THE REBELLIOUS ISLAND: UNLOCKING THE HISTORY OF THE LAND STRUGGLE IN TIREE
Donald E. Meek
‘The Land Struggle’ or ‘The Land Agitation’ or ‘The Land
War’ – this dimension of Highland and Hebridean history, principally in its
nineteenth-century form (covering the period from 1870 to 1890), is known by
three rather similar names. At first
sight, these labels seem interchangeable, but they are, of course, different in
the emphasis conveyed by each of the nouns, ‘struggle’, ‘agitation’ and
‘war’. If you put all three together,
you will have a fair idea of the main components in this land-related
protest. ‘Protest’ it was, but in some
places it was more of a struggle against high rents and trying to pay them; in
other places, it contained a strong element of agitation, that is, stirring the
people to take action; and in other places, such as Braes in Skye, there was a
marked element of fighting, when police and soldiers clashed with the women of
the area at the celebrated Battle of the Braes in 1882. It would, however, be safe to say that Braes
had its share of ‘struggle’ and ‘agitation’ too. So it’s a question of emphasis, not only
within each label, but also within each area, depending on the land-related
issues that were most pressing. In some
areas, the issue was principally high rents, in others it was enclosure or
removal of common grazing, and in others again it was lack of land for cottars,
with crofters and their rent problems as a secondary matter. In certain areas, of course, you could have
combinations of all of these issues, with numerous local grievances, personal
and corporate, thrown in for good measure.
Phases and stages in
the land agitation
It is important to distinguish phases and stages too, not
least because some of these go well beyond the nineteenth century. With simplicity and clarity in mind, they can
be summarised as follows:
(1) 1870s-1880s: creation of a ‘movement’,
the laying out of concerns, propagandising, with some outbursts of action, as
in Bernera, Lewis, in 1874.
(2) 1880-1886: strong articulation of
protest, in the form of agitation and fighting with fiscal authorities, most
notably in Skye, followed by the Napier Commission (1883) and its Report
(1884), and then the passing of the Crofters (Holdings) Scotland Act (1886).
(3) 1886-1890: implementation of the
Crofters’ Act and its recommendations, notably the creation of a Crofters’
Commission to tackle the question of high rents, and to reduce these as
appropriate. In this period too, there
was an opportunity to assess the value of the Crofters’ Act, and to note its
shortcomings as well as its strengths.
This was very important in Tiree and Lewis, because of the land-hunger
among cottars which the Act did not address.
This was more than evident at the west end of Tiree, as we shall see. The question of high rents appears to have
been more acute at the east end than the west, where the issue was principally,
though not solely, lack of land.
(4) 1890-1900: the question of the deer
forests and how to tackle land issues relating to these. The ‘failures’ of the Congested Districts’
Board, which was tasked with creating new holdings, came under scrutiny.
(5) 1900-1930: continuing demand for land,
following the deficiencies of the 1886 Act, and the ‘promise’ of land for
soldiers, who had returned from the First World War. In fact, the Tiree demands appeared before
the First World War. The ‘promise’ made to soldiers galvanised sentiment, and
took ‘the land question’ in the Highlands well into the twentieth century. Bodies such as the Department of Agriculture
were involved in this phase, when tacks and farms were bought by the Department
and broken up to provide holdings. This
process again links Tiree and Lewis, and also parts of the Highland mainland
such as Glenelg.
(6) 1930-39: difficulties with the payment
of rent and the repayment of loans from the Department of Agriculture.
The land struggle in Tiree belongs to stages (3) and (5),
with an element of (6). This chapter is
concerned with events during stage (3).
The active phase of the struggle occurred mainly from 1886 onwards, but
the pot of ‘rebellion’, so to speak, had been simmering long before that date,
and was on the boil after 1880.
