My best friend grew up on Eigg, and the campaign for the buy out is something I’ll never forget (I was 12 years old at the time).
I feel very very fortunate to have grown up in the idyllic and optimistic era of the 90s in Scotland. I was born into the sadness and pain of the AIDS crisis in Edinburgh (known as the AIDS capital of Europe), but managed to experience the coalescing around positive political change that (at least for me and the people around me) resulted in autonomy for Eigg and the beginnings of independence for Scotland in the successful devolution from the UK govt in 1999.
Eigg is in some ways, even better than you’ve written about. Because it is a real place, with tension and contrast and difficulty. There’s a lot that remains constrained and harsh about living off the west of coast of Scotland and struggles with the same problems that all islands face (employment, climate change, ferry links) but I couldn’t agree more that it points to a real, tangible alternative to the majority trajectories of how we can assemble, organise and live.
Sadly, much of the rest of Scotland remains in private lands, opaquely held far from anyone’s understandings. Held as a rich man’s playground. But Eigg does act as a map to a different future. The Pollok Free State was another such point on the map.
Wow, thank you so much for sharing your experience! I’m so glad Eigg was as wonderful on the ground as it appears on paper! I know that community-purchased lands are slowing down in Scotland, but there is still so much opportunity. I particularly enjoyed the maps showing the viable land available for community purchase. Hopefully communities take heed! (And are inspired by series like this one!) https://whoownsscotland.org.uk/
So inspiring to read about Eigg, the island where its resident decided to purchase all the land together. It sounds an interesting and, frankly, thought-provoking case study. On the other hand, I am cautious to which extent this could work in practice. I come from a country, where in the 1940s much of the big land estates have been confiscated by the state and transferred to joint, communal property of the village (the so-called PGR, Państwowe Gospodarstwo Rolne). The villages were expected to pull the resources together and join forces on farming the land, based on the idea introduced in the Soviet Union two decades earlier. The result was a complete disaster: a bankrupt, highly corrupt, inefficient system that instead of promoting cooperation and innovation, conserved backwardness and alcoholism. It imploded and collapsed forty years later.
I think today we see revival of socialism on small, controlled scale. I have cautious optimism that at least some of those experiments have chances of survival. I also think that the smaller the scale, the higher the chances of success. Good luck!
You bring up a good point. There is a big difference between traditional socialism and a land lease model. Looking up the PGR project, it looks like the state owned the property and the farmers of that property were employees of the state. This is top-town, with the top owning and extracting all of the benefits from local resources, and the local population having no control and receiving no benefit from it.
That is extremely different from the community ownership models in Scotland where the land is actually owned by the people who live on that land through a trust, and the trust is governed by a board of directors that is made up of stakeholders in that land and territory. Here it's bottom-up, where the local population owns the land and benefits from it, and has full control over it!
In the classic WWII trilogy Swords of Honour (1952-61), by Evelyn Waugh, the soldiers are training on a fictional island that is probably meant to be Eigg or Rum. Waugh writes about some absentee wealthy owner of the local hotel, if I recall, and has negative words about the Laird of the island. He based his novels on his own experiences in the war, although I'm not sure if he really trained up there--but it sounds like he knew the ins and outs of the area. Good on them for making their own destiny! Great article.
I really love this idea of starting with these smaller communities that have the space and some prior sense of community that enable them to become self-sustaining in this way. They help us see the necessary fundamentals, and I think examining the building blocks in this way allows us to see how it could work better on a larger scale.
I don't think any of this is as unique as you think.
I only wish some of your visions could be relied upon. Hing Kong was largely self-sufficient while Great Britain controlled it. Now, China controls it, and freedoms are being eviscerated.
In America, cities are self-sufficient to a large degree. So far as governments go, the local government is generally a much greater presences in a citizen's life than the state or federal government. So, American cities at least resemble you ideal. The trouble is, those local governments, more often than not, treat citizens like just so much chattel. So, now what?
