BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion

Subject: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 18 Mar 18 - 05:15 AM

Murray Pittock is an authority on this.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 18 Mar 18 - 05:18 AM

BBC Radio 4 "In Our Time" on 8 March!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Mar 18 - 06:24 AM

It was very good but I found it a very heavy listen. The fact that I was trundling up the M5 and M6 at the time probably didn't help.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 18 Mar 18 - 06:38 AM

Yes, you would need the volume up loud to catch everything they say on a motorway! Murray Pittock is very clued up on Scottish history and has a very listenable voice to my ears. He has a book out on Culloden which I may buy.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Iains
Date: 18 Mar 18 - 06:42 AM

The Clearances caused the destruction of the clan system, accompanied by ethnic cleansing, because sheep were more valuable than people. It is estimated that during the entire period of the Clearances, some 150,000 Highlanders and Islanders were cleared from their ancestral lands. To give a sense of the scale of this relative to the overall population, the total number of people living in 1801 in what are now the council areas of Highland, Western Isles, and Argyll & Bute was 260,000. War, politics, economics and a anachronistic nature of the clan system all exerted pressures that created the monster of the clearances.

A letter to the government of 5 September 1775, represents the most important declaration of the relationship between government and the Highland landlord in the era of first phase clearance.
"the Highlanders were born to be soldiers and the Highlands ought to be considered as a nursery of strength and security to the kingdom"

I think they found out too late that putting a kilt on a sheep did not make a soldier.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 18 Mar 18 - 06:57 AM

But the clan system was reborn in Canada and still thrives I understand!

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Iains
Date: 18 Mar 18 - 07:35 AM

There are thriving clan societies, but I do not think it is quite the same thing. One of them the Macgregors have a DNA project running to try to determine who they really are.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 18 Mar 18 - 07:57 AM

My ancestors were from Sutherland (my name is one of the small towns up there) and they were 'cleared'. (Clan Mackay) Fortunately they found work as fishermen, seamen and various things connected with the sea and gradually migrated down to NE England.

I once watched the musical 'The Cheviot, the Stag and The Black, Black Oil' in Edinburgh.(written by John McGrath) It portrays very evocatively the whole disgusting process of the Clearances and the cold-hearted unfeeling attitude of the landowners. Also the absolute exploitation of the area by a succession of predators with no roots or right to be there.
As I sat in the theatre I was careful not to use my English accent when talking to my companion. Luckily I can speak a very passable Scottish accent, so I passed muster. The atmosphere among the audience was electric with indignation and anger!

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 18 Mar 18 - 08:33 AM

I can well believe it !

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 18 Mar 18 - 09:09 AM

I almost wished I'd made a badge to wear saying, 'Speaks English but is half-Scots and half-Irish. Please do not bash!'

Actually, the musical play showed how the Scots have been plundered, first by sheep farmers, then by unspeakable grouse-shooting consortiums paying landowners to have access to the grouse moors, then of course the oil/gas in the North Sea. None of these greedy folk had anything to do with Scotland except as a trough in which to poke their piggy snouts.
One song which stuck in my head was,
"We are the men who own your glen but you won't see us there!
In Edinburgh clubs and Guildford pubs we show how much we care!"
It all made a great impression on me.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Mar 18 - 05:44 PM

I spent three summers and three springs in a row in Sutherland in the seventies. I thought it was God's own country. One of those Easters was in 1976 when the weather was spectacularly good, and two of those summers were 1975 and 1976, which were both legendary great British summers. My good luck. Lamentably, I haven't been back since. My memories are treasurable.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Mar 18 - 05:10 AM

'The Cheviot, the Stag and The Black, Black Oil'
Absolutely superb
Have a copy of the television version of this done by the 784 Teatre Group, if anybody is interested
I think might have a VHS version of the equally excellent drama documentary of Maire Rhuad (Red Maggie), a songmaker who led the protests against the evictions - must try to get that digitised
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 19 Mar 18 - 06:20 AM

The production I saw must have been the first touring one, it was in the early seventies and the theatre was packed. I've never since experienced such an atmosphere among an audience, it was almost like an SNP rally! I of course was bristling too on behalf of the people portrayed. The whole history of Scotland has been a tale of exploitation, cruelty and greed.
I like John McGrath's stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Mar 18 - 06:56 AM

