The Lewis Land Struggle - Na Gaisgich le Joni Buchanan
The Isle of Lewis, down to the present day, retains a substantial rural population for one reason above all others. It is that, at crucial points in the island's history, its people were prepared to resist the power of the landlordism and insist on the right to remain on the land which they occupied.
Without these struggles, the crofting population would have been virtually eliminated, just as ir was in many other areas of the Highlands and Islands. This book recounts four of the crucial encounters, starting with the Bernera Riot in 1874 and concluding with the classic conflict between Lord Leverhume and the returning ex-servicemen in Coll and Gress.
The book is written unashamedly from the crofters' point of view. The alternative to resistance would have been even greater emigration, even larger tracts of land under the unproductive ownership of a few individuals and even greater weakening of the Gaelic language and culture. The heroes - Na Gaisgich - who resisted all of that deserve to be remembered and honoured.
