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Thu 23 Dec, 2010 02:19 pm
Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Condition of Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands.
The Commission was a response to crofter and cottar agitation in the Highlands of Scotland. The agitation was about excessively high rents, lack of security of tenure and deprivation of de facto rights of access to land. It took the form of rent strikes (withholding rent payments) and what came to be known as land raids (crofter occupation of land which landlords had given over to sheep farming and to hunting parks called deer forests). Crofters' War has been used since as a name for this agitation.
In the 1870s there had been sporadic short-lived agitations in Wester Ross and Lewis (then both in the county of Ross). In the early 1880s agitation began in Skye (then in the county of Inverness) and there it became persistent and threatened to spread throughout the Hebrides and the Highlands. Police forces attempted to enforce what landlords believed to be their rights, but the police were severely overstretched, especially in Inverness-shire, where William Ivory was Sheriff Principal. Agitation became therefore an issue needing the attention of central government and, eventually, Gladstone's government appointed the Napier Commission.
About three years after the Commission's appointment the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 would be on the statute book. The Act was not based on the recommendations of the Commission, but the process by which the Commission collected evidence, and the Commission's report, did foster and inform the public, Parliamentary and Cabinet debate which led, eventually to the legislation. The legislation was based on principles accepted in the Irish Land Acts of 1870 and 1881, principles which Napier had implicitly rejected in 1884.
@dyslexia,
what the hell are you talking about...?
A croft is a free-hold farm, and a crofter is a farmer on a free-hold. Because of conditions in Ireland and the Scots highlands where they were found, they were associated with impoverished farms.
Yeah, but what's your point? Not something I need to know right now, but thanks anyway, dys.
you never know when this information may come in handy mame.
I, for one, will cherish this and keep it close to my heart.
@chai2,
Hmmm, I went to a party last night and brought this up. People immediately took sides and a raging debate ensued. Tempers flared, swear words were flung about, and two (one man, one woman) got into a fist fight. It got pretty ugly.
Not doing that again.
@Mame,
Mame wrote:
Hmmm, I went to a party last night and brought this up. People immediately took sides and a raging debate ensued. Tempers flared, swear words were flung about, and two (one man, one woman) got into a fist fight. It got pretty ugly.
Not doing that again.
Are you serious?
wow! That really WAS good information to have on hand. I mean, how often can you truly start a fist fight between a man and a woman?
I wish I'd been there.
@farmerman,
put a round tent behind your farm cottage and you've got
yurts and crofts