Climate Solutions Scotland, Community Land or Big Finance
Abriachan Forest
The public discourse between Community Land Scotland and Nature Scotland came to a head recently with the publication of a paper by Jon Hollingdale on Scotland’s interaction with private Green Finance and alternative approaches to funding the response to the climate crisis. It’s called ‘The Credibility Gap for Green Finance’.
In its foreword Ailsa Raeburn, chair of Community Land Scotland writes: “Jon Hollingdale’s paper came about due to his growing sense of unease at the widespread official acceptance of the Green Finance Institute (GFI) £20bn ‘finance gap for Scottish nature’ and the corresponding impact this is having upon the Scottish land market and our national response to the climate and biodiversity crises. In March 2023, the Scottish Government twice quoted the £20bn finance gap figure as justifying the need to ‘leverage responsible private finance’. We have seen how this rush for private finance is driving change in Scotland’s land market.”
“In fact recent research commissioned by the Scottish Land Commission has identified demand for land for forestry as being the key driver for the increase in Scottish land prices – and this was before the £2 billion deal arranged by NatureScot which has the potential to further overheat the market – even if it’s not for land purchase directly, it will help make land more valuable to those who own (and can sell) it).”
“The purpose of the GFI report seems clear. In their press release they state that ‘having identified the scale of investment needed, and where it is needed, we must now focus on unlocking barriers to the mobilisation of private finance into nature-positive projects and
businesses’. Jon Hollingdale’s work now fundamentally questions a substantial part of the evidence provided in the report published by GFI.”
So here we have two fundamentally clashing visions of how we deliver a radical response to the nature and climate crisis.
Back in March NatureScot and the Scottish Greens minister Lorna Slater announced that they had signed a deal with private financiers which would leverage up to £2bn in loans to help fund an expansion in new forestry and peatland restoration. They argued that the plan could plant 457,000 acres of woodland to store about 28m tonnes of CO2 over the next 30 years – a figure equivalent to half Scotland’s annual CO2 emissions.
But the figures and the perceived gap are based on estimates published in 2021 by the Green Finance Institute (GFI), a London-based think tank, that the UK faces a “green finance gap” of between £44bn and £97bn on all nature investments over the next decade, if it intends to reach net zero by 2050. Hollingdale’s analysis challenges the whole premise of the report.
Willie McGhee, of the Forest Policy Group (FPG) has said:
“Jon’s paper highlights that a natural capital lens can depict Scotland’s land and environment as a speculative opportunity, a means to attract significant private capital and to maximise returns from altering land and changing the environment. This financial perspective has resulted in inflated land prices, is attracting opportunist investors, and has resulted in more remote absentee forest ownership … Unfortunately, governments are often drawn to the idea of using private capital to solve problems without fully considering the long-term consequences.”
Mind the Gap
At the heart of the division is the key document “The Finance Gap for UK Nature”, published in 2021 by the Green Finance Institute, a “forum for innovation in green finance” that is “backed by government, trusted by finance, and led by bankers” which uses their platform “to co-design financial instruments and mechanisms”.
The Community Land Scotland report is detailed and technical but here are a few highlights. The national total of the Finance Gap document is disaggregated across four nations, covering areas such as Clean Water, Protect Biodiversity, Reduce Flood Risk etc, (Table 1: Finance gap by outcome and location (2022-32) in £bn), which produces some curious effects and prompts some obvious questions:
- Why is the cost for water the same in Scotland as in England, given the discrepancy in population and the well-publicised water quality issues south of the border?
- Why are the costs for improving access and engagement in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each £1bn, and all much more expensive per capita than England, which has almost 85% of the total UK population?
Hollingdale/CLS said the Green Finance Institute’s projections wrongly included the cost of buying the land needed to plant forests and resuscitate degraded peatlands. Instead he argued that most of those would be carried out by existing landowners.
As Severin Carrell reports (‘Reforesting Scotland doesn’t need multimillionaires, say campaigners‘): “If investors bought land specifically for carbon sequestration, that land would be a financial asset, not a cost. He estimated that if buying the land was taken out of the equation, the actual finance gap for woodland would be roughly 30% of the figure given by GFI – a gap which could be met by government subsidies.”
Further, forestry, once established, attracts very generous tax advantages promoted heavily by forestry land agents in order to attract investors – these include relief from inheritance tax and the increase in timber value being free from Capital Gains Tax.
All of these lands in the week when The Ferret reported “Just two communities have applied to take neglected land into public ownership since the Scottish Government launched the initiative more than five years ago.”
Hollingdale concludes: “The urgency of the climate and biodiversity emergencies, and the need for rapid and far-reaching land use change cannot be denied. It is vital, however, that the search for solutions to difficult political questions does not lead to the abandonment of other commitments to community wealth building, land reform and just transition: the role of government is to provide the correct balance of regulations and incentives to ensure that land use serves the public interest across a range of policy areas.”
