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Highland Clearances Psychodynamics
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The Scottish Highlands in Colonial & Psychodynamic Perspective by Alastair McIntosh, Andy Wightman & Daniel
Morgan First published in INTERculture: International Journal of Intercultural and Transdisciplinary Research, Montreal, Vol XXVII:3, Issue 124, 1994, pp. 1-36, in both English and French translation. Interculture is available at $5 per issue (specify French/English) from the Intercultural Institute of Montreal, 4917 St Urbain, Montreal, Quebec, H2T 2W1, Canada (www.iim.qc.ca). Contents
(hyperlinked to bookmarks in the text) Foreword: Towards a “Transatlantic
Cultural Therapy” by Robert Vachon, Editor Origins and Externalities of Land
Enclosure The Clearances: Sheep as
a Cash Crop The Balmorality Epoch: The Great
Sporting Estates Estate Psychdynamics: a Ghillie’s
Eye View Empowerment,
Internationalism and Revolt Education as the Denial of History Ecological Consequences of
Highland Colonialism The Case of Mar Lodge and Brazil Foreword by Robert Vachon, Editor of Interculture On February 4th 1994,
I received a letter from Alastair McIntosh, who directs the Master of Science
postgraduate human ecology degree at the Centre for Human Ecology, Edinburgh,
Scotland. “In short, what is happening is that our people are waking up to the
issue of Scottish land rights, inspired by the activities of Native Americans,
Aboriginals, etc., this accompanied and informed by a cultural and historical
renewal. It has direct consequences for the people of Canada, because many of
the people who were cleared from the land over the past two hundred years,
emigrated to your nation. The close bond we feel with the Canadians (and also
the “Auld Alliance” with the French) is the reason why Interculture is the
first journal I am approaching for consideration of publication of this text.” So here it is! A good example of
an ongoing resistance of Scottish people to the cultural colonialism wrought by
a certain modernity. “Are we ready to ‘unpack’ our history?” says Alastair elsewhere.
“To re-read history: re-membering, re-visioning, re-claiming the people that
we are; learning how, for instance, half a million Scots have been forced off
the land in the nineteenth century Highland Clearances, to make way for
commercial sheep farms and playboy sporting estates? Seeing how many who had
gone to the New World, to Australia and elsewhere, perpetuated and reperpetuated
their oppression against other native peoples?” But Alastair goes further. “A question I want to put is whether we actually need a transatlantic
cultural psychotherapy: a movement towards healing wounds of the broken and to
this day laird-ridden disempowered communities left behind in the Old World, and
also those of the sometimes brash breaking un-communities of the New World.” Yes, Alastair! Scots, French and
Native peoples, coming together and remembering the resistance of their
respective ancestors. But awakening also to the contemporary ongoing resistance
of these three peoples to the same cultural colonialism which is being
perpetrated today against them, even by some of their own people sometimes, in
the name of moderninty. Yes, “reclaiming the peoples
that we are and recovering wellsprings of cultural renewal, together.” Robert Vachon **********************
"Lord and Lady Stafford were pleased humanely, to order a new
arrangement of this Country. That the interior should be possessed by Cheviot
(sheep) Shepherds and the people brought down to the coast and placed there in
lotts under the size of three arable acres, sufficient for the maintenance of an
industrious family, but pinched enough to cause them turn their attention to the
fishing (waged labour). I presume to say that the proprietors humanely
ordered this arrangement, because, it surely was a most benevolent action, to
put these barbarous hordes into a position where the could better Associate
together, apply to industry, educate their children, and advance in civilisation."
‑ Patrick Sellar, factor for the Sutherland Estates, Scotland,
1815.[1]
"So white settlers have set about 'civilizing' these people by
destroying their tribal land system. They are taking the lands from the natives
and wherever they have done so, the result has been an abundant supply of 'labour
on the market' with wages kept down by the competition of landless men, just as
they are at home. This is confirmed
by evidence given before the Native Labour Commission (Kenya) in 1912‑13.
Settler after settler came before the commission and demanded in the most
precise terms that the natives should be forced out of 'Reserves' to work for
wages by cutting down their land so that they should have less than they could
live on. Lord Delamere, himself owner of 150,000 acres, said: 'If this policy is
to be continued that every native is to be a landholder of a sufficient area on
which to establish himself, then the question of obtaining a satisfactory labour
supply will never be settled.' The process of reducing men to unemployment and
poverty is here stated in all its nakedness and simplicity.... In refusing Land
an 'adequate' supply of labour on the market would be guaranteed."
