by Dave Hewitt » Wed Oct 09, 2013 11:24 pm
I think you need to put your collective brains in gear here. I was involved in organising "reclaiming" hill outings during the comeback period after foot and mouth in 2001, and various encounters were had with unsavoury land-manager types. But the absolute bottom-line for the reclaimers was that, whatever happened, there was to be no violence on our part and no issuing of threats either.
I'm not for a moment condoning what this Ledgowan chap appears to have said and done, and I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure there's already been enough said on this thread to completely compromise any mass walk - certainly if it involves anyone who has announced that they're prepared to use violence or to conspire to cover things up (that's arguably the greater of the two problems with what's been said on here). The people at Ledgowan aren't stupid - you're discussing and gung-ho-ing all this on a public forum which is quite probably being quietly read by someone from the estate. All it would take is for any kind of incident to happen - however minor, and however not initiated by the visiting walkers - and you'd be in big trouble given the amount of written/published evidence there is already.
There's also the issue that a few people on WH do not in any way represent the much larger general community of hillgoers - and something said on here, or something done in anger on a hill, could cause repercussions for non-WH walkers who happen to visit at some future point, given that the estate is quite likely to tar everyone with the same brush. There's a time and a place for mass walks, for sure - eg I don't for a minute regret what was done in 2001. But I think you've already blown your chances of making sensible use of that method here.
Instead, switch off the bravado, slow down a bit and make use of the existing (and very good) legislation: take it to the council access officer, possibly to your MSP, and also to the MCofS. But don't for goodness sake go around threatening people and then publicly conspiring to cover it up.