Scottish Land and Estates |
Address to the Council of the Scottish Landowners’ Federation
Edinburgh,
10 June 1998 by Alastair McIntosh
I
am grateful to you, gentlemen, for having invited me to address your Federation.
The timing is impeccable because in just a few hours I shall be heading North to
Eigg to celebrate the island’s first year of being a laird-free zone. During
that year secure leases have been offered to tenants in need of them. Economic
development has allowed the opening of a visitor centre, restaurant and shop.
And the indigenous population has increased by one third because three families
have now been able to return. The community has awarded them secure and
reasonable farm leases. All rents are ploughed back into the island to be used
for democratically accountable social and ecological benefit. No longer is the
fate of this Hebridean community decided at the whim of a man whose sole
qualification to exert power over others was his wealth bolstered by that poor
man’s tax known as “rent”. I
have been invited to address you today as a result of being ejected from
an
emergency meeting you held some months ago in the Jarvis Ellersly House Hotel.
Through peculiar circumstances one of your members had asked me to represent
him, anonymously, as is often a landowner’s wont. Some of you suspected that I
might have been wearing more than one hat. Accordingly, two stalwart gentlemen
placed hands on my shoulders and escorted me, politely but backwards, out
through a narrow exit. The
Lord works in mysterious ways, and the one in question on this occasion was a
lord temporal in a wheelchair - none other than His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch.
My two bouncers and I nearly fell into his lap! He appeared to recognise me
(having initially mistaken me for that other land reformer, Andy Wightman).
After according me a warm welcome he was informed with some embarrassment about
the circumstances of my departure. However, he resolved to get in touch later. Now,
that meeting, at which I was prevented from representing the liberal views of my
landed “client,” had been convened to discuss the threat of a Scottish
Parliament and “community interests” like Assynt, Borve and Eigg. Your
Federation’s convenor had felt obliged to warn in his letter of invitation:
“I do not believe there has ever been another occasion upon which the private
landowners in Scotland have needed to come together to meet the challenges which
they face.” He continued, “I am considering how best to ensure that
landowners’ rights are properly protected.” Now,
I find that a most telling statement. We’re talking here about some of the
most powerful people in Scotland. 1,000 of you - which is one-fiftieth of one
percent of the population - control nearly two-thirds of our most primary
economic, cultural and spiritual resource. Some even call themselves “lords”
and presume to be addressed by such sycophantic and divisive titles as “Your
Grace,” as if they have forgotten, Christian men that most would claim to be,
that Jesus’ temptation on the mountain in Luke 4 was to have the devil offer
to make him a landlord. And yet we hear them, I hear you ... bleating on about
your “rights” in
the absence of serious consideration of obligations. You
will correct me, of course, by saying that being a landlord today involves more
than a little noblesse obligee. Your
vassals should be grateful, you tell us, for the £30 million that recreational
killing puts into the pockets of ghillies and gamekeepers ... although the
latter are employed in part
to
keep the locals off their forebears’ patch. Christopher
Bourne-Arton representing your English sister agency, the Country Landowners’
Association, put the economic perspective very well in a debate with me on Radio
5 in 1994. He said: “Don’t forget you need an awful lot of money to run a
Highland estate... You either own a Highland estate or you run three Ferraris,
six racehorses and a couple of mistresses - I mean, the costs are much the
same.” And,
I say, “The mindset that invents the need for many of these costs is also much
the same.” Yes, I’m sorry, but from my past experience working as a ghillie
back home on the Isle of Lewis as a youth, I find myself asking, “Why do
people like you want to hold such
power?” And “What impels you to kill, not out of necessity, but for the
“pleasure” of it?” An
unwitting insight into these questions is given in the August 1992 issue of the
high society magazine, Harpers &
Queen. Its cover proclaims a theme of: “LOADED lairds and lovely LASSIES;
SUNNY Scots and holiday PICTS: why we love our Highland playgrounds.” Inside,
along with pictures of Mohamed Al Fayed’s “hereditary Ross pipers” and
“the naked truth” about Scotland’s six most upmarket women, it advises the
reader to pack a copy of Alice Miller’s latest book, Breaking
Down the Wall of Silence. Miller’s
psychotherapeutic writings echo Erich Fromm who wrote extensively of the need
for people who lack an authentic sense of “being somebody” to have things instead. Life’s basic question, he said, is “To have or
to be?” Now,
we all have our neuroses and dysfunctionalities - doubtless me too. Miller’s
point is that institutionalised relationships of domination often have their
roots in precisely the sort of unloved childhoods that many rich children
experience. As Robert Burns said, “How cruel are the parents/ Who riches only
prize.” The stereotypical laird, in my view, wants to be loved, but
desperately tries to control that process. This distorts it and so distorts both
his and our social realities. Old-style public school environments are famous
for cultivating such a narcissistic pathology. It gets played out on whole
communities, indeed, empires, because wealth amplifies the empty rattle of a
hollowed-out soul into other people’s lives. Blood
sports for pleasure’s sake can often be a good example of the wounded
child’s sadomasochistic relationship to power. When I put this controversial
viewpoint to one of your Council
members I was astonished to find that he agreed with me. I wrote down his words.
