Don’t put all blame for tragic Highland Clearances on 19th-century landlords

Perspective is not the word I would use for the article by Kenny Macaskill (27 July). People with a left-handed axe to grind continue to demonise the alleged behaviour of 19th-century landowners as a means of discrediting anyone who owns land up to the present day.

The term “Highland Clear- ances” has been repeated so loudly, and for so long, that most people in Scotland believe without question that the landowners were to blame for the tragic events which forced many Scots to go overseas, or starve.

Most people have heard of the Irish potato famine, which started in 1845 and continued for nearly ten years. The same famine caused by potato blight crossed into Scotland in 1846, and for the next few years devastated the staple food supply of the poorer people in the west and north of Scotland who lived on a diet of nothing but potatoes. If you don’t believe me, simply Google “potato famine in Scotland”. If no “landowners” had existed in these distant times the people would still have starved, and the Highland Clearances would still have happened.

WILBERT GIRVAN

Berryfell, Hawick

“The land issue is burned deep in the soul of every Scot”

This sweeping statement is central to Kenny Macaskill’s article on the injustices of the clearances. I would question how valid it is in Scotland south of the Highland line. In Lowland Scotland clearances did occur,but so far back that there is virtually no folk memory of them. In my family for example I can find no-one who made a living from the land in the last eight generations – we were mostly stonemasons or joiners. I don’t think that my family is unusual in Lowland Scotland so I think, in conclusion , that the statement I quoted would be more accurate if it was applied to the Highlands and Islands only.

WILLIAM WAUGH

Cleikhimin, Penicuik