The Soap Man

by Roger Hutchinson

  Set against this was their comprehension of both the scale of the opportunity and the caricature of themselves which would be painted if, having protested for so long that the land belonged to the people, the people declined to take ‘free’ ownership of the land. Bailie George Stewart, one of Leverhulme’s sternest Stornoway supporters, pointed out with relish that: ‘A refusal to accept would prove the old slogan “The Land for the People” to be a meaningless and insincere shibboleth.’

  Bailie Stewart was being mischievous. They wanted the land, but not on anybody’s terms. While the Stornoway Town Council, unperturbed by such difficulties, ran smoothly towards acceptance of their own offer and the establishment of a Stornoway Trust, the Lewis District Committee battled bravely to tie up loose ends and balance the books.

  They quickly decided that they needed a little help from the government. On the night of Wednesday 12 September 1923, ten days after Leverhulme’s offer, two officials from the Board of Agriculture and two from the Board of Health disembarked at Stornoway and went on the following afternoon into urgent consultation with the District Committee. The meeting closed by reaffirming the Committee’s desire

  to co-operate in carrying out Lord Leverhulme’s public-spirited and generous proposal that the landward part of Lewis Estate should be handed over to a Public Trust to be administered for the benefit of inhabitants . . . but we foresee certain difficulties in administering them arising partly from the possibility of any considerable number of crofters electing to accept their crofts while common grazings are to be vested in the Trust, and from the prospect of a somewhat narrow margin of revenue for carrying on the administration, seeing that public burdens will exhaust the greater part of revenue.

  They wished to be able to co-opt onto such a trust representatives from the Boards of Agriculture and Health, as ‘the public departments most closely associated with Lewis’. They also desired to meet in Edinburgh with the Scottish Secretary,Viscount Novar, just as soon as he was able to accommodate them.

  On the night of Monday 17 September the Town Council called a meeting of Stornoway’s ratepayers in the Drill Hall. It was so well attended that the doors were shut behind a packed assembly before the appointed hour. Provost Kenneth MacKenzie and his fellow councillors confirmed what everybody had guessed: whatever difficulties their colleagues on the District Committee may be having in reconciling the acceptance of rural Lewis were not shared by Stornoway Town Council. Their half of the figures added up. The fish processing factories could not, as Leverhulme himself had so painfully discovered, be depended upon to provide any substantial income. The Fish Oil Works were, said Provost MacKenzie, ‘a more or less uncertain source of revenue . . . being entirely dependent upon the fishing – we, therefore, leave these out of account.’ The cannery and ice-making plant had never been opened for business. But other estate ventures which would fall into the hands of the Stornoway Trust, such as the town’s steam laundry and especially the gas works ‘would be sufficient to maintain the castle and policies’. The crofters of Back, Coll and Gress, if they did not wish to divorce themselves from the crofting system by becoming owner-occupiers (they did not), would instead become tenants of the publicly-elected Trust.

  It was settled without serious dispute. Provost MacKenzie left the Drill Hall to convey two messages to Viscount Leverhulme. One congratulated him on his seventy-second birthday. The other informed him that Stornoway said yes.

  On Saturday 29 September four representatives from the District Committee, led by their chairman, ex-Provost Murdo Maclean, met the Scottish Secretary in Edinburgh.

  Viscount Novar was presented with a statement which declared that the Committee thought it to be ‘in the best interest of the people of Lewis’ if they accepted the offer of the land. It added that the crofters ‘throughout the district are likely to elect to remain tenants’, and that the notional Lewis District Trust would require for its first few years of life government assistance in both administrative personnel and financial solvency.

  The latter was most important. Murdo Maclean insisted that given the right people and policies, the trust could make itself pay after a short period of time. ‘Our object,’ he said, ‘in coming here this day is to see whether the Government will encourage us and remove the bogey of finance that lies between us and accepting Lord Leverhulme’s gift.’ His vice-chairman Alexander Maclennan ‘did not see why the island should not be self-supporting . . . the great thing we cannot lose sight of is – we feel that without immediate financial assistance we will not be able to carry on the trust, even for a year, on the face of the figures that we have got.’

