On this day, 19 April 1882, hundreds of women, men and children fought police on the mountainous Isle of Skye in northwest Scotland. It was the start of a widespread land revolt that required a military invasion to restore order.
In 1865 a landowner let out Ben Lee hill to a sheep farmer. It was a devastating blow for his already impoverished tenants, who traditionally had local grazing rights. For 15 years they stoically endured the confiscation of their grazing rights, but when the sheep farm’s lease expired, they petitioned the landlord to reinstate them for a fair rent.
When the petition went ignored, the crofters declared a rent strike and drove their animals onto the hill in violation of the law. So the sheriff’s office delivered eviction notices to some of the most senior and troublesome tenants. Sheriffs were met by a jeering mob of 150 women, men, and children who burned the eviction notices and chased them off.
So on April 19 the Sheriff returned with his own officers plus police from Glasgow. They marched into the Braes and seized prisoners in Balmeanach. The crofters, initially taken by surprise, soon ran from their homes and fields carrying whatever weapons they could find. In heavy wind and rain, the crofters began to chuck stones, while others attacked with branches and agricultural tools. The police baton-charged unsuccessfully and soon they too resorted to hurling stones.
A local journalist described how “Stones were coming down like hail, while huge boulders were hurled down… Here and there a constable might be seen actually bending under the pressure of a well-directed boulder, losing his footing, and rolling down the hill, followed by scores of missiles.”
Eventually the exhausted police had to flee with just five prisoners, but the revolt spread and was only quelled by warships and hundreds of troops over two years later.
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