CHAPTER FIVE

Land, Land Everywhere but not an Inch for Sale

MY MEMORY IS NO CALENDAR. But there are ways to calculate the date of Maruma’s arrival on Eigg – an event that breathed new life into the land reform movement and opened the final chapter in Scotland’s history of feudal landownership.

Not that any of us present on the tiny Inner Hebridean isle that day knew it. And not that the final chapter has yet closed.

The mysterious ‘fire artist‘ from Stuttgart became the last private landlord of Eigg, 16 miles west of Mallaig, after persuading the previous owner, Keith Schellenberg, to sell. Professor Marlin Eckhart – to give Maruma his Sunday name – or Gotthilf Christian Eckhard Oesterle to give him his real name – first appeared a few months afterwards, convinced journalists had been put off the scent by a press conference in Edinburgh, cunningly cancelled at the last minute. No journalist would now be able to race five hours to Mallaig, board a ferry and catch him in situ. He was safe. At that very last minute however, I was nowhere near the furious press pack, but on board a Cal Mac ferry en route to Eigg from Mallaig. And that scores off some dates on the calendar. If it was summer, I’d be on the privately owned Shearwater with its direct crossing from Arisaig – or direct until Ronnie the irrepressibly curious skipper spotted a minke whale, basking shark or school of porpoises en route. The conversation with Ronnie and the generally faster crossing time meant no islander or regular visitor used Cal Mac when he was sailing. So my presence on a Cal Mac boat meant Maruma must have landed in spring or winter when the Shearwater was out of the water for seasonal repairs. The rhythms of island life are that predictable and dependable.

Aboard the ferry, I was sitting in the cafeteria with island farmer Colin Carr and the enigmatic Donald MacLean – an intense, lean Scotsman rumoured to have served in the SAS. Given the length of the journey, we embarked on a bottle of Highland Park to the disgust of mothers who tugged their children away from our occasionally raucous corner. And that places the year in the mid-’90s when, two unlucky days a week, Eigg could only be reached after a five hour trip via every other Small Isle first. Far simpler though, it was the day after the birthday of Maggie Fyffe – one of the mainstays of island life. Which means Maruma landed at 11am on 9 April 1995.

The old pier at Eigg, the welcoming party and the Sgurr.

Any lesser event in the Eigg social calendar would not have pulled me from sleep at 6am into pitch darkness and torrential rain. But I’d made the trip dozens of times since I first encountered the Eiggachs in 1992 and became a Trustee of the Isle of Eigg Trust. The trick was to get up and jump straight into the car before the mind had a chance to waken properly and assess the length of the journey ahead. The waymarkers soon became familiar. West through Crieff and Comrie listening to the earliest part of Good Morning Scotland, losing the signal at St Fillans, weaving round Loch Earn and slowing down for another amused keek at the Clachan Cottage Hotel where I worked as a receptionist one eye-opening summer after leaving school. Climbing up to Lix Toll and along to Crianlarich, where the inevitable hard to pass lorries join the road from Glasgow till Tyndrum and the point where I imagine all hesitant drivers wilt before the wall of Munros and head west to Oban instead. Then the freedom of Rannoch Moor – past the takeaway on the Black Mount (shut at 8am), past the iconic rowan in the enormous boulder (growing at 8am) and past clumps of road-hugging deer in Glencoe with its waterfalls and brooding darkness. On across the bridge at Ballachulish (a favourite ’70s ferry crossing during particularly erratic summer holiday Riddoch family drives from Belfast to Wick). Then behind the inevitable tourist on the winding road past Corran Ferry where time stands still till Fort William. Past the pierhouse that used to hire rowing boats (now a fish restaurant). Round the town on the dual carriageway with glimpses of unlovely bins and back courts never intended to be seen by anything but boats (that’ll teach them for ignoring the aesthetic sensibilities of sailors). On through the string of Ben Nevis related B&Bs to the turnoff for the Road to the Isles and the certain knowledge the Mallaig ferry is now attainable in one hour, barring roadworks, tourists, or boats lifting lock gates and blocking traffic across the Caledonian Canal.

On past the Glenfinnan monument, the Harry Potter viaduct, the start of the old single-track road at Arisaig (now an elegant two-way road with overtaking lanes) and the switch to headlights which I always hoped might suggest (and excuse) ferry related urgency to more leisurely traffic ahead.

Past Arisaig pier, the tucked away beach used in the Local Hero film just before Morar, into Mallaig, onto the pier, into the office, out again onto the pier, up the passenger gangway (badly packed bags banging everywhere) and onto the first available seat, ticket still in hand, as if such a victory snatched against time, fatigue and distance needed proof.

‘What happened to you? Your eyes look like pissholes in the snow.’

‘Look who’s talking – how many weeks have you been away?’

‘Three days – we had a bit of a singsong last night.’

‘Which explains the voice. And the hair and the shirt and the…’

‘OK, we all look rough. How are you anyway?’

And then the hugs and stories since last time, and the drams and long trip round the isles till the ancient, crumbling Eigg pier was finally in sight, tucked safely behind the outlier, Castle Island – a great place to say there were sheep in the old days, when newly arrived subsidy inspectors could hardly face getting straight back on the boat to check.

By 2pm on 8 April 1995, the weather had improved dramatically and when people, luggage and island provisions were finally decanted from the large ferry to the small flit boat person by person, rucksack by rucksack, box by box and case by case, half the island had gathered on the pier to assess the amusement new people and provisions might add to island entertainment. A fixed link means supply containers can be driven off these days – but for long decades, in all weathers, everything islanders needed was subject to this dodgy seaborne juggling act.

That day, after the communal lifting, passing, stretching and unloading was complete, Colin Carr, Camille Dressler and myself led a posse of kids up the Sgurr – the mountainous outcrop that gives the island its name of edge or notch in Gaelic, Norwegian and Icelandic – and its distinctive tilted cap profile from the mainland. Over the long buyout years I must have climbed that Sphinx-like lump of pitchstone lava several dozen times – and its cliff-face became a metaphor for the islanders’ dilemma. From one direction, an unscalable cliff: from another, a long saddle with a safe access point halfway along its two mile length. Impossible or relatively easy – depending on your own location and perspective.

The reward for tackling the climb however, was always the same. A truly stunning vista. On a clear day, Muck sits low beneath the Sgurr like a sponge in a bath and beyond sit the tiny but distinctive Dutchman’s Cap off Mull and the brown Paps of Jura.

To the West, the mountainous spikes of volcanic Rum rise sheer from the sea like igneous turrets of a Narnian castle. Beyond that the tortured outline of the Cuillin, the high cliffs of Waterstein Head and beyond them all the dreamy, winking outline of Barra and the Uist. North sits the fat mountain clumps of Applecross, Torridon, Slioch, and An Teallach – the great western sideboard of Scotland – and below them the glinting white sands at Morar and Ardnamurchan. If there is a better view in Europe, I haven’t seen it. That spring day the Sgurr’s vantage point on the rest of the world seemed glorious – and symbolic.

