13548: Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886

The Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886, was a direct result of the Napier Commission and created legal definitions of crofting parish and crofter, granted security of tenure to crofters and produced the first Crofters Commission, a land court which ruled on disputes between landlords and crofters. The same court ruled on whether parishes were or were not crofting parishes. In many respects the Act was modelled on the Irish Land Acts of 1870 and 1881.

The Act was largely a result of crofters’ agitation which had become well organised and very persistent in Skye (then in the county of Inverness-shire) and of growing support throughout the Highlands for the Crofters’ Party, which had gained five Members of Parliament in the general election of 1885. Agitation took the form of rent strikes (witholding rent payments) and what came to be known as land raids; crofter occupations of land to which crofters believed they should have access for common grazing or new crofts but which landlords had given over to sheep farming and hunting parks (known as deer forests).

The Act itself did not quell the agitation. In particular, it was very weak in terms of enabling the Crofters Commission to resolve disputes about access to land. It was enough however to make much more acceptable politically, the use of troops in confrontations with agitators.

See also Angus Macleod’s account of the Napier Commission, which gives some background to this subject.