NOTABLE anniversaries do not stop with the jubilee and there is one due this coming weekend which brings back memories from my own political scrapbook. Far from pomp and circumstance, they are of an event held on the island of Eigg on June 12th 1997 to mark its passage into community ownership.

I had already been invited on the basis of past support but meantime there was a general election and I was Minister of State at the Scottish Office with responsibility for, among much else, Highlands and Islands Enterprise. I had quickly learned the first rule of government – if you want anything to happen fast, do not hang about waiting for the civil service to oblige.

Having turned my Eigg visit into an official engagement, I cut a deal with the extremely helpful chair and chief executive of HIE. Their part of it was to establish a Community Land Unit to facilitate buy-outs of land and a pot of dedicated money which would thereafter evolve into the Scottish Land Fund. And this would be ready to announce on Eigg.

It is difficult now to imagine the extent to which Eigg, with a population of fewer than 70, had become a symbol in the debate about Scottish land ownership; or indeed the extent to which land ownership and use had been made into a significant political issue by those who campaigned for decades. Far more so then than now, which begs its own questions.

The capricious market in land had resulted in Eigg going from one disastrous owner to the next without regard for a rapidly declining community. Under the proprietorship of an individual called Keith Schellenberg, it finally developed into a national cause celebre. Against all odds, leadership emerged within that small community to mount a buy-out when Schellenberg finally agreed to sell.

Remarkably, the asking price of £1.5 million had been raised, almost exclusively through private donations. The fact remained that there was no right to buy and no source of funding to which communities in the same plight could turn, to avoid being passed from one awful landlord to the next. Assynt in West Sutherland had previously fought the same trail-blazing battle.

However, it was very clear that if there was to be a movement towards community ownership rather than a few noble, isolated battles, there needed to be a dedicated source of support, financial and logistical. That was what I was able to announce on Eigg – a very practical example of what a change of government had ushered in.

Just before I spoke on Eigg, someone told me the ground on which the marquee was pitched had previously been used by Schellenberg as his tennis court. That allowed me one of my better rhetorical flourishes: “Game, set and match to the people of Eigg”. But I was acutely aware that while Eigg was a symbol, the far bigger contest was with a whole system that has left Scotland with the most inequitable pattern of land ownership in Europe, maybe the world.

At the same time, we created a Land Reform Working Group chaired by John Sewel with the remit of coming up with an agenda that could be pursued by the Scottish Parliament, which was about to exist. It was a very good report but only a fraction of it has been acted upon. In the early days, some of the low-hanging fruit was plucked including abolition of the feudal system, confirmation of the right to roam and creation of National Parks, as well as consolidation of the Scottish Land Fund and Land Unit which drove a flurry of really significant community buy-outs.

However, the foreword to the Sewel Report made clear: “It is crucial that we regard land reform not as a once-for-all issue but as an ongoing process. The parliament will be able to test how this early legislation works and how it effects change. They will then have the opportunity to revisit and refine their initial achievement…..These present recommendations are therefore by no means the final word on land reform; they are a platform upon which we can build for the future”.

And that is what has never really happened. After nearly 25 years of devolution, Scotland is little closer to significant change in the fundamentals of land ownership – a sad fact made all the more conspicuous by the current speculative surge in land values in the name of meeting net zero targets. It is more likely to fill the ample sporrans of landowners than to help save the planet, while consolidating absentee ownership of vast tracts of Scotland.

I always find it curious that so many who talk endlessly about Scotland as their guiding entity are so little concerned with the fact that a high proportion of it is run as private kingdoms, largely immune to public policy unless there is money to be made. Land for housing? Certainly not. Maintenance of population? Not our problem. Public access? Not if we can help it.

Not all rural land lends itself to community ownership, partly because there is little or no community left in many of the most landlord-afflicted areas. Can Scotland really afford to write off that finite resource? Even where community ownership is an aspiration, it is being made more difficult because of these soaring land values that the public purse would be competing against.

This is reflected in the work of the Scottish Land Fund which really isn’t a Land Fund any more because there are few opportunities within range of its maximum award of £1 million. Instead it funds the acquisition of “community assets” like halls, pubs and lighthouses. All perfectly worthy but absolutely nothing to do with land reform which has become a lost cause, as in lost from political view.

READ MORE: The islanders who took control and transformed beaten Eigg

So as Eigg celebrates its liberation 25 years ago, with a population that that has almost doubled, perhaps we could think of it again as a tiny microcosm of Scotland. The reason land reform is steered clear of is not because it is a fringe issue but because it is so central to radical change in any society. It also needs politicians who care enough to drive that change.