land raid
{{short description|Form of political protest in Scotland}}
{{redirect|Land raiders|the 1969 film|Land Raiders (film)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
A land raid was a form of political protest in rural Scotland, primarily in the Highlands.
History
A land raid was a form of political protest in rural Scotland, primarily in the Highlands.{{cite book|last1=Robertson|first1=Iain J.M.|title=Landscapes of Protest in the Scottish Highlands After 1914: The Later Highland Land Wars|date=2016|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781317108047}} Land raiders threatened to seize, or seized, land which they claimed had been unfairly taken from them or their forebears. Landowners, and the law, regarded the protests as a form of squatting. Land raids were particularly common in the Hebrides, but some of the most prominent cases occurred on the mainland, for example in Wester Ross and in Sutherland. Examples include Coll, Lewis (1888) and the Raasay Raiders (1921).{{cn|date=June 2022}}
In 1906, landless men from the island of Barra crossed to Vatersay. The latter was a fertile island run as a single farm but its owner Lady Emily Gordon Cathcart had only visited once in 54 years. After the cottars refused to leave, Cathcart took ten of them to court in 1908. The judge said the owner had neglected her duties, but still sentenced the men to two months in prison.{{cite news|last1=Quinnell|first1=Teàrlach|title=The story of the Vatersay raiders|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/highlands_and_islands/6653709.stm|accessdate=18 September 2017|agency=BBC}} In 1909, the Congested Districts Board bought the island and broke it up into 58 crofts.
The Seven Men of Knoydart were returning servicemen who made an unsuccessful raid on land belonging to Nazi sympathiser Lord Brocket in 1948.{{cite book |last1=Scott |first1=A. |title=Native Stranger: A Journey in Familiar and Foreign Scotland |date=2015 |publisher=Hachette UK |isbn=978-0751561227|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5zyNBQAAQBAJ&q=%22seven+men+of+knoydart%22&pg=PT343 |accessdate=10 August 2019}}
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
Further reading
- {{cite journal |last1=Leneman |first1=Leah |title=The last successful Scottish land raid |journal=Northern Scotland |date=1 May 1990 |volume=10 (First Series) |issue=1 |pages=73–76 |doi=10.3366/nor.1990.0006 |url=https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/nor.1990.0006 |issn=0306-5278|url-access=subscription }}
{{Authority control}}
{{Squatting in Scotland}}
Category:Land reform in Scotland