“Scrutiny of the underlying assumptions in the Green Finance Institute report demonstrates that the scale of the finance gap, at least in respect for woodland creation has been greatly exaggerated. Similarly, it is unclear whether there is demand for private loan finance on the scale envisaged by the NatureScot/Private Finance MoU.”There is a significant risk that an undue focus on extractive private investment solutions will further entrench the land ownership status quo, whilst distracting attention from alternative measures, including review and reform of existing mechanisms, which might be more effective at both delivering land use change and advancing wider land reform and community wealth agendas.”
This is a restrained take.
A Carbon Klondike
The dispute goes to the heart of how we see political change and how we step-up to the challenge of the climate and nature crisis. It goes to the heart of what we think land ‘is’ and what we think forests are for. There’s also a melancholy-reality that you can’t ‘resurrect forests’ at a time scale that matches our challenge, as the old saying goes “What’s the best time to plant a tree?” – “About fifty years ago”.
But is also a strategy that Mairi McFadyen took on earlier this year (“Just Listen to the Birdsong Now” – Possibilities for people and nature in community-owned woodland’):
“The question ‘who owns the land?’ – Ceist an Fhearainn in Gaelic – has taken on a renewed and profound sense of urgency in the context of climate crisis and ecological breakdown. Land is being bought and sold at an alarmingly rapid pace by private finance, in part to plant trees in a deeply flawed and hasty attempt to offset the carbon emissions of global business through carbon credits – ultimately no more than an accounting exercise, much easier than reducing emissions at their source.”
In response to the argument NatureScotland tried to navigate out of the dispute saying: “The report from CLS challenges some of the assumptions in the GFI report and we will leave it to GFI to comment on these. Land acquisition (the cost of which is reflected in the report from GFI) is not part of the model we are developing with our own investment partners. In that regard we agree that the £20bn figure may be an overestimate.”
But they also say: “It is clear that public funding alone cannot tackle the climate change and biodiversity crisis we currently face.”
The question is raised why are NatureScot – ie civil servants – making such an explicitly political statement? And a subjective one. The argument that there isn’t sufficient public money is a neoliberal one, and ducks the issue of using taxation to raise the necessary money.
There are 2,000 private jets registered in the UK, and a typical private jet can cost £20 million i.e. £40 billion tied up in luxury transport for the wealthy, alone. So the money is out there, and who better to provide it (from taxation) than those most responsible for the climate crisis, i.e. the high emitters? And the Scottish Government can’t get off the hook by blaming Westminster – their own Land Reform Review Group recommended in their 2014 report a number of devolved tax measures and the Scottish Government hasn’t progressed any of them.
NatureScot’s response continues: “Responsible, private finance is one, crucial way that we can meet Net Zero. That’s why we are working with the Scottish Government and others to help build a new market for values led, high integrity, private investment in Scotland’s nature that benefits Scotland’s people and communities.”
Is there such a thing as a market that is ‘values led’? Is luring private finance the way to restore nature?
As Alastair McIntosh writes in his report (‘The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Carbon – Community Land Scotland‘):
“Scotland is already experiencing rapidly rising land values, apparently driven by a surfeit of global capital looking for safe havens. As a country we enjoy relative political stability and have little regulation, especially compared to other similar domains. Importantly for the intelligent long-term investor, we are also relatively insulated from near to medium term climate change, being mostly well above sea level and enjoying a cool temperate climate. Therefore, Scotland’s market advantages are numerous and these are easily capitalised. Agents are reporting record breaking prices. It’s a Klondike economy both driven by and to the benefit of speculative private investors. The market-making Green Finance Initiative Report, written by financiers, set an estimate of £20 billion for Scotland to meet its natural finance gap. The Scottish Government has relied on this Report which is thinly presented, unverified and contested. A Report which is driving public policy which, in turn is driving huge changes in the land market, ownership and use. A Report which gives credibility and justification for the ‘unicorn’ investors like Oxygen Conservation, rapidly expanding their footprint in Scotland to ‘prove that the natural environment can pay to protect and restore itself’.
As McIntosh concludes the ‘rewilding’ agenda reeks of neocolonialism, it: “shows evidence of justifying its urgency on grounds of climate change, but treats huge swathes of rural Scotland as a colonial ‘terra nullius’ requiring the helicoptering in of external experts to impose their own view of what the land should look like and be without considering working hand-in-hand with what communities, hammered by housing price rises, see as the equally important imperative of repeopling.”