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| Greenhill Farm, which was at the centre of the Tiree 'rebellion' of 1886, is immediately to the east of Kilkenneth. |
Defining terms
The terms for the land agitation are not the only ones that
cause trouble. Some who read this
chapter may already be uncertain about the meanings of terms such as ‘farmer’,
‘crofter’ and ‘cottar’, and it may be helpful to define these at this stage, as
several will appear regularly in the course of our consideration of Tiree’s
‘rebellion’.
Tacksmen hold a ‘tack’ or farm on lease from the
landlord, the Duke of Argyll, on conditions which stipulate a period and an
annual rent. They are, in effect, large farmers,
sometimes holding several hundred acres.
Crofters hold a
piece of land called a ‘croft’ or (in the Outer Hebrides’ a ‘lot’ on annual
rent from a landlord. The ‘system’ was
created by landowners in the early nineteenth century in order to retain a
workforce for kelp harvesting and to provide a ‘slimmed-down’ form of
landholding, without tacksmen as middlemen between landlord and subtenant. Crofting tenure, the terms of which have been
defined in successive Crofting Acts from 1886, is now regulated by a Crofters’
Commission (established in 1955, and not the same as the commission of 1886,
which addressed issues of rent). Croft
land cannot be bought or sold, though, following the Crofting Act of 1976, a
crofter can purchase the feudal title to his croft. Land in crofting tenure has to be ‘decrofted’
before it can be sold. A croft is not
a house, although a crofting tenant usually has a ‘croft house’ on the croft. It is important to be clear about this, as it
is extremely common to see the term ‘croft’ wrongly applied to a
cottage.
Cottars have a house site on a croft, but they do
not hold any land. They assist the
crofter with seasonal labours, and labouring with the crofter acts, in effect,
as a form of rent for the house site.
They have right to potatoes etc. grown on the croft. Cottars commonly fish for a living or have
other work.
Squatters have no real status within crofting tenure,
as their houses are usually on common grazing.
Squatters in the nineteenth century were often little more than
refugees, who had been displaced from crofts, with which they were previously
associated either as crofters or as cottars.
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| George John Douglas Campbell, Eighth Duke of Argyll, who was at the centre of the Greenhill dispute. Painting by George Frederic Watts. |
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| My great-grandfather, Hector MacDonald, 'Coll View', Caolas. |
Causes of crofters’
and cottars’ dissatisfaction
Various processes were at work to create the conditions for
the Tiree ‘rebellion’:
(1) Fear of the Argyll Estate and its factors
(i.e. landlord’s agents). My
great-grandfather, Hector MacDonald, ‘Coll View’, Caolas, kept all of his rent
receipts from the time he inherited the ‘Coll View’ croft in 1868. It belonged previously to his uncle, Hector MacLean. This in itself tells us that at least one
crofter was careful to preserve evidence that he had actually paid the rent,
fearing perhaps that he would be asked to make second payments. This suggests that there was more than a
grain, even an ear, of truth in the Tiree saying, ‘Mura b’ e eagal an dà mhàil,
bheireadh Tiriodh an dà bhàrr’ (‘If it were not for fear of the two rents,
Tiree would yield a double crop’). The
rents were paid in two instalments, due on the quarter-days at Whitsunday and
Martinmas.
(2) Growing arrears of rent. The rental for my great-grandfather’s croft
in 1868 was £5.17s.6d per instalment, i.e. £11.15s for the year. It remained at that level until 1882, when it
became £6.8s.2d from Whitsunday of that year, i.e. £12.16s.4d for the year. By
1886 he was carrying arrears of rent which he attempted to pay, but evidently
could not pay – he carried at least a full half-year of arrears. So 1886, the year in which the ‘rebellion’ in
Tiree became articulate and expressed itself, was my great-grandfather’s bad
year, quite probably his worst year.
(3) As
a result of the enquiry of the Crofters’ Commission, which he attended in Baugh
Baptist chapel, along with his close neighbour and friend, John MacFadyen, my
great-grandfather’s rent was reduced to £4.15s per half-year, i.e. £9.10s for
the year. Thus, after the Commission,
and from 1887 onwards, the rent for the ‘Coll View’ croft was lower than it had
ever been in my great-grandfather’s time.
