Land Matters

CLICK HERE for PRE-PUBLICATION OFFER

Signed hardback copies dispatched post free to the UK together with a free one-month subscription to www.whoownsscotland.org.uk for all orders placed by 17 September 2010.

The Poor Had No Lawyers provides a fascinating and in depth account of how Scotland’s vast commons were converted into private ownership through a variety of legal devices. It examines the legacy of Robert the Bruce, the Reformation and municipal corruption. It exposes the motives behind the laws of land registration and prescription. Over 32 chapters, it explores everything from the story behind the Cuillin sale, the scandal of agricultural subsidies and the use of a non domino titles to legal reforms of succession law, the ongoing struggle to protect remnants of Scotland’s commons, the muddle that is the community right to buy and why the current SNP government has done so little on land reform. Along the way it provides authoritative statistics on who owns Scotland today and reveals the remarkable story of how the ownership of every corner of Scotland was mapped and documented in 1910.

A critical, detailed, engaging and shocking account of how Scotland came to be so ill-divided.

Well, today’s the day.

Exactly 450 years ago the Scots nobility sat down in Parliament in Edinburgh and passed a series of acts which neutered the power of the Catholic church and ushered in the Reformation. Two years ago I visited Wittenberg in Germany and spent some time in the Luther museum there. My visit convinced me that Luther was one of the great European revolutionaries. More recently, on a cycle trip round Normandy, I read Harry Reid’s Reformation. The dangerous birth of the modern world. It is a gripping and well written account of the events surrounding the momentous events in 16th century Europe that transformed power relations and society across the continent.

The one very big problem I have with Harry Reid’s analysis is his view that the central factor that made the Scottish reformation possible was the intervention of Queen Elizabeth I in sending a naval force which defeated the French forces. I agree that in practical terms that was vital and that, without it, there would certainly have been no reformation (at least not in 1560) since Scotland was in effect a colony of France. But what Reid fails to highlight in the book is the real reason why there was pressure and a military force backing the reformation in the first place (and in support of which Elizabeth’s intervention proved so critical). The reformation would never have taken place had it been left to John Knox and his followers. It was a religious revolution of course, but they simply did not have the power to push such reforms through Parliament.

The key to understanding the speed and success of the reformation is the role played by the Scots nobility in the 40 years leading up to 1560 (and up to and beyond the Union of Crowns in 1603). The reformation was made possible and indeed driven forward by Scottish nobles in order to secure for themselves the ownership of the extensive and valuable lands of the church. The reformation was the culmination of a massive land grab and it was to protect that plunder and secure their ill gotten gains that the nobility forced through the reformation. In the process they destroyed John Knox’s plans for the reformed church and ushered in the laws that form the underpinning of Scotland’s concentrated pattern of private landownership.

This topic forms a chapter in my forthcoming book, The Poor had no Lawyers. Who owns Scotland (and how they got it) to be published by Birlinn in October.

I am now in the final stages of editing and proof reading of my next book to be published by Birlinn in October. Titled ‘The Poor had no Lawyers. Who owns Scotland (and how they got it)’, it seeks to analyse how the millions of acres of Scotland’s common lands disappeared into private ownership. It also provides detailed discussion of a whole range of topics related to land in Scotland. There are chapters on everything from the reformation to the community right to buy, from the Crown Estate to landownership and the education of the Edinburgh bourgeoise and from Gordon Brown’s failed economic policies which led to an inflated runaway housing boom to the SNP government and the death of land reform.

I will shortly be promoting a pre-publication offer for the book - details shortly. Meanwhile, if you are interested in a copy, let me know and I will make sure you are on the list.

For the last few years a growing number of people have been calling for the easing of the complex and restrictive licensing terms imposed by the Ordnance Survey for use of their digital maps. I have had my own horror story with them over the use of maps on the Who Owns Scotland website.

The Government has announced that at long last these restrictions will be lifted for some important datasets. All credit to the Free Our Data campaign and Charles Arthur who have led this fight. Data available at Ordnance Survey OpenData (link to be added as their server is overloaded!)

BUT, it does not include the 1:25,000 or 1:50,000 digital maps needed for the Who Owns Scotland website which will still cost me over £10,000 per year! So, no improvement on the existing 1930s one inch and quarter inch mapping I’m afraid which is a big disappointment. Full details of the proposed changes in the government’s response here.

