This text is based on the address delivered in the company of
other trustees by Alastair McIntosh of the Isle of Eigg Trust.
Some two-thirds of the people of Eigg attended the three-hour
long public meeting on Friday 25th October 1991. Afterwards the
community agreed to discuss the concept amongst themselves and
vote ing a secret ballot. The outcome was 73% in favour.
One working man, who lives on the island in a caravan because he
does not have land, came up the morning after the public meeting
and gave 100. He said he really hoped for his sake and others
like him that the Trust's objectives might be fulfilled. A
similar donation has been received from the Rev. John Harvey,
Leader of the Iona Community. Most of the Trust's expenses to
date have been paid for by the trustees, particularly by Tom
Forsyth taking on dry stane dyking work. Contributions are much
needed and should be sent to Elisabeth Lyon at 42 Dublin Street,
Edinburgh EH3 6NN.
Ladies, gentlemen and children,
It is not without a certain sense of impertinence that we present
our credentials to you this evening. We have, as you know, formed
a charitable trust in the name of this island. Consultation with
you beforehand was informal and with individuals only, not least
because some had expressed reservations about speaking openly in
view of future ownership uncertainty.
At a cost so far of some 3,000 and many hours of work on behalf
of myself, Bob Harris, Elisabeth Lyon and above all, Tom Forsyth,
we have brought our proposal to a stage where we hope it can be
weighed by you and considered as an alternative model for land
ownership on Eigg.
To you I need hardly outline the history of land ownership in
this part of the world. Since the Clanranalds first forsook their
role as stewards and in exchange for 15,000 presumed to treat
this island as a market commodity in 1828, it has changed hands
eight times and is now under a court order to be sold again. Some
ownership regimes, like the present one, have been relatively
benign and even generous. Others, remembered by some of you
here, have been described to us as "like living under enemy
occupation".
Either way, the inhabitants of Eigg today, like those of so much
of Scotland, have legal status akin only to nuisance value in
matters of "real" estate. "A collector's item", is how one
laird described the Isle of Eigg to me recently. A collector's
item, indeed, which can be bought and sold without reference to
the interests of those whose lives paint their meaning here. An
absentee collector's item, or investment opportunity, or rich
man's playground, for some rueless oil sheik, pop star, Swiss
banker or Dutch yuppies' syndicate.
Some collector's item this! This, where disused houses crumble
while young men, women and children live in caravans. Where
crofters have had to wait years or spend large sums in legal fees
to procure freehold over their small plots. Where no-one knows
who will be the next laird, hoping only that the highest bidder
might show more generosity towards them than was perhaps evident
while they accumulated such massive personal wealth.
And this is not just Eigg. This is the condition of much of the
Highlands and Islands today. For example, tourism, one of our
few growth opportunities for cottage industry, too often becomes
controlled by estates which convert homes into summer timeshare.
Those who belong to a place get squeezed out, leaching community.
The Clearances continue under economic masquerade.
Go to the poor quarters of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Govan, and look
where our people live now. Oh yes, the fortunate ones have done
sufficiently "well" sometimes to forget their roots, but many of
the names of those living in the high rise flats and "priority
treatment" estates are folk with Highland names. Folk for whom
the tragedy of being uprooted, by direct clearance or by
restriction of access to nature's sustenance, has given rise to
the spectre of poverty across generations.
Going home on the Ullapool ferry recently I had the pleasure of
meeting one of our former teachers at the Nicolson Institute. I
had happened to have been reading the part of Jim Hunter's
book on crofting history where he mentions that Leurbost, where I
grew up as the doctor's son, had resettled some of the hundred or
so families cleared in South Lochs. I asked this teacher WHY we
had never been taught this. Remorsefully, he replied that it was
not in the curriculum, is still largely excluded from the
curriculum, and is the sort of painful history people prefer to
forget.
"I think I hear the cry of the children till this day", said one
Lewis crofter of the clearances in Uig of the 1850's. My friends,
which amongst us can not hear that cry STILL as we view rural
caravan dwellers and the peripheral Sowetos of contemporary
Scottish cities? Is it not time for us, like other indigenous
peoples of the world, to demand restitution for the historical
usurpment of our lands? We lament about "Dances With Wolves".
What about Clearance?
Of course, we are told that such idealism lacks economic
viability. Perhaps such critics should spend time on Foula, off
Shetland, or Scoraig, near Dundonnell. Both are revitalised
crofting communities. In any case, as the economic hubs of the
world roll their way towards ecological suicide, are we really to
be fobbed off with the suggestion that lifestyles based on
industrial intoxication, nuclear umbrellas, agricultural soil
degradation, land expropriation from the powerless and unjust
trade relations with the Third World are somehow "viable"!