  The anticipated amount of short-term subsidy was small. According to the estate’s own figures it ran to a total, for the whole of rural Lewis, of £1,365 9s 2d a year.

  Viscount Novar had made up his mind before meeting the delegation from rural Lewis. Murdo Maclean would later bitterly reflect that the Scottish Secretary, having heard the lengthy case proposed by the Leodhasaich, in reply produced and read aloud from a written statement which had clearly been composed before the meeting took place. ‘Therefore,’ submitted ex-Provost Maclean, ‘we concluded that his decision had been arrived at before we went there.’

  He rejected outright any possibility of his office, either directly or through the Boards of Agriculture and Health, delivering members or financial subsidy to a non-governmental trust. He alluded delicately to the occasion thirty-eight years previously, when as the 24-year-old Ronald Crauford Munro-Ferguson of Novar he had spent a year as Member of Parliament for Ross-shire before being kicked unceremoniously out of office by, among others, the newly enfranchised crofters of rural Lewis. ‘My associations with the island of Lewis in parliamentary and county affairs were very close at one time,’ he said, ‘and though seas have divided us I have never failed to follow with deep interest the affairs of the island.’

  Despite that deep interest, ‘only one answer is possible to the suggestion that the two Boards should each nominate a representative to serve on the proposed Trust. It is not possible for me to accede to that suggestion.’ There would otherwise be, he insisted, an unacceptable conflict of interest.

  As for the District Committee’s proposal ‘that if such a Trust were constituted the Government should give financial assistance to it for a few years at least . . . I might say at once that it is impossible for me to entertain the proposal that payments for the purpose of meeting such a deficit on the working of the estate should be met by the Board of Agriculture, the Board of Health, or any other department. This decision rests on general grounds of principle, and I do not think it can cause surprise.’

  Viscount Novar was saying that it was, in 1923, impossible for him to differentiate between an estate which was owned and run by a private proprietor, and one which was operated by and for its tenantry. As a private landowner could not expect a rates subsidy, neither could a Lewis District Trust. On that ‘ground of principle’ he withheld any possibility of the Board of Agriculture – which was regularly spending tens of thousands of pounds to acquire Highland estates and farms and turn them into crofting communities – doling out a few thousand pounds over a few years to assist the community ownership of almost the entire island of Lewis. By withholding the possibility of such a subsidy he was, as he must have known, effectively eliminating any possibility of a District Trust, for without underwriters the individual trustees themselves would have been personally responsible for any estate deficit, which could have forced a number of serving members of the Lewis District Committee into bankruptcy.

  It was an unhelpful position to adopt. It may have been worse than that. The District Committee member Donald MacLeod of Breasclete, who was not part of the Edinburgh delegation, would later muse with some conviction that: ‘I think if Viscount Novar had cast about him he would have found a precedent that is not very remote . . .’ He could have added that it was within the prerogative of Scottish Secretaries to set precedents. Novar’s successors in Sco
ttish government eighty years later, who found themselves answering requests for millions of pounds from populations anxious to buy out their comparatively small acreages of Hebridean land, may have regretted their predecessor’s profligacy.

  The deflated delegation returned to Lewis and called a full District Committee meeting for Friday 5 October. Twelve members, representing Breasclete and Shawbost on the west coast, Dell and Europie in the Ness district, Back and Stornoway assembled under the chairmanship of Murdo Maclean. They had twenty-four hours in which to convey their decision to Leverhulme, who had been informed of Viscount Novar’s lack of cooperation but who found himself unable to extend his deadline beyond 6 October.

  In the depressing circumstances their debate was creditable. Not a single member disagreed with the basic principle of a Lewis District Trust. But no-one could adequately answer vice-chairman Alexander Maclennan’s admission that ‘I fail to see how we can get over this deficit that we have from the figures supplied.’ Mrs J. M. Fraser protested that: ‘We have been hearing from infancy the cry of “the Land for the People and the People for the Land”, and now when we have this unique opportunity I do not see how we can refuse it.’