“Oh yes,” he said of his fellow lairds. “They got buggered and beaten when
they were at school and now they want to do it back with a shotgun now that
they’ve grown up.” I
now have three points that I want to make. The first is, please lay down the
latter-day white man’s burden of your noblesse
obligee. It’s very nice of you to offer to patronise us, but like those
resettled families on Eigg, most of us would rather be living on the same land
but as self-sufficient entrepreneurs operating within community agreed
guidelines, than being hireable and fireable employees of a laird. If you
personally think that your particular style of lairdship does communities a
favour, then why not ask for a vote of confidence in secret ballot? Secondly
and of profound importance in the context of the present deliberations of the
Scottish Office’s Land Reform Policy Group, any rights you have as landowners
must be recognised as feudal, not absolute, and this entails obligations to the
Scottish people that go far beyond noblesse
obligee. You see, some of you have been talking about your human rights in
relation to property, hoping that you can thereby mitigate the nation’s thirst
for land reform. I’m afraid that I have bad news for you. As the philosopher
Alasdair MacIntyre points out in Whose
Justice? Which Rationality?, English law stresses absolute property rights
because it places individualistic “man” at the centre of things. Scots law,
however, places God in that position and so at the apex of the feudal pyramid. Sir
James Dalrymple of Stair expresses this in his seminal work published in 1681, The Institutions of the Law of Scotland, where he concludes that
“the absolute sovereign [is] divine law.” Most of you, then, have prospered
by taking English rights but neglecting Scottish obligations to community that
ensues from divine imperative. You
may say that my appeal to theology is irrelevant at the cusp of a new and
secular millennium, but I’m sorry to say, it’s simply the present law of the
land. Any land reform or even mere continuation of the status quo must therefore
address theology. Happily, both the Church of Scotland and the Free Church have
recently held preliminary deliberations on this matter. In
Scots feudalism properly applied, you may call yourself “landlords,” but you
are certainly not “landowners.” Leviticus 25:23 is quite clear: “The land
shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine,” says God. It is
because we are all God’s vassals in Scottish law that Andrew Melville was
famously able to get away with calling James VI “God’s silly vassal.” It
is therefore incumbent upon us to enquire what is God’s view on land
ownership. Leviticus is cross-referenced by Jesus in Luke 4:19 on this, and we
find that the “acceptable year of the Lord,” or “Jubilee,” requires that
land be redistributed back to its original owners every
fifty years. This is to prevent the inequalities of power that you presently
enjoy. Ezekiel 47 additionally makes clear that land distribution should be
equitable, and that second generation settlers are entitled to their full share
and full citizenship. God is, in short, an ethnically inclusive land reformer,
consistent with our Scots internationalist traditions. Feudalism,
then, has not failed the people of Scotland. Rather, the lairds have failed
feudalism. Theologically, the gift of land was God’s reward for justice. But
too many lairds have failed to steward the land to uphold social and ecological
justice. And they have failed to redistribute it. In short, gentlemen, many of
you have acted as despots. You have applied an English legal mindset to a
Scottish question and so failed the community of the realm. Which
brings me to my third and closing point. How can this be gradually reversed and
community landownership encouraged? I would suggest the reintroduction of
Sporting Rates and similar measures that would tax land value - both rural and
urban. Community ownership schemes, and even private landowners who have their
community’s democratically granted endorsement, should be exempt. We need to
remember, after all, that not all communities are desirous of or ready for land
reform, and the efforts of some lairds are appreciated by their communities. Where
change is wanted, however, land taxation would both bring down capital values
and generate revenue. These funds could be used to support community buy-outs. In these way, gentlemen, you would have a choice. You would either be able to become stewards on behalf of both ecology and human community, democratically accountable and recognising that your power is granted to you for the purpose of service. Or you may pay taxes. These would compensate Scotland for your profligacy and ultimately, finance your own clearance.
Click here for Evening News' cartoon depicting this address
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