Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886

Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886
Act of Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long titleAn Act to amend the Law relating to the Tenure of Land by Crofters in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and for other purposes relating thereto
Citation49 & 50 Vict. c. 29
Territorial extent Scotland
Dates
Royal assent25 June 1886
Other legislation
Relates to
Status: Amended

The Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 (49 & 50 Vict. c. 29) (Scottish Gaelic: Achd na Croitearachd 1886) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that created legal definitions of crofting parish and crofter, granted security of land tenure to crofters and produced the first Crofters Commission, a land court which ruled on disputes between landlords and crofters. The same court ruled on whether parishes were or were not crofting parishes. In many respects the Act was modelled on the Irish Land Acts of 1870 and 1881.[1] By granting the crofters security of tenure, the Act put an end to the Highland Clearances.[2]

The Act was largely a result of crofters' agitation which had become well organised and very persistent in Skye and of growing support, throughout the Highlands, for the Crofters Party, which had gained five members of parliament in the general election of 1885. Agitation took the form of rent strikes (withholding rent payments) and land raids (occupying land which the landlord had reserved for hunting or sheep).

The Act itself did not quell the agitation. In particular it was very weak in terms of enabling the Crofters Commission to resolve disputes about access to land. It was enough however to make much more acceptable, politically, the use of troops in confrontations with agitators.[3]

Peighinn Choinnich, crofting town near Ùig in the Isle of Skye

According to John Lorne Campbell, however, the Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 was nothing less than "the Magna Carta of the Highlands and Islands, which conferred on the small tenants there something which the peasantry of Scandinavian countries had known for generations, security of tenure and the right to the principle of compensation for their own improvements at the termination of tenancies. Nothing was suggested in the report, or contained in the Act, to restrict absentee landlordism or limit the amount of land any one individual might own in Scotland, but for the moment a great advantage has been secured."[4]

The Act was not fully effective in increasing the equality of land distribution in Scotland. By the year 2000, two-thirds of Scotland's land area was still owned by only 1,252 landowners out of a population of 5 million.[5]

  1. ^ MacColl, Allan W. (2006). Land, Faith and the Crofting Community: Christianity and Social Criticism in the Highlands of Scotland 1843–1893. Edinburgh University Press. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-7486-2674-8.
  2. ^ Thomson 1983, p. 237
  3. ^ Keating, Michael; Bleiman, David (1979). Labour and Scottish Nationalism. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-349-04678-2. OCLC 644246228.
  4. ^ Frederick G. Rea (1997), A School in South Uist: Reminiscences of a Hebridean Scoolmaster, 1890-1913, edited and with an introduction by John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Page xviii.
  5. ^ Wightman 2000, pp. 23–29 (figures are for 2000)