Posted on 02/23/2003 12:10:03 AM PST by Destro
February 23, 2003
Land Reforms in Scotland Give Big Estates the Jitters
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
DORNACH, Scotland, Feb. 20 — Swaddled in the solitude of the Scottish Highlands, Skibo Castle, once the home of the steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie and now a storybook resort for the privileged, is a place infused with an aura of tranquillity and comfort.
The rich and famous travel here to the northern reaches of Scotland to golf, ride, roam about the grounds and attend candlelight dinners. Madonna married Guy Ritchie at the castle two years ago, in full Scottish regalia. Members of Skibo's members-only Carnegie Club enjoy a "unique and private refuge from the hectic world," its Web site boasts.
But last month the Scottish Parliament, a four-year-old institution based in Edinburgh, overwhelmingly passed a land reform bill that fundamentally changes property rights in Scotland and could greatly expand the public's access even to private estates like Skibo Castle.
The new law would give crofters — small-scale tenant farmers who have lived in the Highlands for generations — the right to collectively purchase sections of the estates they live on, whether or not the landowner wants to sell. The law also allows anyone in Scotland the right to roam just about anywhere they please, granting landowners only limited power to eject someone from their property.
The provisions, expected to be signed into law by the queen later this year, have set off a fury among Scotland's rich estate owners, who have labeled it a brand of Marxism and likened it to the seizures of white-owned land by President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
"The only countries in the world left with this kind of thing are North Korea and Cuba," said Peter de Savary, the flamboyant entrepreneur who turned Skibo Castle from a private home into the Carnegie Club in 1995. "The Scottish legislation is ill-conceived, has not been thought out and is particularly inane. There is nothing to commend it at all."
Landowners fear their land may be sold out from under them or, in the case of sporting and leisure clubs, the members worry about losing privacy. They also argue that the bill may ultimately hurt local economies by cutting into tourism.
Supporters of the bill, which passed by a vote of 101 to 19 with only 2 abstentions, shrug off the criticism, saying change was overdue in Scotland, where half of private land is in the hands of just 343 landowners and only half of Scotland's land has gone on the market in the past century.
"The reason we are doing this now is because we haven't done it in 200 years," said Andy Wightman, author of "Who Owns Scotland."
Mr. de Savary said he was most distressed over the "right to roam" section of the bill, which would make it next to impossible to bar someone from his land. "I'm not sure they can't walk all over the golf course and get hit on the head by a ball and be killed," he said. "And the owner of the golf course will be liable."
Other landowners, most of whom vigorously lobbied against the bill, are particularly aghast over the provision that gives crofting communities the right to buy an estate's common grazing grounds, including its fishing rights, regardless of the landowner's desire to sell. If the majority of crofters in a community decide they want to buy, the property's value is determined by an independent assessor and may be bought using lottery money that goes into a government fund.
"This is about the haves and have-nots," said Gordon Robertson, who manages Balnagown, the Easter Ross estate of Mohamed al-Fayed, owner of Harrods department store. "The decision appears to be political, looking at the past, and it lacks a basic understanding of how rural Scotland works."
Several landowners, through the Scottish Landowners' Federation, hope to challenge the law before the European Court of Human Rights. They say the bill is scaring off potential investors, who would not want to risk money on estates that could be bought out from under them.
"It's a revenge job for something carried out 150 years ago and more," said John Mackenzie, whose family has owned 50,000 acres on the Isle of Skye for more than five centuries.
To many people, though, the bill is viewed as a belated effort to address a deep imbalance in property ownership in Scotland and a chance to remedy the wrongs committed by powerful landowners 200 years ago, during the Highland Clearances. At the time, crofters were pushed off the land and their huts were burned to enlarge estate holdings and, often, to make way for sheep. Many left for the United States, Canada and Australia. The crofters living in Scotland today can trace their lineages back to those who were pushed on to the margins of the big estates.
The British government ignored the issue for decades, partly in deference to the House of Lords, which is stocked with wealthy landowning aristocrats. But when the Scottish Parliament was created four years ago, it seized on the issue.
