Charles Innes and a trial that changed history

“I am certain that the people are more frightened of the proprietor and the factor than they are of the God who created them”. Alexander Morrison, chairman of the Stornoway branch of the Highland Land Law Reform Association.

In April 1874, 150 crofters from the island of Bernera and other villages in the Parish of Uig marched to Stornoway and took their bitter grievances to the door of the proprietor, Sir James Matheson of Achany. Fifty-six families had been served with eviction notices. Three young Bernera men had been arrested.

The people, pushed to the edge of their remarkable tolerance, were seeking redress from a proprietor who sought to present himself to the outside world as a benign patrician. Their brave action in the face of terrible adversity gained little from the proprietor. But the trial that followed led to the downfall of one of the most hated men in the history of Lewis – Donald Munro, factor to Sir James Matheson from 1853 to 1874, and cancelled the threats of eviction.

These are the events that have passed into history as the Bernera Riot – undoubtedly a turning point in the whole saga of Highland landlordism and responses to it. The trial of the Bernera men became a cause célèbre and drew widespread attention to the subjugation of the Lewis crofters. In spite of Matheson’s loyalty to Munro, it did lead to the factor’s resignation and removal from the many public offices he held.

The Highland economy was relatively stable during the two decades of Munro’s rule and conditions were such that in many areas crofters could improve their lot. However the crofters of Lewis were never given that opportunity. In 1874, the Oban Times reported that the Lewis crofters existed “ in a state of virtual slavery …. in conditions which in other lands would foster seeds of revolution”.

The power of the estate over the crofters’ lives was absolute. A pamphlet on the Bernera case, soon after its conclusion in July 1874, described the manner in which Munro exerted his authority: “The poor people complain of their thraldom and the petty tyrannies to which they are subjected. To give examples – though they seem almost incredible – if a small tenant enters the room of the Chamberlain with his head covered, his hands in his pockets or with apparently unwashed face, he is by that functionary fined; and if offence is given – though it would appear to be more frequently taken than intended - or if his behests are not at once obeyed with becoming meekness, the poor crofters are invariably threatened with ejection from their lands”.

Donald Munro had the final say in every aspect of people’s lives. He evicted them, fined them and treated them with open and utter contempt. He ruled the people of Lewis with a rod of iron for 20 years, until he was finally brought to account by the crofters of Bernera, aided by the incisive legal mind of Charles Innes, the Inverness solicitor who represented the men in court.

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THE LAST STRAW…

From time immemorial crofters on Bernera had used grazing land on the West Uig mainland at Beannaibh a’Chuailein which reached out as far as Loch Langabhat, to graze cattle in the summer months. In 1872, notice was served by the estate that these grazings were to be added to both the Scaliscro and Morsgail deer forests. The crofters were to establish new shielings at Earshader where they were offered grazings.

A seven mile dyke would have to be built by the crofters to separate the new grazings from the deer shooting, and so avoid the heavy fines imposed should their animals stray into the deer forest. The Bernera crofters did not give up their ancient grazing land lightly. They insisted on a lease for the new grazings before starting the monumental task of building the dyke. The conditions were agreed with Munro and a document signed. But while the crofters believed this gave them some security, Munro would later deny the existence, far less significance, of any such document.

The crofters took over the Earshader grazings at Whitsunday 1872. Less than a year later, the ground officer for Uig, James Macrae, was instructed to move them a second time. The issue simmered over the winter. By March 1874, the crofters – men and women – had completed the dyke, delaying the start of the fishing season. This made no difference to Munro. They were to be removed from Earshader without compensation or delay. He told them to remove the cattle or he would bring in the Army. “The Volunteers would settle with them”, he told a meeting.

Munro had been Commanding Officer of the 1st Company of Ross-shire Volunteers for many years and regarded this military role as a back-up to his unparalleled authority. At the subsequent trial, Charles Innes commented on the fact that he must be the only law agent in Scotland “to include such an office in the law list”. Munro went ahead with hiring a Sheriff’s Officer to serve summonses on the 56 crofters involved. Each was to be evicted, with their families, not only from the Earshader grazings but also from the crofts and houses on Bernera.

Amid escalating hostility, the summons-servers were pelted with clods of earth. The Sheriff’s Officer, Colin Maclennan, was heard to declare: “If I had my rifle I would make some of the Bernera women lament the loss of their sons”. That evening at the Garynahine Inn, Maclennan and Munro cooked up charges against three of the Bernera men, one of whom – Angus Macdonald – was imprisoned in Stornoway after a dramatic pursuit through the town. In Bernera, the news sparked off a spontaneous show of resistance.

