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The Poor Had No Lawyers

by Andy Wightman

ISBN: 9781841589602
Imprint: Birlinn
Publication Date: Aug 2011
Format: Paperback (eBook also available)
Price: £9.99
Stock Status: in stock

eBook also available at the iBookstore

"Brilliantly researched, extremely well written and shocking in its detail, this book reminds us that when Proudhon coined his famous dictum, “property is theft”, he didn’t know the half of it?" - John Burnside

How did they get it? What happened to all the common land in Scotland? Has the Scottish Parliament made any difference? Can we get our common good land back? In The Poor Had No Lawyers, Andy Wightman, author of Who Owns Scotland, updates the statistics of landownership in Scotland and takes the reader on a voyage of discovery into Scotland’s history to find out how and why landowners got their hands on the millions of acres of land that were once held in common. He tells the untold story of how Scotland’s legal establishment and politicians managed to appropriate land through legal fixes. From Robert the Bruce to Willie Ross and from James V to Donald Dewar, land has conferred political and economic power. Have attempts to redistribute this power more equitably made any difference and what are the full implications of the recent debt fuelled housing bubble? For all those with an interest in urban and rural land in Scotland, The Poor Had No Lawyers provides a fascinating and illuminating analysis of one the most important political questions in Scotland – who owns Scotland and how did they get it?

Andy Wightman was born in Dundee and gained a degree in forestry at Aberdeen University. He has worked as a ghillie, environmental scientist, and an environmental campaigner before becoming a self-employed writer and researcher in 1993. He is the author of several books and a prominent analyst and critic of land reform process. He lives in Edinburgh.

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