Letter: English outlook

Robert Veitch's (Letters, 3 June) knowledge of the Clearances and appropriation by landlords of the best agricultural land would be greatly expanded if he read the poetry of the Clearances rather than a page from Collins Encyclopedia of Scotland. The Gaelic poems of John MacLauchlan, Mary MacLeod, Henry Whyte and others reflect the social phenomena in the Highlands at the time of the evictions.

Mr Veitch's view that Lord MacDonald and other clan chiefs lack an English connection, is incorrect. They were very English in outlook and disposition.

Is Mr Veitch not aware that in 1707 after the Scottish aristocrats accepted English bribes to pass the Act of Union the clan chiefs took off for England?? The Edinburgh Magazine, 1823, reported: "Every Scotch gentleman, who can afford it, carries his family not to Edinburgh but to London … England is everything; Scotland is nothing but a place to get rents from, and to shoot grouse for a few weeks after the rising of Parliament… their speech is English and their prejudice is English."

The anglicised clan chiefs soon betrayed their clansmen and became a scourge to their unfortunate tenants, whose homes they filled with sorrow and despair.

Finally, let us not forget that whilst Highlanders were being evicted, their sons were fighting and dying from the Plains of Abraham to Trafalgar for the greater glory of the state that was destroying their culture and families.

DONALD J MacLEOD

Woodcroft Avenue

Bridge of Don, Aberdeen