Vatersay Raiders by Ben Buxton

Author:Ben Buxton [Buxton, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857904928
Publisher: Birlinn

Many of the newspapers and opposition politicians claimed that the raiders were led by ‘others’ using the case for their own ends. Lady Cathcart issued a statement in The Scotsman of 24 June hitting back at the ‘organised campaign of misrepresentation by political agitators . . . the public are being misled and deceived.’ She questioned the hardships claimed to have been suffered by the raiders, citing the case of one of them (elsewhere identified as Duncan Campbell) who had had a croft in Barra for ten years prior to 1901, during which he had paid only one pound of the twenty he owed for those years. She said that being fishermen they could make their living if they applied themselves to it (like her tenants on the coast of Aberdeenshire, she meant). She scorned the ‘spurious public sympathy’ for the raiders encouraged by the Lord Advocate’s ‘poor things’ gaffe the previous summer.

One of the ‘agitators’ was, according to The Glasgow Herald of 18 July, ‘an energetic emissary of the Land Values and Free Industry Union, Mr Kinloch. He came to prospect, but remained to address a meeting in Castlebay. He assured the men of Castlebay that the land reformers of Glasgow would stand by them. The assurance was of course warmly cheered, but a subsequent observation by the speaker that “he certainly thought they should break the law rather than starve” obviously struck his shrewd auditors as not quite prudent advice. It was received in solemn silence.’

A writer in The Scotsman of 14 July seized the opportunity to ridicule Scottish Secretary Sinclair for applying double standards: having taken no action over the raiding of Vatersay, for which he was widely criticised, he issued warnings to the raiders of part of the farm of Eoligarry, Barra, to desist. With breathtaking hypocrisy he claimed that ‘the consequences might be most serious for themselves and their families . . . a heavy criminal responsibility will rest upon them as wrongdoers.’ Regarding Vatersay, the writer’s view was that ‘if Sinclair shrinks from the use of gunboats for the vindication of the law he must take over the entire responsibility for Vatersay . . . he can only do this by purchase.’

The sentences were a humiliation for the government, and Sinclair in particular, since they had refused to initiate any legal action. The publicity, and scathing attacks on Sinclair in the House of Commons, put pressure on him to renew negotiations with Lady Cathcart. She had actually withdrawn her offer to cooperate with the Scottish Office because of its refusal to accept responsibility for paying compensation to the farm tenant for giving up his recently renewed lease. Sinclair caved in on this point, provided – and this did not emerge until the following year – that Lady Cathcart order the release of the men. Sinclair also agreed to provide a water supply; essentially he agreed to conditions originally set out by Lady Cathcart in October of the previous year.7

On 18 July it was announced

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.