This is really an astonishing move by the new (4-year-old) Scottish Parliament. They have passed a law that would radically overturn longstanding land-ownership policies, allowing crofters to buy land whether the owner wants to sell or not, AND enacting a right-to-roam law that means a Scottish landowner could not bar people from his property.

It appears to be redress for ugly policies of 200 years ago, but begs many questions, one of which is there a statute of limitations for addressing historical wrongs, and another being how can you fairly take care of social and economic imbalances that were engineered (as this one was by wealthy landowners) in the past?

Lizette Alvarez's NY TIMES article

Interesting subject. Though the legislation doesn't appear to be draconian - affecting only 7% of the land owned by the "large land owners" - it raises a lot of issues:

1 - How many of these owners are non-Scottish?

2 - Do those overseas descendants of the Crofters have any rights here?

3 - How independent is the Scottish Parliament and could appeals be made to the EU (as has been done by gay rights activists even though Britain tries to resist EU oversight)?

4 - Wonder what the British royalty - who I believe have ancestral roots and perhaps property in Scotland, but tendencies to be very humanitarian toward their subjects - think of the situation.

I'm sure things are going to get complicated but overall it seems like a moderate approach to correcting an ancient wrong, and not comparable to the poorly implemented land transfer in Zimbabwe - perhaps it could even set a pattern.

The one example they give of a Crofter who is attempting to use the new law to retrieve land seems to have an enlightened view of how it should be husbanded. Still it could simply open the door for a lot of the large landowners to become shadow owners through the Crofters.

As for 2, I wonder about this too, because one branch of my ancestors left Scotland, came over here, sought their fortune in the Gold Rush, and ended up marrying ex-slaves. Were they crofters? I wonder. (I love the name.)

As for 4, Elizabeth II is most definitely the Queen of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) and Northern Ireland, among other titles, and of direct lineage to the Scottish throne. How? Because her predecessor George I is the direct descendant of the naughty Stuarts, who among other things tried to reintroduce Roman Catholicism to Britain and paid for it with their heads (well Charles I did; James I got the hot poker). George I was the grandson of James I (who was King of Scotland before he unified the throne, taking over for his cousin Elizabeth I). He was also a flaming homosexual, just to tie it back to this board.

Some of my ancestors came from Fyfe. Wonder if I can get a nice seaside cottage for the off season?

The (recent) politics of this are quite ironic. The Thatcher government introduced a right-to-buy for tenants of property owned by local government (even though they didn't want to sell) on the grounds that owner-occupation created responsible citizens. A property-owning democracy. Especially in Scotland, where over half the population lived on council estates (projects).

Interesting to see those arguments now being turned round and used against private owners. I suppose it's that old Law of Unintended Consequences coming round again.

(BTW, I'm willing to be corrected by the legal experts but I don't think there is any Statute of Limitations as such here. Isn't it an American thing?)