‑ W. R. Lester, Unemployment and the Land, 1936.[2] Introduction and Abstract The "Highland Clearances," which forced Scottish people off
their land from the late eighteenth to early twentieth century, were an event of
cultural genocide which paralleled and in many respects, pioneered patterns of
colonial conquest elsewhere in the British Empire. The effects persist in the
national psyche to this day; an aching sense of loss, concealed only by a thin
plaster of relative material affluence, and a growing sense of the importance of
reclaiming the commons. This paper summarises the past 300 years' history of the Highland
"crofters" or indigenous subsistence‑based peoples. Consistent
with the view of the Cambridge Irish historiographer, Brendan Bradshaw,[3]
that the history of a holocaust cannot be credibly portrayed with a presumption
of "objectivity," we declare our values as being those associated with
ecological sustainability, community cohesion and the articulation of each
person's human potential. We address the social consequences of cultural proscription and Clearance
from the wider perspective of the land enclosure movement. Our approach
recognises how the oppressed are often driven to internalise the perspective of
oppressor, noting both the role of the Highland Regiments in building Empire and
the fact that the English had themselves been colonised in Roman and Norman
times. Accordingly, the paper is drawn to speculate upon the deeper
psychospiritual dynamics of land ownership and the disempowering consequences
when direct connectedness of local communities with place becomes mediated by a
morally illegitimate third party. In describing the present day ecological consequences of the Highland
Clearances, we illustrate how green consciousness is adding to social conscience
in building political pressure for change. The process by which Highland
communities have empowered themselves over the past century is outlined,
parallels being drawn with similar processes of liberation in the South.
Recognition is given that we have experienced not just enclosure of land, but
also enclosure of the mind through "inner colonialism." Clearly such
chains must be broken if, in both North and South, we are to liberate our human
potential to achieve social justice and environmentally sustainable livelihood;
these, not just for dignified survival, but for the fullest articulation of
creative, loved and loving life in each person as an integral part of nature in
an international community. Origins and Externalities of Land Enclosure The Clearances, in which some half million[4]
Scottish Highlanders were directly or through economic pressure, forced off
their land, must be understood in relation to the processes of enclosure that
originated much earlier in 14th and 15th century Britain and especially England.
Processes, exceptionally well documented in a recent issue of The Ecologist,[5] that have characterised
capitalist development throughout Britain for the past 500 years, and which have
been, and still are, transplanted worldwide.
Enclosure in Britain can be distinguished from earlier forms of
expropriation and enclosure in that it was more than simply transfer of power
from peasant to elite; it was a profound change in the social order in two
significant aspects. Firstly, by defining land as a "property" in the "theft of
the commons," enclosure gave the land and water rights a tradeable status
within an expanding market economy. The dispossessed peoples who then required
some form of subsistence, were turned into wage‑labourers, and labour too
became a tradeable commodity. By the time Elizabeth I ascended to the throne,
England consequently had some 80,000 itinerant poor with no visible means of
subsistence.[6]
The Elizabethan Statutes, which today remain the foundation stone of charitable
law in Britain and many Commonwealth countries, were established in response to
this manufacture of destitution.[7] William Kingston, professor of Business Innovation at Dublin University
describes the Romanised historical background to such landed power. A growing
number of feminist thinkers are also recognising the scope for scholarship in
the relationship between the historical emergence of militarised patriarchy and
the contemporary cultural psychospiritual dynamics of global oppression.[8]
Kingston, whose main concern lies with the inefficiency of "full"
property rights, says:
"... as the Christian Church expanded within the increasingly
exploitative property rights regime of the later Roman Empire, Church thinkers
began to attack these rights. Ownership
was now concentrated in the way Gibbon described, resulting in a proletariat
juxtaposed to the conspicuous wealth of a very few.... As both political and
economic structures collapsed, Church officials found themselves, as the only
remaining source of order, progressively saddled with the de facto
administration of many aspects of the later Empire....
The idea of Christendom as a unitary church‑state emerged clearly
for the first time, as did also a new, non‑Roman root of secular law, the
Christian ethos.... The barbarian chief became a knight bound by a religious
oath of chivalry, the territorial lord became an anointed king ... (alongside
the development of a) 'social legislation more complete than that of any other
period of history, including our own'.... The property rights of the (monastic)
medieval city took their cue from the qualified rights of feudalism, rather than
the absolute rights of Roman law...." But then, aided by reformers like Calvin, who taught that it was not
wrong to lend money with interest, the Reformation's "freeing of the
economy" from the Church commenced. Thus:
"The Reformation was a reaction against the medieval
Church‑dominated cultural synthesis. Constrained ownership rights were
part of this, and so came under attack of the Reformers. Naturally, this suited
those whose business ambitions were adversely affected by the constraints....