It was determined to march on Stornoway jail. Boats were dispatched to Carloway and Uig to raise more men.

They gathered at Garynahine and 150 set off on the march to Stornoway where the plan was to use a yacht mast of pitched pine to ram the prison doors. When the Stornoway legal establishment learned what was happening, they hastily released Macdonald and expected this to dissuade the marchers from entering the town. Instead, they determined to proceed to the castle to confront Matheson.

The landlord denied knowledge of the events in Bernera and claimed Munro had kept him in the dark but promised to look into the matter so long as the men went home in peace. A few weeks later, Angus Macdonald, Norman Macaulay and John Macleod were summoned to appear in court and trial was set for July 17th. Quite contrary to the assurances given on the lawns of Lews Castle, there was no communication between Sir James Matheson and his Bernera tenants before or after the trial.

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THE TRIAL

It was the trial, and in particular the superb advocacy of Charles Innes, which exposed the powers Matheson had vested in the factor and Munro’s tyranny in dealing with the Lewis crofters. Innes’s summing-up at the end of the trial was a masterpiece which encapsulated not only the specific circumstances which gave rise to the charges but also the wider picture of life in Lewis under Matheson and Munro.

By the time of the trial, Munro had been removed by the Sheriff from his position as Fiscal and it may be that his successor in that role, William Ross, was by no means displeased to see the factor in the witness-box and morally in the dock.

Certainly, Mr Ross raised no objection to Innes’s wide-ranging approach to the case.

The effects of the summonses, if implemented, would have been “the turning out of house and home of several hundred human beings”. Innes, having painted a glowing picture of the Bernera people and their law-abiding history, then turned to the regime under which they lived: “Such a system of management as seems to prevail here is calculated to call forth cries as to tenant-right and fixity of tenure which, if once raised, will spread over to the mainland and, as was found in Ireland, will not easily be allayed.

“It used to be said that the slave who breathed the air of Britain immediately became free; but from what one hears, and from what has come out in evidence in this case, I fear very much that that could not be said of this island at the present moment, for it appears to me that there are many poor but deserving men here who can hardly call their souls their own”.

Innes had turned the entire case around. No longer were the men in the dock on trial but the system which persecuted them and their fellows. He then started to take the character of Munro to pieces, using the deadliest of weapons – ridicule. “Looking at the nature of his multifarious offices, I can almost fancy it is possible for him to appear at one and the same time in the capacity of prosecutor, judge and jury. It is, in point of fact, a matter of great difficulty to think in the singular of such a great pluralist”.

Having characterised Munro as “the oppressor” of Bernera and reflected on the factor’s good fortune not to be operating in Ireland, Innes declared: “I trust the effect of this trial will be that oppression will cease”. He went on to ridicule the scale of the incident which had occurred as the Sheriff’s Officer and his little party left Tobson, leading to the subsequent charges. He told the jury: “You have now before you a true and full account of what has come to be known as the Great Bernera Riot”

After Sheriff Spittal had summed up, the packed Stornoway courtroom awaited the verdict of the jury who were unable to gain access to the jury room because of the crowded scenes. They conferred briefly in the box before the foreman, a Mr Macpherson, rose to say: “My Lord, the jury unanimously finds the panels not guilty”. Munro’s rule over Lewis was broken. Sir James Matheson’s stewardship of the island had been laid bare for history to judge. A turning-point had been reached in the history of the Highlands and Islands.

On Bernera, the immediate effect of the Riot and its aftermath was the dropping of the evictions while the people continued to use the old grazings. Without the Riot, these people would have been off on emigrant ships. That is why the name of Charles Innes continues to be honoured down to the present day.

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THE LAWYER

Charles Innes was born in Inverness and trained as a lawyer at the University of Edinburgh. In 1863, he was assumed into partnership by Charles Fraser-Mackintosh, a leading figure in the Highland land reform movement and one of the five radical pro-crofter MPs elected in 1885.

In 1874, Fraser-Mackintosh had first been elected as a Liberal for Inverness Burghs and at that point, the legal firm became Innes and Mackay which – coincidental with the 150th anniversary of the Bernera trial – is marking its 150th birthday this month. By politics, Charles Innes was himself a Tory.

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Extracted from ‘The Lewis Land Struggle – Na Gaisgich’ by Joni Buchanan, published by Acair