IN a huge victory for party members and campaigners – including the Our Land group backed by The National – the SNP conference decided yesterday that the party’s land reform policy is not “radical” enough.
At the annual conference in Aberdeen, members rejected the motion on land reform, with one delegate telling the party leadership that they would only back them when the proposals were radical.
The motion, which was asking the conference to welcome the Scottish Government’s Community Empowerment Act and the introduction of the Land Reform Bill, was defeated as 570 members asked government to rethink.
SNP member, Nicky Lowden MacCrimmon, who urged the conference to reject the motion, asked delegates: “Does radical land reform leave 750,000 acres of land in offshore tax havens?
“Does radical land reform leave tenant farmers with no right to buy? “I don’t think as a party we are being as radical as we can be, as we have the powers to be on land reform.”
“When you have radical land reform then we’ll sign up to it,” he said.
Scottish Government minister Aileen McLeod admitted to the delegates there could be improvements made.
Speaking after the debate, land reform campaigner Lesley Riddoch said the party’s 2016 manifesto needs to reflect the wishes of members on land reform. “These are not radical proposals. These are proposals sure, but they’re not radical,” she said. “People need affordable, available land in Scotland, and this Bill will not create this in our lifetimes.
And I think even Government ministers would agree that it can’t do that.
“Well, actually, trying to do with make do and mend ain’t going to work anymore.”
The key areas where the land reform proposals fell down for Riddoch were on how much was expected of local communities.
Riddoch said: “You could go through the technicalities of where it falls down. A lot of the mechanisms that are suggested require communities to be brave enough to accuse landowners who are the big cheese in their communities and very often their employers, of negligence.”
She continued: “It’s asking too much of people. It’s asking communities to be braver than the Government.”
Long time land reform campaigner, Andy Wightman said there was no quick solution to this, but praised the Scottish Government for work already done.
“Radical means going to the roots. We’ve got 200 years of history to sort out here. This is not going to get sorted out overnight. This is a generational project. And some of the anxiety around the approach the Scottish Government is taking, is, I think, an anxiety that this is it, when in fact there’s far, far more to do.
“In fact the Scottish Government is actually doing quite a lot. It only had the land reform review group’s report in May 2014. Trying to frame legislation in a relatively short space of time and trying to put it through Parliament before March 2016 is actually a quite a challenge. So I think the key for me and the many others who want a much more radical approach is what goes into the manifestoes of all political parties for May. Because we’ve got a five-year parliament which can drive though pretty significant change. That’s what I’m looking for.”
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