This suggests that the Commission took the view that the rent was too
high for the duration of his tenure from 1868.
However, he got no rebate, and he was instructed by the Commission to
pay his arrears, and he did so in four instalments of £2.10s, which amounted to
£10. He had evidently accumulated other
arrears along the way. His arrears were
all paid by Whitsunday 1889.
(4) The problem of high rents was stated and corroborated before the Napier Commission, when it met met in Kirkapol Parish Church, in 1883. The spokesperson for the crofters at the east end of Tiree was John MacFadyen, Iain mac Nèill, my great-grandfather’s close neighbour. John MacFadyen complained about his own rent, which was then £14.10s, i.e. he was paying almost £2 more than my great-grandfather. John MacFadyen felt that half of that sum would have been a fair rental.
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| This splendid group photograph of some 'worthies' from Caolas was taken when my Great-uncle Charles, sitting in the middle of the front row, launched a new boat, probably when he was home on leave from seafaring in 1916. To my uncle's immediate right (left of front row) sits John MacFadyen (Iain mac Neill), who represented Caolas and east-end crofters at the Napier Commission in 1884, and to my uncle's lower left (right of front row) sits his father and my great-grandfather, Hector MacDonald (Eachann Ban). Other 'worthies' are identified in Chapter 7 of my Autobiography on this BlogSpot. |
(5) Consolidation of large holdings: John MacFadyen also told the commission that tacks in Tiree, i.e. large farms let out on lease to tenants holding directly from the Duke of Argyll, were being consolidated at the expense of crofts and crofters, in Scarinish, Baugh, Balephetrish, Balephuil and Mannal. Those who lost their crofts were becoming landless, and thus became cottars and even squatters rather than crofters.
(6) John
MacFadyen’s evidence was corroborated by Donald MacDougall (or MacLucas) from
Balephuil. He was the son of the
founding minister of Tiree Baptist Church, Duncan MacDougall. Donald MacDougall said that the loss of the
common grazing on Ben Hynish, and its incorporation into the Hynish tack, had
had serious consequences for local crofters, among them loss of land, reduction
of stock, and restricting of access to the shore for seaweed. Congestion, according to Donald MacDonald,
Balemartin, was increasing, as landless crofters were now becoming squatters on
the remaining common grazings.
As matters became difficult in the 1880s, Tiree crofters
were radicalised, and a local branch of the Highland Land Law Reform
Association, popularly known as the Land League, was formed in 1883. My great-grandfather was among its 700
members, and his certificate of membership has survived. Its president was Neil MacNeill, Vaul.
There, then, is an overview of the main processes which led
to the Tiree ‘rebellion’ in 1886. At its
heart was land hunger, first and foremost among landless cottars at the west
end of the island, and not the east
end. We must remember that the Crofters’
Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886 did not give the cottars the right to any land,
nor did it restore crofting land that had been taken into tacks.
In this context, cottars were becoming desperate. As early as 1884, a year after the creation
of the local branch of the Land League, they occupied a vacant tack, apparently
that at Hynish. It seems that the Land
League wanted to take it over, and had submitted a bid. There were threats that Marines would be
sent to the island, but the cottars left the holding on being given an
assurance that the Duke would assign to them the next vacant tack in the
island.[1]
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| This photograph was taken at Kilkenneth, at the west end of Tiree, close to Greenhill Farm, which was on the other side of the road. In the distance are Beinn Hoidhnis (left) and Beinn Cheann a' Bhara (right). |
The Greenhill tack
The next tack that came up for offer was that of Greenhill (Grianal), at the very west end of
Tiree. Its previous tacksman, Lachlan
MacLean, had relinquished it in 1885.
The president of the Tiree branch of the Land League, Neil MacNeill,
served notice in May 1886 that the League was going to bid for the Greenhill
tack. At this point too, cottars and
crofters in Tiree condemned the Bill that was to become the Crofters’ Holdings
(Scotland) Act.
