[3] According to John Lorne Campbell, however, the Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 was nothing less than "the Magna Carta of the Highlands and Islands, which conferred on the small tenants there something which the peasantry of Scandinavian countries had known for generations, security of tenure and the right to the principle of compensation for their own improvements at the termination of tenancies.

Nothing was suggested in the report, or contained in the Act, to restrict absentee landlordism or limit the amount of land any one individual might own in Scotland, but for the moment a great advantage has been secured.

The crofters wanted recognition of their traditional rights to the land that they had enjoyed under the clan system from the Middle Ages.

[6] Through political and economic development the gentry began to take an alternate perspective on their tenantry: The cultural force of dùthchas [heritage] was pervasive in Gaeldom and was central to the social cohesion of the clan because it articulated the expectations of the masses that the ruling family had the responsibility to act as their protectors and guarantee secure possession of land in return for allegiance, military service, tribute and rental.

It was a powerful and enduring belief which lived on long after the military rationale of clanship itself had disappeared and tribal chiefs had shed their ancient responsibilities and become commercial landlords.

[citation needed] The strife grew more intense; the landlords hired warships for protection from the crofters.

[8] At a political level the crofters wanted legal rights, so the Comunn Gàidhealach Ath-Leasachadh an Fhearainn ('Highland Land Law Reform Association') was established in 1885 in London.

The government feared that the "Home Rule" movement would spread to the Gàidhealtachd (Gaelic-speaking areas in Scotland) from Ireland.

On the one hand crofters complained that the Act did not go far enough, because they were not granted automatic right to fertile land for expansion of their small crofts.

[2] On the other hand, the landlords said that there was "communism looming in the future" and The Scotsman wrote that the Act was a "great infringement on the rights of private property.

This opinion was raised again in the Crofting Reform (Scotland) Act 1976 in which crofters gained the legal right to purchase their land for fifteen years' rent.

In the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 the right of purchase was given to community organizations even against the will of landowners, to advance social and economic development.

[5] There has been a steady flow of primary legislation on crofting, including: This is summarised in David Findlay's Blog for the Law Society of Scotland.