The revival of 'full' or 'absolute' property in the West therefore came about as
part of a process of rejection of religious authority. Medieval Christianity had
held elements of both classical and barbarian cultures together in its own
synthesis. When it lost its creative power, these partially absorbed elements
re‑emerged in their individuality. The artistic component of Classical
culture surfaced again as the Renaissance and the tribal cohesion of the
northern barbarians revived as nationalism. As part of this process Roman
property rights ‑ individual, absolute, and now sanctioned by the new
religious teaching (especially protestant Calvinism) ‑ re‑emerged as
the enabling dimension of modern laissez‑faire capitalism."[9] The second reason why enclosure represented such a profound societal
change is that such "improvement," as it was termed by its apologists,
was associated with profit in the same way that the later term,
"development," has become associated with "economic growth."
Enclosure therefore represents not only the removal of land from subsistence
communities, but a profound step towards viewing the land and its people as
things to be traded and exploited. As Carolyn Merchant discusses in The Death
of Nature,[10]
enclosure represents the significant break in the organic conception of the
cosmos; a break related to the ideological transformation of the Renaissance (in
which the Reformation had its origins) and the Scientific Revolution; a break
that set the precedents for the transformation of agricultural and industrial
production in spite of the Earth rather than through the Earth. The gradual enclosure of the commons in England saw the Medieval
"open field" communally managed system steadily replaced by either
cash crop farms producing grain crops, or fenced in walks for sheep and cattle.
Ancient meadows and heath lands were turned over to intensive production. By
Tudor times large numbers of dispossessed peoples were causing unrest in the
cities and country, so various legal brakes were applied to the enclosure
movement with partial success. When the English Revolution of 1649‑1660
brought power to the very classes that had benefited from rural enclosure, the
process began again in earnest. A large series of Private Acts of Enclosure,
some 4,000 covering some 7,000,000 acres, were passed before the General
Enclosure Act of 1845 and it is probable that at least the same amount of land
was enclosed without recourse to Parliament.[11]
Improvers were not ones to recognise the "externalities" of
their movement. The principal "externality," other than
grubbed‑up nature itself, was the people the land had once sustained. The
solution in large measure lay abroad, where the enforced destruction of foreign
industries such as textiles in India and other colonies provided work for the
dispossessed multitudes at home. Thus, when Gandhi was asked if he would like to
see India develop as England had, he is reputed to have replied, "It took
half the world to develop England. How many worlds do you think it would require
for India to do the same?" A 'Parcel of Rogues' Unlike their Roman predecessors who never made it further than lowland
Scotland, the "Great Improvers" who had enclosed England and lowland
Scotland came late to the Scottish Highlands and Islands. This bioregion was an
area at the remote periphery of the cities, inhospitable to intruders, and
mostly mountainous. Today it supports a sparse population of some 350,000.
Human settlement was based on hunter‑gatherer and subsistence
arable and cattle agriculture, ruled by kinship‑based, often warring,
patriarchal clan chiefs; the Scots Gaelic word, "clan," meaning
"family" or "children". In 1707 the parliaments of Scotland and England combined for a mixture of
reasons to do with secession, religion, security, and access to mutual markets.
This lead to much popular resentment in Scotland, the "traitors" in
the Scots parliament, many of whom saw mercantile advantage or were offered
incentives, being immortalised as "a parcel of rogues" by the great
nationalist poet, Robert Burns. As reaction to this and events surrounding the earlier 1603 Union of the
Crowns, Scotland by 1745 was effectively in a state of civil war over the Treaty
of Union. The Catholic pretender to the throne, Prince Charles Edward Stewart
("Bonnie Prince Charlie"), raised an army from amongst the Highland
chiefs and marched south, meeting little resistance. These "Jacobites"
came within 120 miles of London but lacked the strength confidently to press on.
The British army subsequently gathered to make pursuit and, under the
"butcher" Cumberland, massacred the Jacobites at the last Battle to be
fought on mainland British soil: Culloden, 1746.
Interestingly, this was just three years after what was reputedly
"the last wolf" had been shot in Scotland; a significant species local
extinction foreshadowing cultural disintegration.[12] Cultural Proscription Intent upon preventing further rebellion, pacification of the clans
became the immediate priority of the British State, comprising the English,
lowland Scots and Royalist clan chiefs. A process known as
"proscription" was set in place to take the heart out of traditional
Highland culture while leaving many outward structures intact for administrative
purposes. Under other names ‑ "civilisation,"
"education," "Christianisation" ‑ this was to become a
cornerstone of colonial policy around the world as it had earlier been in
Ireland. Speaking from Latin America, Paulo Freire was later to describe the
phenomenon as "cultural invasion." Freire's analysis is having a
significant influence in a contemporary Scotland trying to re‑member its
past in order to re‑vision and re‑claim its future.[13] He says:
"In this phenomenon, the invaders penetrate the cultural context of
another group, and ignoring the potential of the latter, they impose their own
view of the world upon those they invade and inhibit the creativity of the
invaded by curbing their expression.... Cultural invasion is thus always an act
of violence against the persons of the invaded culture, who lose their
originality.... (It) leads to the cultural inauthenticity of those who are
invaded; they begin to respond to the values, the standards, and the goals of
the invaders.... It is essential that those who are invaded come to see their
reality with the outlook of the invaders rather than their own; for the more
they mimic the invaders, the more stable the position of the latter becomes ...
