Highland Land League - Second League in 1909

Second League in 1909

Meanwhile, in Glasgow, in 1909, a second Highland Land League was formed as a political party. This organisation was a broadly left-wing group that sought the restoration of deer forests to public ownership, abolition of plural farms and the nationalisation of the land. Also they resolved to resolutely defend crofters facing eviction by their landlords and they supported home rule for Scotland.

During the First World War (1914 to 1918) politicians made lavish promises about reform which would follow the war, and of course many croftsmen lost their lives in the war itself. After the war the words of politicians did not translate into action, but croftmen returning from the war were in no mood to accept government inaction. Land raids began again. At this time the Easter Rising was recent history in Ireland, as was the Communist revolution in Russia.

In August 1918 the new Land League had affiliated with the Labour Party, with four candidates for the 1918 general election being joint League-Labour. By the 1920s they had fully merged with Labour, under the unfulfilled promise of autonomy for Scotland were Labour to gain power in the forthcoming years. Land League members were then key to the formation of the Scottish National Party in 1934.

When faced with new land raids the government responded by giving the Board of Agriculture the money and powers to do something like what had been promised. The Board's work was assisted by a downturn in the profitability of sheep farming and, by the late 1920s, perhaps 50,000 acres (200 km²) of arable land and 750,000 acres (3,000 km²) of hill pasture had been given over to establishing new crofts. Most of the new crofts were in the Hebrides, the area where Gaelic best survives into present time. There at least it became possible to claim that the effects of the clearances had been largely reversed. Crofters benefited also in parts of Caithness, Sutherland, Shetland, and various other localities.

Crofting is still a distinct lifestyle today, and the Scottish Crofting Federation continues to represent crofters.