The use of ‘external experts’ is at the heart of the problems laid out in Hollingdale’s report and it won’t really do for Nature Scotland to say ‘The Finance gap for UK nature’ report was produced by the Green Finance Institute (GFI) and questions about the report and the assumptions it contains should be directed to them” because that report is steering Scottish Government policy.
It would however be a mistake to see the Nature Scotland / GFI as an accounting error, it’s a worldview error. The economic system, power relations and values that brought you the climate catastrophe is incapable, by definition of resolving it. We’ve been fed a narrative about tackling climate change by politicians, business, media etc that everyone has just accepted. That capitalism will essentially continue unchanged, but will save the planet through ‘green’ business & ‘green’ growth. That offsets and magic green tech will enable us to carry on business as usual. That there is no other way. Now more and more are challenging these assumptions, recognising that elites are actually using the crisis to entrench their positions and preserve the current order.
A better way forward than quangos leveraging money into ‘new carbon markets’ and obscure offsetting schemes would be to radically overhaul the stalled and inadequate land-reform movement and inject money into extensive rural housing programmes and grants and jobs for community forestry on a scale we haven’t seen before.
[after publication we were contacted by a PR firm on behalf of the Green Finance Institute. We are happy to add the following comment from them… ]
Dr Rhian-Mari Thomas OBE, CEO of the Green Finance Institute said:
“The UK Finance Gap for Nature report, published almost two years ago, was the first attempt of its kind to understand the gap between public funding commitments for the UK’s nature goals and the estimated required spend. The addition of new data where it is robust is welcomed, but we also note that the limited data pool in 2021 meant the report was not able to reflect the cost of the compounded impact of climate change over the decade within a ‘business as usual’ environment. As new data emerges, we may find the finance gap is bigger than originally estimated.”
The report was developed using the best data available in July 2021, with the oversight of an independent, expert review board and acknowledgements throughout of the data challenges. A database of all underlying information was published alongside the report so that, as more data came to light, the assessment could be developed further by interested parties over time.”
“The Green Finance Institute is an independent, not-for-profit organisation that seeks to mobilise the capital required to tackle the climate and biodiversity crises. The report does not state a preference for the type of capital used to fill the gap and states clearly on page 3 that “required spending could be paid for by public, private, third sectors and/or investors.”
Notes
Read the Community Land Scotland report – and Nature Scotland’s response here: The Credibility Gap for Green Finance – Community Land Scotland
Outstanding&informative piece, almost depressing though, given the notion that ostensibly green ‘Green’ measures still want to sup wi a lang spoon with private finance/short-term monetising land lobbies….
Very depressing.
Visit Tentsmuir and see the destruction and removal of huge area of forest in the name of progress. Mainly healthy trees have disappeared. I will not live to see the new ones.
If our ecological polycrisis has a similar or greater urgency to world wars, then surely requisitions and compulsory purchase of land should be the order of the day, as happened then (although no doubt some war-profiteers got rich then too):
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/land-requisitioned-war/
Very well said.
In my own experience, Scotland is bought and sold for oligarch gold and run for private profit at public expense. It’s just not quite as blatant as Westminster but the same underlying culture. They are never able to justify their betrayal – responses to enquiries are always either silence, or denial of responsibility. .
The involvement of private money here is a disgrace. It is like pouring petrol on a fire to put it out.
I have been reading ‘Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It’
by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, & Max Wilbert. It makes for uncomfortable reading. I recommend it.
We urgently need politicians and civil servants in Scotland who will act in the interests of planet and people instead of plutocrats with the ‘ethics’ of organised crime. Whether their complete failure to do this is because of corporate bullying, or corruption, or just being willing to accept the lies and manipulations of lobbyists in the hope of a quiet life, matters little – it is not good enough.
I have commented before that I will no longer vote for any candidate of any party who puts private profit before people and planet. I’ll spoil my ballot if necessary. But increasingly, it is becoming apparent that we need a new political party, with genuine principles and a clear vision, if we are to have any future at all. Voting negatively or for a ‘Least worst’ candidate simply destroys what little is left of our democracy.
We also need a national legal service free at the point of use. The poor still have no lawyers.
@John Wood, perhaps more pertinent is the lack of lawyers for non-humans, a legal framework for ecocide, and a new form of government that takes a planetary-realistic view of prioritising non-human life. That is, not party politics, but systemic change.
https://www.stopecocide.earth
#biocracynow
We certainly do need a complete change of direction. I agree that lawyers are needed to defend non-humans, but as a human myself, who is in serious need of a lawyer because of the criminal behaviour of ‘our’ governments, to me my own need is no less pertinent. Also, humans and non-humans are interdependent. The problem is that we are ruled by organised crime. And no lawyer, politician, civil servant, will stand up for planet or people against it.