it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic
inferiority."[14] The Act of Proscription took effect from August 1747 and was not repealed
until 1782, by which time its effects had been "internalised" into a
Freirian "culture of silence." Under pain of being "liable to be
transported to any of His Majesty's plantations beyond the sea, for seven
years,"[15]
the Act banned the wearing of Highland dress, the meeting together of Highland
people, playing the bagpipes and other forms of traditional entertainment, and
the carrying of arms. Bagpipes were treated as an instrument of war, to be
played only within the British Army where their uses included variously
impressing and frightening other natives of foreign lands. Under the
proscription‑associated Heritable Jurisdictions Act of 1747, the
traditional powers of clan chiefs were removed but most of the individual chiefs
were left in place. Those who did
not accede to Royalist jurisdiction had their lands forfeited and placed in the
hands of government appointed surrogates. Jarvie, a historical sociologist concludes, "The British government
was, therefore, able to pursue its policies of cultural marginalisation not by
expropriating the traditional Highland aristocracy but by incorporating the more
powerful members of the clan figuration within the Hanoverian hegemony."[16] Thus, an inner
colonialism was set in place by confusing an intensely loyal kinsfolk as to who
their oppressor was. Whereas in Ireland the wholesale imposition of English
landlords had made the target much more visible, in Scotland the initial stages
of betrayal seemingly came from the clans' own leadership. This, together with
religious factors including what was to become a pacifist liberation theology[17],
is the major reason why the Highlanders did not emulate the violent resistance
of the Irish. Traditionally, Highland chieftains operated a system of usufruct under
patronage. It is telling that the word, "usufruct," like
"usury," is almost redundant in the English language. It means
overlapping patterns of rights to land and water usage, as distinct from
outright Romanesque ownership. The concept is familiar in many other tribal
societies worldwide but often not recognised by westernised development
planners. "Unlike feudal forms
of land ownership, the land of the Highland clan was not the private property of
the chief, but the public property of the clansfolk."[18]
Kinship was therefore focused around the personhood of the chief, not
"his" lands. The post‑Cullodden regime was to change this into a
latifundia‑style "feudal" system whereby land was
commoditised and enclosure introduced. Interestingly, residual elements of the
old understanding are still reflected in Scots law by the fact that the Queen,
in her position as monarch, is regarded as Queen of the Scots and not Queen of
Scot‑land.[19] The imposition of a culture which accepted land as a tradeable commodity
played into the hands of another factor which was affecting eighteenth century
tribal life: the lure of perceived social sophistication.
Just as can be seen today in, for instance, Pacific islands like the New
Hebrides (Vanuatu) with clan chiefs developing an appetite for the mores of
Singapore, Tokyo or Sydney, so it was too in the old Hebrides and other Highland
parts. Thus James Hunter, the great social historian and reformer of the
crofting peoples states:
"... many chiefs were as at home in Edinburgh or Paris as they were
in the Highlands, and French or English rolled off their tongues as easily as
‑ perhaps more easily than ‑ Gaelic. While away from his clan,
moreover, the typical chief ‑ conscious since childhood of his immensely
aristocratic status in the Highland society whence he came ‑ felt obliged
to emulate, or even surpass, the life style of the courtiers and nobles with
whom he mingled. And it was at this
point that the eighteenth century chief's two roles came into irreconcilable
conflict with one another. As a southern socialite he needed more and more
money. As a tribal patriarch he could do very little to raise it."[20] In the recently independent nations of the Pacific the answer to the same
problem has been to sell out logging, mining or fishing rights held on behalf of
the clan. In Scotland, the charging of rents or a cattle levy were obvious
revenue raisers. When that was
insufficient to pay for gambling, drinking, women and such new
"tartans" as the Paris tailors would come up with, more severe
measures such as rent‑racking or forcing tenants into the landlord's waged
labour were introduced. If these too failed to deliver sufficient cash flow, the
"estate" could be sold on in the rapidly growing land market. The new
owner, who would generally be what we would now call a "venture
capitalist," would (with some notable and worthy exceptions) have few if
any traditional ties to the people and therefore fewer still scruples as to how
he exploited nature and those to whom he was (and still is today) the
"feudal superior." Often