Now, the popular idea that crofters and cottars were all
good, and landlords and factors all bad, breaks down at this juncture, and the
picture becomes opaque and even murky, reflecting badly on all parties. The MacNeills of Vaul, namely Neil and his
brother Lachlan, submitted a bid for the tack in the name, not of the Land
League, but of Lachlan MacNeill. This may
well have been a purely legal matter, because MacNeill, as President of the
local branch of the Land League, would have been required to assign the title
of the lease to a single holder, as leases were not granted to corporate
entities. He chose his brother as the
lease-holder. The 8th Duke of Argyll took the view that he had acted kindly in
leasing the tack to one of the crofters, and, he had, in fact, turned down a
higher offer for the lease. The tack was offered to Lachlan MacNeill for a
rental of £80, but the Duke had refused an offer of £96 from Donald Archie
MacLean, son of the previous tacksman. He may have presumed that, following further
discussion among members of the Tiree Land League, the tack would be made
available for the grazing of cottars’ and crofters’ cattle. The
Duke, in later years, referred to this period in Tiree’s history as ‘The Epoch
of the Fools’, and consistently took the view that the community had failed to
appreciate his kindness. It may well be
that, in this instance, he did, in fact, exercise ‘positive discrimination’ in
favour of Tiree’s landless cottars, but that his plans misfired because of a
lack of understanding on their part of the legal niceties of lease-holding.
The Duke’s understanding of events is, in fact, set out in a
letter written to Tiree cottars and crofters shortly after the occupation of
Greenhill. He condemns ‘outrages’ by
cottars and crofters, and then states:
‘Again, violence equally oppressive
and unjust has been resorted to against another crofter, to whom I have let the
little farm of Greenhill. This farm,
having been vacant by the late tenant determining to leave the island, it was
duly advertised, and it was open to any of you, individually or collectively,
to offer for it. But only one of you did
so, and no other proposal or offer of any kind came from any of you. I was willing to accept his offer, although
at a greatly reduced rent, because it was a promotion to one of your number,
who is, I believe, an industrious man.
Accordingly I did accept it. He
bought stock for his farm, and went, in due course, to take possession. He was met by a rabble of men, crofters and
others, who threatened him with violence, and drove him away from the exercise
of his legal rights. Those who committed
this violence have not the least pretext in defence of their conduct. It has been an act of pure violence, of gross
injustice, and of defiant lawlessness.
‘It is my clear duty to defend my
tenants in the enjoyment of their lawful rights, whether they be defenceless
women or individual men, or joint possessors in a township.’[2]
The Duke then claims that he has, in fact, been active in
extending the amount of land available to Tiree crofters.
His letter, however, suggests that the Duke did not
understand that crofters and cottars were not the same entity, and that the
assigning of a lease to a crofter did not in any way address the landlessness
of cottars, because some means of redistribution or common ‘ownership’ (or
‘joint possession’) was required if it was to benefit the wider body. Was he being disingenuous? Or did he expect cottars to negotiate with
Lachlan MacNeill for some land on ‘his’ (MacNeill’s) tack? How did he expect cottars and crofters to
form a collective legal entity that would take the title and common ownership
of the lease? The concept of a community
‘lease-out’ would have been novel indeed at that time, and would have required
the intervention of lawyers acting on behalf of the cottars and crofters. The manner in which the Greenhill lease was
reassigned to Lachlan MacNeill retains an element of mystery to the present day,
but it looks as if it may have been the consequence of a great deal of
misunderstanding on all sides, that of the cottars of the west end of Tiree,
that of the Duke of Argyll, and that of the MacNeills.
Whatever the legal position(s), the roles of the MacNeill
brothers were construed by the Tiree cottars and crofters as acts of treachery
and deceit by two of their own number – those most trusted at the top of the
local branch of the Land League. Neil
MacNeill was removed as President of the branch, and replaced by Donald Sinclair,
Barrapol. On the day that the MacNeills
were to take possession, cottars and crofters put their own stock to graze on
the tack, and kept it there for the next two months.
