It was with considerable surprise and pleasure to learn about this gathering last weekend in Aviemore. I opened up my regular Strathy briefing to see Land Workers Alliance and Land Justice prominently featured. As I am active in land justice campaigns in London, and the group I am involved in, the People’s Land Collective, is affiliated to the Land Workers Alliance, this event is very welcome. Instead of livelihood vs conservation, the gathering was very much supporting both, with radical land reform the key to bringing these interests together.
According to the Strathy: A rally at Aviemore over the weekend has highlighted ‘the new wave of green labs in the Highlands and the creeping corporate control of Scotland’s rural landscapes’.
The Lost Forest at Kinrara Estate was the gathering point for The Landworkers’ Alliance, a UK-wide grassroots union of farmers, foresters and land-based workers who are advocating for greener, more accessible and thriving farming and land-based economies.
One of the main targets was Brewdog, which I wrote about a few years ago when they first bought the Kinrara estate See: https://landforwhatlandforwhom.org/2023/02/18/update-on-brewdogs-lost-forest/.
And since then, the sceptisim over the new corporate ‘green’ landowners has proved well-founded. According to Land Workers Alliance: “BrewDog’s ‘Lost Forest’ is a perfect example of how government subsidies are favouring the interests of big business.
“In 2021 the global beer company BrewDog bought 9,300 acres in the Scottish Highlands to plant half a million trees, re-branding the former Kinrara Estate as the ‘Lost Forest’.
“Within 12 months of being planted, half of the trees died. Despite this, BrewDog has received a staggering £2.7 million in government subsidies – a third of the total value of the estate itself.”
I can only hope that this event will be supported by local people, and that a movement for land justice will take off in the Cairngorm region. This needs to include both farming and housing issues.
Land for What? Land for Whom? 