"The production I saw must have been the first touring one,"
784 took the production on tor all over Scotland - the opening sequence of the film is of the company driving to a village somewhere in The Highlands and performing in a village hall
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 19 Mar 18 - 09:44 AM

That must have been the company that presented it in Edinburgh in 1973 Jim. They started on Benbecula I believe.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Mar 18 - 10:47 AM

I seem to remember a BBC play using the 'Romeo and Juliet' theme, (based on a historical incident), of a Highland village being destroyed and the occupants forcibly emigrated to Canada in order to provide the landlord a clear view of the Loch in front of his Stately Home
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: meself
Date: 20 Mar 18 - 01:53 AM

Although, in the long run, I don't think the move to Canada was so bad - I'm just as glad my Four Bears ended up here ....

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 20 Mar 18 - 04:05 AM

My Four Bears migrated south to Northumberland and became Geordies.
One went to Australia and became quite well-off as a sheep farmer.

I think both the displaced Scots and the Irish famine survivors were extremely tough and resourceful people. They migrated, taking their culture all over the world and succeeded under awful circumstances.
(I'm rather proud, as I'm a mixture of Scottish and Irish blood!)

But one can't forget that many thousands died from starvation and want due to the indifference and cruelty of the rich and greedy.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 20 Mar 18 - 05:28 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 20 Mar 18 - 05:31 AM

Ahhhhh rats... didn't mean to post, click was intended to Add To Tracer. (See what happens when I look at the Cat before I've had my morning coffee?)

Brilliant thread, guys - thanks for the heads-up Bonz. Back later when I can pay it some intelligent (i.e. caffeinated) attention...

Bonne x

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 20 Mar 18 - 05:33 AM

... notice correctly spelled own name...

Gah

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 20 Mar 18 - 06:45 AM

Hahaha Bonne! (I'm sure you ARE bonne!)

I'm sure Mudcat is haunted. The other day I sat ready to write a post and the thing posted all by itself before I'd written a single word.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 20 Mar 18 - 06:49 AM

I really am a twit. It wasn't grouse the consortiums were exploiting, it was the deer of course. (Clue is in the word STAG) Dementia?

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: JMB
Date: 20 Mar 18 - 05:21 PM

Speaking of Sutherland, that region was one of the hardest hit regions of the Clearances, and to this day, the population has never recovered. In Duthaich Mhic Aoidh (MacKay Country), it tells of Patrick Sellar and the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland clearing the area and making room for sheep.. The song speaks as if on the passing away of Sellar. The song starts as My curse upon the great sheep, and also refers to Iutharna, an ancient Gaidhlig term for He'll, and the preference of consorting with Judas rather than Sellar. It is performed by the magnificent Kathleen Nic Aoghnais.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: meself
Date: 20 Mar 18 - 06:31 PM

My mother is a MacKay, and an older cousin from that side of the family - the 'distaff' side, that is (I've always wanted to use that term) - once told about his brief visit to Sutherland, by way of paying homage to our roots while he was in the neighbourhood on business. When he told a local that he was a MacKay from Canada, the local informed him that the MacKays were known as sheep-thieves. Cuz and I got a great laugh out of that - it wasn't till much later that it occurred to me that the MacKays would have been thrown off their land and replaced with sheep, so - whaddya expect?

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 20 Mar 18 - 07:03 PM

Ha meself, we may be distantly related!

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: JMB
Date: 20 Mar 18 - 07:03 PM

I'm a MacGillivray myself and some people say that some of us were sheep thieves as a joke. My Daa told me that sheep and cattle theft was a serious offence in those days. My brother in Toronto told his co-workers that as a joke we were sheep thieves. They found themselves on a business trip somewhere and there was a portrait of people and one of them was holding a sheep in his arm. A coworker of my brother spotted it and cried MacGillivrays and they all started roaring with laughter.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: meself
Date: 22 Mar 18 - 03:18 PM

Senoufou: didn't we go through this with some other branches of our respective families a couple of years ago?

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 22 Mar 18 - 03:23 PM

We may have done meself. But as I can hardly remember what I did yesterday, two years ago represents the Mists of Time for me!

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Iains
Date: 22 Mar 18 - 03:43 PM

Senoufou. My ancestors were children of the mist.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 22 Mar 18 - 04:01 PM

Were they Clan MacGregor Iains?

