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Who owns our land, and why?





Crete, despite its natural riches, has similar problems to Caithness, according to George Gunn, who travelled there recently on honeymoon.
Crete, despite its natural riches, has similar problems to Caithness, according to George Gunn, who travelled there recently on honeymoon.

WHAT is the difference between Caithness and Crete? For one thing Crete is a Greek island of 3219 square miles and has a population of 600,000.

Caithness is a headland of 712 square miles and has a population of 23,866. One is self-sufficient yet attached to a country with a basket-case economy. The other is dependent upon everything from without and has been for over 60 years and is also attached to a country with a basket-case economy.

Crete is Greek and looks likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Caithness is British but that could all change quicker than most may assume.

Away from the tourist resorts, Crete lives in a different century. Just what that century is I’m not quite certain. In fact, it doesn’t matter. Any country that has three harvests a season does not need to try too hard to survive.

The only period in recent times when the Cretans suffered hunger and want was during World War Two when the Germans parachuted in a large army. The Nazi policy towards the locals was to kill them if they resisted and to starve them if they were suspected of doing so. As a result, thousands died of hunger. This is hard to imagine as everywhere you look are grapes, olives, potatoes, vegetables and fruit of every kind.

Crete literally burst with life. So it is no surprise some 4000 years ago the Minoan civilisation took such a firm hold on the island and for some 500 years lived a peaceful and fruitful existence. It even survived two large volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tidal waves. Then came the Mycenaean Greeks with their weapons of war and galleys. They were followed by the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Venetians and the Ottomans and so on. Crete may have been blessed in the lottery of life – for example swallows see no need to migrate – but its fertility and strategic position made it desirable to every empire that rose and fell.

But the Crete people are very residual and tough. It takes sweat to create Eden. Olive groves and vineyards need attention. When I visited the folk museum in Vori I was struck by how similar the peasant physical culture was to our own. For all the world I could have been in the farm museum on Papay Westray or in Mary-Ann’s Cottage in Dunnet.

But Crete is no idyll. It seems over keen in abandoning its culture in pursuit of English and German money. But this could be said of quite a lot of Europe. But this is not about what I did on my holidays, even if it was my honeymoon. Why go somewhere if you are not prepared to learn something new?

ONE reason Cretan agriculture is so successful – other than having the weather and the three harvests – is there is no such thing as massive landownership. In fact, speaking as best I could to several Cretans, “owning” land is almost an alien notion.

It’s as if they consider the land to “own” them. This, of course, is also an ancient Highland belief. But we in Caithness have lost this with our current notions of landlords and the feudalism which goes along with it. In Crete the land is worked co-operatively.

Since World War Two and the subsequent civil war, Crete has enjoyed a comparatively long period of peace and with peace comes industry and one can see that with almost every square inch of ground having something growing on it. This is important because Crete is also one long mountain chain, so good ground is limited to the coastal plains and the plateaus but it is worked assiduously.

That Caithness could say the same? Sadly in 2011 much of our largest parishes of Reay and Latheron are still empty of the people needed to work the land, as are parts of Halkirk and Skinnet. The question we have to ask is why is that? If Caithness, in these post-decommissioning years, is to have a reasonable fighting chance at a future then the question of who owns the land and why has to be at the forefront of our thinking.

You cannot just go to Crete and buy several thousand acres of land even if you had the money. There are laws which stipulate this residential clause and that land use condition. In Caithness anyone can buy anything as long as they have the necessary cash. This renders us powerless. Is it not a coincidence our MP is one of the largest landowners in the Highlands?

Caithness is a relatively fertile land to live upon. We may not have three harvests a season but, if we realise our potential both politically and culturally, we should be aiming at increasing our population, not watching it get onto trains, boats, busses and trains never to return.

Crete, despite its natural riches, has similar problems to Caithness – but even as part of a nation which is heading towards more severe financial turbulence, it at least has the resilience to do something ? about it.


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