Scotland - land and power: the agenda for land reform

Andy Wichtman, Luath Press, 126 pages, paperback, £5.00

More of Scottish land is concentrated in private hands than anywhere else in Europe. Of its 19 million acres, over 18 million are in rural areas, of which only two and a quarter million are publicly owned; the rest are privately owned. Of this, one quarter belongs to 66 landowning families, with estates of well over 30,000 acres each.

This author examines the economic and political powers of such landowners, their tax evasion practices and much else. And he is highly critical of the land "reforms" at present under discussion in the Scottish Parliament, setting out his own much more radical programme for change.