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Iains
Date: 22 Mar 18 - 04:26 PM

They were indeed

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 23 Mar 18 - 07:52 AM

I think too that it was about money and making the land profitable to its owners. The crofters were 'in the way' so without regard to the fact they were human beings, out they went.
In the past, the English have held this 'we are superior to all other peoples' idea, and it was behind most of the social injustices perpetrated over the centuries.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Allan Conn
Date: 24 Mar 18 - 12:16 PM

I don't really think a thread on the Highland Clearances need go down an "everything is the fault of the evil English"avenue. Sure there were some individual English landlords involved but the bulk of the people who evicted people off the land were Scots and pretty often themselves Highlanders. They might have been an anglicised upper land-owning section of the Scottish population but they were still Scots. Senoufou is correct in saying it was about profitability. Very much a class issue.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Iains
Date: 24 Mar 18 - 12:45 PM

There were a number of "plastic"clan chiefs betrayed their clans in order to fund the highlife in London . It is a complex story and would take volumes to do justice to the subject.
https://cranntara.scot/clear.htm

Today in the highlands 85 privately owned estates account for about a third of the total land area. 600 for about 50%.

The establishment of crofts has also been a contentious issue.

http://socialist-courier.blogspot.ie/2012/05/crofters-wars.html

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Allan Conn
Date: 26 Mar 18 - 03:02 AM

James Hogg's "A Tour Of The Highlands in 1803" is an interesting read. It is a series of letter addressed to Sir Walter Scott. Hogg writes about his displeasure at certain lands being sold off to what he calls Lowland Gentlemen but he also gives direct accounts of talks with Highland Lairds who are looking to increase their rents. One is with Mackenzie of Dundonnel. Dundonnel took the Ettrick Shepherd on a tour of his estate and asked him how much could be gained by putting sheep on it. Hogg said he only had a superficial view of it but estimated certainly not below £2,000 per annum. Dundonnel said that he was loath to chase his people away to America - but said they would not even pay him half of that and confirmed it was only at present £700 per annum. Hogg states though.................."He hath, however, the pleasure of absolute sway. He is even more so in his domains than Bonaparte is in France. I saw him call two men from their labour a full mile, just to carry us through the water. I told he he must not expect to be served thus by shepherds if once he had given them possession"

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 26 Mar 18 - 05:05 AM

Scotland's most expensive country estate sold for £10million!

I did the annual accounts of this estate for 3 years in the 1980s. I remember the partner in Binder Hamlyn (Chartered Accountants) going ballistic because I booked a flight to Edinburgh instead of going 2nd class on the night sleeper!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 26 Mar 18 - 07:49 AM

We found flights from Norwich to Edinburgh to be actually cheaper than the train Bonzo. And it takes only 1 hour!

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Jim McLean
Date: 26 Mar 18 - 12:54 PM

I wrote 5 Highland Clearance songs in 1966, 4 years before the excellent Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil. They were recorded and I know Joe McGrath borrowed the LP from a mutual friend.

The Shores of Sutherland
Smile in your Sleep
The Fire Raisers
Henny Munroe
The Laird's Prayer.

I read the book Gloomy Memories by Donald McLeod which was originally published as a series of letters. His title was in answer to Harriet Beecher Stowe's book "Sunny Memories", written after her visit to Scotlamd where she stayed with the Duchess of Sutherland. Some of the post above are correct in pointing out the perpetrators who drove and burnt some of people out were Scottish.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Allan Conn
Date: 27 Mar 18 - 02:42 AM

Sorley Maclean from Raasay, arguably the most important Gaelic poet of the 20thC and a campaigner for Gaelic in Scottish schools and he himself was a teacher on Skye, addresses the issue of poetry from the Clearance period in his book "Ris a Bhruthaich - The Criticism and Prose Writings".

He gives instances of poets who pointed the finger at the instigators of Clearance but a lot of the time everyone is blamed (the English, the Lowlanders, the Shepherds, even the sheep) except those actually responsible.

On one poet it causes him to write "the poem goes on to describe the desolation of the Highlands and to express with great power and even a physical contempt for the Lowland shepherds and farmers, their manners, their talk, their whole being, but not a disparaging word of the noble landlords whose pockets were being filled by the high rents paid by the shepherd farmers. I wonder if Ailean Dall's failure to indict the real authors of the villainy was due to stupidy, or to the intellectual confusion of the day, or to his intention of seeking patronage and subsciptions".

