The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil is a play written in the 1970s by the popular playwright John McGrath. From April 1973, beginning at a venue in Aberdeen (Aberdeen Arts Centre), [1] [2] it was performed in a touring production in community centres on Scotland by 7:84 and other community theatre groups. A television version directed by John Mackenzie was broadcast on 6 June 1974 by the BBC as part of the Play for Today series. [3]
A musical drama, Cheviot recounts the history of economic change in the Scottish Highlands, from the Highland Clearances in the early 19th century through to the contemporary oil boom at the time of its first production. The 7:84 Touring Theatre Company presents its live stage play to the people of South and North Uist, Benbecula and Lewis. The stage play is mixed with filmed reconstructions of documented events in the Highland Clearances, darkly humorous songs and sketches and, later, interviews with those participating and affected by the North Sea Oil industry in 1974.
Scotland from 270 miles above the Earth. Castle from helicopter. Land mixes with water, seabirds, fiddle music; people enter the presentation in a community hall. Images of giant earth-moving equipment, sheep, stag, gas flare, then the faces of the locals watching the play – some baffled, some sceptical, some participating, particularly in a song sung in Scottish Gaelic...
Each sketch and reconstruction is supported by a continuous narration of facts and statistics, presenting an account of Scottish history from 1746 to 1974. Scenes describe 60 years of poverty, abuse and small scale eviction endured by the crofting tenants of the Highlands from 1746 – "Culloden and all that" – when speaking, singing or writing Scottish Gaelic and the wearing of the plaid were forcibly forbidden by the government.
The sudden expansion of English and Scottish capital and estate enlargement – "more money to buy more land" – at the beginning of the 19th century is outlined next. Patrick Sellar, a factor of the Duke of Sutherland, is introduced. His systemised evictions of the Highlanders were the broadest and most brutal of all the Clearances, and he is evoked as representative of the issues of land ownership in the Highlands and Islands and the north of Scotland. With frequent shots of the audience the play gives dispassionate readings of the equally dispassionate contemporary accounts of the brutality involved in evicting Highland crofting tenants to make way for the more profitable Cheviot, and later Blackface, sheep.
The reasons for the Clearances are explained and how they were enabled for the 'ruling classes' with the connivance of the church, the Law, the police and the military. It details where the people went: often to allotments on the seashore with wretched soil and conditions, where they were supposed to fish and gather kelp for the soda ash industry. It details the economic reasons why the men were often away south for much of the year, trying to find work to pay the rents on their crofts, or in the Highland regiments defending the British Empire. It also details the emigrations to the Victorian slums of Glasgow and to the rest of the world.
The few, but hugely important, successful instances of organised resistance to the evictions feature. It lists political resistance to the evictions such as the Land Leagues of the 1880s, which are contrasted with the Victorian landed gentry's passion for stag hunting; this and the sheep industry now having taken over many millions of acres. The land raids by crofters in the early 20th century are mentioned.
The play briefly mentions the modern day (1974) exploitation of the Highlands by the tourist industry then makes political comparisons between the past and 1974. McGrath explained in 1981: "At the first sniff of oil off the east coast of Scotland, things began to jump. First in Aberdeen and the North-East. Then all over. Suddenly villages that did not merit even an advance factory for 100 workers are being taken over by thousands of men in labour camps building oil-rigs, and oil-production platforms." [2]
Oilmen at Aberdeen are interviewed about conditions, health and safety at work and wages. These are followed by interviews with American oil bosses and members of the population of Aberdeen and on issues such as the inaffordability of housing after the oil boom.
The play details the political history of North Sea oil from the North Sea Gas explorations of 1962, and explores issues of shore and village destruction and pollution, accompanied by shots of refineries and plant. It explains that exploration is now looking to the West and has in fact already started off the Butt of Lewis.
With a final montage of images from 1746 to the Aberdeen riggers, the performers tell audience members that this is their land and urges them to resist exploitation, warning them that they will find the oil corporations even more insensitive than Patrick Sellar. [3]
The Highlands is a historic region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.
Sutherland is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area in the Highlands of Scotland. Its county town is Dornoch. Sutherland borders Caithness and Moray Firth to the east, Ross-shire and Cromartyshire to the south and the Atlantic to the north and west. Like its southern neighbour Ross-shire, Sutherland has some of the most dramatic scenery in the whole of Europe, especially on its western fringe where the mountains meet the sea. These include high sea cliffs, and very old mountains composed of Precambrian and Cambrian rocks.
Duke of Sutherland is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom which was created by William IV in 1833 for George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Marquess of Stafford. A series of marriages to heiresses by members of the Leveson-Gower family made the Dukes of Sutherland one of the richest landowning families in the United Kingdom. The title remained in the Leveson-Gower family until the death of the 5th Duke of Sutherland in 1963, when it passed to the 5th Earl of Ellesmere from the Egerton family.