under the pretence that it was for the peoples' own good, the ultimate solution
of the Clearances were devised to make way for the Highlands' first modern-scale
cash crop - sheep for wool production. To apologist suggestions of benign
intent, John McGrath, playwright of "The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black
Black Oil," retorts:
"The fact remains that the intensive (sic) methods of cultivation of
the Gaels had maintained a far greater number of people per acre than had been
maintained elsewhere, that the standard of living was not the sole criterion of
happiness or worth, and that although many would have indeed left voluntarily,
‑ as they already had before the clearing began ‑ the majority of
these people did not want to go. Furthermore, the fact remains that the fertile
ground which had kept so many people through the centuries was now turned into
useless land fit only for sheep. The cruellest and most important fact of all is
that the criterion for the best use of land ceased to be the number of people it
could support, and became the amount of profit it could make".[21] The Clearances: Sheep
as a Cash Crop The first wave of Clearance, in the second half of the eighteenth
century, forced a previously self‑reliant peasant peoples onto marginal
land. This was to clear the interior lands for sheep whilst also creating a
waged labour force for the industrialist dominated industries of fishing and
kelping (seaweed based alkali production). The introduction of cheviot and
blackface sheep in the 1760's was the agricultural "improvement"
driving factor, enabling substantial profit to be made from terrain previously
suitable only for peasant subsistence. To take just one of countless examples,
the Isle of Rhum, which is today a nature reserve being totally devoid of its
indigenous population, had 300 people cleared from it in 1826. The proprietor, MacLean of Coll, spent five pounds fourteen
shillings on each adult's emigrant passage to Canada. Vacated and let as a
single sheep farm it brought in a rent of £800, compared with just £300
previously; an investment payback period of just over three years.[22] Clearances were particularly brutal in Sutherland and the Uists.
Carmichael, circa 1928, documents one account given by Catherine MacPhee of
South Uist. Her story is corroborated by other similar reports and what is so
striking is that the events were so recent. It is remarkable that here, in
western Europe, old people alive today can recall such first hand accounts from
the old people of their youth.
"Many a thing have I seen in my own day and generation. Many a thing, O Mary Mother of the black sorrow! I have seen
the townships swept, and the big holdings being made of them, the people being
driven out of the countryside to the streets of Glasgow and to the wilds of
Canada, such of them as did not die of hunger and plague and smallpox while
going across the ocean. I have seen the women putting the children in the carts
which were being sent from Benbecula and the Iochdar to Loch Boisdale, while
their husbands lay bound in the pen and were weeping beside them, without power
to give them a helping hand, though the women themselves were crying aloud and
their little children wailing like to break their hearts.
I have seen the big strong men, the champions of the countryside, the
stalwarts of the world, being bound on Loch Boisdale quay and cast into the ship
as would be done to a batch of horses or cattle in the boat, the bailiffs and
the ground‑officers and the constables and the policemen gathered behind
them in pursuit of them. The God of
life and He only knows all the loathsome work of men on that day."[23] Conditions on marginalised land for those remaining at home were often
miserable. The great potato famine of Ireland and Scotland was one consequence
of people being forced onto inadequate plots and therefore having to replace a
diversified agricultural mix with an "efficient" monoculture. By 1811
potatoes had come to account for four fifths of a Hebridean islander's food
intake.[24]
Disaster followed in 1846 when, as a result of damp weather, the crops were
struck with the potato blight fungus, phytophthora infestans, and in
nearly every field the crop rotted. The
parallels with present day famines caused by unforeseen consequences of socially
unjust development are manifest. Norman MacLeod, a famine relief officer, could
have been writing a field report for Oxfam when he visited the Hebrides in 1847
and reported:
"The scene of wretchedness which we witnessed as we entered on the
estate of Col. Gordon was deplorable, nay heart‑rendering. On the beach
the whole population of the country seemed to be met, gathering the precious
cockles (shellfish).... I never witnessed such countenances ‑ starvation
on many faces ‑ the children with their melancholy looks, big looking
knees, shrivelled legs, hollow eyes, swollen like bellies ‑ God help them,
I never did witness such wretchedness!."[25] Life did not necessarily improve for the first generation of emigres.
