standing features of capitalism. One of its greatest proponents was Baron Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor of Prussia. For the workers, state ownership is merely a change of masters - it brings no solution to their problems. Socialism is not a mere change of masters. Socialism means complete control of their tools and products by the workers. It guarantees this by placing the factories, the mines, transport, the land - all social wealth - under social ownership and control. Not a state, not the capitalists, not a bureaucracy, but the people collectively own, control, and democratically manage the means to produce and distribute all social wealth in socialism.

They tell us that the former USSR had socialism. That the Nordic countries have a form of socialism. A real socialist society has never been established in any country.

Capitalism keeps working people on the verge of poverty, forcing them to toil in order to eke out a bare existence. Socialism would offer equality of opportunity under which each worker would become the architect of his or her own future.

When capitalists cannot profitably dispose of the wealth of which they factories will close and unemployment climb. In order to avoid recessions at home, capitalists seek foreign markets. The competition for such markets leads inevitably to trade wars and eventually a cold war will become a hot one with open hostilities.

Socialism would function smoothly because socialist production would be carried on for use, and not for sale and private profit. The chaos of capitalist production would be replaced by socialist cooperation, based on the principle that each person should receive according to needs.

Are you one who entertain false and distorted concepts about socialism? If you are, then surely, if only in fairness to yourself, not to mention the momentous issues at stake, to learn more. Do this by studying the literature of the Socialist Party and learn what socialism really means. Socialism cannot come a little at a time, or in one small locality at a time by government decree or otherwise. Socialism does not mean a lowering of anyone's standard of living to one common level, as you have been told by countless politicians who want to do your thinking for you.

The Socialist Party is the only organisation to have warned of the dangers of dependence on "leaders." You may never before have heard socialism described as economic democracy. Socialism is one of the most lied-about and misrepresented words in common usage today. Socialism cannot be handed to you by "leaders", no matter how personally sincere. Socialism is strictly a "Do It Yourselves" project.

Socialism means the common ownership and democratic management of all the machinery of production and distribution, as well as the natural resources and land. The working class today creates all wealth for the private owners of industry in return for a fraction of that wealth, called wages. In Socialism, the same producers will create wealth for all of society to enjoy. With those now un - or under-employed, or senselessly occupied in socially unnecessary jobs, put to useful endeavour, and with all the ingenious time and labour-saving innovations put to use, the hours of the working day will be shortened tremendously.

Automation in industry will cease to be a threat to job security, it will bring the blessing of greater abundance and more leisure time to enjoy that abundance. Instead of workers being divided into hostile groups competing for jobs that will pay enough to keep a family until next pay-day, we will work in harmony, cooperating to produce most efficiently the best possible products, since we will all directly benefit from each improvement in quality and quantity of the goods and services we have made available.

 Socialism is not a paternalistic society in which the good things are handed down to you. It is a society of economic equality, which is to say, equality of economic opportunity. You will have a full voice and vote in the industrial democracy of a socialist cooperative commonwealth. After all, you know as well as anyone the details concerning your job. You are capable of choosing management committees that will best harmonise production in your industry. These will discuss new methods of gaining efficiency, and formulate information on the total production of that industry to serve the needs and desires of society as a whole, so that abundance will be assured to everyone. Your representatives can be removed as easily as they are elected, because of your on-the-job voice in running your industry. Economic, as well as governmental freedom, will, at last, be yours. The worries of unemployment, the insecurity and strain that now accompany the sale of your labour-power to the private owners of industry -- all will be banished along with capitalism and its governmental voice, the political State.

Increased leisure and general well-being will, of course, make it possible for all of us to lead wholesome and decent lives. All will enjoy better health. The modern scourge of mental illness will be practically eliminated in a society freed from the causes of anxieties and tensions that now plague mankind.

From History, We Learn

  In Celtic cultures, harsh material conditions made cooperation a necessity rather than a choice, in order to survive. Fishing and subsistence farming was the mainstay of communities. The land was held in common. Each family was allocated a field – the size and needs of the family determined the size of the field. Field ownership was not permanent but changed over time according to need. Peat was also held in common and allocated on the same basis. Fishing was organised on a communal basis. There were very little monetary relations between members of the Celtic communities. People were bound to each other by close ties of clanship and interdependence. Co-operation was at the core of all activity. Collective decisions were made at people’s assemblies where the issues concerning the community were discussed. Votes were not taken but issues were discussed until a consensus was reached.

