ABSTRACT
This chapter takes as its point of departure the fact that the broad outlines of events of protest in the post 1914 Highlands have been long established. Land disturbance has become a central part of the story of the twentieth century Highlands and have been used to reinforce dominant interpretations of Highland protest more generally. Governmental responses have also been subject to much scrutiny and important interpretations have emerged. Thus both Leneman and Cameron have concluded that the 1919 Land Settlement (Scotland) Act was ‘perhaps the most efficient piece of legislation’ attempting to address issues surrounding access to land as it built and simplified procedures introduced in the Small Landholders (Scotland) Act of 1911 and had a profound impact on the lives of many within the crofting tenantry.2 As with events of protest, it is nevertheless vital, as Cameron asserts, that we view the success of the post-war legislation in the context of the failures of that from before the war, not least the Congested Districts (Scotland) Act, 1879 which gave rise to the Congested Districts Board. Moreover, in recognising this it is hard to disagree with Cameron when he argues that far greater attention should be paid to the period after 1886 instead of treating it ‘as an unimportant addendum to the more important and interesting events of the 1890s’.3 It is to Cameron’s credit that he goes some way towards redressing this imbalance. Legislation from 1886 is revealed as manifestation of the tensions between two competing and ideologically
derived views over how to solve the land issue in the Highlands. The first of these was developed by the Liberals in Ireland and applied in much greater depth in Scotland, was that of ‘dual ownership’. Alternatively, for the Conservatives the solution was that of land purchase and proprietorship. The 1919 Act, on the other hand, introduced in the important circumstance of a coalition government was, for Cameron, ‘an honest attempt … to construct a non-ideological approach to land settlement and was, in the Highland context certainly, perhaps the first such attempt.4