I got some of the kids to gather dry grasses on the summit and lit them. The breeze took the burning bush a few yards up into the blue sky, twigs crackling and orange sparks flying as the little fireball drifted away from the Sgurr, burning brightly for a few glorious seconds. I stood transfixed, hoping none of the kids were sharing my own perverse urge to jump off after it.

Fire on the Sgurr. I’ve no idea why that should have happened the day before the fire artist Maruma landed. But the walkers got home, the long preparation for Maggie’s party began and finally, around 11pm, two Landrovers set off from the Kildonan side of the island crawling up the single-track road and over to the more populous township of Cleadale. One vehicle was operated by a screwdriver jammed into the ignition (lost key), the other had a door kept shut by binder twine held by the front seat passenger (broken handle). Since there was no car ferry to take island cars onto mainland roads, Eigg vehicles were exempt from mots and tax discs. The average speed on the eight miles of hilly single-track road was perhaps 20mph. With official passage on CalMac costing more than the scrap value of most bangers, the most common means of getting cars onto the island was to strap them onto the Shearwater (craning them on and off at either end) and hope for a quiet crossing. Either way, there was little point in running anything but the oldest vehicle on Eigg – though many families also kept a ‘proper’ licensed car across at Mallaig or Arisaig for mainland excursions.

The party was definitely worth the long journey. Maggie and Wes have always been the perfect hosts, with the island’s largest supply of sleeping bags, spare mattresses and sofas. The upstairs floor of the Fyffe’s traditional stone crofthouse has long been open house, especially for visiting musicians. Indeed, music was the most powerful unifying force in the story of Eigg. In 1991, Maggie’s determination to organise a Fèis (Gaelic traditional instrument learning festival) was thwarted by a last minute veto on use of the village hall by the island’s (mostly) absentee owner. Keith Schellenberg was a larger than life personality – a member of the 1964 British Olympic bobsleigh team who made his money in shipbuilding, livestock feed and agricultural chemicals.1

The Yorkshireman (of Liechtenstein descent) bought Eigg in 1975, promising leases, jobs and access to land for new residents. The people came, but the promised new dawn never materialised.2 Perhaps, as one sage observer wrote, ‘too many long term leases would diminish the value of the laird’s property’.

Fifteen years later, the situation facing tenants without leases and old people without hot water was serious. And yet it was the sense of frustration over that cancelled Feis which cemented a real change in island mood. The young folk felt cut off and controlled. The older folk felt basic rules of Highland hospitality were broken when they had to withdraw invitations to musicians, guests and neighbouring islanders. Years later Colin Carr resigned as farm manager and Schellenberg issued an eviction notice on Colin, Marie and their family of five on Hogmanay. Yip – seven people facing eviction for no reason. Yip – on Hogmanay. You couldn’t make it up. Colin’s decision to quit had been a hammer blow for the man who was once the darling of the artists, hippies and free spirits he invited to come and give Hebridean island life a try. By the ’90s, though, Keith Schellenberg was so isolated on the island he hardly ever visited.

His second marriage to Margaret Williams had foundered and the jointly owned island had been put up for sale to finance their separation. To general dismay, ‘Schellie’ immediately bought the island back himself – without the steadying influence of his former wife. That winter he announced the farm tractor could no longer be used for ‘other’ island purposes. This put Colin Carr as farm manager in the impossible position of watching neighbours struggle with smaller machines or the boots of old cars to hump large drums of diesel around and keep the population of stalwart, independent old native islanders in heat and light.

Despite ideal conditions for hydro and wind power, Eiggachs depended almost completely on expensive and hard to ship diesel for every energy need (apart from a few small pico-hydro schemes).

There were rats round most houses because no land was available for a rubbish tip (and, to be fair, the islanders hadn’t chosen to use any of their common grazing for that purpose either). So rubbish could only legally be dumped at the end of each croft.3 The old people were exceptionally hardy, but most were reduced to living in one room to conserve heat. As Gaelic speakers, they were slightly isolated from their (mostly) English speaking sons and daughters and the mixture of Scots and English incomers Schellie had encouraged onto Eigg. So there were plans to bring ‘the oldies’ together in sheltered housing and a day centre near the lovely Singing Sands beach at Cleadale – but these came to nought, thanks to the landlord’s missing signature.

That missing signature withheld a lot. The majority of families were not crofters, but tenants without leases. No leases meant no access to housing improvement grants for the best part of two decades, no chance of borrowing money against the value of the house for major repairs and every chance repairs might prompt rent rises. There was absolutely no chance of wheedling new land for new build from the Laird. As a result, the degree of overcrowding was phenomenal, and most children lived away from home during the week to attend secondary school in Mallaig, only to return to life in a shared bedroom with other siblings or – like the hardy George Carr – splendid isolation in the top floor of a draughty barn above the dogs and farm machinery. George called it the penthouse – but made visitors promise they would never go up there. Ever.

Nothing in the Eigg story was completely black and white though – Schellie’s rents were generally low and, inexplicably, he paid Colin and Marie Carr’s eldest son through Gordonstoun. Keith himself – like much of the landowning class – had been bunged off to private boarding school at an early age. Evidently, he was trying to strike an emotional deal, allowing some sort of inclusion in the Carr family. Keith would act as paternal provider and the Carrs would love and respect him like a surrogate dad. The day Colin quit as farm manager, the deal was in tatters and Colin was unemployed for the first time in his life. On an island where the majority of men were often jobless, it took courage to join their number and draw a line in the sand where the cynical, world weary wise-cracking would end and belief in the impossible – local ownership – could quietly begin.

From 1994, I was a trustee of the Isle of Eigg Trust (iet), composed mostly of sympathetic outsiders so no islander could be evicted from a rented house or sacked from an estate job for perceived acts of defiance. Clearly the tactic was only partly successful and hadn’t managed to protect the Carr family or Scottish Wildlife Trust bird warden John Chester, whose stout defence of his neighbours at Kildonan earned him a place on Schellenberg’s eviction list. I also set up a group called ‘Friends of Eigg’ – a well-connected bunch of Central Belt folk who met every month for several years to support the iet in whatever way was needed. Around a dozen folk, including ecologists like the late Andrew Raven, were ready to head Eigg-wards at a moment’s notice to help prevent evictions should Schellenberg decide to act. After several long, nervous months though, the Eiggachs decided the Laird’s threat had passed. But his clumsy threat had an unforeseen consequence, uniting almost the entire community behind fundraising for a community buyout.

