The Vatersay Raiders

BC 26-2

Please enjoy this excerpt from our 2025 Q2 issue of British Connections. Our theme was the “Breaking the Law in Britain: Historical Risks and Rewards.” Join ISBGFH to access the entire issue and peruse 40+ years of British Connections.

By Chris Paton

From 1906–1907, a group of men from the Scottish Gaelic speaking Outer Hebridean islands of Barra and Mingulay seized land on their neighbouring island of Vatersay on which to build homes and small farm-holdings known as crofts. The land in question was owned by Lady Emily Gordon Cathcart, who resided in Berkshire, and who had been one of the key proponents of the Highland Clearances (“na Fuadaichean” in Gaelic). Although Lady Cathcart had only visited the island of Vatersay once in 54 years, in 1908, she took the Vatersay raiders to court, with all sentenced to short prison terms. However, the uproar surrounding the episode led to the UK Government purchasing the island just a year later, with the land divided up into 58 working crofts, and distributed to residents from both Barra and Mingulay. 

The island of Vatersay had been held for centuries by the chiefs of Clan MacNeil of Barra, who had leased it to their kinsmen for generations. In 1816 the island was documented as having a small fishing community, but following increasing financial difficulties with the MacNeill estate, it was sold in 1838 to Gordon of Clunie. As had already happened to so many communities in the Highlands and islands, from 1845, Vatersay’s final inhabitants were cleared to make way for more profitable sheep, as was much of Barra, with 450 islanders forced to emigrate to Canada in 1851. When the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Condition of Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands was convened in 1883, better known to Scottish history as the “Napier Commission,” Vatersay was described as consisting of just one farm. At this point the remaining population of Barra was growing fast, with not enough crofts available to sustain the remaining families resident on the island. The croft sizes were small, with the land becoming increasingly more barren through over-farming, and with fishing the only means to add an additional income to their basic incomes.

The Vatersay land raids of 1906–07 were a final desperate act by the islanders, who had already spent years trying to force any form of meaningful change within the law. Through the Napier Commission, the people of Barra were afforded an opportunity to express their previous failed efforts to secure any meaningful new plots of land from the Gordon estate for their needs. The Commission heard from witnesses such as Michael Canonach, from Borough, who said that the crofters of Castlebay, Barra’s largest settlement, had previously attempted to acquire Vatersay when it had been advertised for rent, but their request had been refused. 

Although some reform was secured after the Commission’s findings were published, the people of Barra were still unable to secure new territory for their crofting needs. From 1900, several cottars therefore commenced a series of annual raids to Vatersay to seize land and to mark out potential croft boundaries, aiming to provoke the Government into intervening and to persuade Lady Gordon Cathcart to sell them the land required. In 1906, they escalated their actions, building huts on the island in which to reside. 

Within a year, they were joined by four fishermen from the nearby island of Mingulay, who equally required land, as they could not pull their boats up onto their own island’s rugged shores. After building sheds on Vatersay’s shore to store them in, the Mingulay men were served with an interdict saying that they had broken the law. Further interdicts were served to all of the raiders, from both Barra and Mingulay, but refusing to acquiesce, the entire group was subsequently prosecuted at the Court of Session in Edinburgh on June 2, 1908 for breach of interdict and contempt of court, and sentenced to two months imprisonment. 

Such was the outcry over the sentence that a relief fund established for their families raised £174, and in July, Lady Cathcart was forced to come to an agreement to sell the island to the British Government, and to ask the Court for the prisoners to be released two weeks early from their sentence. In 1909, the Government’s Congested Districts Board (Scotland) created 58 new crofts on Vatersay. 

Interviewed in his native Gaelic in 1947, one of the raiders, Dòmhnall Bàn Eileanach (Dòmhnall Mac a’ Phì) described how resolute the islanders had been to challenge the status quo: 

…chuir sinn romhainn gu làidir is chaidh sinn ann an guaillean a chèile gu làidir. Bha rud mòr againn ri dhèanamh. Bha fios againn gun robh cumhachd an lagha agus an t-sluaigh nar n-aghaidh…. Dh’fhuiling sinn gu leòr. Gun teagamh sam bith, sinne a rinn sin, dh’fhuiling sinn even ar cairdean fhèin gu leòr. Ach, co-dhiù, thug sinn a-mach Bhatarsaigh doirbh ’s mar a bha, agus bha e cho doirbh ri sgath a chunna mi riamh, ach rinn sinn an gnothach orra. Fhuair sinn buaidh orra a dh’aindeoin cho làidir ’s a bha an cumhachd, cumhachd an lagh.

In English:

… we set out strongly and we stood shoulder to shoulder with each other strongly. We had a great thing to do. We knew that the power of the law and the people was against us… We suffered enough. Without a doubt, we who did that, we even suffered enough from our own friends. But, at least, we took Vatersay, difficult as it was, and it was as difficult as I have ever seen, but we defeated them. We defeated them despite the strength of their power, the power of the law.” 

As the old Scottish Gaelic proverb goes, “Is treasa tuatha na tighearna”—“the people are mightier than a Lord.”

In the incident’s immediate aftermath, Mingulay was permanently abandoned in 1910 by its 23 remaining families. The island remains unsettled to this day by humans, its only residents currently being various colonies of seabirds and grazing sheep, with occasional visits by tourists on boat trips. By contrast, a thriving small community was established on Vatersay, and in the aftermath of the new crofts being created, a newfound community confidence emerged on the island, which thrives to this day. In 1991, a new causeway was opened, connecting Vatersay to Barra, improving access on a range of fronts, particularly for medical needs, although equally providing an excuse for the primary school on Vatersay to be closed just three years later, with the island’s children today travelling by road daily to school in nearby Castlebay. The community battles continue, but there is still a vibrant community there to fight them. 

For more information about the plight of crofting communities in the 1880s, the hearings of the entire Napier Commission are available to read online at www.uhi.ac.uk/en/research-enterprise/cultural/centre-for-history/research/resources/the-napier-commission/. 

For further research into the history of Barra and Vatersay and those who have previously lived there, Comunn Eachdraidh Bharraigh agus Bhatarsaigh (Barra and Vatersay Historical Society) can be contacted via www.barraheritagecentre.com, whilst additonal comainn eachdraidh (historical societies) from the Outer Hebrides are listed on my Scottish GENES blog at https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2023/10/comainn-eachdraidh-historical-societies.html.s to proudly look over the city today, a fitting memorial to a band of brothers who, around 150 years ago, with not much money but plenty of ambition and skills, took a risk by venturing westwards to a distant Welsh port town brought to prominence by the industrial world’s thirst for copper, and ended up playing a key role in its urban development.