What can we do? First, I suggest, we must remember. We must
remember in the way that those erecting cairns on Knoydart, or at
sites of land grabs in Lewis are presently helping us to do. As
with personal psychological health, repression of a culture's
past will only turn anger and sadness against itself. No
cultural carcinogen is more powerful than oppression
internalised to the point that a community blames itself alone
for disempowerment, disfunction and under-achievement. So let
us start by re-membering, ever mindful while so doing of the
curative role which forgiveness must eventually play with all
involved.
Then we can engage in re-visioning. We must envision what our
communities could become ... sorting out the realistic from the
phantasy and asking what kind of a people we want to be. Are our
values primarily those of market forces, or is there something in
older virtues which seek meaning in people, land and the
spiritual?
Finally, dare we re-claim? Can we, as in the words communicated
by Moses, "proclaim the liberation of all the inhabitants of the
land ... a jubilee for you; each of you will return to his
ancestral home ... Land must not be sold in perpetuity, for the
land belongs to me...." (Leviticus 25)?
Some of you on Eigg may think private ownership by a wealthy
benevolent laird would be in your best interests. If the lottery
of ownership falls favourably this could be so. But even then, is
there not something about such patronage which quietly
disempowers a community? You know, when Lord Leverhulme earlier
this century promised Lewis crofters a fishing fleet, a fish
cannery, railways, electrical power, a garden city, steady work,
steady pay and beautiful homes, the response which won the day
was, "We are not concerned with his fancy dreams that may or may
not come true! What we want is the land - and the question I put
to him now is: will you give us the land?".
Land restitution is much of what the Isle of Eigg Trust stands
for. We are four people of humble means, but with an awareness of
history, some understanding of the worrying state of the world,
sound track records in rural and community development and a love
of Scotland and our own people. The benefits we offer are not
offcuts from the table of monetary wealth. Rather, they are
opportunities to reconstitute full community. Opportunities
which, let it be said, are the taproot of existing community and
will be of growing importance to a "developed" world faced with a
spitiual crisis of meaning and ecological bankruptcy.
We are not claiming that most people today can live entirely from
the land on a smallholding! Rather, our experience is that having
an opportunity to live with the land deeply enriches human life.
It can release creativity in many forms, including economic
entrepreneurship. Here lies a font of true viability.
Should the Trust acquire ownership of Eigg, the main thing we
offer is security of tenure for those who lack it. We propose
that new land holdings are made available to those in need,
including current estate workers, other residents, emigres who
wish to return and other suitable settlers - gradually and in
limited numbers.
We further undertake that decisions about such matters would be
made within the terms of the Trust deed by the trustees and a
management committee representative of the community. (I
personally undertake to resign as a trustee should this not be
effected to the satisfaction of a majority of the resident
community.)
Indeed, this charitable trust offers the hope that when a future
visitor asks your children who owns Eigg, they will reply, not an
industrialist, aristocratic heir, racing car driver, insurance
company or any other sort of "laird", but simply, "Us ... we own
our island, we decide what happens, holding it in trust for
people and nature".
Here is the vision we place before you tonight. That this island,
this "jewel of the Hebrides", could become a turning point in
Scottish land ownership. That Eigg could become a place where
these children playing around us now can more readily unfold
lives which find wealth in the richness of human relationships,
through the land and sea, in self-directed work and local
self-determination, in songs of the old tongue, and in all that
can derive from assuming full responsibility for community growth
But before we can make substantial headway in building support,
it is important to hear clearly your voices. Is what we have
outlined tonight and placed in the Trust booklet something you
wish and would uphold? In responding, remember that continued
private ownership could bring financial benefits, whereas
trusteeship would require community effort and by no means
guarantees a halcyon era.
What we have done is simply to have created a trust in waiting.
It can be used for charitable purposes while waiting, but
crucially we seek your endorsement for its primary function - to
try and remove the island, forever, from the vagaries of private
ownership.
We know that the current owners, Mrs Williams and Mr
Schellenberg, are not without sympathy for what we are doing.
Both have expressed qualified support. We call for more than
that. We ask that they hear the pain which continued ownership
uncertainty causes, and consider making easier the primary
objective of the Isle of Eigg Trust. This could be a gesture with
little precedent; a gesture of healing which helps to set right
ancient wrongs. A gesture of stewardship; even, of belonging.