The Vatersay Raiders

All they wanted was land: land for crofting and land on which to build a house.

In 1908, ten desperate men from the islands of Barra and Mingulay in the Western Isles were imprisoned in Edinburgh for refusing to leave the island of Vatersay, where they had built huts and planted potatoes without permission. The case caused an outcry throughout Scotland, and led eventually to the purchase of the island by the government for crofting. This book, the first about Vatersay, tells the remarkable story of the raiders and their struggle to escape from the poverty which the policies of an absentee landowner forced them to endure.

The Vatersay Raiders documents not only these events, which had enormous significance in the history of crofting, but also the fascinating earlier history of Vatersay and its now-deserted neighbour Sandray. An outline of more recent developments brings the account up to date.