Land that was stolen from the Scottish people The result of landlordism in Scotland has been the greatest curse which has ever blighted the country (“SNP storm clouds gather over Highlands estatesâ€, 17 January). Every inch of land in the Highlands and Islands was stolen from the ethnic population by Anglicised clan chiefs and landlords. The whole mass of the inhabitants were dispossessed by an unrelenting avarice, which has now been found to be as short-sighted as it was selfish and unjust. The Highlands was the largest man-made wilderness in Europe. The Highland Clearances is the longest period of ethnic cleansing in European history, lasting over 100 years – from 1784 when the Duke of Athol (Chief of the Murrays) evicted the population of Glen Tilt, until 1903, when Lady Gordon-Cathcart was cramming emigrant ships with men, women and children from Uist and Barra. It is not by accident that today there are more Highland surnames in Halifax, Nova Scotia, than in the Highland capital of Inverness. Once British aristocrats acquired a great taste for deer, salmon and game, large swathes of land were appointed as deer forests. Between the early 1800s and 1913 the area of Scotland covered by deer forests escalated from a few hundred thousand acres to 3,599,744 acres. Many of the tyrannical landlords were members of the House of Commons or the House of Lords. Is this the reason that Westminster has not apologised to the descendants of the Clearances, though Tony Blair apologised to the Africans and the Irish for the slave trade and the potato famine? I fully support the SNP policy on land ownership, and as a descendant of an evicted family that settled in Canada in 1851 would like to see the estates nationalised so that the people of Scotland have the fundamental right to use and enjoy their native land. Donald J MacLeod Bridge of Don, Aberdeen
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 06:36:32 +0000
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