His point is addressed also at Mairi Mhor one of the prominent poets who wrote about the Clearances.

"It is only too common a feature of Gaelic poetry to blame Englishmen and Lowlanders for the crimes of Highland chiefs. This tendency gets an absurd expression in Mairi Mhor's wish to drive the Sasunnaich from Skye, where nearly all the principle Clearars had names at least as Gaelic as her own.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Allan Conn
Date: 28 Mar 18 - 02:57 AM

It is the other posters, including myself, who pointed out that Scots were involved in the Clearances. The vast bulk of the Clearers were Scots either Highlanders or Lowlanders. My very first post itself confirmed they were an anglicised upper-class land owning section of the Scottish population so no-one was "ignoring" that. Likewise are you really suggesting that writers like Sorley Mclean are attacking Gaelic and Gaelic culture? He was a native Gael and one of the most important figures of the Gaelic language movement of the 20thC. He didn't make excuses for the Clearances (and I can't see anyone replying to you doing that either) he simply pointed out those responsible. Likewise the idea that Scottish people (of Highland descent but it'd be as relevant if they weren't) are racist against Gaels because they point out that the landed class were responsible for the Clearances rather than "the English" is clearly absurd. You know we are largely a pretty confident bunch now and quite capable of looking at our own history and recognising the nation's skeletons in the cupboards without trying to blame every ill that ever befell us on those "evil English". I think I know who the racist is. Where are you? North America somewhere? In truth what has any English person ever done to you to make you so full of hatred?

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 28 Mar 18 - 03:24 AM

I think one should include the Wars of Scottish Independence when considering relations between the Scots and the English. I lived in Edinburgh and Glasgow consecutively for ten years, and eventually it dawned on me just how much the English were detested 'up there'.
As I said, my name was very Scottish, and I took on the accent of both cities, which helped my integration.

My bibulous Scottish boyfriend took me to many rugby matches between Scotland and England. I was under strict instructions not to shout for the latter or I'd be flattened.

When 'O Flow'r of Scotland' was bellowed out by the Scottish supporters, the animosity and hatred were palpable.

He once took me to his parent's house in Fife for 'tea'. His family were aghast that he'd actually got an English girlfriend, and positively bristled when I arrived. I was very young and vulnerable, and it was awful.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Iains
Date: 28 Mar 18 - 05:00 AM

To get a true perspective of the highland clearances it needs to be studied in the context of it's time. Over the same time period of the clearances an agricultural revolution was occurring in England and the Industrial revolution was making it's first tentative steps. At the same time the enclosure acts were created.
Between 1604 and 1914, over 5,200 individual enclosure acts were passed, covering 6.8 million acres(about 1/6 land area of England, I think) The impact on the individual peasant was similar to the cleared highlanders, in that they also were dispossessed. It never became a headline grabber though. Rights of housebote and firebote were lost aswoodland was enclosed and the openfield system terminated in most places. In reality, for the individual impacted, enclosure has the same outcome - no land, no house and no prospects apart from the slow growth of the factories.
The aristocracy owned Parliament, created all the enclosure acts, and also preferred sheep to tenants in some cases. They still comprise the
major landowners in Britain.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Mar 18 - 08:49 AM

Some time ago I gave a talk on Song and History at our local History Society
I carried out a great deal of research on the Enclosure and seizures of land in Ireland
If this is no interest - please ignore it
Jim Carroll

The seizure of what was originally common land began in England in the 14th century and became widespread in the 15th and 16th centuries. Wealthy and powerful landowners annexed huge tracts of commonage as part of their own estates, planted hedgerows and built fences around them to prevent access by members of the public.
Common land was used by working people as an essential source of food to feed their families. It was the practice, for instance, of factory workers, landless labourers or tradesmen and artisans involved in cottage industries to use common land to graze a cow or a sheep or raise poultry, even to have a small market garden. Commons were also places where a rabbit, a pheasant or even a small deer could be got to supplement the family diet.
With the closing off of the land this vital source of sustenance disappeared overnight.
The effect on rural life was devastating: it caused poverty, homelessness, and rural depopulation, and resulted in revolts in 1536, 1569, and 1607. A further wave of enclosures occurred between about 1760 and 1820.   Numerous government measures to prevent depopulation were introduced between 1489 and 1640, including the first Enclosure Act (1603), but were sabotaged by local magistrates who were usually influential landowners.
A new wave of enclosures by Acts of Parliament from 1760 to 1820 reduced the yeoman class of small landowning farmers to agricultural labourers, or forced them to leave the land altogether.   The Enclosure Acts applied to 4.5 million acres or a quarter of England. Some 17 million acres were enclosed without any parliamentary act.
It was probably the last bout of enclosures in the first half of the 19th century that inspired, not a song, but this anonymous rhyme:

