In the years following the 'Clearances' such as occurred in Suisnish and Boreraig, life continued to be hard for the crofters of Skye. Some had gone on the emigrant ships to Canada, to America or Australia, which in these days must have been like seeing your friends and relatives leaving for the moon, so little was the prospect of their return.
"Mrs M'Kinnon told me, that last year when a ship sailed from Portree for America, the people on shore were almost distracted when they saw their relations go off; they lay down on the ground, tumbled, and tore the grass with their teeth." (Boswell - Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides)
Those remaining found themselves on the poorest land. Some wages were to be had from gathering and burning seaweed from the sea-shore to make soda-ash for the land-owners to sell as an ingredient in the making of soap and other products, but when import duties were removed this industry collapsed. Throughout the century potato harvests were subject to blight and as this was a staple of the highlanders' diet, famine occurred in some areas. Adding to these hardships there was a steady upward pressure by landlords on rents.
It seems appropriate that at this time help should come from the West. Only 12 miles of the "Straits of Moyle" (Sruth na Maoile) seperate Kintyre from Antrim in the north of Ireland and since the Gaelic colonisation of the west of scotland in the 5th century there had been a strong tradition of alliance and exchange in trade, music and war. I do not know which group of inspired crofters invited Michael Davitt, the famous Irish land league orator to come and speak to the people of Skye, but it indicates that the struggle which had been carried on against landlordism in Ireland had important lessons for the Skye crofters.
The story of the struggle for their rights by the crofters of the highlands is one that is still not told in Scottish schoolrooms to this day. The land raids in the outer isles, the rent strikes and attacks on policemen in Skye culminated in the sending of a gunboat with a regiment of marines to Portree to impose order. At the same time the government of the day, nervous that the violence in Ireland might be paralleled in the highlands, set up the Napier Commission to investigate and act on the crofters' grievances.
Finally the Crofters' Act of 1886 gave the tenants of highland estates security of tenure which included being able to pass on their tenancy to their descendants. Rents were also severely curtailed; until very recently the rent on our croft was 5.00 pounds per year.