"This is the first major challenge to the institutional power that landowners have enjoyed in the political process," Mr. Wightman said.
In the Highlands, where the bill most resonates, fewer than 100 landowners — aristocrats, celebrities, foreign investors, sheiks and offshore companies — own more than half the land. Some are absentee landlords. Others, though, run the estates at a loss and invest millions to maintain the grounds, run lodges and keep rivers pristine, all of which helps local economies.
Many lawmakers and crofters argue that landowners are panicking unnecessarily. The most contentious provision in the bill — the crofting communities' right to buy — affects only 7 percent of all Scottish land, and many crofters have no intention of taking advantage of the offer. Those who do want to buy must surmount a number of hurdles, including holding a local referendum and withstanding a legal appeal.
"In one sense, it is revolutionary," said Jim Wallace, deputy first minister of the Scottish Parliament who helped steer the bill through the legislature. "It's a simpler way of giving crofting communities the right to buy land. But the heavens aren't going to fall in."
In some cases, the buying and selling of land will be done amicably, as is currently happening with the Dundonnell Estate of the lyricist Sir Tim Rice, who is negotiating the sale of part of his 33,000 acres of Wester Ross land to a group of crofters.
Several other crofting communities, though, are moving ahead with plans to confront their landlords and assert their right to buy. Hugh Mac- Lellan, 42, a crofter who has occupied the same land his family was squeezed into some 200 years ago, is already setting plans in motion to purchase 2,300 acres of the Durness Estate, which is owned by Vibal SE, a corporation licensed in Liechtenstein. Mr. MacLellan, an oyster farmer and owner of a bed and breakfast in northwest Sutherland, hopes to revitalize the village of Laid, which he says has languished through neglect.
The owners, he said, want to hold on to the property for its mineral rights. He hopes to buy it and turn parts into a heritage trail, maybe set up a shellfish processing plant or a wind farm to produce electricity.
"The landlord has had it for 20 years and done nothing with it," Mr. MacLellan said. "As far as I know, the owners have never been here. We hope, if we take it over, we can create developments."
Putin, fix Russia quick cause the West is dead and I may need to move.
Are we to assume that these "communities" lacked the "right to buy land" before? Or did they perhaps simply lack the means.....?
Better that the current owners continue to do nothing with the land. The only minerals there, I think, are coal, and nobody is going to be stupid enough to open a new coal mine.
Bozo wants to make a heritage trail that nobody will walk, a shellfish plant to pollute the air and water and cause local overfishing or a windfarm that is not economically viable.
And remember, the money to buy this land would come from the already overused lottery funds.
During the Clearances, my family was burned out of Sutherland, then shoved off of Barra, and landed in Nova Scotia.
I highly recommend "Who Owns Scotland." It's an eye-opener, and very depressing to see how much of the Highlands and Islands land has been taken over by rich Arabs, Middle Easterners, and others.
Tens of millions of modern day Americans have a property-right interest in these particular estates if the Scottish Parliament acts in a way which renews ancient property rights.
Frankly I want my piece of the mountain and if some Socialist voting laird has been luxurating in Majorca while the land languishes in an unproductive state, then he'll just have to be evicted!
The sooner the better, too! - Him AND his sheep.
Go back far enough, and pretty much all land is owned by thieves and scoundrels. :>)
Seriously, though, there are a number of Scots families who have indeed owned their land for many centuries. The article above itself names one: John Mackenzie, whose family has owned 50,000 acres on the Isle of Skye for more than five centuries.
One or two MacDonald families own their ancestral land, as do a few families down south on the Borders. The Marquis of Lothian is an example, the Lord of Jedburgh. He is a Kerr, of Ferniehirst. A fortified house was built at Ferniehirst in 1476 by a Thomas Kerr, on an earlier foundation. The Kerrs still own it.
They should first get rid of the Monarchy, Lords, and anything that give a privilaged royal class a leg up. The rest will take care of itself in a free market. The Scots intent is good but the means rot.
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