Parallels were often drawn with negro slaves. Malcolm MacLean writes:
"By 1851 Highland proprietors were clearing their estates with
renewed vengeance in the aftermath of the (potato) famine, and being assisted by
public money made available to them by the Emigration Advance Act of that
year.... Conditions on board emigrant ships were often said to be worse than
those prevailing on slave ships. The fitter and healthier a slave cargo the
higher the price they fetched, but emigrants paid their fare on embarking and
were they to die in mid‑ocean that would save on the cost of provisions
and make for a higher profit margin. Two ships which sailed from the West
Highlands for Nova Scotia in 1801 with seven hundred emigrants would only have
been permitted four hundred and eighty‑nine 'passengers' had they been
slaves putting out from the Gambia. Three out of every twenty emigrants died on
board one of these ships ... and in the six years between 1847 and 1853 at least
forty‑nine emigrant ships were lost at sea."[26] On arrival in Australia or the New World, emigres sometimes ended up
forcing other native peoples off their lands: oppressed turned oppressor. Many
of those left at home found themselves pressed into military service to do the
dirty work of Empire building, it sometimes being quipped that "The Queens
Own Highlanders" might be more honestly dubbed, "The Queens Owned
Highlanders".[27]
Still more migrated within Scotland to domestic service or industrial labour in
the cities. Often a racked rent was payed by a crofter's children from the
growing slums of Glasgow. Through the effects of intergenerational poverty, the
foundations were thus laid for the postindustrial despair of "areas of
multiple deprivation" around all our major modern Scottish cities today. The Balmorality Epoch: the Great Sporting Estates The final stage of consolidating present patterns of enclosed land tenure
came after the military demand for wool collapsed with the ending of the
Napoleonic Wars. As Iain Mac a'Ghobainn immortalises in his epic poem,
"Spirit of Kindness," soldiers returning from Waterloo were prone to
finding that their families had been cleared in their absence.
Remaining unenclosed lands had been consolidated with former sheep farms
to make the Great "Sporting" Estates.
By 1912, 3,599,744 acres or one fifth of the entire Scottish land mass[28]
had been converted so that "gentlefolk" versions of great white
hunters could engage in one‑sided mortal battle with the stag, salmon,
grouse and the thrush-sized snipe.
They handed over to the snipe
the land of happy folk,
they dealt without humanity
with people who were kind.
Because they might not drown them
they dispersed them overseas;
a thraldom worse than Babylon's
was the plight they were in....
What solace had the fathers
of the heroes who won fame?
Their houses, warm with kindliness,
were in ruins round their ears;
their sons were on the battlefield
saving a rueless land,
their mothers' state was piteous
with their houses burnt like coal.[29]
In his sociological study of the athletic and bagpiping competitions
which characterise today's Highland Games, Jarvie[30]
shows how the new sporting landlords took control of such traditional gatherings
of the clans to consolidate their social status. Cultural regeneration could
then be seen as deriving from the benevolence of the ruling classes, thereby
lending landlords a pseudo‑authentic role analogous to that of the
chieftains of the past. The Highlander, like the native American and African, had once been
caricatured as barbarous and uncivilized. The traveller, John Leyden, typifies
such an outsider perspective. Returning to Perth in 1800 he wrote, "I may
now congratulate myself on a safe escape from the Indians of Scotland...."[31]
Few early travellers had the ability to see beyond the racial stereotype. An
exception was the Swiss geologist, Necker de Saussure, who in 1807 recorded his
astonishment at finding on Iona, "under so foggy an atmosphere, in so
dreary a climate, a people animated by that gaiety and cheerfulness which we are
apt to attribute exclusively to those nations of the South of Europe."[32]
But for most of the ruling class, the second half of the nineteenth century
became instead a time when the Highlanders could safely be patronised in terms
of "the glamour of backwardness"[33]
and presented "in terms of loyalty, royalty, tartanry and Balmorality."[34]
Trend‑setting lairds (landowners) like Queen Victoria, with her Balmoral
Castle retreat, displayed the stunning contradiction of, on the one hand,
professing a love of Highland scenery and culture; whilst on the other hand
patronising emigration programmes and setting in process damaging land
management regimes centred around deer and grouse. A look through the Highland press quickly reveals that now, in the
mid‑1990's, summary dismissals, evictions, expensive procedural delays in
planning matters and demolition of housing remain very much a part of estate
control over communities. The West Highland Free Press, for instance,
gives careful documentation on 30th April 1993 of how the estate factors (legal
managers) of one of the world's richest absentee landlords, Sheik Mohammed bin
Rashid al Maktoumm of Dubai, have bulldozed houses in his Wester Ross "glen
of sorrow" to prevent human habitation, probably because of "the
night‑time poaching activities of the local population." Twelve
family homes have been reduced to rubble in a district which has 800 applicants
on the local authority housing waiting list. The Sheik retains a certain support
in some quarters because of his large donations to small local charities. As for landowners whose exoticism is more ordinary, "Balmorality"
can be seen in its full 20th Century glamour nowhere better self‑exposed
than in the August 1992 edition of the high society magazine, Harpers &
Queen, which claims to be "The World's Most Intelligent Glossy."
