HC Deb 24 May 1887 vol 315 cc1031-6
DR. CLARK (Caithness)

, who had given Notice to move— That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying her Majesty to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into the condition of shepherds, ploughmen, farm servants, cottars, and other agricultural labourers of Scotland, especially in reference to the system of service, hours of labour, housing, and the physical and moral results of the Bothy system; said, at the outset he would like to call attention to the decisions given on Saturday by the Crofters Commission on the cases brought before it from the estates of Lord Macdonald and Colonel Eraser, in Skye. The Commissioners gave decisions in upwards of 200 cases, 113 of which were on the estate of Lord Macdonald, and in their case the rent was reduced from £856 to £525, or about 30 per cent. These 113 tenants were £1,831 in arrear, of which two-thirds were wiped off. On the estate of Colonel Eraser, comprising seven townships, 98 decisions were given, and the rent was reduced from £769 to £444. The arrears were about £2,000, of which over £1,300 was wiped off. On Lord Macdonald's estate the 113 tenants had their rents reduced on an average from £7 10s. to £4 12.s. and on Colonel Fraser's estate the 98 tenants, who before paid on an average £7 8s. each, now paid only £4 10s. Even if they got the land for nothing they could not live on it. He would ask, was it possible for a man to live comfortably on a farm the rent of which was, on an average, only £4 11s.? These decisions would do little to alleviate the condition of those poor people, or lessen the difficulties of the Crofter Question. They would certainly have £3, 10s. more to spend on themselves; but that would do little. Indeed, it was in view of this that in the discussions on the Crofters Act he and his Friends pointed out that what these men needed was more land. That this House and the Government had refused to give them. There was a clause in the Crofters Act permitting the Fishery Board to lend money to start the fishermen; and the Government had offered to advance money, on certain conditions, to help them to carry on their industry as fishermen. In January a Circular was issued by the Secretary for Scotland, laying down the conditions on which the men should get these loans. He would remind hon. Members that the fishermen had fallen into poverty because the herrings and other fish no longer came into the inland lochs, and the fishermen had to go out 50 or 60 miles to sea to catch them, and they required heavier and better boats for that purpose; the kelp trade was played out, and there was no labour for the people. Now, even though their rents had been reduced, and their arrears of rent reduced from £4,000 to £1,200 on Saturday last, these men were absolutely poor. They have no money and no credit, yet, before they could get the advance from the Government to help them to buy a boat and nets, they must be able to contribute from £80 to £100. Taking the average cost of a sea-going boat at £350 for boat and nets, would crofters, who were paying £4 10s. of rent, cottars, who were paying no rent—crofters and cottars who were in arrears and in debt to everybody who had given them credit—would they ever be able to start as fishermen if they had first to raise £80 or £100? It was said that four or five men were required to man each boat, and that they might each raise £30; but, with no furniture and no credit, they were unable to raise even that amount. The Government by their Circular were keeping the promise to the ear by the offer of money and breaking it to the hope by the conditions which were laid down. He thought the other conditions in the Circular gave the Government a sufficient security without any such condition as this advance of £80 or £100. In the first place, they had the mortgage on the boats and gear. Then, if the boat was insured, and if it was lost, the Government would get the insurance money. These poor crofters could not give them more; they could not meet the conditions imposed for a loan of money. There had been plenty of applications, but not a single penny had been lent, because none of the crofters were able to advance the money; and so long as that con- dition was laid down, the men of Skye and the Western Highlands would be unable to obtain loans. Unless they intended to do something for these men, they had better tell them at once they could not lend them the money, and that they had better emigrate or do something else, because the condition of things was getting worse and worse every year; and he asked, if nothing could be done for them as farmers, could not something be done for thorn as fishermen? He was not in favour of giving public money to special classes, but this was a most exceptional case. The people were fast sinking into poverty in the congested districts; while sportsmen owned hundreds of square miles of land for amusement. The big farms did not pay now, and the Duke of Sutherland on his estate was giving over the big farms to increase the Duke of Westminster's sporting land. The Duke of Westminster, by confiscating the property of the London people at the end of their leases, was able to pay for more land, while the unfortunate crofters could not get land nor pay for it. As to the working of the Commission, 200 decisions had been given in Sutherland and the North-East district, 213 in Skye, and probably 400 more would be given during the remainder of this month, so that they had about 800 cases decided up to the present time. But there were several thousand more applications, and others were coming in every day, and he estimated that there would be 7,000 or 8,000 cases that would have to be adjudicated on. Unless something was done, therefore, in this direction to assist the Commissioners and to meet the reasonable demands of the crofters, they would soon have a condition of things that would again call for the intervention of gunboats and marines. There were cases of hardship now pending, and unless the Government took some steps in the matter many more poor crofters, in his own county and elsewhere, would be cruelly cleared out of their holdings in the course of a very short time. He urged the Government to fully apply the clauses of the Crofters Act, which, he said, they were not doing, and advised them to grant a sum of money for the appointment of valuers and assessors in the different counties for the purpose of valuing the land and giving evidence on the point, a course which, at comparatively small expense, would obviate the great waste of time that now took place under the present course of dealing with the difficulty. Last year only £200 was voted for this purpose, and it was proposed in the present year to expend the magnificent sum of £419! That sum was totally inadequate to the work. He did not at first like the Commission, for they had not got a single representative of the Crofters on it. They had a Sheriff as its legal head, and although the Sheriff had acted so far judicially and wisely, and considered the interests of both landlords and tenants, he did not value land. Of the other two Commissioners—one was a factor and the other was a big farmer. The factor and the big farmer would do their duty and act fairly between the parties; but they must remember that the crofters did not like the factors, and that between the big farmers and the crofters there was as much love as between the Protestant boys of Belfast and the Nationalist Catholics. In his humble judgment, the only and proper way in which these thousands of cases could be considered in time would be to appoint in the different counties valuers and assessors, as was provided for under the Act, and these gentlemen could value the land and come to the Court and give evidence, and so save the Commissioners occupying so much of their time in tramping over the bogs in going to examine the crofts concerned in the many cases before them. He hoped something would be done, and this was, in his opinion, the best way to expedite the work of the Commission. He also thought the measure which had been introduced in the other House would help them. Turning to another subject, he desired to say a word in regard to the ploughmen and agricultural labourers in the North of Scotland; he would press on the Government the desirability of looking at the conditions under which. they worked and lived. He learned that in Kincardineshire and other adjoining counties ploughmen's associations were being formed everywhere. Their grievance was that they were fed in the farmhouse and lodged worse than horses were stalled or dogs were kennelled. In fact, they were stalled with the horses in the lofts over the stables, and there were plenty of openings between the stable and the bothy, so that the man could see the horses, and the smell of the stable was always very prevalent in the bothy. The physical and moral degradation of such a system was very great indeed. He predicted that, under the influence of the Education Act, men would not much longer consent to pig together as they were now expected to do. As an instance of the evil of the bothy system, he would state that in Caithness-shire, where the bothy system prevailed, the rate of illegitimacy was 14 per cent of births, while in the adjoining county of Sutherland it was only 10 per cent. He attributed the extra 4 per cent in Caithness-shire to the custom of pigging young men and boys together in these bothies. He appealed to the Government not to wait until the ricks were burning before they appointed a Commission to inquire into this matter.

