COSCA, or the Council of Scottish Clans & Associations, are an American organisation who aim to put people in touch with their ancestry. They also wish to keep the clan system, as they see it, alive. They cannot understand that we that are left here in Scotland, the “also rans” as Alastair McIntyre arrogantly states in his comment, don’t bother with our clans. The clan system to which they subscribe is one of their own, and Walter Scott’s, making. It is still fundamentally feudal in nature however, with its inherited chieftainship. It is this aspect of the clan system which we find abhorrent. Why should anybody be placed in a position of power and privilege just because of who their parents were?

The clan chiefs have their own website and club, called the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs or the Scottish Feudal Council as we like to call them. It is this organisation which wishes to perpetuate the feudalism of the past. Have a look at the list of chiefs, it reads like a who’s who of the Scottish landed gentry. Of the 120 persons listed fully half are titled. People such as the Countess of Sutherland and the Earl of Caithness, whose ancestors were among the worst of the clan chiefs who cleared the lands of their people. Their own kin! It is these actions which make the highlands of Scotland look as they do today, empty. Full of ruins, testament to the chiefs’ savagery of the past.

These chiefs are the same people who are currently squealing about the upcoming Land Reform bill. COSCA have also noticed this bill, if they wish to know more about the issues surrounding land reform they could pop over to Andy Wightman’s site or read his book, The Poor Had No Lawyers. It is an issue which we feel strongly about too and there will be posts about this subject soon. Don’t forget that the land which these chiefs own once belonged to the people of the clan, you may wish to ask your landed clan chief how they came to be in possession of it.