THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS

Evening Star, Issue 25684, 7 January 1946, Page 6

THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS

DEFEATISM ABOUT THE FUTURE NOT JUSTIFIED BY FACTS Three assumptions underlie the contemporary attitude toward the Scottish liignlands (writes a correspondent of the London ‘Times’). They are, first, that total resources in the area are insufficient to afford a desirable standard of living to all who would wish to live there; secondly, that Highland youth has always and will always emigrate in large numbers; and, thirdly, that the region is characterised by cultural decay and individual defeatism. The moment seems ripe for a reassessment of. these assumptions in relation to the facts. The first proposition is based upon the'course of history. In the second are constant emigration under pressure of grinding poverty, the recurrence of famine and widespead destitution in the nineteenth century, the decline of sheep farming, the more recent dwindling of local industries, the decay of fishing, and, above all, an enormous change in the popular concept of a desirable standard of living.. The inquiring visitor to the Highlands will discover the evidence: the absence of towns, of large-scale, farming, of a middle class, or of even a moderate proportion of arable land, lapsed cultivation, and small amateur-built and primitively equipped houses. The characteristic Highland problem has ahvays been that of the crofter class the peasant inhabitants of the northern and western isles and of the northern and western fringe of the ‘ mainland. Their position lias changed considerably in the last lialf-century. The population of these districts has declined by a third and the acreage in crofter hands increased by the same proportion. The State, through the local authorities, has provided education, roads, medical care, and other services, together with a weekly income (from pensions, unemployment benefits, etc.) estimated by the Scottish Economic Committee to be not much less than 10s a crofter family in a year of moderate depression. The real criterion of the adequacy of the means of subsistence is the proportion of Highland families living below the poverty line. A recent attempt under the auspices of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, to estimate the pre-war regional income (based mainly on a sample of crofting townships, the census of pro- 1 duction, Fishery Board statistics, and known Government expenditure) gave an average income a head of about £6O a year, and for the crofter class of £3B to £4O. Taking into account rent restriction, agricultural derating, and absence of travelling expenditure it would appear that, the real disparity in measurable income’ between the crofter and the average working-class family was of the order 12 to 15 per cent. It was further estimated that the members of roughly one crofter family in three lived below the poverty line, mostly because they were members of large families. The dimensions of poverty among crofters are thus not dissimilar from those of the country as a whole, averaged over a trade cycle. ,

FRUITFUL POSSIBILITIES

As a future offset to these facts of poverty there is the potential increase in income inherent in the new agricultural techniques for dealing with poor hill soils, in the activities of the recently created North of Scotland Hvdro-eleetric Board, and in the plans of' the Forestry Commission, which, if implemented evenly throughout Britain, would provide-part-time employment near home for the head of every fourth family on the Highland mainland. There seems little room for doubt that even in the islands resources are sufficient, together -with a normal measure of transfer payments by the State, to support a population of the present size at a level considerably above the poverty line as now drawn. The inevitability of emigration, too, is questionable. During the last hundred years the total population of the Highlands has indeed fallen by almost 30 per cent., from nearly 400,000 to about 285,000, the difference between the highest and the present population varying from 16 per cent, in Inverness to 37.5 per cent, in Sutherland. Net emigration reached its peak between 1921 and 1931. For the period 1931 to 1939 deaths outnumbered births for each county. The population is admittedly “ age-lieavy ” to a degree found in few other regions of Britain. Ten years ago, however, it was noticed that the estimate of total Highland population given', annually by the Registrar-General for Scotland persistently approximated to the popula*' tion enumerated at the 1931 census. According to the recently published 1939 National Register—setting aside Argyll, where the presence of evacuees complicates the comparison—the decline in total population is of the order 3 per cent., the equivalent of only an eighth of the decennial loss of the ’twenties. The excess of deaths over births implies that net emigration fs even less. In relation to the emigration rate of the nrevious decade, the flood has shrunk to a trickle, a mere 6 per cent, of its previous size. Undoubtedly the main cause of the