  It was not easy, conceded Alexander MacFarquhar of Dell. But

  when it comes to the government, the government has withdrawn back, and doesn’t seem to help in any way. It seems very strange to me, that attitude, and I must say it is heartsore . . . For my own part I cannot see – although it is difficult and although it is disagreeable, and I would certainly like to be the first to accept the gift if I saw my way clear, but owing to this deficit, and not sure of what might take place, there’s a certain amount of risk in it – I cannot personally see my way to accept.

  John Mitchell of Shawbost, where the schoolboy Calum Smith and his family had been made homeless and landless, found that: ‘I cannot refuse this offer.’ Murdo Maclean answered with feeling: ‘The sole difficulty with us is the financial difficulty. If that difficulty were removed then I would say with all my heart, accept . . .’ ‘Faith will remove mountains,’ interjected Mrs Fraser.

  Mrs J. M. Fraser moved that the District Committee should accept Lord Leverhulme’s offer of the whole of the landward area of Lewis. She was seconded by John Mitchell. Alexander Maclennan moved an amendment which stated that ‘in view of Viscount Novar’s decision not to meet the deficit on the working of the Estate, [the Lewis District Committee] much regret that they cannot see their way to become the nucleus of the proposed Trust for the sphere lying beyond the radius of seven miles from the Post Office of Stornoway.’ He was seconded by Alexander Macfarquhar.

  The motion to accept attracted three votes, from Fraser, Mitchell and Ranald Macdonald of Europie. The successful amendment recommending rejection drew six votes. It was supported by Maclennan, Macfarquhar, Malcolm Mackenzie of Crossbost, Allan Morrison of Back, Donald Macleod of Europie and John Macleod of Stornoway. Aside from chairman Murdo Maclean, three members abstained. They were the clerk Hugh Miller, Donald Macleod of Breasclete and Hector Smith of Europie. ‘If I were a younger man,’ said Hector Smith, ‘I would have no hesitation whatever in facing it.’

  Lord Leverhulme was instantly notified by Hugh Miller of the committee’s decision. The proprietor’s reply arrived in Stornoway on the next day, Saturday 6 October. ‘Note with regret decision arrived at by Lewis District Committee,’ the telegram read, ‘which I am confident had circumstances permitted they would have preferred to have been otherwise. Please accept my sincere thanks for the consideration given to the matter. I must now proceed to deal with the situation in such other alternative manner as I may be advised.’

  His advisers were short of profitable ideas. The 56,000-acre Galson shooting, farming and crofting estate was sold for the throwaway sum of £500, or twopence ha’penny an acre, to Mr Edward Valpy, an acquaintance of Leverhulme who had been an occasional visitor to Coll and to the Castle. Galson Estate contained an unfurnished but substantial lodge, several trout lochs and rivers, wildfowl shooting and twenty crofting townships. Its total annual rental income was £1,638 and its ‘rate-burden’ was £1,242. Edward Valpy said afterwards that he had ‘expected’ his offer to be accepted, and that he had no plans for Galson other than recreational shooting and fishing.

  Valpy may have had a realistic eye on the property market, for the auctioneers Knight Frank and Rutley were unable to win any acceptable offers for the estates of Park, Morsgail, Grimersta, Soval, Carloway, Barvas or Aline. When Lord Leverhulme had, in stressing the philanthropic motivation behind his proposed gift, assured the people of Lewis that he would otherwise have no difficulty in selling the island piecemeal for a tidy return, he had clearly miscalculated. He could in the end sell virtually none of it. Those seven benchmark sporting and crofting estates comprised between them 540,000 acres. In 1923 and 1924 £50,000 would have bought the lot. But £50,000 was not forthcoming. With the exception of the grateful Edward Valpy, private speculators apparently agreed with the Lewis District Committee that they were not worth the risk.