“Back in March NatureScot and the Scottish Greens minister Lorna Slater announced…a deal with private financiers which would leverage up to £2bn….They argued that the plan could plant 457,000 acres of woodland to store about 28m tonnes of CO2 over the next 30 years”
And yet the boring old Forestry Commission managed to plant 600,000 acres in it’s first decade (a third of the timescale above), with public funding, straight after fighting a world war.
Weird how the response to any deep crisis is to make rich people even richer. Thank God for the billionaires! Whatever would we do without them?
Aye,,,
Round up the billionaires and send them to Mars, on a one way ticket.
Then the peasants like us can figure out a sensible solution.
Currently struggling for air in British Columbia. Missing the Western Isles.
It was the ending of the post-war democratic consensus by Thatcher what done it. After that no political party had the guts to return to financing things through taxes and state ownership. Alongside, the Overton Window shifted and any suggestion of full public finance was denounced as socialism, unaffordable, whatever, and we end up in this mad world where the simple idea of funding anything major solely through the sate purse is consider untenable. I find it so sad and yet the truth is very many people have bought into it. It needs some new, powerful and persuasive rhetoric to bring back the idea that there is nothing wrong with public finance. At the same time is needs to be accepted that the ‘state purse’ is largely money we have to fund from our wages.
It infests everything as well. I notice now that in my public institution workplace, every bit of software and hardware is now tied into Microsoft products. Every bit of storage is now an MS ‘cloud’ and the institution has completely given up on their own internal storage and all software is literally bought in. This shift from internal autonomy and bespoke solutions buying everything in has happened in the last decade only. I have queried our total reliance on a private, for-profit mega-corporation and whether it is right and appropriate and received totally blank looks like my question simply doesn’t compute, let alone have any credence.
Yep, take all land into common ownership, tax its private use (as wilderness, planting, mining, housing, sporting estate, industrial estate, religious retreat, leisure amenity, or whatever), and distribute the revenue raised to every citizen in the form of a universal basic income.
And while we’re at it, let’s take the other factors of production – labour and capital – into common ownership too and likewise distribute the wealth they generate as a UBI through the taxation of their private use.
That’s communism.
Your level of intelligence seems to fluctuate wildly depending on the topic. What a load of shite you write. Reds Under the Bed!
Every, single other northern European country has far wider distribution of land ownership than the UK. Are France, Germany, Norway, Finland et al Communist regimes? Perhaps, in your own way, you think they are?
Please don’t reply. Ta.
‘Every, single other northern European country has far wider distribution of land ownership than the UK.’
This is true.
‘Are France, Germany, Norway, Finland et al Communist regimes?’
No; none of their regimes has taken land, labour, and capital into common ownership.
I don’t understand these comments. What are you trying to say? And what does ‘communism’ have to do with it?
Scotland is a country that has been colonised, ethnically cleansed and ransacked for private profit. A country that has been handed over by a parcel of rogues to a small number of International playboys as a ‘wild playground to escape to’ (as the highlands have been described by Visit Scotland). That ‘wildness’ isn’t really about the natural world at all – it is actually the Wild West, where ethics don’t matter and anything goes if there’s money to be made – including clearing the few remaining natives who get in the way. There’s gold prospecting going on right now on the Gairloch estate, we already have a growing forest of 5G masts emitting radiofrequency pollution, and the land is about to be ripped up by more massive pylons and wind turbines which will destroy more of our biodiversity. And for successive governments, we have long been a huge playground for military exercises, and we don’t forget Gruinard Island or the plans to test an atomic bomb in Caithness. ‘Tis no great mischief, after all. The highlands – but also Scotland as a whole, and the rest of the British Empire – have experienced this horror for over two hundred years.
Behind all this facade of ‘free market’ capitalism is actually a totalitarian agenda worthy of Stalin or Hitler. We are bought and sold these days for American gold – in particular, the World Economic Forum, with its stated aim to ‘make the world a better place’ for itself by taking over. Is that agenda ‘communist’ or ‘fascist’ ? – to me it is simply nihilism, an addiction to unlimited power over everything and everyone, an act of violence unparalleled in human history. But it matters little what label you put on it. The only possible future for planet and people alike is for local communities to take back control and work with nature for the good of all, everywhere. Give me Big R radicalism. That’s the one for me.
I don’t understand these comments. What are you trying to say? And what does ‘communism’ have to do with it?