Keep in mind that, in America, two parties control all governments at all levels. It wasn't meant to be that way, but it's the way it is. With almost no exceptions, a city council member or other city official, is more concerned with serving his party than with serving citizens. If a developer wants to deface a neighborhood with inappropriate construction, they bypass the citizens and go straight to the party in power. They make their deals, and the citizen can protest to their heart's content, but it will make no difference. Trust me, I am quite knowledgeable in this regard.
If you have viable solutions to this, I am all ears.
It's pretty unique. Not very many places own their own land and can turn their own profit from it. American cities are certainly not self-sufficient (well, except one of them). They have little to no control over how much money they make and certainly can't turn a profit, they rely on state and federal jurisdictions to do anything including taxation and zoning, and they don't own any land which makes it near impossible to build or do anything. Budgets and regulations all come from above them. But we'll get to all of that in the series—hold your horses!
First, why should cities own land, but not citizens?
Second, yes, cities can own land. Can and do. They own schools and parks and are not generally restricted from buying any land that they care to buy. Public/private partnerships are a thing, theses days, with governments owning the real estate, and businesses running whatever it is that they're running there.
Zoning within a municipality is almost entirely under the authority of the municipality. The municipality can levy income taxes and property taxes (depends on the state).
And who should be in charge of all this? I would say it should be primarily up to the citizens of the municipality, and it mostly is. They vote either directly or indirectly thru their elected council to levy taxes for schools, police, fire, parks or anything else they want to levy a tax for. One little problem: Citizens tend to disagree with each other. What some want, others reject. That's where Utopia goes straight to hell.
I think we might agree that the federal government should be involved in none of this, and state government only a little. I'd be glad to discuss THAT.
Wow this is so cool, Elle. Where's the best place to find more cities and cities in development like this one?
There are 500 of them in Scotland. You can read about a lot of them here: www.communitylandscotland.org.uk/
Thanks!
My best friend grew up on Eigg, and the campaign for the buy out is something I’ll never forget (I was 12 years old at the time).
I feel very very fortunate to have grown up in the idyllic and optimistic era of the 90s in Scotland. I was born into the sadness and pain of the AIDS crisis in Edinburgh (known as the AIDS capital of Europe), but managed to experience the coalescing around positive political change that (at least for me and the people around me) resulted in autonomy for Eigg and the beginnings of independence for Scotland in the successful devolution from the UK govt in 1999.
Eigg is in some ways, even better than you’ve written about. Because it is a real place, with tension and contrast and difficulty. There’s a lot that remains constrained and harsh about living off the west of coast of Scotland and struggles with the same problems that all islands face (employment, climate change, ferry links) but I couldn’t agree more that it points to a real, tangible alternative to the majority trajectories of how we can assemble, organise and live.
Sadly, much of the rest of Scotland remains in private lands, opaquely held far from anyone’s understandings. Held as a rich man’s playground. But Eigg does act as a map to a different future. The Pollok Free State was another such point on the map.
Thanks for writing and sharing the story of Eigg!
Wow, thank you so much for sharing your experience! I’m so glad Eigg was as wonderful on the ground as it appears on paper! I know that community-purchased lands are slowing down in Scotland, but there is still so much opportunity. I particularly enjoyed the maps showing the viable land available for community purchase. Hopefully communities take heed! (And are inspired by series like this one!) https://whoownsscotland.org.uk/
So inspiring to read about Eigg, the island where its resident decided to purchase all the land together. It sounds an interesting and, frankly, thought-provoking case study. On the other hand, I am cautious to which extent this could work in practice. I come from a country, where in the 1940s much of the big land estates have been confiscated by the state and transferred to joint, communal property of the village (the so-called PGR, Państwowe Gospodarstwo Rolne). The villages were expected to pull the resources together and join forces on farming the land, based on the idea introduced in the Soviet Union two decades earlier. The result was a complete disaster: a bankrupt, highly corrupt, inefficient system that instead of promoting cooperation and innovation, conserved backwardness and alcoholism. It imploded and collapsed forty years later.
I think today we see revival of socialism on small, controlled scale. I have cautious optimism that at least some of those experiments have chances of survival. I also think that the smaller the scale, the higher the chances of success. Good luck!