The Agricultural Revolution in Scotland was a series of changes in agricultural practice that began in the seventeenth century and continued in the nineteenth century. They began with the improvement of Scottish Lowlands farmland and the beginning of a transformation of Scottish agriculture from one of the least modernised systems to what was to become the most modern and productive system in Europe. The traditional system of agriculture in Scotland generally used the runrig system of management, which had possibly originated in the late medieval period. The basic pre-improvement farming unit was the baile and the fermetoun. In each, a small number of families worked open-field arable and shared grazing. Whilst run rig varied in its detail from place to place, the common defining detail was the sharing out by lot on a regular basis of individual parts ("rigs") of the arable land so that families had intermixed plots in different parts of the field.
The first Highland Land League emerged as a distinct political force in Scotland during the 1880s, with its power base in the country's Highlands and Islands. It was known also as the Highland Land Law Reform Association and the Crofters' Party. It was consciously modelled on the Irish Land League.
Crofting is a form of land tenure and small-scale food production particular to the Scottish Highlands, the islands of Scotland, and formerly on the Isle of Man. Within the 19th century townships, individual crofts were established on the better land, and a large area of poorer-quality hill ground was shared by all the crofters of the township for grazing of their livestock.
The Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that created legal definitions of crofting parish and crofter, granted security of land tenure to crofters and produced the first Crofters Commission, a land court which ruled on disputes between landlords and crofters. The same court ruled on whether parishes were or were not crofting parishes. In many respects the Act was modelled on the Irish Land Acts of 1870 and 1881. By granting the crofters security of tenure, the Act put an end to the Highland Clearances.
A croft is a fenced or enclosed area of land, usually small and arable, and usually, but not always, with a crofter's dwelling thereon. A crofter is one who has tenure and use of the land, typically as a tenant farmer, especially in rural areas.
In Scotland a factor is a person or firm charged with superintending or managing properties and estates—sometimes where the owner or landlord is unable to or uninterested in attending to such details personally, or in tenements in which several owners of individual flats contribute to the factoring of communal areas.
Iain Crichton Smith, was a Scottish poet and novelist, who wrote in both English and Gaelic.
John Peter McGrath was a British playwright and theatre theorist who took up the cause of Socialism in his plays.
Strathnaver or Strath Naver is the fertile strath of the River Naver, a famous salmon river that flows from Loch Naver to the north coast of Scotland. The term has a broader use as the name of an ancient province also known as the Mackay Country, once controlled by the Clan Mackay and extending over most of northwest Sutherland.
Elizabeth Sutherland Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland, also suo jure19th Countess of Sutherland, was a Scottish peer from the Leveson-Gower family, best remembered for her involvement in the Highland Clearances.
Boreraig is a deserted township in Strath Swordale on the north shore of Loch Eishort in the parish of Strath, Isle of Skye, Scotland.
Aultiphurst, in Strathy, Sutherland, is a village in the Scottish Highlands
Patrick Sellar (1780–1851) was a Scottish lawyer, factor and sheep farmer. In 1811, he was employed as factor by the Sutherland Estate in a joint position with William Young. The estate had started some clearances, integral to their program of agricultural improvements. Whilst clearances in 1812 went reasonably smoothly, in 1813 Sellar failed to successfully negotiate with angry resistance in the Strath of Kildonan. A state of confrontation existed for more than six weeks and concessions ultimately had to be made by the estate to defuse the situation. In 1814, Sellar had the job of clearing some of the residents of Strathnaver. His actions here gave rise to a number of charges brought by the Sheriff-substitute Robert McKid, who was an enemy of Sellar's. The most serious of these was culpable homicide. Sellar was acquitted at his trial in April 1816, but has remained as the focus for much of the anger and indignation arising from the clearances. Sellar and Young were replaced by a new factor later in 1817, and Sutherland estate continued with even larger clearances, particularly in 1818-1820.
Camustianavaig is a crofting township on the island of Skye in Scotland. It is located on the shores of the Sound of Raasay, 5 kilometres southeast of Portree. The Lòn Bàn watercourse flows from Loch Fada to "An Eas Mhòr" below which it is named "Allt Ósglan" and discharges into the sea at Camas Tianabhaig. The stream forms the boundary between the township and Conordan to the south. Ósglan itself is the land on the right bank of Allt Ósglan.
The Highland Clearances were the evictions of a significant number of tenants in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, mostly in the period 1750 to 1860.
Ben Bhraggie is a hill in Scotland which rises to an elevation of 397 metres (1,302 ft) above sea level. The hill dominates the skyline above the village of Golspie and is visible from many parts of east Sutherland. The 100-foot-tall (30-metre) statue which is perched on top is that of George Leveson-Gower, Marquess of Stafford and first Duke of Sutherland who became notorious through the part he played in the Highland clearances.
Badbea is a former clearance village perched on the steep slopes above the cliff tops of Berriedale on the east coast of Caithness, Scotland. Situated around 5 miles (8 km) north of Helmsdale, the village was settled in the 18th and 19th centuries by families evicted from their homes when the straths of Langwell, Ousdale and Berriedale were cleared for the establishment of sheep farms. The last resident left the village in 1911 and a monument was erected by the son of former inhabitant, Alexander Robert Sutherland, who had emigrated to New Zealand in 1839. Today, the ruins of the village are preserved as a tourist attraction and memorial to the Highland Clearances.