SLP Rural Land Policy - A Discussion Paper

Danus Skene, Scottish Labour Party, 11th April 1976

Caledonia Land Programme Introduction

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In this 1970s ground breaking paper on Scottish land reform the author maps out a set of radical policy proposals for the then newly formed Scottish Labour Party (SLP). At the core lies a search for democratic land policy instruments that address the issues of social justice, democracy and land use efficiency. The paper makes the case that land in Scotland has become a commodity concentrated in the hands of a very small number of owners. Many control vast areas (particularly in the Highlands) in the form of non-economic sporting estates which seriously degrade environmental qualities.

Three reasons are given for this being bad for the development of a modern, pluralistic, and democratic society. First, by distorting fiscal policies and public plans it weakens democratic institutions and functions, at both the local and national levels. This undermines the role of elected representatives. Second, by severely restricting access to and use of land it distorts and stifles local economic development, community well-being and the conservation of nature. This establishes the landowner as the de facto local resource planner. And third, it creates a vehicle for class formation, inequality and the concentration of absolute property rights. This puts power in the hands of an unelected few.

The paper then spells out how to create a land reform programme aimed at returning the land to its people with not only access to land, but control over that access. This can be done by creating a country-wide pattern of family farms run as independent small businesses, within a system of overall public control and democratic allocation of working lifetime tenancies. The paper specifically rejects both the nationalisation of agriculture and the establishment of a centralised Land Commission run by bureaucrats. The paper also proposes that shooting and inland fisheries should be brought into public ownership without compensation and that it should be made available to the general public under a licensing system.

The paper is significant for a number of reasons.

First, it presents sophisticated and novel thinking on land reform both within the 1970s Scottish debate and within the overall UK context.

Second, it presents a continuation of radical ideas on land nationalisation as a form of progressive redistribution of wealth. It reconnects in particular with the thinking of John Stuart Mill and that era. It also symbolizes a fundamental political break with the bureaucratic and statist land nationalisation ideas that dominated the British Labour party and its fellow travellers.

Third, it considers that all land must be allocated and managed democratically and at the local level. (This has similarities to the Scottish National Party's (SNP) position.) It proposes a system of local Land Boards functioning under central policy guidance and involving elected representatives of farmers, farm-workers, local authorities, community councils and other civil society associations. And, as part of this wider democratisation of economic assets, it specifically encourages the development of cooperative and other communal land and associated member-controlled initiatives.

Fourth, it addresses the issue of compensation by way of a novel pension mechanism. It proposes that compensation should be based on lost income from land-holding and not the full market value of land. The lost income would be paid as a pension which would be limited by a maximum and be taxable.

Comparing these ideas with those generated some 20-years later by the bureaucratically-led Scottish Office Land Reform Policy Group, one is immediately struck by its lack of vision, dullness and glossing over of the fundamental issues of power, social justice and democratic control. In particular, when examining in detail the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 community right-to-buy regulations and procedures, one is immediately struck by the over-elaborate, centralised and controlling hand of Scottish Ministers and their Edinburgh-based civil servants. Democratic local control and decision making on land, which should be a local matter, has been usurped by pawkie civil servants and their political masters.

Clearly it is time for a single decentralised network of local Natural Resources Agencies (NRAs). This would bring integrated control to and between the community right-to-buy functions and the powers and functions of the Forestry Commission, Scottish Natural Heritage, the Deer Commission, Agriculture Grant Services and the Crofters Commission. A common pool of central services would remain in Edinburgh providing Scottish, UK and European policy and parliamentary services. But each local Natural Resource Agency should be set up as a separate organisation similar to the current network of Local Enterprise Companies.

Democratic control and oversight of the NRAs should be exercised by establishing locally elected Land Boards. Membership of these Boards should be drawn from a broad range of local interests - agriculture, forestry, inland fisheries, environment, tourism, business associations, civil society, community councils and local authority representatives. The intention would be:

To return the land to those in each Scottish community who have an interest in it. This will involve not only access, but also control over that access and its associated public resources.

Graham Boyd, Geneva, June 2004

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