The mountains and glens of the Scottish Highlands are famed for their beauty and tranquillity. These are places where great peaks towers over peaceful valleys and the hand of man has changed little over the generations. Or so you might think.
I used to wander these hill and enjoy what I thought was a natural landscape but now I see something very different. I see a landscape scarred and ravaged by the people who own it, I see a place in the hands of a death cult.
As George Monbiot says writing for the Guardian.
“A visit to almost any stately home reveals something hidden by centuries of justifying myth: the British aristocracy is a death cult. In most of the grand houses on public display, there are scenes or implements of killing wherever you look. Paintings of battles and paintings of hunts, both featuring men in uniform charging on horseback, hang among weapons of war and animal heads. Britain’s traditional ruling classes are as obsessed with death as any street gang in Tegucigalpa. Killing, after all, is how they got there.”
Land ownership in Scotland is concentrated in the hands of around than four hundred people most of whom would lay claim to some aristocratic title. These men are Lords, and Dukes and perhaps earls (I’ve no idea what the difference is and I certainly don’t care.) These men have one thing in common, their great, great, great grandfathers stole Scotland from its people mainly by force and brutality. A few hundred years ago these men turned up with enough force to claim an area of land to themselves. They beat up or killed anyone who disputed that it was theirs and somehow they became its rightful legal owners. Land is power, so once they had the land, they made sure the legal system supported their claims.
These people didn’t make this land, they didn’t build the mountains or dig the rivers, everything was already there. They just said, “This is mine,” and if there was nobody around with enough muscle to argue it became theirs. Today you can buy a title in Scotland for as little as £20 you can become a Laird or use the title Lady. How absurd is that? In many ways if you bought your Scottish title you would have more legitimacy to hold a title than most Scottish landowners. After all you bought your title and they stole theirs, so who would be the real Laird or Lord?
George Monbiot’s description of a death cult in the Highlands may sound shocking at first but in fact there is a lot to support this assertion. If you take a look inside most Highland Castle’s you’ll see they are stock full of implements designed to maim and kill. There are guns, swords, axes, maces, and spears dangling from the walls in such profusion that you could stage several episodes of Game of Thrones there without having to send out for a single dagger. Today, when we look at these weapons hanging on the walls of great chilly halls, it’s easy to see them as museum pieces, or interesting artefacts, and to forget that they were once state of the art tools of oppression. Once these stock piles of the instruments of death were designed to let the populace know just what they’d face it they challenged the status quo. These displays are a celebration of death. Inside these castles you’ll also see numerous examples of dead animals stuffed and hanging from the walls. Stags heads and stuffed wildcats abound, as if piles of weapons wasn’t enough they bring some dead things in.
It is certainly the case that there are a small number of land owners who show a more enlightened attitude to the environment and are beginning to explore the possibilities of rewilding and moving away from the giant killing grounds that most Highland estates are today. Anders Povlsen the Dutch billionaire, is now one of Scotland’s largest land owners and the re-wilding work he is doing in the Glen Feshie area is to be applauded. The are also other examples of good practice, like the Ardtornish estate on the west coast, where estate owners are beginning to move away from the traditional deer stalking practices towards working in sympathy with the land and it’s creatures. It is good to see these estates moving in the right direction but they are in the minority and it should not depend on the attitudes of a few enlightened land owners to decide the fate of Scotland’s wild lands.
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Vast areas of the Highlands are given over to two sporting pursuits, deer stalking and Driven Grouse shooting. In many areas the numbers of red deer have grown to unsustainable numbers in order to sustain sporting interests. Deer are shot, mostly for fun. Clients will pay to shoot stags (male red deer) as trophies while does (female deer) are culled to control their numbers. The large numbers of deer on the Scottish hills prevents the natural regeneration of forestry which would be a home to much of Scotland’s wildlife. The second significant blood sport, Driven Grouse Shooting where red Grouse are driven towards men behind small walls and shot in their thousands is also damaging our wildlife. As much twenty percent of Scotland is managed as Grouse Moor. In order for sufficient red grouse to be available to shoot these wild areas have to be very specifically managed with the elimination of predators, many of which protected species such as hen harriers and other birds of prey.
I can never understand why anyone would kill anything simply for pleasure, so why do these estates put so much emphasis on supporting this way of life? This obsession with killing goes much deeper than simply an enjoyment of blood sports it is making a statement about power and control. While Scotland’s wild places remain the playgrounds of a tiny minority of the population they act as a clear indication of who holds the power in Scotland. Sporting estates are largely in the hands of a tiny wealthy elite and the fact they exist, fundamentally unchanged from the Victorian era or earlier, demonstrates not only who owns Scotland but who controls it. Scotland’s sporting estates are fortresses in a class war which is why those who support them will fight any attempt to control what happens within them. The reintroduction of extinct species, such as the wolf of the lynx, would represent a loss of control and a retreat for those who hold power in these estates. That is why they vigorously oppose even the smallest attempt to regulate what happens on Scotland’s sporting estates.
As Andy Wightman argues, you don’t own land in the way you own a pair of trousers or piece of furniture, you only have rights over it. Land exists for all of us, it is our land and our wild life should live on it. The abolition of land ownership of these huge estates is probably a political bridge too far but surely land ownership should be closely controlled and come with stringent conditions to respect the land and the creatures who live on it or could be living there. The time is rapidly coming when the few should stop the killing and the land we all live in should be managed for the many.