If the bailiffs had ever arrived at the Kildonan farmhouse, I suspect they would not have gone quietly. Colin Carr was not an islander by birth, but came from farming stock in Stirlingshire, an ‘inconvenient truth’ playfully lobbed at him by island natives when he was in full verbal flight at their expense. But 20 years married to the local Marie Kirk had given Colin a positively Hebridean ear which delighted in unravelling the delicate nuances of island exchange. Colin noticed almost everything – said and unsaid.

Eigg’s penultimate private owner, Keith Schellenberg leaving after the island’s sale to Maruma. Courtesy of Kenneth Kean

One week at the kitchen table in Kildonan, talk was full of the expected arrival of Schellenberg. He was planning to remove sheep after his sudden decision to sell Eigg to the mysterious, foreign and non-agricultural Professor Maruma. He had already rejected a well-crafted bid from islanders. A disputed farming partnership was still being disentangled, so there was general worry that Schellie would arrive unannounced and take sheep that really belonged to islanders. The phone rang. Colin answered, stood up and switched ears, jamming his finger in the other to hear better. Recognising the voice, he smiled and put the call on speakerphone. It was the voice of an old man from the mainland.

‘Hello Colin. Maybe you could advise me about a boat that wants to land on the beach at Eigg next Wednesday at about 2pm. Would the tide be right for that, I wonder?’

Colin was the local coastguard as well as the special reserve policeman at the time.

‘Well, it depends on the size of the load.’

‘Och well it could be taking off 60 to 80 head of sheep. And maybe a large item of furniture.’

‘A heavy load, then.’

‘Heavy enough.’

‘Well, a 2 o’clock landing would give him two hours for gathering safely.’

‘That’ll be time enough, I think. It’s just that the gentleman doesn’t want everyone knowing his business.’

‘Well you’ve said nothing. If it was Schellenberg himself we’d be none the wiser.’

‘Just so. Well goodnight, Colin, and good luck.’

‘Cheerie.’

Colin put the phone down.

‘That’s it. Schellenberg’s coming next Wednesday and he wants the map.’

A ten-foot square framed map of Eigg dating from 1805 was evidently the ‘large item of furniture’ under discussion. Islanders claimed the map was gifted to them by the pre-war government minister Lord Walter Runciman, who owned Eigg from 1925–1966. Ironically, his Lordship understood island ways so well that gifts were made by verbal agreement and details went unrecorded. The map had never left the island despite changes of landowner, but without a bit of paper to wave, the islanders didn’t expect to win a legal wrangle with Schellenberg or his lawyers. So the ‘furniture’ was moved to a crumbling but watertight hut by the pier, an old transit reversed against the door, its tyres deflated and several old cars parked and locked around it with their keys removed.

The islanders weren’t exactly withholding the map but not exactly making it available for collection either. For months afterwards, it was moved from house-to-house as a further precaution.4

At midnight on 8 April 1995, Maggie’s birthday party was full of such tales.

Songs were sung, dozens of cans of McEwen’s beer emptied, whisky measures carefully poured into the bottle cap and shared round, tales of Schellenberg’s ignominious exit from the island recited and strategies for the next stage of the island story vaguely formulated.

At 6am, the weather was changing. I walked back to Kildonan before the rain hit and found my way to the attic bedroom in the dark – once the diesel generators were shut off for the night, they didn’t come back on till daylight. The wind had got up, so I tied one of my walking boots by its laces to the loop at the base of the skylight and hung a bag from the boot to add weight and minimise the danger of breakage. As usual.

Within minutes I was asleep – and within a few more minutes (it seemed) I was awake again. It sounded like a helicopter.

I looked at my watch. 11am. I turned over to go back to sleep. And suddenly it hit me. A helicopter. Maruma.

The household jumped into action almost simultaneously. Colin was first out the door – wellies on, decent shirt, old jacket and a trip to the pier to top up petrol in the Landrover, and maybe gather breath for that important first meeting. I’d been allowed to chum Colin (with strict instructions to act as a second pair of ears, say nothing and just listen). Colin drove up to the Lodge through the palm tree studded garden and past the mildewed front gate – then hesitated, reversed, parked instead at the back door and knocked on the servant’s entrance at the kitchen. A young woman answered, dressed almost as casually as ourselves. Maruma’s make-up free girlfriend, Marianne, led us through the damp smelling, Italianate Lodge to the kitchen where Maruma sat. He was one of the oddest looking men I’ve ever seen – a tall, bulky, inflated and puffy looking 41 year old with long, lank hair beneath a black beret he never removed. His eyes appeared slitty and assessing – his skin was pock-marked and drawn so tightly over his wrists he looked slightly inflated. There were duty-free cartons of Marlboro cigarettes, evaporated milk, coffee and sugar sachets, a few sleeping bags – and that was it.

Hey, tonight you will in a bed sleep, but Maruma will be on the floor. And Schellenberg has everything including the kitchen sink taken.

Looking at the rubble-strewn worktop, he was right. The kitchen sink was missing. Eigg’s new Laird was playing for sympathy and acting the underdog.

He didn’t offer us a coffee or a seat, so we stood awkwardly until his agent Vladi came in and Maruma decided he wanted to see round the island and meet the people. I never got Vladi’s first name or saw him without a tie or briefcase. Maruma introduced the well-dressed, dark haired German and explained his brief had been to survey the islands of the world, including the Seychelles and Maldives, to find a suitable place for Maruma’s Project (the Prof nearly always referred to himself in the third person). At that point only one thought was going through our minds – aye right.

I said nothing (for once) and took cues from Colin. Minutes after the household was awoken by the helicopter’s vibration, he had stopped a visitor trying to find an un-sampled bottle of whisky to present to the new Laird.

‘Things are changing here. And that tradition is the first to stop. He needs to get our approval – not the other way round. Not anymore.’

Now Colin was probing gently. Obviously Maruma had enough money to buy the island – but would need more cash to run and improve it.5

‘Would Maruma a Rolls Royce buy when he not enough cash for the petrol had?’ Gradually we all that day to German sentence structure adjusted.

Davey’s transit van (the island bus) appeared outside and we all poured in. The rain was lashing down, the windows steamed up and the excesses of the previous night – well, early morning – were still working on me. I expressed some surprise that Maruma was up for being trailed around the island so soon after he’d stepped out of a helicopter.

‘And I was in a survival suit that fitted her,’ he beamed, pointing to the diminutive Marianne. It didn’t bear thinking about. But it was worth considering that Maruma sat on planes and choppers for the best part of five hours to get from Stuttgart to Eigg. He was a man with a mission. But what was it?

Stop one – the doctor’s house, where fellow journalist Maxwell MacLeod caught up with the posse.

