Skip to main content
Land reformist attacks Scottish aristocrats' claims
Lairds' lobby group produced 'research' claiming private estates boost Scotland's economy

Scotland's lairds cannot simply cite their own wealth as proof of their right to rule, a leading campaigner for land reform said yesterday.

Legal geographer Andy Wightman poured cold water on the aristocracy’s claims its Scottish Land and Estates (SLE) lobby group produced research insisting that private estates generate hundreds of millions of pounds for the Scottish economy each year.

Just over 500 families control around half of Scotland’s land mass — the result of the infamous Highland clearances in which eighteenth-century aristocrats seized crofters’ lands for sheep runs, evicting up to 2,000 families a day.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
A sign in a field by the M40 near Warwick, protesting the changes to inheritance tax (IHT) rules, November 2024
Landownership / 22 October 2025
22 October 2025

CAROL WILCOX argues for the proper implementation of the land value tax, which could see unused plots sold off and landlords priced out of landlordism, potentially resolving the housing and planning crises

fotw
Film of the week / 17 July 2025
17 July 2025

MARIA DUARTE recommends the ambitious portrait of an agricultural community confronted by the trauma of enclosure