The whoownsscotland website has been relaunched in a redesigned format making it easier to use. All maps are now complete and the map navigation function has been fully restored. Access to the property data and mapping is now available only on subscription.

Take a look around - it’s all freely available until you want to see specific property data.

In 2002 I launched a site called whoownsscotland which was designed to document the ownership of land in Scotland. Progress has been slow because it is substantially a voluntary effort though I have had great support form folk in meeting the expenses of running it. The biggest expense has been Ordnance Survey digital mapping. Now, however, my reationship with OS is over due to them terminating my contract unilaterally and trying to bully me into a new, far more expensive contract.

You can read the full story at

www.whoownsscotland.org.uk/os.php

Please leave any comments you care to make here at this blog entry.

11 COMMENTS (these have been carried over from my previous blog site - new comments apear in “comment”) link below
2:59 PM
George Clark said…

Andy
I have read the story and it makes grim reading. Hopoefully the OS crew will change their ways.

George

2.59pm
Anonymous said…
I find this incredible! You have taken all steps possible to be correct in your dealings with the OS and then they refute all agreements?
Does this mean that a sport such as Orienteering, where you mark out a course on a reproduced OS map is illegal?

7:25 PM
Greg said…
It’s genuinely outrageous that OS charges for this stuff at all; never mind their pricing and licensing policies make no sense.

At the end of the day, our government (at all levels) needs OS mapping to do its work; so our taxes pay for this data anyway. Making it free would cost no more, but enables all levels of the economy to generate innovation and wealth. This is the US approach, and part of the reason that their tech industry is able to fluorish so beneficially for their whole economy.

A government owned monopoly trying to maximise its income is a dangerous beast.

9:57 AM
Nick said…
Seeing as we paid for this data once (as taxpayers) paying for it again is a bit much.

Maybe you could derive your polygons from the recently released KGB maps

5:39 PM
Anonymous said…
This is not a unique story. OS are managed by a bunch of incompetents, with one hand not knowing what the other is doing, and like the blind monkey incapable of even reading and understanding their own drivel.

They are responsible to the Deputy Prime Minister, who despite correspondence on a similar but unrelated matter totally ignores everything put to him. Even to the extent of sending a dismissive comment back in a plain unstamped envelope with a Post Office demand to pay £1.23!

OS has not the slightest bit of common-sense to enable them to understand how negative and antagonistic they are, without the slightest sign of any real business acumen. Their ivory tower needs to be pulled down.

10:54 PM
Mike said…
Andy, like the others, I agree that this is not an unusual story. We had to go through hoops recently to get a small excerpt into an academic book we were publishing. All very unsatisfactory. I have worked in academic GIS for over 10 years and the recent surge in open source mapping tools is fantastic. Have you thought about putting your whoownsscotland mapping into a GoogleMap hack?

11:49 AM
Jack said…
I’m surprised nobody has suggested the obvious: that wealthy, well-connected landowners don’t like having maps of their estates published online; and perhaps one or two of them have found ways to lobby or put pressure on the OS to have them removed legally and discretely.

12:55 AM
Anonymous said…
Is there somewhere we can lodge our complaints, this is good, but doubt if OS will ever see it…

12:49 PM
Anonymous said…
They did what they did, and that can’t be changed. 

What I’m more interested in is the WHY. 

Why after telling you, initially, that all was OK, did they seemingly go out of their way to make things difficult for you?

8:30 PM
Anonymous said…
It is to be hoped that the EU’s INSPIRE Directive (2007/2/EC)which seeks to make “spatial information” gathered by governmental bodies more open will help to stop this sort of nonsense as practiced by the Ordnance Survey.

Keith T.

4:18 PM
muymalestado said…
So; OS adds value to the land of Great Britain by mapping and we are charged for it. On the face of it that sounds about right. Now; the Crown also charges for using the sea bed. Did they add value there? Will they soon charge for walking on the surface of Britain? Most of us breathe. Will we be charged?

1.21 AM 21 September 2007
Jackie Quinn said….
Sadly this is so typical of they way life is ..it is always all about money or someone wishing to flex their little power muscles.. It is a pity.

I feel for you going through all that stress for nothing.