At the apex of social inequality in Scotland – as in the (dis)United Kingdom as whole - is King Charles and the rest of the people who make up ‘the monarchy’.
The recent Dispatches film revealed some aspects of their finances but ignored the Scottish dimension.
Ownership of land is one of the key dimensions of inequality closely associated with the monarch’s attachment to hunting estates, including the land around Balmoral.
Andy Wightman’s updated report on landownership in Scotland contains some shocking figures. He found that 83% of rural Scotland is privately owned: this has become slightly more concentrated since his previous survey in 2012.
The latest figures show 433 landowners own 50% of private land (in 2012 it was 440). While the public sector estate has decreased by 20,907ha since 2012, community landownership has increased by 40,048ha (from 172,000ha in 2012) a 23% increase. 75% of all privately owned land is in the hands of legal entities (trusts, companies and partnerships). About 15% of privately owned land has been owned by the same family for more than a hundred years – some much longer including going back to the 12th century!
Of course, some owners of big tracts of the highlands – amongst the richest people in the world – have only taken on this ‘responsibility’ recently. Some of these characters are being profiled in a current series in The National newspaper, introduced by journalist Hamish Morrison as ‘peeling back the lid on the eccentric millionaires who can be spotted racing sports cars through Highland glens, looking at the billions that flow through this country every year and some of the unexpected things going on behind the scenes in the country’s lucrative tourism industry’.
One of these is Scotland’s largest landowner, the ‘fast fashion’ multi-billionaire and private-jet operator Anders Povlsen. The patterns of private ownership being highlighted in The National exploits gap in government regulations around greenwashing, with much of the finance used being based outwith the UK in tax havens.
Published 3 January 2025