Letter: Anglo smear

Donald J MacLeod's statement (Letters, 1 June) that the "Highlanders were evicted almost exclusively by Anglo-centric clan chiefs and landlords" really mustn't pass unchallenged, especially as his claim that a "cursory glance" at any history of the clearances would prove him right, in fact proves him wrong.

My Collins Encyclopedia of Scotland declares that Leveson-Gower "incurred unmerited odium" for the clearances because, of course, it was his Scottish wife, the Countess of Sutherland, who was the main instigator of the clearances in the north.

And the Scottish Lord MacDonald cleared much of Skye and North Uist. But the chief of the MacDonald's depredations, like the majority of his ilk, lack an English connection and so pass by as blameless as any leg of Scotch lamb. Mr MacLeod's harrowing account of Highlanders forced to emigrate is terrible to read. But the Highland chiefs did the forcing themselves.

And there was nothing Anglo-centric about them except perhaps that they no longer lived in their clan lands and chose to live among the sassenachs of Edinburgh and London.

Not that sassenach landlords were blameless. But it was the lowlands of Scotland and England that they cleared, not the Highlands.

Why don't we ever hear from these victims of the class warfare? I suspect because it's more to do with Scottish politics than with any real concern for Scottish history.

Altogether, some 20 million left these shores for the colonies in what was a British diaspora and only the most ardent nationalist argues that all 20 million of them were Highlanders or indeed Scots.

Their tales were just as harrowing as any Highlander's and shouldn't be buried under an anti-English smear and what is in the end little more than political propaganda.

ROBERT VEITCH

Paisley Drive

Edinburgh