Crofting by Finlay Macleod - Croitearachd le Fionnlagh Macleòd

The profound social and economic changes which affected the Highlands and Islands throughout the latter part of the 18th Century and into the 19th Century transformed land tenure, organisation and use in the Western Isles, resulting in the crofting system as we now understand it.

The clan-based form of social organisation yielded to economic and political pressure where those who owned the land began to utilise it for commercial gain. The indigenous people lacked power and were incorporated into the new system, or excluded from it, to the extent that this was profitable to those who owned the land. If labour was required for the owners' industries in fields such as kelp production and fishing, then the poor people were brought in as cheap labour. If there was no role for them, as in large-scale sheep production on new farms, then they were moved out of the way. Crofting emerged out of this.

Small portions of land were created and leased to crofters; the irony was that they could never make an adequate living from these pieces of land since they were both of insufficient size and tended to be the poorest land - the best land having been given over to the sheep farms.

Earlier in the 18th Century the landowners in the Lowlands had brought in land surveyors to draw up plans of estate improvement and this process reached the Western Isles before or around 1800. Improvement plans of the various parts of the islands are associated with names such as Chapman, Bald, Reid and Maclean. Caird (1989) writes of the surveyors, 'They not only surveyed the estates and drew the plans but often wrote detailed reports making proposals for the creation of new agricultural units, paying particular attention to topography and soils, field size and design, field boundaries and type of enclosure, shelter belts and woodland blocks, location and design of farm houses and steadings and villages, and alignment of roads and construction of harbours and piers.'

Crofting areas were laid out as mosaic patterns on paper plans in estate offices and these were laid as a network upon the township landscape, determining the shape and size of individual crofts as well as regulating how the new crofting settlements of housing were to be arranged in relation to the evolving system of roads. This resulted in the linear form of townships still in place throughout the Western Isles.

Politically and economically the lives of crofters remained precarious and powerless. The landowner had full possession of the land and whole townships were moved around depending on how the owner was improving his estate. Allied to the crofters' over-dependence on potatoes as staple diet, there was always danger of societal crises and disaster. The alarming failure of the potato crop in the middle of the 19th Century and the constant insecurity and impoverishment finally led to mounting unrest and protest among the crofting population in the 1880s. The Crofters' War is an important phase in Highland and Island history, and some of the events have led recently to memorial cairns being built, especially in Lewis. This phase culminated in the passing of the Crofters Act in 1886, which gave the crofters security of tenure and the right to pass their crofts on through successive members of their family, and it also guaranteed fair rent of crofts. But the Act did not make new land available for the creation of new crofts: although new crofts were created early in the 20th Century, it long remained a source of friction and anguish that more crofts were not made available when they were most needed.

The system of land allocation determined by the Act of 1886 remains with us, with some subsequent changes, to the present day. As with many things in the Gaeltachd, crofting has taken on an aura of having come to us out of the mists of antiquity. As with other institutions such as the Church or the School we tend to accept them as 'given' and as having always been with us from the beginning of time. The remains of pre-crofting settlements as with the remains of the small chapels in old graveyards all remain 'silent' as our mode of education has not made their story readily available.

People now regard crofting not merely as a form of land-use but as a way of life, which - linked with extraordinarily strong attachment both to family and to place - has helped retain a size of population and a viable and vital rural lifestyle which would otherwise have waned. It is a way of life which perplexes and intrigues anyone who is new to it, especially in its present form where its animal husbandry relies so heavily on sheep production and grazing rather than on the varied form of cultivation which was an integral part of it up to 30 or 40 years ago. Nowadays the Flymo has taken over from the plough and the oil-tank replaces the peat stack. Modern croft housing can be surprising in its acceptance of modernity. As always, crofting is in transition where elements of traditional life are still visible through the seeming trends of sameness and external influences.