Landraiders' Monument - Gress

The Gress monument relates to an unfortunate era in the island's history. In 1918, the Great War ended. One thousand islanders lay dead on the field of battle, another 200 had been killed at a stroke when the ship carrying them home sank just outside Stornoway harbour.

Lord Leverhulme had acquired the landmass of Lewis and Harris (which, incidentally is one, contiguous island) in 1918. He had great plans for industrialisation. A fishery station at Carloway, linked by railway to Stornoway. A whaling station at Bun Abhainn Eadar in Harris. A new port at An t-Obbe (now Leverburgh). Railways the length and breadth of the island. The plans basically never really came off the ground.

Many island men, half of whom had joined up for the War, wanted a piece of land. And when Gress Farm was occupied to get a piece of land, Leverhulme asked them to leave. Which they did not do. No action was taken against the landraiders.

I do not agree with the Gress monument, the way I do agree with the ones at Balallan and Aignish. It depicts Leverhulme (as the central pillar) standing in division between the crofters. That is too narrow a view. If action had been taken against the landraiders, AND if Leverhulme's money had not run out, the project might have been successful. As it was, Leverhulme sold Lewis in 1923. He offered the four parishes to its inhabitants at a peppercorn price. Only the burghers and crofters of Stornoway Parish, stretching from Tolsta to Arnish, took up the offer. It generated the first community buy-out in history, some 70 years before the first modern one, at Assynt, Sutherland. Uig, Barvas and Lochs were bought by private buyers.

The Canadian government advertised for workers to emigrate from Lewis, which they did en-masse in 1923. Four hundred young people left the island on ships like the Metagama, to start a new life in the New World. That sounds prosaical, but it was on the whole a disaster. No work on the land, no money. Some of them ended up in the automobile factories of Detroit. A far cry from the Hebrides.

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