Eigg getting on with ordinary, radical lives

With Maggie Fyffe on Monday

I dashed from London to the Isle of Eigg on Monday to join the 20th anniversary celebrations of the community buy-out of the island.

If you don’t know the story, this Hebridean island was in thrall to a series of abusive landlords but created history by becoming a beacon for community ownership in the Highlands.

More than 20 years ago, with photographer Sam Maynard, I documented the deathly grip of landlordism on Eigg, although my grasp of feudal power was theoretical then.

For people living in leaking hovels on the island it was all too real.

Speaking out against their conditions risked livelihoods and homes because Keith Schellenberg, the landlord, controlled everything. But speak out they did, they changed the story and changed their lives.

It took great courage from the islanders, if I can borrow a fashionable phrase, to “take back control”.

Over two decades Eigg has become the proven alternative to the dead hand of landlordism.

Among many speeches and drams on Monday, the soundtrack to the entire day was toddlers gurgling and children laughing. It’s the sound of optimism.

Eigg is now home to 105 souls, a 60 per cent increase since the buy-out, with 19 children.

I bet when I go back in 20 years the population will have doubled.

About 500,000 acres of Scotland are now community owned, small cheer because that’s only 2.5 per cent of the land.

Yet, the minimum wage aside, I can think of few legislative changes other than land reform that have had such an impact on the Highlands in the last two decades.

I loved my day out, it was great to be re-united with old friends.

My journey proved, if it needed proving, that not all politics is in Westminster and there are people who in their ordinary way are a lot more radical than some of the guff on the green benches.