Fiercely drenched in their own traditions, heritage and culture, it takes a brave soul to attempt to tame the Outer Hebridean islanders of Harris and Lewis. 

Generations of families have toiled to survive, digging for peat to warm their home, growing what meagre crops could survive the westerly gales and venturing into the roaring seas to fish for herring.

Today, islands such as Harris and Lewis are attracting a new generation keen to keep alive traditions, skills and heritage.

Yet, 100 years ago, one incomer’s vision of a more modern way of life was fuelling crofters’ wrath, and would inadvertently go on to help spark one of the most dramatic upheavals in land ownership of the age. 

Soap baron Lord Leverhulme arrived on his newly-acquired island of Lewis in 1918 with a vision to propel crofters into a modern world – a move that could have seen a precious and fragile way of island life lost forever.

Instead, he encountered a strong-willed group of locals who not only wanted to retain their way of life, but to firmly reject his. 

Later this year Lord Leverhulme’s botched attempt to shift reluctant islanders into factory jobs – sparking a series of bitter land grabs – will be remembered during a three-day event on the island. 

The gathering, in September, will be a chance for islanders to reflect on how close they came to losing their much-loved way of life. 

The 1919 clash between Lancashire-born soap baron William Hesketh Lever, known for his “forced labour” style of management, and the spirited crofters and cotters (peasant farmers), pitched 20th century progression against age-old clan heritage, and it would end in humiliation for the powerful businessman.
one of the business world’s most powerful men.

“Leverhulme didn’t understand what the people wanted and was baffled by the fact they didn’t welcome his proposals,” says historian Dr Iain Robertson, who explores the episode in his book Landscapes Of Protest In The Scottish Highlands After 1914. 

In the end, the author adds, rather than unpick what he saw as an outdated way of life by removing crofts in favour of large farms and a modern fish-processing industry, Lord Leverhulme strengthened crofting heritage and even laid the foundations for the pivotal 1919 Land Act and the bedrock for today’s flourishing community right-to-buy land schemes.

Lord Leverhulme bought Lewis for £167,000 in 1918. The semi-retired earl, whose Lever Bros business would go on to form part of giant Unilever, believed the crofters’ outmoded way of life needed a visionary like him to revolutionise their communities.

He believed a mechanised fishing industry with ice factory, canning and processing plants to feed his UK-wide network of businesses could end the back-breaking task of toiling the land and allow crofts to merge to create single, sprawling farms, boosting his fortunes in the process. 

“There was a strong aspect of late Victorian paternalism, of people in poverty and seeing the crofting way of life as a very backward one,” adds Mr Robertson.

“He thought these were impoverished people in need of being improved. He didn’t see any benefit in crofting and thought what Lewis and Harris needed were more large farms – dairy farms in particular – and that the people should go to work on the farms or in his fish processing and canning factory. 

Resistance came, in particular, from young men home from the First World War. Angry at having been initially promised crofts on their return, they drew inspiration from the rebellious actions of the Red Clydesiders and organised themselves in military-style groups. 

Together they marched on crofts that Leverhulme’s farms had swamped, and carried out a series of land grabs to take them back. Sixteen of Lord Leverhulme’s 22 Lewis farms were affected, while his threat to evict the crofters drew little public or political sympathy.

“Leverhulme didn’t understand the crofts and cotters. They didn’t want what he was offering, it was incompatible with their lives,” says Mr Robertson, a lecturer at the University of Highlands and Islands. 

“There’s a Gaelic word ‘duthcash’; an amalgam of a sense of heritage and a fundamental belief in common rights. They believed they had a right to inherit land – even land they didn’t own”.

A showdown between Lord Leverhulme and crofters’ representatives symbolised the yawning gap between the two.

The episode is marked today by the Gress Raiders Memorial. Eventually, Lord  Leverhulme gave in  and switched focus to Harris, where a small fortune was ploughed into creating his modern vision in the fishing port of Obbe – hastily renamed Leverburgh. He died in 1925.

But the episode prompted Parliament to pass rethink crofters’ rights and passed the Land Settlement (Scotland) Act 1919, which gave government the right to remove land from private ownership and deliver it to the people.

Today, it is accompanied by more recent “right to buy” legislation that gives communities, such as recently happened in Ulva, the chance to push for landowners to sell land to them. 

Mr Robertson said: “Leverhulme wanted to completely reorganise how the land was worked on Lewis and Harris. The irony is in many ways, he helped keep it alive.”