For my final speech as the member of the Scottish Parliament for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross since 2011, I will explore bringing more local control to the people whom I have had the immense privilege to represent. I will reflect on how the Highlands and Islands region, which I represented from 2003 to 2011, and my huge mainland constituency, which is the size of Northern Ireland, have suffered without sufficient say in their affairs. I hope that I will point out how decisions that affect local lives can be sustainable and socially just and how, by applying subsidiarity, all our communities around Scotland can, I believe, thrive.
First, I will recall some of the pressures that have shaken our land and shaken out its people. The so-called improvements by lairds in the early 19th century evicted the age-old, cattle-raising Gaelic communities from the most fertile land and brought in sheep farming, deer shooting and salmon angling for personal gain and the pleasure of the rich few. The results have been stark. Since around 1810, the exodus of surplus population to the industrial areas and to the ends of the earth has been augmented by losses in war after war, which has undoubtedly made the area clearances country.
I whole-heartedly welcome the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, as it can pave the way to build on the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, which has enabled 500,000 acres to come into community ownership. The cause has a long back story. Early protest against individual clearances led to the major victory of the 1880s in the crofters’ war for secure rented tenure. In the 1920s, the Stornoway Trust gained local control, but it was the 1992 fight by the Assynt crofters in my constituency to win their land that ignited the modern debate.
Professor James Hunter talked of
“new lights shining in the glens”
when the crofters won. In praise of their 20,000 acre purchase, my old friend the singer-songwriter Andy Mitchell told it like this:
“No love nor commitment those past lairds did display,
A playground for the wealthy always was their way,
This land they once stole from us, they’ve now been forced to sell,
Since we’ve paid for what we own we’ll try to keep it well.”
Our Scottish Parliament will leave its teenage years behind and reach adulthood before the 2021 election. As discussed in the strategy report on having 1 million acres under community control, there is a new mood of hope for more diverse land ownership that is ready to roll.
That opens up wider questions about the democratic deficit in local government, as well as the need to build confidence and capacity and to use every possible resource to maintain and, we hope, repopulate more of our land beyond the crofting communities, create more smallholdings and create 1,000 huts and allotments across the land. We must apply human rights under the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to ensure that local people have the right to decide how to provide affordable housing, safeguard their most cherished environmental features, supervise local health provision and develop a vibrant local cultural life.
When I was a district councillor in Ross and Cromarty from 1988 to 1996, our policy had to cope with a steep downturn in economic activity, such as the then oil slump. Ross and Cromarty District Council promoted quality of life at the core of its work. Fèis Rois and arts provision were created alongside environmental adaptation and modern affordable house building.
In 2010, as an MSP, I consulted on decentralising services in local government and argued that small works. Today, the urgent need to develop local control could not be clearer. Local management of the Crown Estate coastal funds is looming and strategic planning of considerable community benefit funds from renewables is urgently needed.
The need to break up Highland Council, which covers an area the size of Belgium, is widely discussed. How can 80 councillors meet local needs in an area of that size? Caithness has always wanted its council back and deserves to have it. Other areas should have that, too.
In Highland, the democratic deficit shows as one elected councillor per 4,000 voters. Germany has one to 500 and representatives have full planning and service powers in thousands of communes. In Scotland, we must gain the right for local communes around groups of secondary schools and their catchments to decide local taxes to meet local needs. That is urgent business because, as the Parliament grows up, so should local democracy.
On the environment, my constituency has been heavily subject to conservation by command. All manner of designations hamstring scattered communities. We have a quarter of the high-profile core wild land areas. Our hinterland is criss-crossed by restrictive designations. We need conservation by consent.
We are caught between the zealots of the John Muir Trust, who want no wind power and who fail to manage deer culls acceptably, and some retirees and the rich, who often object to renewables or other developments in sight of their properties. Dougie MacLean described the latter in his song “Homeland (Duthaich mo Chridhe)”:
“You sold your house in the city
You put it on the market and you did so good
Now you’ve bought a little piece of something
That you don’t understand and you’ve misunderstood”.
Despite the growing constraints, I have witnessed many leaders emerging over the years—even from the smallest communities—to make a difference. Open debate and the ability to spend taxes will bring out many more local voters if we have more local elections.
Those who have led communities to own their own land include the late Allan MacRae of Assynt; Maggie Fyffe in Eigg; Willie McSporran on Gigha; and the real David Cameron, of North Harris. They have made their own lands places of possibility, aided immeasurably by the late Simon Fraser of Carloway—at last, the poor had gained a lawyer.
I have so many folk in my constituency to thank for advice and support, including my staff over the years, two of whom are now members of Parliament. I thank my current staff: Niall MacDonald, Maureen Forbes and Councillor Gail Ross. They call me the moss boss—I will not explain why, but some members will know. My sincere thanks go to the clerks of the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee; the Scottish Parliament information centre; my MSP colleagues, not least the RACCE members; and most of all my family and my partner, Eleanor Scott, who is my rock.
We live in a better land thanks to the huge support for this Scottish Parliament, which will soon reach adulthood. I will be cheering it on in helping to make our land fit for a sustainable future.
A dozen miles from where I stay on Easter Ross, at Kildermorie, in the winter of 1921, Christopher Murray Grieve taught the children of the estate gamekeeper, whose then laird Dyson Perrins—of Worcester sauce fame—was philanthropic at least in the village of Alness near his private kingdom. Much later, Grieve, who was the founder of the Scottish literary renaissance, having adopted the nom de guerre Hugh MacDiarmid, reflected in his long poem “Direadh Ill” on the act of surmounting difficulties. Thinking of the rugged Cuillins of Skye, he wrote:
“Let what can be shaken, be shaken,
And the unshakeable remain.
The Inaccessible Pinnacle is not inaccessible.”
My case for deepening local decision taking is unshakeable and rests on the solid ground of an increasingly confident Scotland where full powers are not inaccessible. [Applause.]