It is ironic indeed if a misunderstanding of the law on the
part of cottars and crofters with regard to a lease granted to them, and
legally held in the name of their President’s brother, may have created Tiree’s
infamous and somewhat pointless stand-off with officialdom. It would seem that the crofters and cottars
were in a mood for rebellion in any case, and required only the merest trigger
to bring their grievances to a head. The
MacNeills, rightly or wrongly, by accident or by design, provided that trigger.
When crofters and cottars put their
cattle to graze on the Greenhill tack, this was seen by the Duke and other
authorities as illegal occupation – made all the more difficult because the
‘occupiers’ were determined to keep their cattle on the tack. If it is the case that the agitators
misunderstood the legal niceties, and in effect used the tack as a piece of common grazing, it is equally clear that the authorities were
not in a mood to let them have their own way – and certainly not ‘ownership’ –
in the longer term. Illegal occupation
or intrusion by an unauthorised group was therefore the official interpretation
of what had happened.
Determined action on both sides, with much scope for
misunderstanding and little desire to compromise, may well have contributed to
the somewhat nasty atmosphere which was created in the island by the
‘rebellion’, with various feuds and grievances of a more personal kind finding
a focus in threats of extreme action in the locality itself, including alleged
attempts, or at least an expressed willingness, to hang the ground-officer,
John MacKinnon. It was the case then as
now that such disturbances attract trouble-makers with all sorts of grievances,
real or imagined, in addition to those with a genuine case which deserves a
reasoned response.
Military intervention
and arrests
The various goings-on and the Duke’s determination to
‘defend his tenants’ set in motion a chain of events leading to serious military
and fiscal intervention. Sheriff George
MacNicol came from Edinburgh on 21 July to serve notices of
interdict on the ‘rebels’. He and over
30 policemen from Glasgow went to Balephuil, where they were met by an angry
‘mob’. To cut a long story short, a
warship Assistance and a
support-vessel Ajax arrived in Tiree
on a glorious evening on 30 July 1886 – an event long remembered by my own
elderly relatives in ‘Coll View’. They
were followed to the old harbour in Scarinish by the steamship Nigel.
The vessels carried Royal Marines and policemen (from Oban and
Inverness).
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| The Agamemnon-class turret-ship, HMS Ajax. |
Notices of interdict began to be served the next day, and six ‘ringleaders’ were arrested, all of them from the west end of Tiree: Colin Henderson, Hector MacDonald and Alexander MacLean from Balemartine; Donald Sinclair, the new president of the Land League; and Donald MacKinnon and Lachlan Brown from Balevullin. They were taken to Inveraray Jail, but were bailed out by Lachlan Macquarie, merchant in Balemartine. In September, another five were arrested: John Sinclair, John MacFadyen and Gilchrist MacDonald from Balemartine, and George Campbell and Alexander MacArthur in Balinoe.
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| The steamship Nigel arrives at Hotwells, Bristol, with the Suspension Bridge in the background. |
Of these, some were released, and the following stood trial in Edinburgh: MacLean, Henderson, Hector MacDonald, John Sinclair, and George Campbell, all of whom got six months in prison, and John MacFadyen and Gilchrist MacDonald, and Donald MacKinnon, who got four months.
The so-called ‘military occupation’ of Tiree had its lighter
side, and has been remembered as much for the Marines’ participation in
crofting activities and in sports (especially tug-o’-war with the islanders!)
as for the arrests. Memories of Marines’ official activities also remained fresh
for many years. My elderly relatives remembered in the 1960s how groups of
Marines patrolled the township of Caolas, and ate their lunch beside the well
called ‘Tobar Bean Iain’ (‘The Well of John’s Wife’, ‘John’ being the
aforementioned John MacFadyen) on the road to Milton. About 1976, when I conducted some local
research into the agitation, I spoke to a remarkable centenarian in Lower Vaul,
Mrs MacLean. When I asked her to describe the Marines, whom she remembered
vividly, she replied, ‘They were just like the soldiers you see on television,
except that they wore red jackets!’ They
had obviously been on patrol in Vaul too!
