New Statesman Scotland
The news that the ever-controversial Egyptian tycoon Mohamed Fayed has lost yet another round in his long tussle to become a British citizen is intriguing. It has a particular Scottish resonance. Now that the High Court in England has agreed with Jack Straw that Fayed is not fit to carry a British passport, why is it OK for him to own so much of Scotland? If Fayed lacks the necessary "good character" to become one of Her Majesty's subjects, how come he is allowed to hold on to thousands of acres of the Highlands and strut his stuff as the Laird of Balnagown?
Fayed's Scottish lairdship predates his ownership of Harrods. Years before he acquired his Knightsbridge shop to supply goods and services to the gentry he had become gentry himself. In the early 1970s Fayed (and his brother Ali) acquired huge chunks of Ross and Cromarty and Sutherland. Operating through a company called Bocardo SA (registered in Liechtenstein but run from Geneva) the Fayeds ended up with a swathe of the Highlands stretching from Strathoykel in the north down to the shores of the Cromarty Firth. At the centre of it all was Balnagown Castle on which, according to Easter Ross myth and legend, Fayed has spent a large part of his fortune.
Now this diary has nothing against Fayed in his Scottish incarnation. From most accounts he seems to have been a decent enough laird. The only serious complaint voiced about his lairdship over the years was the way in which he allowed one of the best neoclassical houses north of Inverness - Old Tarbart House by James McLeran - to go to rack and ruin before selling it off to an anonymous Panama- registered company. Nevertheless, there does seem to be something amiss with a system that rates ownership of a British passport much more important than owning a large slice of Scotland.
Colourful and controversial as Mohamed Fayed may be, he is not a patch on one of his predecessors as laird of Balnagown - Sir Charles Lockhart Ross, the last man in Britain to be officially declared "outlaw". Ross succeeded to the title in 1883 at the age of 11 and was dispatched to Eton College with a "train" of servants, including a footman, two valets, a gamekeeper and his own piper. For all his batty aristocratic ways, Ross was a brilliant engineer. He set up a machine shop in the castle where he made his own agricultural equipment. He also invented and developed the Ross "military and sporting rifle", which, it seems, was a fine gun (and copies of which remain in the gun room at Balnagown).
Inevitably, as Ross's business built up, the Inland Revenue took an interest. When Ross refused to pay, the taxman tried to seize the estate to pay the bills. Ross had it made a "ward of court" in Delaware and then fled to the USA. At which point His Majesty's government had the errant laird declared outlaw, the last time the ancient process was invoked. When Churchill's wartime government requisitioned Balnagown, Ross objected to this "invasion" of American territory. Ross died in exile in 1942, still railing against the wickedness of the Inland Revenue.
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