| Allan Wilson:
Like Pauline
McNeill and other members, I begin by thanking the clerks to the Justice
2 Committee, who put an enormous amount of work into the bill, which is
a historic piece of legislation. I thank all the committee members and
I give a special mention, of course, to Bill Aitken, who made it so easy
to get the bill through. I thank Opposition members for their stamina in
coping with the volume of evidence and amendments.
There are days
when we remember why we got involved in politics and why that brought us
to the Scottish Parliament. Yesterday and today have been—for me at least—two
such days. To see Jamie McGrigor during the debate this afternoon, flapping
in the wind and impaled on a hook of his own making—like one of the salmon
that he talks about in the chamber—as he spoke of land grabs, was the icing
on the cake of my political career so far.
As I said to
comrade Finnie, commander in chief of the Scottish land-grab unit—[Laughter.]—it
was the prospect of this day that kept so many of us going through the
dark and often desperate 18 years of Tory government. We were determined
to create the Scottish Parliament. The joint determination of the Liberal
Democrats and the Labour party in the Scottish constitutional convention
was to realise this day and to deliver land reform.
Like others,
I quote Donald Dewar:
"Who could imagine
such a land reform bill passing unscathed through the massed ranks of the
House of Lords?"—[Official Report, 16 June 1991; Vol 1, c 406.]
Not I, nor anyone
here.
A Tory press
release this week spoke of revenge for the Highland clearances. However,
it is the Tory party that is living in the past. Comparing mild-mannered,
west Highland crofters with the thugs of Zanu PF, or ramblers with the
North Korean people's militia, does a disservice not only to the struggle
for the liberation of the people of such countries, but to the Tory party.
As Brian Fitzpatrick
and Alasdair Morrison said, from the first days of the Labour movement
in Scotland, land reform has been unfinished business. From the land league
men of Raasay, Skye and Lewis through the mass trespass of the 1930s and
on to today, I am proud and privileged, as a Labour minister in the Liberal-Labour
Executive, to propose to a Scottish Parliament that the land of Scotland
should belong to its people and that the Parliament should pass the Land
Reform (Scotland) Bill.
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