Scotland is a country that has been colonised, ethnically cleansed and ransacked for private profit. A country that has been handed over by a parcel of rogues to a small number of International playboys as a ‘wild playground to escape to’ (as the highlands have been described by Visit Scotland). That ‘wildness’ isn’t really about the natural world at all – it is actually the Wild West, where ethics don’t matter and anything goes if there’s money to be made – including clearing the few remaining natives who get in the way. There’s gold prospecting going on right now on the Gairloch estate, we already have a growing forest of 5G masts emitting radiofrequency pollution, and the land is about to be ripped up by more massive pylons and wind turbines which will destroy more of our biodiversity. And for successive governments, we have long been a huge playground for military exercises, and we don’t forget Gruinard Island or the plans to test an atomic bomb in Caithness. ‘Tis no great mischief, after all. The highlands – but also Scotland as a whole, and the rest of the British Empire – have experienced this horror for over two hundred years.
Behind all this facade of ‘free market’ capitalism is actually a totalitarian agenda worthy of Stalin or Hitler. We are bought and sold these days for American gold – in particular, the World Economic Forum, with its stated aim to ‘make the world a better place’ for itself by taking over. Is that agenda ‘communist’ or ‘fascist’ ? – to me it is simply nihilism, an addiction to unlimited power over everything and everyone, an act of violence unparalleled in human history. But it matters little what label you put on it. The only possible future for planet and people alike is for local communities to take back control and work with nature for the good of all, everywhere.
Colonised and ethnically cleansed? This is just nonsense. Using extreme and inappropriate language, twisting the true meaning of words towards breaking point to try and ramp up the hate and negativity doesn’t work. It just makes people look unhinged. I saw someone on another site claiming Scotland has suffered ‘genocide’ the other day (apparently you can apply this to culture now, except you can’t, it’s BS), and the English people living in Scotland are colonial invaders / occupiers and are ‘vermin’ that need ‘exterminating’. Yes this was actually written on a nationalist site. This stuff is just crass, hateful and the precursor to fascism.
Of course I don’t agree with you at all. I am an English Scot, who has lived in, and studied the history and archaeology of the highlands for around 30 years. This is not hate speech at all, nor is it ‘alt-Right’ (whatever that is), or nonsense. You might not like it but it is just my considered opinion. If you disagree with me, please present some evidence to support your view.
I agree, John; although I’m not so sure that there is any kind of conspiracy behind the facade of capitalism. That’s alt-right talk.
‘Wilderness’ is just another form of land-use, one of the ways in which we ‘humanise’ the earth or appropriate it to our human purposes.
The World Economic Forum is an NGO that lobbies governments to undertake initiatives that will harness the technological changes of the fourth industrial revolution to reset capitalism. On the premise that capitalism is currently subject to a polycrisis, from which ‘business as usual’ cannot lead to a recovery, the WEF’s goal is to rebuild society/rehumanise the earth in ways that prioritise sustainable development.
This ‘Great Reset’ has three core components:
1. creating conditions for a stakeholder economy (an economy in which corporations are oriented to serve the private interests of all their stakeholders, including their customers, suppliers, employees, and local communities and not just their shareholders);
2. using environmental, social, and governance metrics to create and distribute wealth in a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable way;
3. harnessing the tremendous wealth-creating potential of the technological innovations that are currently emerging from our scientific activity.
Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the International Monetary Fund, crystalises these three core components of the recovery from the polycrisis in the strapline ‘green growth, smarter growth, and fairer growth’.
This is hardly communism, whose advocates instead prescribe resetting capitalism and overcoming the polycrisis into which it ‘naturally’ deconstructs (or ‘world revolution’, as they’ve traditionally called the latter; ‘nihilism’ in more Nietzschean terminology) by taking all the factors of production (land, labour, and capital) out of private ownership and placing them under common ownership. As thon auld communist, Slavoj Žižek, suggests, world revolution calls for world government in order to manage the levels of complexity that recovering from the polycrisis and establishing sustainable human development will involve.
But I agree: in contrast to both the corporate technocracy of the WEF and the totalitarianism of Žižek, liberal democracy requires the so-called ‘third way’ of communitarianism, whereby the power to dispose of land, labour, and capital as they will is vested in local communities and their subsidiary political syndicates rather than in private individuals or state bureaucrats.
I agree, Niemand. It’s all alt-right/cancel culture talk, a nasty and dangerous side to Scottish nationalism.
It is you John who need to explain who has been ethnically cleansed and by whom and to explain exactly why Scotland is a colony (of England?) using the correct understanding of those words.
Ethnically cleansed was a term invented in the 1990s for the violent mayhem in Yugoslavia and is defined as:
‘a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas . . . “ethnic cleansing” has been carried out by means of murder, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, extra-judicial executions, rape and sexual assaults, confinement of civilian population in ghetto areas, forcible removal, displacement and deportation of civilian population, deliberate military attacks or threats of attacks on civilians and civilian areas, and wanton destruction of property’ (UN definition)
‘Colonisation is invasion: a group of people taking over the land and imposing their own culture on Indigenous people.