Rev. Donald MacCallum
and ongoing issues
The matter of rent continued to trouble Tiree crofters in
1887, and this was one of the questions that had to be tackled by the Rev.
Donald MacCallum when he arrived in the island as minister of the Heylipol
church late in that year. MacCallum, who
was well known for his support of crofters and cottars Arisaig and Glendale,
Skye, later moved to Lochs, Lewis. In Tiree, MacCallum found himself in the midst of a
community which believed that it was in some important respects worse off,
rather than better off, as a result of the passing of the Crofters’ Holdings
(Scotland) Act of 1886. Apparently, a
crofter who gave land to a cottar was at risk of being turned out. In this context, MacCallum provided robust
leadership, outlining developments in ‘long and interesting address[es]’, and
explaining ‘the advanced position the Land League now holds’.
MacCallum’s ability to advise crofters and especially cottars on how they should proceed in their case against high rents and lack of land is more than evident in the reports of Tiree Land League meetings in The Oban Times. The business before a meeting held in Moss Schoolhouse on 9 April 1888, for example, represents the concerns of the time:
‘Rev. Mr MacCallum, who presided, stated that the business before the meeting was 1) to consider the memorial prepared by the Committee to be sent to the Secretary for Scotland; and 2) to consider what should be done in regard to the answer that was said to have been given by the Duke of Argyll, through the factor, to the cottars, who sent him a petition for land.’
The memorial, as explained to the meeting by the secretary of the local Land League branch, was about the following matters: 1) methods adopted by the Commissioners in fixing fair rents, which were deemed insufficient; 2) the apportioning of rent when certain crofters’ crops were still in the ground, which had caused ‘a tax to be put on the superior industry of the crofters concerned’; 3) ‘that in several instances crofts which had been reclaimed from nature by the present holders and their predecessors had been charged with rents equivalent to their actual marketable value’; 4) ‘that crofts which were greatly damaged by sand blowing on them were not reduced in rent in accordance with this damage’; 5) ‘that an unreasonable amount of arrears was ordered to be paid, and that they were quite unable to meet the demands made on them’. The challenges facing Tiree fishermen ‘because the island was exposed and had no harbour’ were also discussed.
Although MacCallum was particularly well known for his orations, he was no demagogue in his Tiree days, making ‘inflammatory’ public speeches round the island. Rather, he put his analytical and memorial-writing skills at the service of the island’s crofters and cottars. His commitment to their needs was evidently quite outstanding, and it was deeply appreciated. When MacCallum left Tiree in 1889, crofters erected a fine cairn in appreciation of his efforts. This was a truly remarkable tribute to his contribution to their lives during his very short occupancy of the Heylipol charge. It sprang spontaneously, immediately and directly from the crofters’ and cottars’ experience of MacCallum’s leadership. It was thus uniquely eloquent in its own time, and remains so to the present day.[3]
Nevertheless,
MacCallum did not lack detractors in Tiree, and, according to Donald MacKinnon,
Hough, the cairn was sometimes referred to as ‘Tùr Mhic Caluim, tùr an amadain, air mullach cnoc
nan plaosdairean’ (‘MacCallum’s tower,
the tower of the fool, on top of the hill of the idiots’).[4]
This saying reflects what this chapter seeks in part to demonstrate, namely the conflicted nature of the ‘rebellion’ in Tiree, and the divisions that existed within the crofting community itself. Even so, MacCallum’s contribution cannot be gainsaid. It provided what had evidently been in very short supply at the height of the agitation, and what may even have precipitated military intervention, namely a clear-headed ability to disentangle the threads, to understand the arguments, and to provide guidance and leadership in matters of procedure.
