page_title: Eigg
section_title: Community buy-out
hierarchical_section_title: Eigg / History / Community buy-out
caption_attribution_description: English: Sgorr an Fharaidh.
context_page_description: Eigg is one of the Small Isles, in the Scottish Inner Hebrides. It lies to the south of the Isle of Skye and to the north of the Ardnamurchan peninsula. Eigg is 9 kilometres long from north to south, and 5 km east to west. With an area of 12 sq mi, it is the second largest of the Small Isles after Rùm. Eigg generates virtually all of its electricity using renewable energy.
context_section_description: In the early 1990s, a fire at Schellenberg's home on the island destroyed a 1920s Rolls-Royce; Police suspected the fire was due to arson. Some locals claimed that since the late 1980s, he had neglected homes, closed the community hall, and restricted leases. While admitting that he had closed the community hall (but only in the evenings), and had refused to continue one particular lease, he told the press that "drunken hippies and drop-outs" were unfairly branding him a despot. In 1994, now in his 60s, Schellenberg concluded that trying to conserve the island was not worth facing violent intimidation for, and in the following year sold it to Marlin Eckhard, an artist from Germany; Schellenberg retained ownership of the 18th century Manse.
  Nevertheless, by then a community trust had been formed by the Highland Council, the Scottish Wildlife Trust, and a number of residents – particularly those newly moved to the island – with a view to buying Eigg from the laird. In 1997, this Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust persuaded Eckhard to sell, and bought it from him. The ceremony to mark the handover took place a few weeks after the 1997 General Election and was attended by the Scottish Office Minister, Brian Wilson, a long-standing advocate of land reform; he used the occasion to announce the formation of a Community Land Unit within Highlands and Islands Enterprise to support further land buy-outs in the region.
  Between then and the 2011 census, the ordinarily resident population expanded from 65 to 83; this increase of 24 percent (six times greater than for the Scottish islands as a whole) was principally formed by young people who moved to Eigg to set up in business, as well as a handful of former residents returning to the island. However, by 2003, the residents' representatives on the trust's board were entirely people who had moved to the island since the trust took over. 
  A number of the longstanding residents complain that the trust focuses on the new residents, while ignoring the concerns of the families who have lived on the island for generations; for example, they complain that new mains power connections, and housing provision, is given to the families of trust members, not indigenous islanders. One islander from an old Eigg family declared that the trust "is not a democracy ... it is the mafia". More recently, more positive articles have been published, showing a different picture of the island.
  Eigg was featured on the American television program 60 Minutes in November 2017 and an extended feature on its companion web site 60 Minutes Overtime in July 2018.
caption: Cleadale from the northern end of the island
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