 Socialists have used the term primitive communism to describe these pre-class societies. There was no division of goods based on a top-down hierarchy. Rather, it was a society of mutual aid supporting and sustaining real humanity.

In the modern age, clans are associated with poverty and backwardness. The Georgian and Victorian generations appropriated a romantic sanitised version of the clan traditions of bagpipes, tartan and kilts. 

The time came when people saw in the newspapers things they were unable to make themselves and had to buy. To obtain them, money was needed, and all they had to sell was their labour-power. Their communal way of life was gone. 

Yet the past gives us an insight into the future – how people freed from the oppression of class society might live their lives – but this time in an age of plenty.

Our aim is world socialism

 

Internationalism is a vital part of the socialist movement. It is a powerful antidote for some of capitalism's most  virulent poisons such, including racism, divisive patriotism and xenophobia, chauvinisms of all kinds. Recognition of the interest all exploited peoples have in ending the system of class rule provides a powerful bulwark against the bellicose, war-mongering propaganda. Given the current weakness of socialist movement, the global solidarity of the world’s working class remains an aspiration. Nationalism is used by the capitalist class deliberately to blind the workers to their own material interests and to to keep the working people of the world divided against each other in the name of "national interest" and to owe allegiance to the nation and not ones fellow worker.

As Marx once remarked, “The nationality of the toilers is neither French nor English nor German; it is toil, free slavery, sale of the self. His government is neither French nor English nor German; it is Capital. His native air is neither French nor German nor English; it is the air of the factory. The land which belongs to him is neither French nor English nor German; it is a few feet under the ground."

When anti-war campaigners criticise militarism yet uphold the capitalist system, they are attacking an effect while defending the cause. The only road to permanent peace lies in the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by socialism under which goods will be produced for use and the means of wealth production will be socially owned. The workers of the world, including those in the anti-war movements, must listen to and heed the Socialist Party. We believe that the conclusion is inescapable that the only way to end the threats of war is a fundamental change to an entirely new social system. 

SOCIALISM DOES NOT MEAN government or State ownership. 

SOCIALISM MEANS common ownership by all the people of the factories, mines,transport, land and all the other instruments of wealth-production. Socialism means production of things to satisfy human needs, and not, as under capitalism, for sale and profit. Socialism means free access to and democratic management of the industries by the workers. Socialism means a full, happy and useful life. It means the opportunity to develop all your faculties and latent talents. It means that, instead of being a mere chattel bought and sold on the job market, an appendage to a machine, an automaton, a producer of wealth for the parasite class, you will take your place as a human being in a free society of human beings, and a participant in its running.

Working inside socialism will not be dependant on the caprices either of a private employer or the capitalist market. When things are produced to satisfy human needs, instead of primarily for sale and profit, involuntary idleness will be an impossibility. The "demand," instead of being limited to what people can buy, will be limited only to what people can use. Nor will technological unemployment be possible with socialism. Instead of being made redundant, surplus to requirements, the improved methods of new technology will reduce the hours of the working day and make work more pleasurable. Socialism alone can give jobs for all and open wide the doorway to economic opportunity. A job of work in socialism will be the minimum necessary to fulfil society's needs. Work is not the end and aim of a person's existence; it is the means to an end. We do not live to work; we work to live. Socialism will, therefore, strive in every way to lighten the burden of mankind and give us the leisure to develop our faculties and live a happy, healthful, useful life.

DEMOCRACY is the foundation of this infinitely better world for which the material conditions are already present. Capitalist democracy is limited to the political field. Even there it is restricted and in constant peril. On the economic field, despotism prevails. Capitalism gives to the owning class the terrifying power to hurl millions upon the mercy of charity with a stroke of the pen. Socialism destroys this despotic power and creates an economic foundation for complete democracy.

In SOCIALISM, all authority will come from the workers integrally united in associations. Such is the full-flowered democracy of socialism - ECONOMIC FREEDOM!

YOU ARE NEEDED to help bring about the promise of abundance and human happiness that this age offers. You are needed to help avert capitalist tragedies. Prepare yourself to prepare others. Help us to unite the working class politically to demand the unconditional surrender of capitalism. Join with us to consolidate the workers' power, proclaim as your goal the goal of the working class.

Capitalism must go

The Right to be Lazy

 Exploitative wage labour is the most subtle form of slavery. The chattel slave and feudal serf knew full well they toiled in bondage but wage exploitation is hidden and modern workers seldom suspect they are being held in chains. The fact is the capitalist class take possession of labour's product at the point of production in return for which workers on average get paid just enough to maintain their families and to keep themselves in fit condition. Despite the most intricate evasions invented by "economic experts" the case has long been proved that profit is simply unpaid labour and nothing but unpaid labour. 