Ducal perspectives
MacCallum’s most eloquent detractors, however, were within the Duke of Argyll’s family, and included his daughter, Lady Frances Balfour, who, smarting from MacCallum’s earlier attacks on ducal estate policy, wrote her own assessment of the Tiree ‘rebellion’ and MacCallum’s role in her memoir of her sister, Lady Victoria:
‘Then arose, what the Duke alludes to with trenchant severity as “The Epoch of the Fools,” when mercenary agitators went to and fro preaching a gospel which had for its motto, “Blessed is he who removes his neighbour’s landmark.”
‘Long ago, the agitation in Tiree has died the death it deserves. A melancholy cairn, erected to himself by the chief agitator, alone marks the days of the Land League and its folly. But such “epochs” make history, and no country is the same where, even for a season, lawlessness and disorder have obtained the upper hand.
‘There were, doubtless, faults on both sides. The Celtic temperament is peculiarly susceptible to personal influence, and it is insensitive to a fault when honest pride is wounded.
‘The Duke could never forget the misrepresentation and injustice which his life’s work had received. It would have been better had he gone among the people of his own race, and met the lies of the paid agitator with the words of ringing truth, as he alone knew how to utter them. The work was less efficiently done by what his daughter called the “middlemen” and the arrival of the soldiers. Their chief occupation was assisting the islanders with their harvest, while the officers were the pioneers who laid out the first of the golf courses, destined to be famous in the annals of first-class golf. It would be useless to revive the story of the agitation. It has been repeated in other islands, even though the Crofter Act has changed many of the conditions. It will be repeated again, as long as any man ignored economic laws, and the change which has passed over the conditions of rural life.’[5]
Lady Balfour’s naïve farrago of sour
misrepresentation contains at least one sentence of perceptive understanding –
‘It will be repeated again….’ The
‘rebellion’ was indeed ‘repeated again’ before and after the First World
War, though piece-meal and on a smaller scale, but with greater success. This resulted in the breaking up of
the tacks at Baugh, Hynish, Heylipol and Greenhill, which was divided into thirteen new holdings and four enlargements in 1912. Following an occupation of land by
crofters in 1918, the Balephetrish tack owned by Tom Barr was divided into crofts in 1922.
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| Donald MacCallum's cairn was restored in 1986 as part of Tiree's commemoration of the Centenary of the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886. |
Conclusion
What exactly did Tiree’s ‘rebellion’ of 1886 achieve for
crofters and especially cottars? The
answer, in a nutshell, is quite simply, ‘Not much’.
The ‘rebellion’ is best regarded as a confused and bungled
attempt to assign the title of a tack to a crofter and cottars on the one hand,
and to bring the matter of land-hungry cottars to public and political
attention on the other. It may have achieved the latter, but not in the best
way, and certainly not in a way that immediately benefited those who needed
land in Tiree. It could also be regarded, in a medical metaphor, as a boil
which had been suppurating for some years, before bursting in 1886, and spreading
its poison to other parts of the ‘body’. It took
time to deal with that poison and its causes.
Problems relating to rent had to be tackled after the ‘rebellion’, and almost thirty years were to pass before tacks were broken up to provide more crofts. The ‘rebels without a croft’ had to wait until the early twentieth century to gain land. We may wonder if the bungled nature of the ‘rebellion’ might, in fact, have retarded, rather than facilitated, the process of allocation of land to cottars. The real cause of the delay, however, was one of the points amply demonstrated by the Greenhill dispute, namely the lack of a proper government scheme, with appropriate legislation and legal advisory services, which could divide a tack, divide it into holdings, and assign these holdings to cottars.