Vladi asked Maxwell and myself to stay in the van – funny how a good minder can always spot journalists – and the rest went in. Twenty minutes later, the group emerged and moved on to Dolly’s house. Maruma came out furious that an old woman could be left with only cold water and one habitable room. Colin told me later that Maruma had been genuinely angry and spluttered that having no bed was hardly a problem now. He wouldn’t have been able to sleep, thinking of her situation – and he couldn’t believe Schellie had ignored it.

One hour in, and despite the hangovers, islanders were starting to warm to the ‘Prof’. He said and did the right thing – precisely the right thing – everywhere. Earlier, at the doctors’, he’d been offered a large Macallan. He accepted it (which was socially correct) but because it was before noon he hadn’t drunk it (probably also correct for a serious new Laird). Finally, he rolled into the Fyffe household, where Maruma knew there had been a big party the night before – and despite a hasty morning tidy up, a few cans of McEwen’s Export were still visible. Maggie and Wes were sitting beside their display, holding mugs of black tea and roll-ups.

Maruma grinned.

‘Well, Maruma had plans a distillery on Eigg to build… but perhaps instead it should be a brewery?’

There were almost audible intakes of breath. The guy couldn’t speak very good English but he had just spoken fluent island. He had tried to make a joke.

  Journalist Rob Edwards discovered he was born near Stuttgart as Gotthilf Christian Eckhard Oesterle and changed his name when he saw the word ’Maruma’ reflected in a puddle in Geneva.

There was no doubt; we were starting to slip under Maruma’s spell.

Finally, the minibus crossed the island to Colin’s house at Kildonan, where Marie had volunteered to cook an evening meal for everyone. Marie has run a Bed and Breakfast (as well as being island Registrar) for decades and is a fantastic cook. No spindly haute cuisine, but steak pie, chicken curry, cakes, homemade bread. Maruma started eating and had polished off two bottles of red wine by the time conversation turned to his Concept and reason for choosing Eigg. It was perhaps one of the most fascinating conversations I’ve ever heard – the man was a genuine mystery, and yet the lives of 65 people hinged on his intentions. I remember trying to explain the limitations of crofting tenure to him, then to Vladi and then to both in rusty A-level German. The main point I was trying to make was that, although he owned the island, he couldn’t just build things anywhere he liked. The apparently empty meadows fringing the beautiful white sands of Cleadale Bay for instance, were common grazing.

‘Common what?’

‘A common place for cows and sheep to eat.’

‘What? And the cows have rights over this land? This is impossible.’

‘Not the cows, the crofters.’

‘Who is a crofter?’

‘Many of the islanders are crofters. It’s the way the land has been arranged.’

‘But if there are no houses then the land surely belongs to me.’

‘Well, not necessarily.’

‘But there were no cows there either.’

‘That doesn’t actually matter…’

‘So absent cows have more rights than real life owners? This is very strange.’

I could see he didn’t believe me. Jings, listening to myself I didn’t believe me. But that was perhaps the first warning shot we should have heard loud and clear. Maruma had plans to build. The conversation moved away from legal matters and onto Maruma’s reasons for buying the island.

During the day he’d been asked this at every house. His answer was that he admired the spirit of the islanders – defying their bad, feudal landowner. And this kind of spirit showed there was a positive energy that could be harnessed by a different owner to help his own Concept succeed.

And that Concept was actually quite simple. Holiday homes, a distillery, art studios, wind turbines and everyone working together in creative harmony. It sounded good.

It was clear the wine, the day, the fatigue and maybe some form of chemical interference slipped into his giant frame were all tempting Maruma to inch nearer to the truth. Or as we would eventually understand about him (and life in general I suppose), a truth.

‘I came here Schellenberg and his dog to visit and I made him an offer. Vladi and I for a walk along the coast went to let him decide. We came to this place you the Massacre Cave call, ja?’

At this point Vladi interrupted forcibly.

‘Professor Maruma. I don’t think this story is now one to tell.’

‘No, no Vladi. This one I will tell.’

‘Really, I don’t think…’

Maruma droned on over the protesting minder. We were on the edge of our seats.

‘So we up to this cave climbed where so many people from one clan have been, you know, smoked up by fire by another clan [400 MacDonalds were burned to death in the cave by rival MacLeods in the 16th century] and I stand there at this hole into the Mother Earth that so deep and narrow is. And I to myself think…’

Vladi’s hand covers his face.

‘I think this cave is like a uterus where the mother new life pushes out. Und like childbirth there is viel pain aber auch viel energie. Both pain and new life in the same place. And I think then this is why I must Eigg buy. You understand?’

And the amazing thing was, we sort of did.

‘Aye, right enough.’

‘Ach, you could look at it like that.’

‘It’s an amazing cave, that’s for sure.’

Vladi looked between his fingers. The madman had done it again.

The next day, they both disappeared quite early and we were all left piecing together what it all might mean.

‘Aye well, he’s hardly going to evict anyone is he? I mean, that would affect the positive energy he needs for his Concept.’

‘Do you think we’re part of his Concept or do we need to develop our own Concept to interact with his?’

‘For fecks sake, listen to yourselves!’

Of course it had to be Colin.

‘You’ve all been Maruma’d!’

‘No we haven’t. I think the guy’s quite genuine.’

‘He’s an actor. He didn’t put a foot wrong. Anywhere. That’s not normal. We still know nothing about him. Nothing. Where does his money come from? When’s he coming back? The guy’s a phoney.’

And although a few signatures did finally happen, releasing land for sheltered housing, improvements and a new tea room near the pier, Colin was right. Maruma visited only twice and wound up defaulting on one of two loans he’d taken out to buy the island (from Hong Kong and Liechtenstein). After a false alarm suggesting he had sold the island to the Pavarotti Foundation for an offshore opera school (you really couldn’t make it up) and a public appeal that saw £1 notes from kids and £100 cheques from grannies pour into Maggie’s home (she was now Secretary of the Island of Eigg Appeal Fund) – it was clear community control was just a matter of time, and of finding a million quid.

At that point I was Assistant Editor of The Scotsman; a useful position to make sure news about the island got coverage. Quite often the angle selected was a matter of fierce dispute. I remember arguing with then News Editor (now Scotsman Editor) Ian Stewart over news that Maruma’s Professorship had been awarded by a Mickey Mouse establishment in Louisiana. I insisted the fact he’d failed to issue leases (just like his predecessor) was more important. At the time though, Ian was probably right, because Maruma’s fake persona was unravelling fast. Clearly he’d been banking on the fact that years of delayed development would mean a flurry of state-funded infrastructure improvements raising the value of the island without Maruma himself having to spend a red cent. The state would issue housing improvement grants as soon as he issued leases. With the merest hint of stability, they’d also make long overdue improvements to the ferry, roads and electricity supply. All Maruma had to do was build high-class log cabins and a distillery overlooking the bay, and watch the income roll in from dream holidays and island whisky with its unique and now world-famous bolshie brand.