MR. ANDERSON (Elgin and Nairn)

said, he wished to call attention to another part of the Crofters Question, which, to his mind, was as important as that brought forward by his hon. Friend—namely, to those who had not the advantage and benefit of the Crofters Act. He would refer to the crofters in Morayshire and Nairn, where the Crofters Act did not apply, while it was in operation across the bounds of the county in Inverness-shire. In Inverness-shire the crofters who had gone before the Commission were entitled to the adjustment of their rents to a fair standard, and the reductions in those rents by the Commission amounted to 30, 40, and in some instances 50 per cent, while the crofters in the contiguous county were excluded from the operations and the benefits of the Act. This was naturally a very fruitful source of dissatisfaction to the crofters of the border.

MR. SPEAKER

Order, order! The hon. Member is out of Order. He is now anticipating the discussion of one, if not two Bills, which are before the House, one of which proposes, if I remember aright, to extend the benefits of the Crofters Act to Highland counties adjoining the actual declared crofting counties, and the other Bill is of a similar nature. The hon. Member is clearly anticipating the discussion on both Bills.

Mr. ANDERSON

said, he presumed he should be in Order in calling attention to a particular case with respect to which he got an answer from the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Scotland (Mr. J. P. B. Robertson) on Monday. The case he wished to bring under the notice of the House was that of Alexander Taylor, a crofter of Lake of Moy, Morayshire, who had been induced to sign a document under which he would have to give up his holding, and be evicted from a house built 50 years before by his ancestors, and from a farm which had been enclosed and reclaimed by himself and his ancestors, whoso labour had given it its present value. That man's case was but an illustration of the condition in which those tenants stood in that part of Scotland. They were wholly and entirely at the mercy of the lairds in consequence of the present state of the law. He (Mr. Anderson) wished to ask the Government whether they intended to introduce a measure this Session to give powers to enable persons to obtain small patches of land compulsorily, which were so much wanted in the North of Scotland, and mentioned a case which had come under his notice, where a shopkeeper on being obliged to leave his premises could not get a piece of land on which to erect other premises, although the proprietor owned hundreds of thousands of acres?