Land Action
“Time is ripe for revolution when the masses of people won’t act for change but won’t strongly oppose those who do.”
Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, 1971.
It’s time to challenge landed power and mount a campaign of positive action for land reform. Land Action Scotland – co-ordinated by Andy Wightman – will be launching a number of actions over the coming months and to kick off they plan to help the people of the Isle of Bute and Applecross to take control of the land:
“Around 90,000 acres of the Island of Bute and the Applecross peninsula are owned by two private companies owned by a handful of non-residents. The purpose of this campaign is to open up the membership of these companies (which have charitable status) and enable the communities there to have a democratic stake in the management of the land. This is your campaign and your opportunity to help this to happen.
“The Mount Stuart Trust owns 28,300 acres of land or around 89% of the entire Isle of Bute. It is not (despite what the website says) a “Charitable Trust”. It is a Limited Company with charitable status. It has 7 members, none of whom live on Bute. The Applecross Trust owns 61,600 acres of land of the Applecross peninsula in Wester Ross. It is also not a Trust but a Limited Company with charitable status. It has 6 members, none of whom live in Applecross.
Land Action is here: http://www.landaction.org.uk/
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Another reason for independence,and public ownership of the country.
I think this is a great idea, but the truth is that most of the rural population is beginning to look like and sound like the cast of the Good Life. They sell their homes in Surrey, and take advantage of economic differences to buy cheap land in Scotland. And that’s just the crofters!
The tiny rural population surely isn’t the issue here, its the poor sods in our ghastly urban bantustan. Scotland’s underclass share a plight for all intents and purposes little different to that of modern Native Americans.
The Scottish urban underclass, mostly functionally illiterate and consequently largely unemployable, left their own devices will be an unsustainable drag on an independent Scotland and solving the problem by throwing petrodollars at it like Thatcher did is simply criminal.
Giving this group a meaningful stake in society and weening them off their chronic industrial scale dependency on violence, alcohol and drugs is critical if the independence project is to offer something more meaningful than a mere change of flags.
“Public ownership” isn’t the answer, just look at Glasgow and its environs to see the folly of that approach. No, private ownership is key, without it you’ll never get any sense of responsibility, essential for long term multi-generational stewardship. Nationalise the great estates, parcel then up and give the land to individuals. These properties could be leased or passed on but not sold outright meaning that they could not be used as collateral against borrowing or other financial chicanery. The allocation of the plots would be by lottery and owners would be free to do as they saw fit with them, grants, soft loans and other assistance for there improvement would be made available from central and local government with the explicit goal of fostering self reliance and sustainability.
Current living patterns make less and less sense in an increasingly deindustrialised economy whilst the endless Americana-like sprawl that typifies most modern developments is predicated on cheap oil, which even the most myopic must now see as the folly that it is. Mindlessly aping the lifestyle of North America is both economically and ecologically unsound.
As for the “Good Life” quip all I can say is that in my experience they’re usually the only ones that actually give a shit and are you seriously suggesting trying to stop them from retiring to Scotland. EU membership is after all predicated on the free movement of peoples and I for one would rather have retired southern civil servants and teachers, etc., than the plague of grasping eastern europeans and grifting Somali’s I have to contend with on a daily basis in N6.
N6 & grifters means nothing to me I’m afraid! 🙂