But it all took too long – in no small part because Vladi had never understood the intricacies of Scotland’s crofting tenure (and let’s face it, that’s easily done). Land used and held by crofting families in perpetuity could not be owned by the Laird, but non-crofting land couldn’t be developed by the crofters either. The result was an unproductive stalemate. Survival on a remote island was well nigh impossible without the capacity to build, improve housing stock and develop. Eigg needed a political solution. But politicians were woefully and shamefully absent.

The local MP at the time, Russell Johnston, refused to help because he decided a landowner (even an absentee) would be a better landowner than islanders who lacked management experience. Political etiquette meant almost no other MPs would then get involved. Thankfully though, Lib Dem Councillor Michael Foxley paid no attention to party rules and was a constant supportive presence during the buyout years along with other individual councillors and staff members at Highland Council. Labour mp Brian Wilson was a regular visitor, though the city-based core of the People’s Party in Scotland failed to engage. The strangely biddable Tory Scots Secretary Michael Forsyth arrived a year before the buyout and said he was ‘rather appalled’ with a situation that was ‘pretty shocking and not sustainable’. But he came up with no solutions or cash. The young Nationalist and teacher Angus Brendan MacNeil (now SNP MP for the Western Isles) visited but the SNP leadership didn’t.

One of the biggest let-downs came from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), after a promising start at a meeting in Glasgow presided over by heid bummer Lord Jacob Rothschild. In the wake of the Churchill papers row (bought for the nation at a knockdown £12million in 1995), the Fund realised they looked like a bunch of toffs buying the accoutrements of toffs. They’d taken a great deal of flak over this and didn’t know how to reposition the Fund to dodge more hostile headlines. Sitting round the elegant dinner table at a four-star hotel in Glasgow, neither could I (representing The Scotsman) nor any of the other Scottish editors summoned to brainstorm a solution.

There was one big catch. The Fund could spend money only on capital investments like the purchase of an asset – building, artefact or art work – with national significance and historical value. What object that mattered to working-class people could possibly fulfil those criteria? Billy Connolly’s Banana Boots? The Townhead Library? The Rottenrow Maternity Hospital? The goalpost from that 1977 Home International?

Minutes of head scratching over exquisite starters rolled into hours chewing the minimal fat of seaweed-fed Orkney lamb. By the chocolate mousse it was clear we had come up with… nothing.

Rich people own nice things other rich people rate. Poor people don’t.

‘What about support for islanders who’ve raised half a million pounds to buy an asset all of Scotland thinks they should have? It’s in rather dodgy hands and in danger of being sold off by a foreign bank.’

Puzzled looks all round.

‘The island of Eigg.’

Puzzled looks now limited to the London-based Heritage Team.

‘Eigg’s an island off the west coast with a disastrous history of private owners – now islanders want to buy it. Land is an asset. So why not help them? It may be stretching the definition a bit but…’

The conversation was swiftly moved on.

I finished the chocolate mousse (come on, chocolate is chocolate) and got my coat to go. Lord Rothschild came after me.

‘We can’t go into detail in public now, but this is a good idea. We’ll be back to you soon.’ And to my amazement, they did. Eigg got a case study number. Jemimas and Jeremys from the Lottery Fund travelled to Eigg, met the locals, savoured the views, heard the frustrations and got religion. It was like Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero all over again (in those days before mobiles the Lottery folk even had to use the island’s scenic but solitary red phone box). Things progressed until an offer was ready.

I was working in London at that point and stayed in a hotel near Broadcasting House run (even then) by East Europeans. I’d been staying on a regular basis three nights a week for several years – and had long chats with staff in the wee small hours when I was dropped back after presenting BBC2’s aptly named Midnight Hour. As a result, I generally got the best room in the place with two windows facing away from the noisy street and, to combat the stifling warmth of summer evenings, a blessed electric fan.

Anyway, Colin Carr arrived in Euston looking strange with no sheepdog at his heel. The NHMF meeting was that same night, and though the man from the Hebrides was smiling, he was clearly a fish out of water. Colin didn’t want to take in the Galleries, Buckingham Palace or the shops. We went over the underground route several times but finally booked a taxi and another to get him straight back to the sleeper afterwards.

I left him looking decidedly uneasy – as it turned out, with just cause.

A poisoned chalice was on offer – a million pounds available right then and there if Colin agreed public agencies would have a controlling majority stake in Eigg with islanders in the minority. Forty-nine per cent control might have seemed pretty good to a tired man who’d travelled alone for three days to reach the feet of the great and the good. But Colin got up, thanked them for their time and walked out. No way would locals accept less than 51 per cent control, even if that meant losing the million pounds. The offer was removed from the table.

I was furious at the strings attached by lottery bosses but told to shut up. Wiser, calmer heads already realised the buyout would inevitably happen and lottery cash would be useful afterwards for improvement projects waiting in the wings. The Fund would deliver – eventually.

Back home, no-one questioned Colin’s decision. Perhaps more wise words were ringing in their ears. The charismatic ringleader of the Assynt crofters, the late Allan MacRae, had visited Eigg just after the historic Sutherland buyout in 1993 – and his advice was simple. Buy everything. Buy all the rights. Don’t be fobbed off. Get everything – go for gold.

Colin’s decisive response to the NHMF proved Eigg was actually already run by the community – or as human ecologist and fellow Isle of Eigg Trustee Alastair McIntosh put it, ‘un-lairdable’. With conventional landowners scared off, it was only a matter of time before the right cheque came through Maggie’s door to make that informal reality a formal truth.

And a few months later, it happened. I still don’t know the identity of the anonymous female donor from the North of England – Maggie Fyffe insists it wasn’t Catherine Cookson – but she coughed up more than £900,000. Deals were done with the Lichtenstein bank and finally, in April, Colin appeared unexpectedly in Edinburgh, saying he was down for a meeting with ‘the department’ about sheep dip. We got through one course of a lunch before he cracked.

‘We’ve bought the island – there’s a press conference in the Caley [Caledonian Hotel] in an hour!’

So with backing from the public, the mystery donor, friends, a few individual politicians, the Highland Council and the Scottish Wildlife Trust, Eigg made history as the first Scottish island to be bought by its inhabitants. Ever.

Why does the Eigg saga matter?

Well, it’s a great tale and this is just one tiny part and one person’s subjective version.6

But it reveals some truths about Scottish society which are both inspiring and downright alarming. In a country that likes to think of itself as a modern democracy, it took 65 people on Eigg an unbelievable eight years and a community buyout just to make sure each island tenant had a lease. Eight solid years of campaigning, organising, focussing on very little else and withstanding every attempt at bad-mouthing, deflection and obstruction. Before that, several generations spent their precious lives learning to dance round the egos of ‘great men’, second guess their temperaments and hang onto empty promises in the pursuit of security.

