The Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 () is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that created legal definitions of crofting parish and crofter, granted security of land tenure to crofters and produced the first Crofters Commission, a land court which ruled on disputes between landlords and crofters. The same court ruled on whether parishes were or were not crofting parishes. In many respects the Act was modelled on the Irish Land Acts of 1870 and 1881. By granting the crofters security of tenure, the Act put an end to the Highland Clearances.
The Act was largely a result of crofters' agitation which had become well organised and very persistent in Skye and of growing support, throughout the Highlands, for the Crofters Party, which had gained five members of parliament in the general election of 1885. Agitation took the form of rent strikes (withholding rent payments) and land raids (occupying land which the landlord had reserved for hunting or sheep).
The Act itself did not quell the agitation. In particular it was very weak in terms of enabling the Crofters Commission to resolve disputes about access to land. It was enough however to make much more acceptable, politically, the use of troops in confrontations with agitators.
According to John Lorne Campbell, however, the Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 was nothing less than "the Magna Carta of the Highlands and Islands, which conferred on the small tenants there something which the peasantry of Scandinavian countries had known for generations, security of tenure and the right to the principle of compensation for their own improvements at the termination of tenancies. Nothing was suggested in the report, or contained in the Act, to restrict absentee landlordism or limit the amount of land any one individual might own in Scotland, but for the moment a great advantage has been secured."
The Act was not fully effective in increasing the equality of land distribution in Scotland. By the year 2000, two-thirds of Scotland's land area was still owned by only 1,252 landowners out of a population of 5 million.
Background
During the Highland Clearances, the crofters had no official rights to the land. Until 1886, it was legal to evict any crofter at the landlord's convenience. The Land Wars commenced in Scotland in 1874 with the successful legal case of the Bernera Riot on the island of Great Bernera in the Outer Hebrides. The crofters wanted recognition of their traditional rights to the land that they had enjoyed under the clan system from the Middle Ages. Through political and economic development the gentry began to take an alternate perspective on their tenantry:
The cultural force of [heritage] was pervasive in Gaeldom and was central to the social cohesion of the clan because it articulated the expectations of the masses that the ruling family had the responsibility to act as their protectors and guarantee secure possession of land in return for allegiance, military service, tribute and rental. It was a powerful and enduring belief which lived on long after the military rationale of clanship itself had disappeared and tribal chiefs had shed their ancient responsibilities and become commercial landlords.
Land agitation in Scotland began because of the "Home Rule" movement in Ireland and information and opinions of this movement brought by fishermen to the Outer Hebrides. Believing that they were the rightful owners of the land, crofters used rent strikes and what came to be known as land raids: crofter occupations of land to which crofters believed they should have access for common grazing or for new crofts, but which landlords had given over to sheep farming and hunting parks (called deer forests). The strife grew more intense; the landlords hired warships for protection from the crofters. From time to time there were open uprisings and riots.
In 1884 suffrage was extended to men owning land worth at least £10 or paying £10 in rent annually. This included many Highland crofters.
At a political level the crofters wanted legal rights, so the ('Highland Land Law Reform Association') was established in 1885 in London. The Crofters' Party was established and elected five MPs in 1885. ('The people are stronger than the lord') was their best-known slogan.