The Goose And The Common.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own,
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don't escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so, but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

While the enclosures did not produce a spate of songs relating directly to the events, a side effect of the appropriation of common land provided one of the largest and most poignant bodies of songs in the English repertoire, the poaching songs. Deprived of the right to legally catch game on the old commons, the poor resorted to taking it illegally.   Many of them continued, as they had always done, to go out at night setting traps to snare rabbits and pheasants. The landowners retaliated by employing keepers to protect what they considered their inalienable right to their newly-acquired property. They also resorted to setting mantraps, large, viciously toothed spring-loaded devices capable of breaking a man’s leg and inflicting deep wounds. The response of the poachers was to go out armed and in larger numbers. This escalation led to a period of English rural history known as “The Poaching Wars”.   It worked like this. Men who had previously gone out poaching singly resorted to teaming up with others to offer resistance to the gamekeepers employed by the landowner. The landowner would, in his turn, employ more keepers and so ad infnitum. One song from the eastern county of Lincolnshire, entitled “The Rufford Park Poachers” tells of a pitched battle between forty poachers and a similar number of keepers.
On being apprehended the poachers would be tried by local landowners who would, as was to be expected, show little mercy. First offenders would usually be heavily fined, but the most common punishment for a repeating offender was transportation to the penal settlements in Australia, often for periods up to fourteen years.
The songs created on this subject cover the whole gamut of attitudes and emotions: despair, anger, defiance, repentance even a boisterous humour, but to my mind among the best of them is the one popularly found in East Anglia.   Entitled simply “Van Dieman’s Land”, it deals with an event taking place in Warwickshire on Squire Dunhill’s (sometimes Donniell’s or Daniel’s) Estate. In my opinion it is a perfect example of a narrative English traditional song, and what makes it so good is its matter-of-fact presentation of the events. It tells how four young men go poaching, are taken by the keepers, tried at Warwick Assizes, and sentenced to be transported for fourteen years. They are placed on board ship, endure a three month voyage, land in Australia, are taken ashore yoked together like livestock, auctioned to the highest bidder and finally settle down to their fate.   
Whether the events described can be pinned down to one particular occurrence is debatable, but they are so typical of what was happening all over rural England that the song passed into numerous versions with different names and locations.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Allan Conn
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 03:01 AM

Seriously has anyone ever been flattened at a Scotland v England rugby match for shouting for either of the teams? Yes you get some bigots everywhere and I personally have had two very bad experiences in England simply because I had a Scottish accent - one ended up in an unprovoked attack on my friend who got a bottle pushed in his face. I would never suggest that meant Scots were hated in England though. It was just a bad experience. Likewise my brother-in-law from Norfolk was beaten up in Scarborough simply for being southern!! Unfortunately these things happen everywhere and they can and do happen in Scotland too.

There have actually been detailed studies of being English and living in Scotland. One was done by Dundee University and resulted in the 2003 book "Being English In Scotland" by Murray Watson. The findings were that although there were twice as many English born people in Scotland than all the other incomers put together the percentage of assaults, verbal abuse reported by English incomers was only like 5% of that reported by other incomers. You are far less likely to be abused for being English than incomers in general are likely to be abused.

Added to that the vast majority of English people (again it was over 90%) who did complain about a negative reaction to them conceded it was low level teasing about sport and politics that bothered them. I imagine that if you are an English left-winger then being blamed for voting for Margaret Thatcher might get a bit tedious.

I've seen myself how different people react though. My wife has been living here for over 30 years and has no complaints or reservations whatsoever. Her mother on the other hand has been here for over a decade and she is hyper sensitive. She sees people not cheering for an England football win as being discriminatory against her personally. The horror story she has recounted countless times was when my wife and her were visiting an old woman in hospital who said "there's one of the enemy in the next bed". Mum in Law almost saw that as positive proof that she herself was hated for being English - whereas my wife says the two patients were friendly and the old woman was simply joking in the way Edinburgh/Glasgow folk joke about each other.