So much effort had to be expended in Scotland to reach a level of fairness that’s been normal in other neighbouring nations for centuries.

That’s why it’s important not to leave the story in 1997 at the buyout, because then only a point had been made. The Eiggachs real triumph was only possible once they had full control and the chance to make a mess or a miracle. And full control only happened after one final attempt by Keith Schellenberg to rain on the islanders’ parade.

In 1999, the aggrieved former landowner took legal action against several journalists, including myself. He tackled the Guardian first in the High Court, forcing islanders and supporters to write submissions of evidence and make long expensive journeys south to London for the trial. The defamation case collapsed within days, cementing Schellenberg’s reputation as a deluded and bitter man, ending the threat of legal action against anyone else and removing the only shadow left hanging over the Eigg buyout.7

So what did the Eiggachs do with this new-found freedom? The first action – after a week-long party – was the hardest. Peppercorn rents had to be raised to finance repairs – that wasn’t universally popular. Valuable contracts for housing repairs had to be drawn up and awarded – bad feeling could easily have been generated if contracts had gone to one local builder or an off-island firm. Instead the Eigg men decided to work together, not in competition, and formed the Isle of Eigg Building Co-operative, sharing contracts, income and employment opportunities. Within a few years the Co-operative had acquired considerable expertise and Eigg had full male employment – though of course activity ebbed and flowed.

New tenants had to be chosen for the renovated housing. Freed from the council allocations policy, which of the shortlisted applicants would Eiggachs favour? George Carr – the young, local, single farmer and occupant of the aforementioned draughty ‘penthouse’; an elderly woman and Eigg native living near Mallaig, or Grace and Tasha, the 20-something daughters of two Eigg families? Shrewdly, the Trust gave the first renovated house to the two gals sharing, echoing the findings of a Norwegian study of the same year showed that depopulation generally starts with disaffected young women – not men.

Norway’s first female Minister of Agriculture, Gunhild Øyangen, had surveyed areas losing people and discovered that contrary to local mythology it was local women who were leaving first:

The young girl dreams of another life than her mother’s. A professional career may be easier to obtain in the cities. The small villages are felt to be narrow-minded with no space for untraditional or unconventional behaviour. The girls lack relevant female role models, and few local jobs fit with their future plans. Many social and cultural activities are those that men favour, like hunting and fishing, and this does not necessarily attract younger women.

The Norwegian solution was truly radical. They introduced quotas to get women into local planning and politics – ‘women can be a vitamin injection in the democratic process.’ They paid remote mums or dads who wanted to bring up their children full time. They gave special funding to women setting up businesses in remote areas on the grounds that ‘women’s ventures add value to the raw materials produced by male labour.’ They backed places for socialising other than the sheep fank. They put public money into creating challenging indoor jobs not just more jobs at fish farms. And they paid for good public transport to stop women feeling trapped without access to boats or cars.8 Without even reading the report, the Eigg islanders had intuitively reached the same conclusion and made an inspired departure from the usual social housing priorities. Grace and Tasha were friends back then – today they are both young mums living on Eigg with their own children. George left to study agriculture and came back to run Lagg Farm with his partner Saira and their young daughter. Putting young women first, putting friendship on a par with marriage and keeping young folk on the island has been Eigg’s greatest achievement.

‘Eiggtricity’ came along in 2008 when expensive, polluting diesel was finally replaced with a mini-grid integrating solar, wind and hydro energy and a unique system of ‘demand management’ – islanders cannot use more than 5KW without tripping their house and businesses have a 10KW limit. The system was chosen by Eiggachs and to date no-one’s been disconnected – switching off one device before switching another on is embedded island behaviour. House building is now relatively easy as long as newcomers stick to preselected plots where land’s contributed at a discounted rate so young folk can afford to build and stay. As a result, Eigg’s population is rising in contrast to her privately and quango-owned island neighbours of Muck, Rum and Canna.

Eiggtricity meant affordable energy security at long last, international publicity and a winning entry to the NESTA challenge (beating 100 other shortlisted communities across the UK) after islanders managed to cut emissions by a third in 2009.

Of course, Eigg is no Nirvana. There are disagreements. A few folk still remain opposed to the buyout. Under-employment is a worry. Volunteer burnout is a constant risk. And isolation is a big problem – especially in winter. In 2012, the GP of more than a decade, Rachel Weldon, took her own life – no-one had been aware of the near-permanent pressure that came with being the only health professional and on-call GP serving four island communities. The danger of trying to demonstrate success on Eigg is to suggest island life is perfect. It’s not.

On Eigg, as in life, success is by the way problems are tackled not their improbably absence. The island’s fate is now squarely in the hands of the people who live there. Quangos, councils, government departments and passing millionaires must all deal with islanders as equals – not easy to ignore, disposable locals. That’s a big result for islanders – and of course the ripples have spread far wider.

Eigg ensured that a Land Reform Act – including a Community Right to Buy and legal rights of access – became the first substantial piece of legislation passed by the new Scottish Parliament in 2003.9 Since then, 17 land buyouts have taken place and a 2011 report shows those communities are measurably more resilient than they were as private fiefdoms. In Stòras Uibhist on South Uist, turnover is ten times higher than it was in 2006, when Scotland’s largest community buyout took place. In general, school rolls have almost doubled, population has increased, energy supply systems have improved, local land ownership has prompted young people to build homes and start families and old people don’t face the unpalatable choice of living locally without heat or in a distant old folk’s home without company. Historian Professor Jim Hunter has calculated that all the community buyouts and associated improvement grants have probably cost the public purse £100 million – roughly equivalent to eight weeks of agricultural subsidy.10 Do many other public realm projects show anything like such a healthy return on investment – in human or monetary terms?

Eigg energy before (diesel generator) and after (homemade solar panel).

And yet, there’s still scepticism – about buyouts, community control and the long term capacity of people managing their own land. Amazingly, the first time I witnessed such naked hostility towards the viability of Eigg was amongst their nearest mainland neighbours on ‘Independence Day’ itself. Colin Carr, Maxwell MacLeod and I were waiting at Arisaig for the Doctor’s boat to make a triumphant crossing to the island after that heady day in Edinburgh. We decided to have a ‘hair of the dog’ and went into the hotel bar. A local man stood with his pint, one foot on the rail, one elbow on the counter. He glanced up at Colin.

‘You’ll be pleased with yourselves,’ he said.

Colin nodded and picked up his pint.

‘We are.’ News of Eigg was audible on a radio somewhere in the background. The well-wisher cleared his throat.

‘I give you five weeks.’ I was quietly appalled but Colin just smiled:

‘That long?’

