~Athena Paragon More than half of Scotland is owned by fewer than 500 people. According to the academic and land reformer, Jim Hunter, this equates to the most concentrated pattern of land ownership in the developed world. The big estate owners now worry that the intense criticism of the interim report will railroad the group into recommending something approaching radical. What they fear most is legislation conferring the absolute right of Scotlands tenant farmers to buy their farms, even if the landowner does not want to sell. There are a host of reasons why the lairds will resist this with every sinew. Agricultural subsidies and forestry grants are weighted so that the largest farms, owned by the biggest landowners, receive the largest handouts. Such owners can claim five-figure sums a week in subsidies. The landowners also cash in on windfarms on some of Scotlands most beautiful places to the tune of £1bn a year. Thus Scotlands richest people are skimming off more millions from taxpayers when benefits are being capped and the bedroom tax is forcing people on to the street. But within the tendency of several landowners to view the UK as their private merchant bank with limitless cash reserves may be the seeds of their downfall. The families of many of Scotlands tenant farmers have worked this land for generations. They have invested money in them and made improvements, while the estate owners sit back and employ agents to raise rents every three years. Andy Wightman is author of The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland (and How They Got It), which has become the primer for those who had always felt something was never quite right about such a concentration of land and unearned privilege in the hands of so few. His book gives depth and academic rigour to the arguments of those seeking meaningful land reform. The land on which many of our lairds sit was stolen in the 17th century, he says. But these ill-gotten gains were protected by acts which maintained their hegemony after the rest of Europe ditched feudalism and concentrated land ownership. He describes how the aristocracy embraced the 1560 Reformation as a means of getting their hands on land belonging to the Auld Kirk. They needed to protect their stolen goods with a robust law. The Act of Prescription (1617) did the trick. Thus any land occupied for 40 years or more was indemnified from future legal challenge. The law remains in place and has effectively upheld the gentrys rights to stolen goods for 400 years. Last October, on a farm near Edinburgh, the body of Andrew Riddell, a tenant farmer, was discovered. He and his family had worked on the farm for more than 100 years and then, one day, he was given notice to quit by his landlord, Alastair Salvesen, billionaire and Scotlands third-richest man. The notice followed a year-long legal case which finally found in favour of Salvesen. The judge ruled that the protections Riddell thought he had in the tenancy arrangement were trumped by the landlords rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. He killed himself after collecting his final harvest. theguardian/uk-news/2013/aug/10/scotland-land-rights
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 03:06:31 +0000
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