Problems relating to rent had to be tackled after the ‘rebellion’, and almost thirty years were to pass before tacks were broken up to provide more crofts. The ‘rebels without a croft’ had to wait until the early twentieth century to gain land. We may wonder if the bungled nature of the ‘rebellion’ might, in fact, have retarded, rather than facilitated, the process of allocation of land to cottars. The real cause of the delay, however, was one of the points amply demonstrated by the Greenhill dispute, namely the lack of a proper government scheme, with appropriate legislation and legal advisory services, which could divide a tack, divide it into holdings, and assign these holdings to cottars.
The ‘rebellion’ and its causes are an eloquent
indication of the unhappiness and dissatisfaction caused at the time by the
passing of the Crofters’ Holdings (Scotland) Act in 1886, although it is now
commonly, and often naïvely, regarded as the cornerstone of modern crofting
legislation and the beginning of a new era. It is more than clear from the Tiree 'rebellion' that it failed to make any provision for those who most obviously needed its assistance, namely the landless cottars. In short, the 'land issue', as distinct from protection and rights for crofters, had not been tackled in any meaningful way in 1886.
In Tiree, as in other parts of the Highlands and Islands, the 1886 Act was therefore the cause of further unrest, rather than a first and final cure for all the land-related troubles of the so-called ‘crofting counties’.
POSTSCRIPT
The Secret Island, the volume of papers from the conference at which the above paper was delivered, contains a most important additional contribution by Dr Bob Chambers, 'Land Settlement on Tiree', pp. 253-282, which provides a detailed account of the breaking of the Tiree tacks in the early twentieth century. It also reinforces strongly the argument at the heart of my paper with regard to the lack of appropriate means to meet the just demands of cottars when they were driven to 'desperate measures' in 1886. I have made minor revisions to the published version of my talk in the light of Dr Chambers' invaluable research.
In Tiree, as in other parts of the Highlands and Islands, the 1886 Act was therefore the cause of further unrest, rather than a first and final cure for all the land-related troubles of the so-called ‘crofting counties’.
POSTSCRIPT
The Secret Island, the volume of papers from the conference at which the above paper was delivered, contains a most important additional contribution by Dr Bob Chambers, 'Land Settlement on Tiree', pp. 253-282, which provides a detailed account of the breaking of the Tiree tacks in the early twentieth century. It also reinforces strongly the argument at the heart of my paper with regard to the lack of appropriate means to meet the just demands of cottars when they were driven to 'desperate measures' in 1886. I have made minor revisions to the published version of my talk in the light of Dr Chambers' invaluable research.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Balfour, Lady Frances, Ne
Obliviscaris: Lady Victoria Campbell: A Memoir, Hodder and Stoughton,
London, [c.1912].
Meek, Dòmhnall, ‘Aimhreit an Fhearainn an Tiriodh, 1886’,
ann an D. MacAmhlaigh (deas.), Oighreachd
agus Gabhaltas, Roinn an Fhoghlaim Cheiltich, Oilthigh Obar-dheadhan,
Obar-dheadhan [1980], 23-31.
Meek, Donald E., ‘Preaching the Land Gospel: The Rev. Donald
MacCallum (1849-1929) in Skye, Tiree and Lochs, Lewis’, in Ewen Cameron (ed.), Recovering from the Clearances: Land Struggle,
Resettlement, and Community Ownership in the Hebrides’, The Islands Book
Trust, Ravenspoint, Lewis, 2013, 77-106.
[1] In
addition to family papers, this chapter draws on the evidence presented in
Meek, ‘Aimhreit an Fhearainn an Tiriodh, 1886’.
My main aim in this chapter is to reflect again, with a fresh mind, on
that evidence.
[3]
This section draws directly on Meek ‘Preaching the Land Gospel’, which looks at
MacCallum’s changing roles in his different parishes.
[4] I owe this saying to Dr John Holliday, Tiree, who notes: ‘I'm assuming plaosdair
is a Tiree dialect form of plaosgair
(Dwelly), which makes it likely this saying was coined by a Tiree Gaelic
speaker. Interestingly, the Tùr is
built on a Neolithic cairn, probably connected to the three-stone circle
complex at Hough.’