In the days, weeks, months and years that followed, the Arisaig doubter was not alone in predicting and even inciting disaster for the plucky, over-confident islanders. Some Scots seem to have a deep-seated emotional need for all who challenge the status quo to meet with ignominious failure. Issy MacPhail experienced the same reaction to the success of the Assynt Crofters and developed her ‘crabs in the bucket‘ theory to explain it. Apparently if one crab tries to crawl out, the rest will pull it back in. The message seems to be, ‘If we’re going down, we’re all going down together.’

That day in 1997, the Eiggachs were finally on a fast-track to community development, leaving others to follow in their wake, stuck forever in the feudal slow lane. Their new perspective had allowed the Eiggachs to look at what was once an insurmountable obstacle and find a route to the summit – a bit like the route up the rocky Sgurr itself.

It would be easier for similarly disadvantaged communities to believe there was no alternative to the status quo but now the damned Eigg folk had visibly demonstrated otherwise. And the closer folk lived, the better they knew that the islanders were no super humans but ordinary west coasters like themselves. There was no escaping the parallel and that really hurt.

The Sgurr – a steep cliff face from one angle but an accessible summit (and great wind energy site) from another.

Of course, for every lukewarm response there were three or four ecstatic messages of congratulations and goodwill. In the end though, Eigg’s victory did not prompt a tidal rush of communities competing to repeat their declaration of UDI – despite funding from the newly established Scottish Land Fund. Why not?

For one thing, the inspiring human story of triumph over adversity on Eigg was all too quickly subsumed into a complex legal, political and historical case for land reform – absolutely necessary, but alienating for non-specialists. Broadcasters like the BBC were wary about ‘taking sides’ and urban Scots were unable to see parallels between dramatic land battles ‘in the sticks’ and city problems of land scarcity and high prices on their own doorsteps. Few small mainland communities were well-enough organised to take advantage of the new buyout legislation. And relatively few estates came onto the market anyway, giving locals little chance to make pre-emptive bids.

All in all, the community buyouts of the nineties and noughties started a slow burn on neighbouring Hebridean islands, but failed to set the mainland heather alight. Now – a decade after Scotland’s historic land reform legislation – fewer than one in ten communities that registered a desire to buy land actually managed to do it, and only 142 communities out of tens of thousands even tried. That could mean all in the garden is rosy… or it could mean the community buyout model is too daunting for all but the most determined city estates like West Whitlawburn or the most thrawn island communities like Eigg.

I’d plump for the latter explanation. Despite the challenge posed by Eigg, Gigha, Knoydart, Stòras Uibhist and North Harris, it’s generally been business as usual for Scotland’s landowners – buoyed by new revenue streams from wind turbines, conservation agreements agricultural subsidies and forestry grants.

Scotland still has one of the most concentrated patterns of landownership in Europe.11 The government cannot finance more than a few buyouts and individuals still cannot get their hands on small, affordable parcels of land. The ball is still in the large landowner’s court.

Working together and flat-out for eight long years, the Eigg folk did manage to deter any rival bidder, raised more money in a public appeal than the combined value of all their own homes and turned the tide of Scottish history.12 But the Eiggachs also quietly tolerated impossible circumstances for decades before making a public fuss or daring to believe they could do better than absentee landowners. Clearly the dead hand of disempowerment isn’t dislodged fast and the Eigg buyout every politician now applauds was achieved without formal help from any part of the Scottish political establishment.

Eigg demonstrated that land reform is about people not soil, the present not the past and relevant to every Scottish community, not just remote ones. And yet an Eigg-style buyout is still a giant leap from a standing start for most communities. As a result, the chain of (largely Hebridean) one-offs is an ever-growing exception to a still dominant rule of quasi-feudal land ownership. Which means stultifying ‘Old Eigg’-style situations are being tolerated by people across Scotland right now, as help is focused on those local fighting forces able to bid successfully for limited public cash.

Why is that?

Put simply, almost everyone in authority still has more faith in the capacity of tweed-jacketed, well-spoken self-made millionaires than in local people. It was the unpalatable truth in 1997 – and it’s the unpalatable truth today.

Certainly Land Reform legislation has helped communities buy land, islands, bridges, pubs, wind turbines, libraries, orchards, woodlands and even farms and these ventures have been life-changing for all involved. But there isn’t enough cash in Christendom to fund the purchase of very parcel of land, forest or water, nor the energy amongst unpaid volunteers with day jobs. And actually, why should there be?

Community buyouts alone will not reverse the disempowerment experienced all over Scotland today. The community on Eigg is now one of Scotland’s most capable – tackling everything from depopulation and climate change to saving the corncrake. I’ve visited the island more than sixty times over two decades. Without frequent visits and strong friendships there it’s almost impossible to appreciate the degree of change. But it’s been empowerment the very hard way.

In more democratic countries with no feudal landownership there have been no community buyouts. In Norway, for example, land has been owned or rented on long secure leases by tens of thousands of individual Norwegians for centuries. All rural communities also own common land – often planted with trees and co-operatively managed to yield a local income and steady supply of wood – and exercise control through small municipal councils.

Here, community activists get marginalised unless they join a political party, become a councillor and spend years travelling to distant council meetings where they learn to micro-manage other communities they have no time to visit. There, the small size of municipal councils allows activists to stay at home but still get involved in the formal business of local self government – without having to spend millions taking over massive estates.

Widespread land ownership, land taxes and local control mean communities don’t need to buy what individuals already own and voters already democratically control. The community buyout is a typically piecemeal, Scottish solution to a larger problem we don’t have the will to tackle universally, systematically or at source.Those who work hardest may escape the blight of feudal-style landownership.

Those who can’t, must bide their time. Don’t get me wrong. The amount of money involved in community buyouts has produced amazing returns from relatively small investments. But the wider system remains intact with no prospect of an end to the overall shortage of available land. Cash is easier to pledge than change.

The easy way to transform Scotland overnight is to swap our current property-based Council Tax for a Land Tax so large landowners and speculators would have a financial incentive to ‘divest’ fallow acres and unused buildings or face eye-watering tax demands. The Scottish Parliament could legislate to give all children (not just the eldest son) the legal right to inherit land – the main way large estates elsewhere were ‘naturally’ broken into manageable, diverse blocks. Holyrood could make ‘sporting estates’ pay business rates – currently they don’t – and could replace toothless community councils with tax-raising parish councils as an ‘ultra-local’ tier of democratic control and service delivery.

Almost all of these changes could be made today and could be recommended by the Scottish Government’s Land Review Group. They could – but I’m not holding my breath.

Land reform still sounds too remote and too radical, there are still too many vested interests to annoy, and there’s too little political belief in the capacity of Scotland’s people to manage their own communities – whether they own them or not.

