THE FUTURE OF CROFTING
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1954.tb00925.x |
| Author | T. A. F. Noble |
| Date | 01 June 1954 |
| Published date | 01 June 1954 |
THE
FUTURE
OF
CROFTING
SINCE
the Napier Commission’s
Report into the Condition
of
the
Crofters and Cottars
in
the Highlands and Islands of Scotland
in
1884,
Governmental responsibility for the welfare
of
this area has
been generally recognised. and it has been the field of much admini-
strative experiment, special legislation and public investment. Yet
the problem of the crofting districts as a whole has proved intractable,
and the passage of the years has been marked by a fall in their popu-
lation and an ageing of their population-structure that is even more
critical than in the rest of the country. In some districts the process
of
decay has gone
so
far as to cause the abandonment of human
habitation, and in many others, especially in the north-west main-
land and in some
of
the smaller islands. the number of active people
is now
so
small that the uneconomic maintenance of public services,
poor though these often are, can hardly be justified much longer.
The national conscience is stirred by the knowledge that the
crofting way of life represents one last bulwark
of
the traditional
freedom and independence of a pre-industrial civilisation. and
supports a virile, intelligent peasant stock to which the nation has
owed a great debt in war and peace in the last two hundred years.
Perhaps sensitive also to the claim that the Highlands have
a
right
to equality
of
treatment, at least, with any other underdeveloped
area, at a time when the benefits and obligations involved in their
development are becoming more generally realised, the country is
rightly reluctant to adopt the ruthless-though possibly least expen-
sive-solution that has been suggested. namely to evacuate the
population and ‘seal
off
’
the part of Scotland to the north and west
of
the Caledonian Canal.’ Consequently, as the process of decay
develops, public awareness of responsibility grows, the amount of
public spending in the Highlands increases, less is heard of the old,
bitter question
‘
Why
should
we help the Highlands?’, and more and
more official attention is given to the search for alternative solutions.
No
nation is willing in the last resort to watch part of itself die.
I
See
G.
C.
Hayes,
‘
A Survey
of
West Highland Agriculture
’.
in
Proceed-
ings
of
the
Agriciiltural
Economics
Society,
Vol.
X,
No.
1,
June
1952.
pp.
35-59.
This excellent discussion, needless to
say,
rejects the extreme
solution
of
evacuation.
174
THE FUTURE
OF
CROFTING
175
I
A White Paper published in July
1950
(Cmd.
7976,
A
Pogramme
of
Highland Development)
committed the Government more
definitely than ever before to attempting a constructive solution,
based on what it called
'
the new factors (of) the increased importance
of
home food production, the necessity for a large-scale programme
of afforestation, the development of hydro-electric power in the High-
lands, and the greatly increased importance of the tourist trade'.*
So
far as the first
of
these factors was concerned. the White Paper
made
no
attempt to discuss the reform
of
the crofting system, save
for
a
passing reference to an experimental 'first step' by way of
'
reorganisation by agreement (of smallholdings) in crofting townships
on
land owned by the Secretary
of
State', and to the intention of
restarting work
on
land settlement.J But in June
1951
a new Com-
mission of Enquiry was appointed, with the following remit:
'To
review crofting conditions in the Highlands and Islands with special
reference to the secure establishment of a small-holding population
making full use of agricultural resources and deriving the maximum
economic benefit therefrom; and to report.' It was certainly implicit
in this remit that the Government believed a solution to the problem
could be found
within
the framework of the crofting system.
Since
then the literature
on
the subject has been greatly enriched,
not only by the
Report
of the Crofting Commission, which appeared
in April of this year,' but also by the publication, in December
1953.
of the late Adam Collier's book,
The Crofting
edited
and furnished with a foreword, up-to-date statistics and footnotes
by Professor Cairncross. There is also to be published early in
1955
a
shortened version of the report of the West Highland Survey.
directed by Dr.
F.
Fraser Darling between
1944
and
1950.
The full
report, prepared in cyclostyled form in
1950-51,
has already taken
its place as one of the most influential documents of its kind ever
'For
an analysis of that programme,, cf. the present writer's 'The
Economic Development of the Highlands
,
in
The Manchester School,
Vol.,XIX.
May 1951, pp. 190-211.
Cmd. 7976, paras.
39-40.
The State is in fact the biggest landowner in
the Highlands.
'Cmd. 9091, April 1954,
to
be referred
to
hereafter as the
Report.
No
doubt this will come
to
be known as the Taylor Commission
Report,
after
its chairman,
to
distinguish it from the Crofting Commission
Report
of
1884
(the Napier
Report).
'Published by the Cambridge University Press as
No.
1
of a series of
Social and Economic Studies by the Department
of
Social and Economic
Research, University of Glasgow.
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