Modern colonisation dates back to the Age of Discovery in the 15th century, as European nations sought to expand their influence and wealth. In the process, representatives of these countries claimed the land, ignoring the Indigenous people and erasing Indigenous sovereignty.
Laws and policing were significant tools of dispossession and oppression. Indigenous people were brutalised, exploited and often positioned as subhuman. As Jean-Paul Sartre described colonisation:
[…] you begin by occupying the country, then you take the land and exploit the former owners at starvation rates […] you finish up taking from the natives their very right to work.’
(https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-decolonisation-131455)
How does that tally with the Treaty of Union? Who were the invaders? Who are the ‘occupiers’?
I have nothing much more to say on this, except to offer the explanation demanded. When I refer to colonisation, I am talking about a process based on an ideology that built the British (and other) Empires. When I talk about ‘ethnic cleansing’ I am referring mainly to the treatment of Gaels – do I really need to rehearse the evidence? Ethnic cleansing may be subtle as well as violent, but I think the UN definition of ‘ethnic cleansing’ is certainly applicable to the period after 1746; the Clearances of people for private profit then followed right through the 19th c., leading to the Napier Commission and the Crofting Acts. Not everyone was burnt out of their homes; mostly people were just ordered out, and they went. The scratching on the windows of Croick church bear witness. And the psychological scars still remain in the highland psyche. But the pressure to abandon the land and culture continues to this day. The Cheviot, the Stag, the Black, Black Oil, the drive through tourism, the de-funding of ‘remote rural’ areas, the Green Lairds – we’ve seen it all before.
This is not anti-English. I am myself, as I have said, an English Scot. It is about a colonialist ideology that has appeared in many places at many times. Gaeldom has been under sustained attack for centuries, long before 1707. I think we can trace the development of colonial / imperial ideas in northern Europe to the Roman Empire. Although I refer to the Gaels especially, I think it’s important to recognise that colonisation is just part of the centralisation of money and power and that that entails the imposition of a dominating identity and loyalty through culture and language; and that with industrialisation, the tools to exert power over others have become much greater and more powerful. Power is based on divide and rule, and the creation of an identity includes an ‘approved’ version of history (written by the winners). So many Scots have said to me that they were never taught their own history at school.
The Kingdom of Scotland’s expansion through the medieval period north and west from the central belt included the incorporation of the west coast and the Hebrides from Norway in 1266; and the subsequent suppression of the Kingdom / Lordship of the Isles. It was not until the 15th c. that Orkney and Shetland found themselves ruled by the king of Scots. James VI / I was very much a coloniser, even before he became King of England. A good example is the Fife Adventurers for example, sent to seize Lewis from the Macleods in 1598. Delighted to gain the throne of England he made great efforts to consolidate his two kingdoms into one centralised state – supposedly coining the term ‘Great Britain’. He was also responsible for the Plantation of Ulster in 1609. Henry VIII had already incorporated his native Wales into England in 1536.
From then on, the coloniser became ‘Britain’ rather than ‘England’ or ‘Scotland’. The Empire was not the property of the English or the Scots people, but of the wealthy, and especially the City of London. But the Scots, and especially the Highlanders, were seen as a threat. I’ll edit here, because otherwise I’d end up writing a whole book! But the idea of “Britain’ goes back to Roman times. Officially supposed to include the whole island, it only ever actually included the southern part. I think that it was a very useful concept for centralising powers in the 17th-20th centuries to adopt. The City of London, rather than England, was the driver of Empire. And for centuries, the City has drawn in people from a wide radius. In the late 17th c. and early 18th c., for example there was a very strong Dutch interest.
But by that time, Scotland was an entity, a kingdom with its own identity and a trading competitor; and it resisted attempts to assimilate it into England. Attempts to bring it under the control of London continued through the 17th c. – whether by the Stuart kings, or the increasingly powerful merchants who looked for resources to exploit. Just as elsewhere, in America for example. And as in America, the Scots resented it. And as in America, there were people you could do business with, mainly in the central belt, and ‘natives’ who didn’t even speak English. And natives. what is more, who prided themselves on their private armies.
So the ‘British’ establishment, which then, as now, included wealthy Scots, was happy to divide and rule Scotland. It is ironic that the Stuarts, having been the enemy of the Gael for centuries, now co-opted them in the Jacobite rebellions. They were, in theory, Scots, although by the 18th c, it was hardly true at all. The Jacobite rebellions were at least in part an attempt to reassert a ‘Scottish’ identity. They made the British establishment all the more determined to crush it.
The 1707 Act of Union was the product of corruption and intimidation and bitterly opposed by many Scots. I used the words ‘parcel of rogues’ advisedly. The 1745 uprising ended with the battle of Culloden, after which full scale ethnic cleansing and colonisation of the highlands took place, including pretty much everything in the UN description. The Clearances that followed and the wholesale transfer of land and assets were acts of colonisation.