In his seminal book Who Owns Scotland, Andy Wightman observed that 25 per cent of large estates have been held by the same family for over four centuries, and the majority of aristocratic families who owned land in 1872 still own it today.13

Indeed, there was more open challenge to Scotland’s concentrated pattern of landownership in the Victorian era. Tom Johnston, born in 1882, wrote an exposé of the Scottish aristocracy in Our Scots Noble Families which became a controversial bestseller in 1909.14 He noted with outrage that miners and salt workers till 1799 were ‘bought and sold as part and parcel of the pits in which they were condemned to work for life,’ and recounted Hugh Miller’s description of a ‘slave village’ at Niddrie Mill near Edinburgh where the collier women, ‘poor, over-toiled creatures,’ carried coal up a long stair inserted in one of the shafts, shifting a hundredweight from sea level to the top of Ben Lomond with each day’s labour. The young journalist then ‘exposed’ the people he blamed for such exploitation – every noble family in the land:

The Scott’s of Buccleugh, [sic] descended from border thieves, land pirates and freebooters, still boast their pedigree. The blood of knaves and moonlighters has by process of snobbery become blue blood; lands raped from the weak and unfortunate now support arrogance in luxury.

And Johnston famously concludes:

Today in Scotland our artisans and peasants appear to believe that these ancient noble families hold their privileges and lands at the behest of Divine Providence; that their wealth has been justly earned and that their titles are but rewards for honest service to the state.

The first step in reform… is to destroy those superstitions. Show the people that our old nobility is not noble; that’s its lands are stolen lands – stolen either by force or fraud. So long as half a dozen families own one-half of Scotland, so long will countless families own none of it.

This angry revolutionary went on to become the outstanding secretary of state for Scotland in the wartime coalition under Churchill, who brought Hydro Electricity to the Highlands. And yet even with such formidable powers, the exceptional Tom Johnston could not push any further against landed power. So, the force of history has still not been undone. Scotland’s law and tax systems still encourage vast estates and absent landowners. Stifled, frustrated communities like pre-buyout Eigg exist across Scotland. This should be one of Scotland’s most urgent concerns.

Instead, questions about the way land is owned are regarded as rude, personal gripes against upstanding people or an irrelevance in this modern age. Yet we are physical creatures who experience the world first and foremost via the patch of earth that supports and surrounds us. To ask who owns it is simply to pose a basic question about democracy and human development.

A nation has no greater asset than its people and yet the energy of many Scots is being wasted, in a mass of uneven battles for basic human rights, even as we speak. It took 65 people on Eigg eight years and a community buyout to give each island tenant a lease. No wonder Scots have been ground down. No wonder a grim air of defiance is all many have inherited. No wonder people have left. The miracle is that so many have stayed. Those people have self-selected as stoic beyond belief and thoroughly adapted to their environments. To lose them now would be to lose an essential building block in a delicate human ecosystem. And yet, those precious people are still leaving rural communities for the age-old reasons – no land, no housing and no prospects.

The good news is that after everything, Eigg is now thriving in its own co-operative, creative, eco-friendly way and energy, know-how and youthful enthusiasm still exist in communities almost everywhere. The buds of development are different in each thwarted community – but energy, know-how and youthful enthusiasm still exist in spades across the country.

The job of a democracy is simply to shift heaven and earth to put those people first.

In Scotland, it still isn’t happening.

—

1  Islanders were still bitterly complaining that, as they struggled to eke out a living, Schellenberg entertained scores of chums to motorboat races and ‘champers and hampers’ weekends. His costumed Jacobite and Hanoverian mock battles did not go down well either. It may have been mere history to Schellenberg, but it was salt in the wounds of some locals. The 1745 Jacobite rebellion and the final defeat of the clans at Culloden sounded the death knell for the ancient Highland way of life in which no-one owned land, not even the clan chiefs – though they would later claim it as their private property. It also heralded the clearance of hundreds of thousands from Eigg and elsewhere to North America and lowland cities to make way for lucrative sheep farming.’ Mary Braid, The Independent 26/02/1996.

2  Simon and Karen Helliwell uprooted from their home near Norwich… Mr Helliwell was to be employed as the boatman and to repair cottages. But the promised lease never materialised and the boatman work was a disaster. He claimed in court that he was expected to take boats out when he judged they were overloaded and conditions dangerous. After less than two years, he resigned from Mr Schellenberg’s employment, eventually building his own house on land bought from a crofter. Anne Campbell, an old lady who lived on the island, described how she used to drown the rats she had caught in her house in the sink. Jamie Wilson The Guardian 20/05/1999.

3  A croft is an area of land which may or may not have a croft house on it.

4  Finally though, Schellenberg did remove it and gave it to his close friend, Ranald MacDonald, chief of the largest branch of Clan Donald.

5  Maruma claimed to have made his money as a ‘fire artist’, fusing paint onto canvas with a mysterious technique to produce work sought after by conveniently anonymous private dealers and collectors in his native Germany.

6  C. Dressler, Eigg: The Story of an Island (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2007) and A. MacIntosh, Soil and Soul: People Versus Corporate Power (London: Aurum Press, 2001).

7  On three occasions, Mr Justice Morland, the trial judge, suggested to the wealthy businessman he should speak to his qc about the status of his case. ‘If I were trying this case on my own, without a jury, it is likely I would already have come to the conclusion that sufficient facts had been proved to be true to justify the comments made about you.’ Throughout the five-week trial, a picture emerged of Keith Schellenberg as a ‘Toad of Toad Hall’ character: racing around the island in his Rolls Royce, wearing a tweed jacket and goggles, his scarf flapping in the wind and with little regard for anybody else. Jamie Wilson, The Guardian 20/05/1999.

8  L. Riddoch, Riddoch on the Outer Hebrides, Luath 2006.

9  The Community Right to Buy (CRtB) allows Scottish communities with less than 10,000 people to register an interest in land and have the opportunity to buy when it comes up for sale… after which the community body will be given six months to conclude the purchase: Outlaw.com 26/07/2012.

10  J. Hunter, From the Low Tide of the Sea to the Highest Mountain Top (Scotland: Islands Book Trust, 2012).

11  To date, 142 applications to register a community interest in land have been submitted under the provisions in the Land Reform Act, of which 95 have been approved. Of these, 33 have had the chance to go ahead and purchase land and 11 have been successful in doing so, according to Scottish Government figures: Outlaw.com 26/07/2012.

12  Eigg was purchased on 12 June 1997 for £1.75 million by the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust (which took over from the Isle of Eigg Trust), a partnership in which Eigg residents have the majority of trustees along with representatives from Highland Council & the Scottish Wildlife Trust.

13  Over 1,000 acres in size.

14  Brian Osborne in the introduction to Thomas Johnston, Our Scots Noble Families.