Amidst "Advanced Night Repair" advertisements for cosmetics to combat
"environmental damage" (that is, intensified sunburn, which "can
cause as much as 80% of premature ageing" to the skins of the
"beautiful people" whose lifestyles gave us the ozone hole in the
first place), the magazine features the Queen at Balmoral; Mohamed al Fayed
(proprietor of Harrods and the Ritz) with his "hereditary pipers" at
the Highland castle he hardly ever goes to; "Three fab families" of
Anglicised Scots aristocrats with "greyhound‑like physiques ...
super‑intelligence ... and a sense of public duty;" five
public‑schoolboy junior lairds who "look like a king" for the
ladies to fancy and the crofters to endure; six of "Scotland's
bonniest" debutantes, who "adore smelling of horses," posing
erotically in fantastic tartan dresses untraditionally slit to the crotch; and
Lord Edmund Vesty, proprietor of the notorious Sutherland Estates, sporting his
top hat and prim daughter at Royal Ascot. Punning on the Picts, the original
native peoples of Scotland, the cover proclaims, "LOADED lairds and lovely
LASSIES; SUNNY Scots and holiday PICTS: why we love our Highland
playgrounds." It goes on to appeal to its "tartanned" readership
as follows:
"The international social set hang up their party boots at the end
of July and depart for caiques off the Turkish coast, villas in the South of
France or huge yachts in Sardinia. But
not the Old Guard British ‑ there's only one choice for them: the
Highlands.... There's nothing like
Scotland in August for sheer expenditure of physical energy; the grouse moor,
the deer and the salmon river claim the chaps during the day, who then heave a
lot of whisky down, change into kilt (if they qualify), evening tails (if they
don't) and go reeling until dawn with wind‑burnt girls adept at quick
changes from muddy tweeds to ballgowns and tartan sashes. There's ... nothing
like Scotland for stalking the biggest social game...."[35] Meanwhile, one million Scots, 20% of the population, live at or below the
European decency threshold. On the Island of Eigg one of us was thus able to
conclude at a land restitution public meeting in 1991:
"This is the condition of much of the Highlands and Islands today.
The Clearances continue under economic masquerade. 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. Go to the poor quarters of
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Govan, and look where too many of our people live now. Oh
yes, the fortunate ones have done sufficiently 'well' sometimes to forget their
roots, but many of the names on doors of those living in the high‑rise
flats and 'priority treatment' estates are Highland. 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."[36] Hebridean poet, Mary Montgomery, grew up on the boundaries of three
estates on her home island of Lewis. One of a growing number of empowered
Scottish women who make you wonder if the clans of old were quite so patriarchal
as is often made out, she pens an embittered conclusion which could have come
straight from Southern Africa:
I prefer it when they're rude
because they're easier to destroy in my thoughts
and my conscience can be at peace....
I prefer them to be awful
showing themselves without warmth
nothing if not practical
old chap, dear sir and dame.
The kind of value they lay store by
is each one for himself
that's what's going away with my country
and what leaves them in it.[37] ************************************************************* BOX Estate Psychodynamics: a Ghillie's Eye View (personal reflection by Alastair McIntosh) Having served as a ghillie (salmon boat rower) and pony boy (retrieving
stag carcases from the hill) for many summers on my home Isle of Lewis in the
Outer Hebrides, I have developed an interest in sporting estate psychodynamics.
You can learn a lot when, as a young man, you have had the opportunity to spend
all day on a remote loch or mountain with generals, admirals, industrialists,
stockbrokers, aristocrats, those who purport to "profess a vocation"
as professionals, high‑church military clergy and assorted wives and
mistresses. Many are individuals who would appear to fit Alice Millar's[38]
description of the wounded child; the child whose "primal
integrity" has been violated because it was not unconditionally loved for
itself. Instead, love was
dependent upon conformity to authority, on performance and giftedness, leaving
the eventual adult with deep‑seated anxiety as to their self‑worth.
