They put half the estate in Sleat up for sale and it had just been bought by an Edinburgh merchant banker, Iain Noble. He got 20,000 acres plus a nice hotel in Isle Ornsay for £120,000 – £1.4 million in today’s money. Crofting land was cheap because the rights of landlords were heavily constrained for as long as crofting regulation was enforced. There was very little market in crofting estates.
This led to a remarkable sub-plot, which Iain described to me the first time we met. There was so little demand for land in Skye that the lawyer handling the sale threw in a job-lot of title deeds just to get rid of them. As a result, Iain learned subsequently that he had acquired a range of assets without knowing it, some of which proved in time to be very significant.
He told me this story outside an old farm steading in Sleat which had been a particularly odd inclusion in the job-lot since it stood in the middle of the remaining Macdonald lands. What will you do with it, I asked. Iain replied: “I thought it might be rather fun to turn it into a Gaelic College”. And that was the genesis of Sabhal Mor Ostaig, now a much expanded seat of Gaelic learning.
But I digress. The remaining 20,000 acres of Macdonald crofting land came under ownership of Clan Donald Lands Trust, a body which was for many years generously funded by wealthy Americans. In particular, Ellice Macdonald and his wife, a member of the DuPont family, poured in millions. And it was money well spent.
The combination of Iain Noble and Clan Donald, even if they didn’t much approve of one another, brought stability and prosperity to Sleat. For good measure, though now bereft of the crofting estate, the current Lord Macdonald and his wife Claire created a wonderful hotel, so for 50 years the consequences of old Macdonald’s death duties have been inadvertently beneficial – diversity of ownership, Gaelic sustained, quality tourism and population retained.
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Even philanthropists are mortal. In 2013, Ellice Macdonald died at the age of 100 and other Clan enthusiasts in Trumpland were thinning out. I know nothing about what led to the decision by Clan Donald trustees to sell the estate. What is certain, however, is that more than half a century after Sleat got lucky, half the peninsula is back on the market for sale to the highest bidder – speculative hedge fund, Arab potentate, Russian oligarch? That is how the Scottish land market operates.
The biggest change has been entirely negative. It lies in the fact that the system of crofting tenure has been allowed to fall into disrepair as a protection against speculation and exploitation. The property industry worked tirelessly to “normalise” croft land in terms of market value. In the glossy brochures produced by our great estate agents, you will need to look in the very small print to learn about the constraints imposed on owners’ rights by crofting tenure.
The Clan Donald sale might usefully highlight the folly of having thrown away something which had the potential to relieve Scotland of one of its actual “world-leading” distinctions – as host to the most inequitable distribution of land ownership in any non-totalitarian society. And yet, it most definitely need not have been like this.
In 1997, the incoming Labour Scottish Office established a working group on land reform chaired by John Sewel. Some of its recommendations were enacted after devolution. But the most radical faced intense hostility from the Edinburgh civil service, who were a lot closer to the landowning fraternity than to crofters. It was that “all crofting communities who create a properly constituted crofting trust (will have) a right to ownership on fair financial terms”.
There was a precedent to build on. Even the Tories had been persuaded that crofting community ownership had merits and had just put through legislation which created that right in respect of estates owned by the government, of which there are still a few for historic reasons. The Sewel proposal was to “give the same basic rights to all other crofting communities” which has proved far too radical for devolved Scotland.
The brochure for the Vlan Donald estate sale highlights “potential for future wind development”The brochure for the Vlan Donald estate sale highlights “potential for future wind development” (Image: PA) You might think that “crofting” happens on the fringes of Scotland. In fact, 775,000 hectares are under crofting tenure; so a “community right to buy” – or vesting ownership in a wider trust – would be by far the biggest, cheapest and easiest means to transform the ownership map of Scotland, if anyone wanted to.
Instead, when the civil servants were eventually forced to include a “right” in the 2003 Land Reform Act, it was made so complicated as to be unusable – and has never been successfully used, which explains why community buy-outs ground to a halt.
In spite of this having been glaringly obvious for well over a decade, not a finger has been lifted to rectify it. There is currently a useless Land Reform Bill going through Holyrood which does not mention crofting tenure and a Crofting Reform Bill which does not mention a community right to buy. It is as if ministers have no clue about the distinctive nature – or potential – of a uniquely Scottish system, which I fear is entirely possible.
There is another respect in which matters have got worse rather than better. The Scottish Government has eagerly embraced “carbon trading” through peatland restoration and tree planting as things of wonder. We have had the grotesque spectacle of First Ministers traipsing to the City of London to beg speculators to make Scotland the “world centre of natural capital”. The actual effect is to drive up land values, with precious little benefit for the climate.
Sure enough, the Strutt & Parker brochure for the Clan Donald estate, having waxed lyrical about “a unique opportunity to own the majority of a renowned and historic peninsula” advises prospective buyers of “a feasibility study identifying a 566 ha area with restoration and carbon accreditation potential”. Not to mention “potential for future wind development”.
More than half a century after the break-up of the Macdonald lands, the people who live in Sleat are again left as bewildered by-standers, waiting to discover which rogue or chancer will turn up as their next “laird”.
There is no subject on which Scottish nationalism has proven to be such an intellectually empty vessel. No subject attracted more rhetoric than the buying up of Scottish land without let or hindrance. They have had 18 years to change that and, as Sleat confirms, have delivered the square root of hee-haw.
Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003.