apparent reversal of trend is a changed attitude towards leaving the’Highlands and Islands. To some extent this was associated with conditions of industrial degression elsewhere, but it is notable that rearmament brought no revival of emigration before the war. This applies, to both sexes and to every part of the area with the exception of Lewis, where the decay of the fishing industry created an especial employment problem for women. The net reproduction rate, now the recognised method of measuring the extent to which numbers are currently being replaced, had declined in the Highlands from the high levels of last century to .89 in 1931, or if account is taken, at it ought to be, of losses by migration, to about .75, against a rate for all Scotland of about .93. But in 1939 the Highland net reproduction rate had risen to about .9, even when losses by migration were included. CLANS DISRUPTED. Finally, is it true that defeatism rules F To understand the present cultural conditions of the Highlands it is necessary to harlr back to the disruption of the indigenous social organisation—over most of the area, the clan system—between 1745 and 1830. The prime mover was the idea that the clan chiefs, or those who replaced them after the abortive 1745 rebellion, were entitled to exploit their control. over local resources to yield a financial return instead of cherishing the maximum number of potential warriors on their land. Much of the better land of the valleys and coasts which had formerly maintained the clansmen was now given over to sheep farmers from the south who needed it for wintering their flocks. The effect of this process, however, was to displace and distort, rather than, as elsewhere in Britain, to alter the social pattern. The township was not replaced by the farm or the factory as the typical economic and social unit. People went on piecing together a meagre livelihood from pastoral plus subsistence farming, together with fishing. But it was now more difficult to avoid falling below the starvation threshold. The in aj or immediate social consequences were* the disappearance of the tacksmen, the middle element in the clan structure and the reservoir of leadership, and the sentiments of animosity towards the financial criterion in economic enterprise which were then generated and still persist. The most significant consequences derived from the failure of the commercial outlook to command general acceptance in the Highlands. A rearguard action was fought all through the nineteenth century, successful in the sense that confidence in the validity of their cultural standards was not lost, but unsuccessful as an adjustment to the changing facts of environment. Within the last two generations resistance has crumbled. Increased facility of intellectual and physical contact with the intruding culture has broken it down with growing rapidity. The effect of the delay has been to magnify the task of assimilation and to require it to be achieved at a pace much greater than that of the industrial revolution elsewhere and in an era which had lost much of the earlier expansionist buoyancy. The undertaking would have been notably difficult in the Highlands at any time. The doctrine of progress with its insistence in the economic sphere on the need for adaptability is not readily applicable to Highland, resources, which are highly specific—i.e., suited to one or two purposes only. The tenacity with which the township persisted as the social unit enhanced the difficulties of transition. In these small aricT isolated communities, virtually undifferentiated either economically or socially, the new conceptions of life have in fact had power to unsettle but not to secure a real change in the social structure and level of economic efficiency.

ADAPTABILITY THE TEST.

The task of reconciliation has in general been too great for the adaptive

capacity—not a notable Highland attribute—of the individual. To him, the clash of social philosophies _ presents itself as an unavoidable choice which almost every Highlander must make in early life between staying at home in relative poverty and emigrating to secure a higher standard of living. This sense of inevitability has given rise to an emotional tension of which the result, too often, is acquiescence, scarcely to be distinguished from apathy. This rough and rapid survey indicates that the measures of economic and social improvement which are pending or practicable could within a very few years enable every Highland family to live substantially above the poverty line as this was thought of before the war. There is evidence, too, of a new stability in numbers. The size of tlie younger generation' can be maintained by births, and there is a strong probability that the draining away of youth and ability will not be resumed on the old scale in post-war years! The lesson to be drawn from the recent cultural history of the Highlands is not that fundamental decay and defeatism prevail, but that in recent decades an immense and rapid readjustment has been called for, which, is not perfect or complete. There is to-day a hope of abolishing within one generation the dichotomy of Scottish society which has distorted and impoverished the national culture for so long.