Evil arises largely from fear, leading to a desperate need to possess and control. It builds ideologies to ‘justify’ itself which include the ‘othering’ of people and other species, and the creation of enemies or perceived threats to blame for your suffering.
I am no-one’s enemy. Real power, even in the corporate world, derives from mutual aid, co-operation. The most ruthless and violent are not the ‘fittest’ to survive. We are all co-responsible for the suffering in the world, if not directly, then by condoning, excusing or denying it. There are those who deny the holocaust, or the clearances (and incidentally clearances occurred elsewhere too; and some of those who did the clearing were themselves locals); or the building of the modern industrial western economy on the back of industrialised slavery.
I suggest, if we want any future at all, that we stop and reflect, stop denial and acknowledge the evils of history, without seeking to weaponise them against anyone. Surely the only way to learn from experience (and history), is to recognise that different perceptions are possible. The truth is not always whatever we wish it to be.
I repeat, I am not blaming any group, including the English, for British Imperialism. The problem is an ideological one. If we are to move forward in any positive way we have to stop the ‘othering’ of people (including me!), and make a strong determination to ditch the destructive philosophy of colonialism that is destroying us all.
It is the same philosophy that gives ‘legal rights’ to multinational corporations to bully, threaten and abuse people and planet for private gain; that destroys democracy, human rights, and treats everything and everyone as mere ‘resources’ to be exploited and destroyed. It is not the exclusive preserve of the ‘English’, or the Americans, Russians, Chinese, or the ‘right’ or ‘left’, ‘communist’ or any other (ultimately meaningless) label. At present, all our political parties now seem fear the wealthiest more than they fear the public. That has to change.
I completely reject this philosophy, and all it implies – whoever is supposedly responsible. So for what it’s worth, here’s my own philosophy, in 3 quotes. I like to think (perhaps wrongly?) that it connects me to a long and ‘radical’ tradition in Scotland, and also elsewhere. Real independence, in Scotland or elsewhere, must mean letting go of a colonialist mindset. Anyway, make of it what you will. This is my final comment in this thread.
“Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
“We have to wake up to the fact that everything is connected to everything else. Our safety and wellbeing cannot be individual matters anymore. If “they” are not safe, there is no way that “we” can be safe. Taking care of other people’s safety is taking care of our own safety. To take care of their well-being is to take care of our own well-being. It is the mind of discrimination and separation that is at the foundation of all violence and hate.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.”- Wangari Maathai
Spot-on regarding the role of James/the Plantations/ City of London- remember reading the story boards on Derry/Londonderry’s walls when I visited during the IRA 1st ceasefire when I went over for a few days Ulster golf. Only then did I realise that the ‘safer’ venture capitalists of the City took the surer,easier bet on Ulster,rather than the Americas…
@ Niemand,
Apropos John’s ‘alt-right’ nationalism and the anglophobic blood libel that ‘the English’ ethnically cleansed/culturally cancelled ‘the Scots’: “Although the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ has come into English usage only recently, its verbal correlates in Czech, French, German, and Polish go back much further.” (Jerry Z. Muller, ‘Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism,’ Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008)
“Apropos John’s ‘alt-right’ nationalism and the anglophobic blood libel that ‘the English’ ethnically cleansed/culturally cancelled ‘the Scots’:
What utter rubbish. You need to take a hard look at yourself. This is hate speech. It is also libellous.
@ John Wood on 25th August 2023 at 12:27 am
‘Scotland is a country that has been colonised, ethnically cleansed and ransacked for private profit. A country that has been handed over by a parcel of rogues to a small number of International playboys…’
That’s hate-speech irrespective of how you identify yourself
According to the historian, Joshua Tait (in ‘What Was the Alt-Right?’, Tablet, August 11th 2023), the alt-right emerged initially in the US, from a constellation of writers who worked outside of mainstream conservatism, who valued anti-modern sources of identity, such as ethnicity, cultural norms, race, or nationality, rejected core aspects of the liberal democratic establishment, such as its majoritarianism, and expressed a secular nihilistic outlook that imputes a meaninglessness to life under its present circumstances (i.e. in the ‘end times’ of the polycrisis). Tait notes that, unlike the moral opprobrium of both the trad-right and the trad-left, both of which are informed by idealism, the alt-right trades in a kind of pragmatic (unprincipled and populist) ‘respectability’ politics that directs its ire against unnamed ‘parcel-of-rogues’ conspiracies of colonisers, cultural elites, and invisible plutocrats.
If the cap fits…
Sorry that cap does not fit at all. There’s not a drip of hate in my analysis. You see what you want to see but it bears no relation to reality.
Not guilty.
