Scottish Islands Explorer 41: Jan / Feb 2017

Apostle of Land Reform
The Crofters’ Cause
Retiring from his career in 1872, Murdoch
moved to Inverness where the following year
he founded e Highlander. It was a
monthly publication and continued until
eventually floundering owing to financial
difficulties in 1881. As a progressive
newspaper, it promoted the croers’ cause
during the Land Agitation.
Under Murdoch’s radical editorship he
gave the Gaelic Language Revival
Movement a distinctly political and
inevitably nationalist flavour. In short, he
provided an incisive voice for the oppressed
Gaels and in his first editorial announced:
‘We this day place in the hands of
Highlanders a journal that they may call
their own. is we do with the distinct view
of stimulating them to develop their own
industrial resources and of encouraging
them to assert their nationality, and
maintaining that position in the country to
which their numbers, their traditions and
their character entitle them.’
Murdoch’s achievements were many.
For instance, he was an early and active
member of The Gaelic Society of
Inverness, to which he contributed a few
articles to its transactions, and which
continues to this day. At one dinner, he was
described by William Jolly as ‘a true
Highlandman, with high, outspoken,
honest purpose, working well to rouse his
people to real self-help and independence.’
Wrote Elegantly
In essence, John Murdoch was an agitator.
He combined the plight of the crofters
with the struggles of the Irish and of the
urban working class. He wrote eloquently
about trade unionism in The Highlander,
linking these issues as well as raising the
visibility of crofters and their conditions to
the wider world.
Over and above this, Murdoch’s connections
with the trades union movement
were growing, and, as seen during his tour
of America over the winter of 1879–80,
his positions on Home Rule and Land
Reform were part of wider, radicalised
thinking. It was Murdoch who chaired
the first meeting of the Scottish Labour
Party in May 1888, at which Keir Hardie
was present.
JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2017 SCOTTISH ISLANDS EXPLORER 41