This syndrome affects people irrespective of social class. Indeed, it has been
most widely popularised, well before Alice Millar became known, through the
lyrics of John Lennon's greatest song, Working Class Hero: "As soon
as you're born, they make you feel small; by giving you no time instead of it
all; 'till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all.... There's room at the
top, they are telling you still; but first you must learn how to smile as you
kill; if you want to be like the folks on the Hill...."[39]
With working class people, the violence of frustration perhaps stays mainly
within the self or family; with the rich and powerful, its reach is global. Typical "sporting" gents of my acquaintance were often
surrogate parented by nannies, then sent away in late infancy to austere
so‑called "public" private schools. Education for regimentation
at these was strong on punishment "for your own good," emotionally
disengaged ("stiff upper lip"; "uptight") and largely
lacking in close male and female role models of gentleness. Acceptance at home
was contingent upon conformity to Father's authority. This included the
expectation of early potty training, "being seen but not heard,"
displaying the "toughness" of "big boys don't cry,"
educational competition and exam success, playing field discipline; and later in
life, military achievement, success in the professions or old‑monied
industry, and wealth accumulation. "Who
is he? Is he anybody?" such a
person will ask. "Oh, he's quite somebody ... he's ‑ such and such a
company or landed property." As Fromm[40]
put it, this is the psychology of needing to "have" in order to
"be," material acquisition compensating for such a "shrivelled
sense of soul".[41] Tellingly, one of Alice Millar's psychotherapeutic books is cited in the
same issue of Harpers and Queen as is quoted from in this paper. The
magazine recommends packing Breaking Down the Wall of Silence as holiday
reading. Such a book title could be straight from Freire. Freire writes of the
"pedagogy of the oppressed." Millar, through case studies of members
of the Third Reich, mass murderers, and disturbingly ordinary people, reveals
the "poisonous pedagogy" which can often be shown to have afflicted
the oppressor, and reperpetuates from one generation to the next. In their own
ways, both oppressed and oppressor are victims and must be understood as such if
cycles of destruction are to be broken. It is a cause for optimism that US
Vice‑President, Al Gore, acknowledges the importance of the work of Millar
and similar psychologists in the "Dysfunctional Civilisation" chapter
of his outstanding book, "Earth in the Balance"[42]
he also mentions favourably the new feminist Goddess‑based
reinterpretations of archaeology coming from workers like Marija Gimbutas.[43]
Such thought leads some thinkers to conclude that we are speaking here of a
cultural psychopathology with a history that can be traced back 6,000 years, the
Roman Empire having been only one phase of it.[44] Scots born Kenneth White, professor of 20th Century Poetics at the
Sorbonne, speaks of "geopoetics" ‑ the "higher unity"
of geography and poetry; the aliveness, one might say, sacredness, of
relationship between a person and place.[45]
This comes naturally to a well grounded people. It is evident in the
radical deep ecology of pre‑colonial Celtic literature,[46] music and art. But
landlordism perverts the person‑place relationship. Like a priest claiming
to mediate between humankind and God, the laird bolsters his virility through
theft of the vitality that belongs to those who live on, work with, cherish and
feel themselves to be cherished by a place. The laird then claims to be the true
steward of the land and, of course, the generous benefactor and arbitrator of
its communities. The psychopathologies manifested in landlordism are of more than merely
local significance. As Alice Millar, Wilhelm Reich and several other
post‑Freudians show, the love/power/sex dynamics of wounded people (and
which of us are not somewhat in this category?) are often played out on much
bigger stages: those of economy and battlefield, complete with all the denial of
feeling once denied to the actors. Playwright John McGrath speaks of...
"The Victorian self‑image of the near‑brutish male doing
battle with the natives in far‑off lands, the servants in draughty
mansions, and competitors on the Stock Exchange ... in the
romantically‑situated hunting lodge, with tales of even greater slaughter
at other, better times, and the odd titbit of useful industrial or investment
information, perhaps even the odd deal seen through in the rosy haze of the
apres‑massacre. It came as no surprise that the single most important
carve‑up of the market in the twentieth century, that between the 'Seven
Sisters' ‑ the seven major oil companies ‑ took place in Achnacarry
Castle, a turreted mansion in the West Highlands, where the most ruthless and
powerful men in the oil business assembled ostensibly to shoot grouse and
fish."[47] In the community arts produced book, As an Fhearann: from the land,
p. 84 has a photomontage of President Reagan peering out of a TV screen at the
prehistoric Callanish stones. It brings sharply to mind Alice Walker's poem
about the oppressor, the "Wasichu": "Regardless. He has filled
our every face with his window. Our every window with his face."[48]
p. 93 pictures NATO exercises at Stornoway airport; and on p. 38 General Curtis
le May is shown shooting deer in the Highlands, 1967. This is captioned,
"General le May was Commander in Chief of the USAF when the atomic bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima." In perhaps unintended but graphic reflection of one
of the roles of sporting estates, the rock group Pink Floyd sang, in the
aftermath of the Falklands War and the IRA's blowing up of bandsmen in London:
Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere
and build them a home, a little place of their own
the fletcher memorial home
home for incurable tyrants and kings
And they can appear to themselves every day
on closed circuit TV
to make sure they're still real
it's the only connection they feel
Ladies and gentlemen please welcome reagan and haig
mr begin and friend, mrs thatcher and paisley
mr brezhnev and party
the ghost of mccarthy
the memories of nixon
and now adding colour a group of anonymous latin
american meat‑packing glitterati
Did they expect us to treat them with any respect? They can polish their medals
and sharpen their smiles
and amuse themselves playing games for a while
boom boom, bang bang, lie down, you're dead....[49] ************************************************************** |