The basic point is John, I just wish people would stop ramping up the hate by using highly inaccurate and deliberately demonising language in the cause of nationalist righteousness. Hanging on more and more to perceived iniquities of the past by one national, ethnic or religious group against another is a recipe for never-ending social strife in the present day, strife that is basically internecine (because that is what it is, as perfectly exemplified by your identification as an ‘English Scot’, though one that would be rejected as absurd by blood and soil nationalists who you seem to be aligning yourself with).
For the last time, I am absolutely not ‘ramping up the hate by using highly inaccurate and deliberately demonising language in the cause of nationalist righteousness’ Quite the opposite. I ramp up no hate at all. My language demonises nobody. My identification as an ‘English Scot’ would indeed be rejected as absurd by blood and soil nationalists. Your idea that I would ever align myself with them is utterly ludicrous. You seem to me to be a prisoner of your own prejudices. If you are determined to attack and vilify me in this way, I can’t stop you. But your perceptions are false.
Now please stop posting this poisonous stuff.
It’s nothing personal, John; I’m sure you don’t have a hateful or poisonous bone in your body. It’s just that the language you sometimes use, the rhetoric you and other nationalists sometimes employ, is ‘unfortunate’ and dangerous in the way that Niemand describes. I’m sure you don’t mean anything by it, but it still has harmful consequences
It’s nothing personal, ‘230830’, whoever you are (why do you identify yourself as a number? Who or what are you afraid of? ; I’m sure you too don’t have a hateful or poisonous bone in your body . It’s just that the language I sometimes use is not ‘rhetoric’ and, as I thought I had made clear, I am emphatically not a ‘nationalist’, contrary to your persistent assertions. What is ‘unfortunate’ and dangerous is the way you persist in vilifying and attacking me and trying to turn what I say on its head in order to further some agenda of your own. . I’m sure I stand by every word I write, and the only harmful consequences are likely to come from your wrong attitude.
Attempting to deny history is extremely dangerous and counter-productive. It has to be acknowledged and engaged with. Until we do so, we cannot move forward from hostility and hatred.
Please desist.
Past sins certainly can’t be denied, but they can and should be forgiven. That’s why Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu were so keen on truth and reconciliation in the aftermath of apartheid in South Africa. Continuing to vilify and demonise ‘the Other’ as ‘ransackers’ and ‘invaders’ and ‘occupiers’ and treacherous ‘parcels of rogues’ only resurrects and perpetuates old hatreds and grievances. It’s the language of the alt-right, and it needs to be called out in Scottish political discourse.
Let’s just say that the only problem I see is with your attitude. You are wrong. Let’s leave it there.
These developments are depressing and worrying in the extreme. The whole notion of “carbon credits” is insane from the start; “Plant a tree, so someone (wealthy) can burn more oil without a care”. Every carbon credit tree in Scotland represents a license to burn the planet a bit faster. It’s a twisted system indeed that can turn a burning planet into a financial instrument to further enrich the already wealthy.
That’s before we get to the utter insanity of handing over vast tracts of Scotland to private financiers whose only interest is their % return. How did that work out last time? Take a look at the de-populated, treeless, moribund “playground” of the Highlands or the wasteland of central-belt ex-coal-mining communities. What is their legacy? The thing that causes a problem is NOT the thing that solves it.
The land must to be returned to the control of the people who actually live and work on it. The people who make their living and raise their children in the place where they stand.
The very first thing that local people do when they get their hands on land is to plant trees. Then they build sustainable energy and food production systems. They create living neighbourhoods because they live there. There is absolutely no need for effing millionaires! We can’t afford them.
And please let us not forget that trees plant themselves. They have been doing it very successfully for millennia.
If we want more trees in Scotland all we have to do is stop the Laird’s deer and sheep from eating the bloody things. Remove the Laird’s dead-hand, reduce deer and sheep grazing and a billion Scottish trees will spring up free of charge. No millionaires riding white horses required thanks.
The so-called £20bn “Funding Gap” is already sitting right under our noses, just waiting to get stuck in. It’s called the people of Scotland.
Yep, as long as there is a reasonable nearby source, simply fencing off land will re-forest it in time. Having said that there are many places in Scotland now where that would not happen due to a lack of nearby seed and upland areas would struggle to establish regardless.
But you are so right about local ownership and the natural investment that brings. It’s so obvious and basic and yet we end up in the crazy world where the long disenfranchised have to kowtow to billionaires rather than simply being enfranchised and the billionaires dispossessed of their unjust holdings. What is depressing is I doubt independence would make one iota of a difference to that dynamic. There is a lot of ‘old money’ going back centuries and powerful new big business in control and I can see no government challenging any of that in a serious way. Instead, they get into bed with them.
I agree!
100% agree.