You bring up a good point. There is a big difference between traditional socialism and a land lease model. Looking up the PGR project, it looks like the state owned the property and the farmers of that property were employees of the state. This is top-town, with the top owning and extracting all of the benefits from local resources, and the local population having no control and receiving no benefit from it.
That is extremely different from the community ownership models in Scotland where the land is actually owned by the people who live on that land through a trust, and the trust is governed by a board of directors that is made up of stakeholders in that land and territory. Here it's bottom-up, where the local population owns the land and benefits from it, and has full control over it!
In the classic WWII trilogy Swords of Honour (1952-61), by Evelyn Waugh, the soldiers are training on a fictional island that is probably meant to be Eigg or Rum. Waugh writes about some absentee wealthy owner of the local hotel, if I recall, and has negative words about the Laird of the island. He based his novels on his own experiences in the war, although I'm not sure if he really trained up there--but it sounds like he knew the ins and outs of the area. Good on them for making their own destiny! Great article.
Oh how cool!!!! The author probably researched these models!!! Maybe even Stornoway, which already existed as a trust at that time!
Really, really, really cool! Thanks for unearthing this nugget!
It’s seriously an amazing program!
How very, very cool!
❤️
Would love to hear more about this!
I highly recommend Community Land Scotland, I spent hours reading this website in research, and there are so many incredible case studies!
ttps://www.communitylandscotland.org.uk/
Thank you for writing about Eigg. The story is so inspiring!
It really is!
I really love this idea of starting with these smaller communities that have the space and some prior sense of community that enable them to become self-sustaining in this way. They help us see the necessary fundamentals, and I think examining the building blocks in this way allows us to see how it could work better on a larger scale.
Good for them! My Scottish ancestors would be most pleased.
I don't think any of this is as unique as you think.
I only wish some of your visions could be relied upon. Hing Kong was largely self-sufficient while Great Britain controlled it. Now, China controls it, and freedoms are being eviscerated.
In America, cities are self-sufficient to a large degree. So far as governments go, the local government is generally a much greater presences in a citizen's life than the state or federal government. So, American cities at least resemble you ideal. The trouble is, those local governments, more often than not, treat citizens like just so much chattel. So, now what?
Keep in mind that, in America, two parties control all governments at all levels. It wasn't meant to be that way, but it's the way it is. With almost no exceptions, a city council member or other city official, is more concerned with serving his party than with serving citizens. If a developer wants to deface a neighborhood with inappropriate construction, they bypass the citizens and go straight to the party in power. They make their deals, and the citizen can protest to their heart's content, but it will make no difference. Trust me, I am quite knowledgeable in this regard.
If you have viable solutions to this, I am all ears.
It's pretty unique. Not very many places own their own land and can turn their own profit from it. American cities are certainly not self-sufficient (well, except one of them). They have little to no control over how much money they make and certainly can't turn a profit, they rely on state and federal jurisdictions to do anything including taxation and zoning, and they don't own any land which makes it near impossible to build or do anything. Budgets and regulations all come from above them. But we'll get to all of that in the series—hold your horses!
First, why should cities own land, but not citizens?
Second, yes, cities can own land. Can and do. They own schools and parks and are not generally restricted from buying any land that they care to buy. Public/private partnerships are a thing, theses days, with governments owning the real estate, and businesses running whatever it is that they're running there.
Zoning within a municipality is almost entirely under the authority of the municipality. The municipality can levy income taxes and property taxes (depends on the state).
And who should be in charge of all this? I would say it should be primarily up to the citizens of the municipality, and it mostly is. They vote either directly or indirectly thru their elected council to levy taxes for schools, police, fire, parks or anything else they want to levy a tax for. One little problem: Citizens tend to disagree with each other. What some want, others reject. That's where Utopia goes straight to hell.
I think we might agree that the federal government should be involved in none of this, and state government only a little. I'd be glad to discuss THAT.
I think you’re just going to have to wait and read the series. Because I discuss a lot of this coming up…..
Can't wait!