No wonder that Marxism is everywhere hated by the apologists of the wages system. The capitalist class hires its "intellectuals" to denigrate Marx, teach the economic absurdity that capital creates wealth, and spread the infamous lie that the former U.S.S.R. represented real socialism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Socialism is industrial democracy, the most complete democracy yet conceived. Socialism is a class-free society that replaces the political state of class rule. By replacing production for sale and profit with production for the needs of the population, and by harnessing our ability to produce an abundance with a minimum of labour, socialism will end poverty.

With socialism, there will be no unemployment problem. Since, instead of being owned privately and operated to produce things for sale and profit, the industries will be owned collectively by all the useful producers and operated to produce things for use, there will be no such thing as involuntary idleness. Instead of kicking workers out of the industries, robotics will enable us to shorten the workday, work week, and work year, while at the same time it will vastly increase the basis for material well-being. Technological progress will no longer be something for workers to fear, but an unqualified blessing that will ensure abundance and leisure for all with a minimum of toil by each. Nor can there be recessions in socialism. Production for use, combined with a system under which workers will receive, directly and indirectly, all that they produce, will end forever the social idiocy of want in the midst of plenty.

Artificial Intelligence and automation can be a blessing.

It can greatly increase our productivity. It can eliminate unpleasant, boring and dangerous work. It can result in immense improvements in mankind's material and cultural welfare. It can do all this, and more, without imposing the horrors of economic distress on millions of workers and their families. But it can do all these things only if the workers of America accomplish a Socialist reconstruction of society. Only through socialism can new technology fulfil its promise of abundance for all with a minimum of working hours. Only with socialism can robots be introduced without causing a single worker to suffer economic distress. In fact, socialism will install robots as rapidly as it is developed. But, instead of throwing workers onto a scrap heap, as happens today, the new machines will make possible a general reduction in working hours. All will then benefit from robotics, both in the greater abundance that will be available and in the enjoyment of increased leisure. Robotics will solve toil and drudgery but as long as the means of social production are privately owned, and production is carried on for sale and profit it will always be a curse. When this outmoded contradiction-ridden capitalist system is abolished, when the industries are socially owned and democratically administered, and when production is carried on to satisfy human needs -- that is, when socialism is established -- automation will be a blessing for everyone.

Working people are different in many ways yet alike in so many others. We work hard. We depend on our pay to live, feel stressed out by too many working hours, or too few. We worry about our future, fret about the future of our children. We are in college or in prison; retired or disabled. Young, old, unemployed or underemployed or suffering too much from compulsory overtime. technicians and nurses. Delivery drivers and software developers. Teachers and cashiers. Designers and scientists. We are the working class.

Without us, nothing could happen, be produced, nothing grown or harvested, nothing fixed or invented. Whether we live in suburban developments or inner cities; in an apartment or a house; pay rent or owe on a mortgage or are homeless. We are just making it but worry we might lose it all. We must work for our living or suffer the consequences. As a class, as a community and as a people, we share the same basic needs and basic desires: to live in and be part of a healthy, peaceful and humane society. 

We in the Socialist Party are like so many others, looking for real change and seeking a path to get it. We look to the alternatives of the profit and competitive economic system, the way industry and society is run today. We need a strategy that can take us from where we are, to where we want to go. We believe our case for socialism is the solution.

Nationalist? Not Us

 

The SNP is to resume making the case for independence - with the goal of holding a referendum by the end of 2023.  It had previously paused its promotion on separatism and its indyref2 plans because of Covid.

The SNP's power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens means the two parties form a pro-independence majority at Holyrood.

The Socialist Party, its Glasgow and Edinburgh branches and the scattered members across Scotland have not shifted their principled position advanced back in 2014. We oppose all varieties of nationalism. 

When we speak of aspiring towards a cooperative commonwealth, we think of a confederation of free peoples united in one common bond - socialism. Not any parochial claim to nation-hood.

We aim at a new society without the State, without government, without classes, in which the workers shall administer the means of production and distribution for the common benefit of all. We advocate for a world where there is no longer any master, no longer any slave, for the abolition of wage slavery and the creation of the cooperative commonwealth.

A rather more ambitious and revolutionary goal than mere Holyrood rule.