49045: The Lewis Land Struggle

by Joni Buchanan (Acair, 1996)

"The Isle of Lewis, to the present day, retains a substantial rural population for one reason above all others. It is that, at crucial points in the island’s history, its people were prepared to resist the power of landlordism and insist on the right to remain on the land which they occupied.

"The book is unashamedly from the crofters’ point of view. The alternative to resistance would have been even greater emigration, even larger tracts of land under under the unproductive ownership of a few individuals and even greater weakening of the Gaelic language and culture. The heroes – Na Gaisgeach – who resisted all of that deserve to be remembered and honoured"