  So the aging widow Mrs Jessie Platt, who had in 1887 attempted to admonish the Park deer forest raiders and had run into a stone wall of Gaelic, was allowed to remain in grace and favour residence at Eishken Lodge. A lodge and part of its estate at Uig were given to Leverhulme’s niece Emily and her new husband, the Lewis doctor, Donald Macdonald, who would in future years become a popular historian and folklorist of the island. ‘Two bays of the canning factory,’ writes Nigel Nicolson, ‘which had never produced a single can, were dismantled and transported in sections to Leverburgh, where they joined the ice factory, which had never produced a cube of ice.’57 Leverhulme made another half-hearted attempt to persuade Lewis crofters to become owner-occupiers. Forty-one of them agreed to do so. Three thousand declined.

  On November 8 1923 Stornoway Town Council met to consider, and to approve, the draft deeds of property which would become the estate of the Stornoway Trust. They noted with satisfaction that the ‘seven-mile radius’ had been amended to exclude all of the inhabited parishes of Lochs south of Amhuinn Leuravay, and extended northwards to encompass all of Stornoway parish. At a further meeting on January 28 1924 Provost Kenneth MacKenzie told his fellow councillors that he had received the complete Deeds of Trust from Viscount Leverhulme’s Edinburgh solicitors. This democratically accountable body was now the proprietor of much of Stornoway and its environs, and was the crofting landlord of the entire Back machair from Tong to Tolsta by way of Gress and Coll.

  The Stornoway Trust, unlike the thwarted Lewis District Trust, actually anticipated a surplus of revenue. They intended to invest any such profits

  in developments on or in connection with the Trust estate calculated to promote the material and social welfare of the community; in improving means of communication with the island by land, sea or air; in afforesting certain portions of the estate; in encouraging higher education by the provision of bursaries to enable deserving scholars to proceed to secondary schools and universities; in improving the medical service of the community by assisting in the employment of medical practitioners, nurses, and for the building and equipping of hospitals or dispensaries; in the improvement or construction of roads and bridges.

  An interesting restriction had been written by Leverhulme into the trust deeds applying to Lews Castle. Sir James Matheson’s towering symbol of ownership should ‘never be let as a hotel or club, nor as a private residence for a tenant of sporting rights.’ It would become in due course a Technical College, which would carry the name of the building – if not the building itself – into the twenty-first century.

  The Trust would be composed of ten members. Five of them would be ex officio: the Provost, two magistrates and two senior town councillors. The other five would be elected to represent ‘those holding lands within the trust area in their own right on tenure, or who appear in the Valuation Roll as paying rent for subjects within the said area in their own rights’. This enfranchised the crofters. On Th
ursday 28 February 1924, the Stornoway Trust, the first substantial community-owned estate in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, held its inaugural elections. Polling took place briskly in Stornoway itself at the Nicolson Institute and the Drill Hall, and at schools and other public buildings at Tolsta, Back, Aird and Bayble in Point. The Stornoway doctor J. P. Tolmie won most votes. He would be accompanied onto the Trust by Mr J. McRitchie Morrison of Stornoway, the Stornoway shipping agent and councillor Murdo Maclean, Norman Mackenzie of Bayble and councillor Angus Smith of Holm.

  In October 1923 the local Nursing Committee at Ness re-formed itself into an Emergency Relief Committee. The headmaster of Lionel School grew so concerned by the malnourished condition of his pupils that he issued a public appeal for funds to provide them with a midday meal. Sir William Mitchell Cotts MP appealed unsuccessfully to Lord Novar to resume the Ness to Tolsta road works which had been abandoned by Leverhulme. Almost a full year of preternaturally wet weather resulted in the failure of the potato crop throughout the Hebrides and the west mainland. In Lewis itself only a handful of days in May, June, July and August had been completely dry, just one day in September had seen no rain, and in the whole of October and November there was ‘not recorded one single instance of twenty-four consecutive hours dry’. Peats and corn had been too wet to harvest properly. Cut hay lay blackening on the ground. Severe equinoctial storms blew down the few stooks of fodder and wiped out most surviving crops in certain west coast districts such as Callanish. The fishing industry remained in deep depression. Clothing and food parcels were distributed throughout the islands by charitable organisations and Highland societies. People said that matters had never been worse since the Hungry Forties of eighty years before.