So yes some people don't take so well to living in Scotland but the facts speak for themselves and something like 9% of the Scottish population are English born. There are no English areas or English ghettoes etc. English people in general fit perfectly well into Scottish society and do not in general suffer through being hated.

That is not to say there are no bigots. Of course there are - but you can't suggest the vast bulk of the population are like that!

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Allan Conn
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 03:21 AM

Removal from the land happened everywhere but that doesn't though excuse the magnitude or sheer sudden brutality of some of the Clearances. Despite people moving away, or being forced away, the population continued to rise to a high in the 1840s then there was more massive upheaval, expulsions and starvation following the potato famine. Not on the scale of Ireland but pretty devastating all the same. The population of the Highlands and Islands as a whole plummeted. So I wouldn't, or didn't mean to, downplay what happened. My only point was that as far as the forced evictions go they were for the most part carried out by the Scots landed class so it was wrong to blame "the English" as such.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Iains
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 04:23 AM

In the case of Ireland commonage had a vastly different origin, resulting largely from the breakup of large estates. Many farmers in the upland areas have freehold farms but also a joint share of adjacent commonage. Where those with entitlement to graze reach agreement, these commonages are still being enclosed today. Because of CAP regulations these areas have been overstocked and understocked and are now subject to individual management plans in order to gain GLAS payments.

What happened prior to the breakup of the estates is a different story.

{Over the years the shareholders on many commonages have decided to “stripe” or split their commonage between them. In spite of this approx. 426,000 Ha of commonage remain.(total area of Ireland 6.9million Ha) Over 11,000 farms have a shareholding in one or more of the approx. 4,500 remaining commonages.}

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Senoufou
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 06:01 AM

Allan, I've had a beer can full of urine chucked at me at a rugby match at Murrayfield. And been spat on. I met with anti-English comments from people in Fife (Kirkcaldy) including aunts and uncles of the boyfriend.
I quickly learned to disguise my place of birth, as I said above.

My sister (a retired hospital doctor up in Perthshire) has also met with Scottish Nationalist Party aggression triggered by the fact she's not a Scot by birth, in spite of having spent over forty years up there, doing her medical training then tending to the sick.
My experiences were in the Sixties, so I'm pleased to hear you say things are different now, fifty years later.

And I can also sympathise with the Scots' attitude, having learned much about Scottish history. Between 'The Rich' and 'The English', the ordinary Scots have truly suffered many injustices over the centuries.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 06:18 AM

"In the case of Ireland" land ownership came to the fore when Ireland was at its weakest
Farming was overwhelmingly a small-farm set-up
The predatory landowners used the opportunity of expanding their holdings at the time of the Famine, when farmers were unable to pay their rents - the end result was that those evicted either died at the side of the road or emigrated
When the landowners were forced to break up their estates, the government ascertained that the land was given to the wealthiest farmers, which led to the Land Wars and the cattle rustling protests
These protests officially ended in 1911, but continued in some areas up to and beyond Independence in 1922
Land seizure was always as much a political ploy - a solution to the "Irish Problem" as it was about land
It was a part of what is still referred to as "The Irish Holocaust"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
From: Iains
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 10:08 AM

The reality is that modern farming could not exist without enclosure and this process occurred over swathes of Europe as well.
"In Europe enclosure made little progress until the 19th century. Agreements to enclose were not unknown in Germany in the 16th century, but it was not until the second half of the 18th century that the government began to issue decrees encouraging enclosure. Even then, little advance was made in western Germany until after 1850. The same policy of encouragement by decree was followed in France and Denmark from the second half of the 18th century, in Russia after the emancipation of the serfs (1861), and in Czechoslovakia and Poland after World War I. Common rights over arable land—which constitute the most formidable obstacle to modern farming—have now for the most part been extinguished, but some European land is still cultivated in the scattered strips characteristic of common fields, and common rights continue over large areas of pasture and woodland."
The reality is that peasant farming was inefficient and not capable of generating the required level of investment to progress. Modern arable farming requires single blocks of significant hectarage to operate efficiently, strips comprising roods and perches can no longer hack it.
   It is carefully overlooked that the displaced persons also created victims. How many native peoples suffered as a result of uncontrolled immigration?