please sign my petition

[pourfarmer]

I couldn't imagine having your livelihood taken away like that... Especially with a young family.

Reading about The Clearances. WOW

[tweety]

grassy, can you do a little more searching on it? You reading it would be able to see thru the media bias more-so then us.

[grassfarmer]

Tweety, I don't want to comment on hedgehogs particular case as I don't know the in-and-outs of it and the situation around these tenancy disputes is immensely complicated.
I'll give you a little background and some links for those wanting to understand it better.
Historically Scotland has a long history of landowners owning farms and tenants renting them covered by various pieces of legislation. The 1991 Act was important as it was the last of the "old style" where tenants had a lot of security of tenure and succession rights.
Through the 90s it was seen not to be working as landowners were reluctant to rent out farms with these constraints so there was a move to "limited partnerships" between tenants and landowners which was a way to get around security of tenure provisions.

In 2003 the Government came out with a new act which in reflection wasn't good legislation. The European Commission of Human Rights later intervened and made the Government go back and change parts of this legislation.
There are relatively few farms and farmers in the position hedgehog is - they were caught in the middle of these law changes.

An important legal case was Salveson versus Riddell which ended with tragic consequences as the farmer committed suicide after being evicted from his farm.

A couple of links that give you some more detail are

http://www.tenantfarmingforum.org.uk/eblock/services/resources.ashx/000/240/962/TenantFarmingForumGuidetotheAgriculturalHoldings_S cotland_Act2003.pdf

and

https://www.supremecourt.uk/decided-cases/docs/UKSC_2012_0111_Judgment.pdf

[grassfarmer]

Away from the specifics of these cases I'd like to comment on a couple of things.
The Highland Clearances are greatly romanticized and somewhere where it's easy to point to the villains (the landlords). Sure there were some really bad ones but the role that potato blight played in the Clearances is rarely mentioned even in Scotland. The Irish Potato famine is well documented but it was happening in Scotland too - the crofters trying to eke out a living on small areas of poor land relying on the potato were in a pile of trouble anyway, it was a way of life no longer sustainable. Moving overseas was forced in some cases but it was a life saver in others too.

A couple of thoughts come to mind comparing these events to modern day. How does it sit with you folks that are independent, free-enterprise minded landowners that someone might challenge you in court for the right to own your land? That is the position these Scottish landowners see themselves in.

And while there is shock expressed at the cruelty of the Highland Clearances there is not much benevolence shown to modern day migrants fleeing from Africa and the middle east, many of whom are just similar displaced rural dwellers seeking to escape war and famine and make a better life for themselves.

[Braveheart]

Grassfarmer, with the exception of a few Highlanders with deep Gaelic connections that might have some Irish Fenian cousins, most Scots that immigrated to Canada as a result of The Clearances didn't have any suspicion of terrorism suspected. Nowadays, can anyone from the Middle East, North Africa, etc really be fully vetted?

[Braveheart]

By the way Grassfarmer, a small irony, you live just a few miles west of the boundary of Argyll municipality. The house of Argyll was one of the most aggressive lairds in The Clearances.

[grassfarmer]

Braveheart, "terrorism" wasn't a thing back then but I don't doubt that there were some murderers, cattle thieves etc that emigrated. We didn't catch them all and send them to Oz.

I don't doubt there are many, many genuine migrants trying to escape north Africa particularly. You can't write them all off as terrorists or extremists.

It's a good job the native Americans didn't pursue a "no immigrant" policy, lol.

[Braveheart]

They tried (First Nations). Too little, too late.

[hedgehog]

Thankyou everyone for your interest and understanding. This is a terrible time for us, but we have so many people who have supported us which is easing the burden.
The highland clearances happened because only one man decided who could reside on the land, the laird.This is the same exactly. He wants the farming subsidy to himself.
The worst clearances were in 1815 in strathnaver long before the potato
problem, in fact it was the loss of the highlanders grazings and arable in the clearances that forced them to depend on the potato on the miserable plots allotted to them.

[tweety]

Thank you very much grassfarmer