Scotland: Rural campaigners push for Community Wealth Building and economic democracy
November 5, 2025
In May 2025, a range of organisations and activists gathered on the Island of Arran to discuss and push for the deepening of economic democracy and Community Wealth Building (CWB) within rural Scotland. Among them was The Democracy Collaborative’s own Global Lead for CWB, Neil McInroy. Here he considers the context and the ramifications of this important step.
The Arran Statement was produced in a the context of a growing CWB agenda, including national legislation in Scotland, consolidating existing progressive rural and island practice into a unified national demand for systemic change. Whilst important for Scotland, this work and statement particularly highlight the importance of Community Wealth Building in rural places.
The Arran Statement is explicitly framed within a context of longstanding patterns of wealth and resource extraction in Scotland, and demands that mainstream economic strategy and policy pivot to address these entrenched injustices. It calls out economic norms that privilege large landowners, corporates and distant capital, and argues that community ownership - and other inclusive and democratic business models - are necessary correctives to decades of concentration and extraction.
The work in Scotland has also fed into the Declaration of Inverurie, which emerged out of a meeting of the European Rural Parliament, a body including various high level rural representative bodies across Europe. The declaration was signed in late October 2025.
This rural‑led movement demonstrates globally that scaling Community Wealth Building into formal policy requires organised pressure from wider movements, as well as sustained local practice. The Arran work and its associated developments show us how activists, community organisations and allies can use their practical experience and campaigning into coherent policy demands that tackle depopulation, climate and biodiversity loss, intergenerational opportunity and social isolation.
By linking ownership and governance reforms to stewardship of natural capital and social wellbeing, the Arran Statement positions CWB not only as a powerful pre- and re-distributional tool, but as a structural strategy to undo historical extraction and build resilient, place‑based prosperity for all.
The Democracy Collaborative is a proud co-signatory of the Arran Statement.
The Arran Statement
Over three days, people and organisations representing Inclusive and Democratic Business Models (IDBMs) gathered in Auchrannie, on the Isle of Arran, where they debated Scotland’s rural and national economic future and produced this statement.
The Arran Statement We have much to celebrate in Scotland. Elements of an economy that genuinely works for people, place and planet are already evident - most notably in our rural and island places. Inclusive and Democratic Business Models (IDBMs) including co-operatives, social and community-led enterprises, development trusts and employee-owned businesses are building community wealth, creating resilience, empowering communities and individuals, and stewarding our environment.
They offer a glimpse to a potential positive future - but to get there requires a fundamental and urgent shift, including in government policies and priorities. Depopulation, the climate and biodiversity crises, deepening inequality and poverty, and increasing social isolation all demand policy responses that ramp up investment in IDBMs. Of course, we must - and do - acknowledge the existing success of IDBMs which help drive our economy. However, often their success is achieved in spite of the system.
Their full potential is hampered by outdated economic convention, by a patchy support ecosystem and by finance that wafts and wanes. Above all, it is hampered by economic norms that are loaded in favour of large landowners, corporates, land bankers and venture capitalists, and their ingrained wealth extraction models. We need a brave, bold and radical leap forward.
Starting from now, IDBMs must move from the margins to the mainstream and be acknowledged as an integral driver of rural prosperity, and of national prosperity. We must elevate their status, role and position within Scotland’s economic strategy and policy, making the pivot to an inclusive, democratic economy which delivers community wealth.
From the deep knowledge and wisdom we have, drawing on the seeds of success in rural places, we must exponentially grow the number of IDBMs by strengthening the ecosystem of support and building on regulatory and fiscal levers, including designing funding and investment mechanisms that recognise the centrality of IDBMs to wealth generation, wellbeing and resilience.
We need to harness the creativity and passion of younger people to start businesses that enable them to live well in - and as part of - their rural, island or urban communities. We need education and learning opportunities that align with local economic contexts, and that are firmly rooted in the ethos of IDBMs. Scotland’s economy and its history is blighted by inequalities and the concentration and extraction of wealth.
With the need to safeguard our finite natural capital, and to move from fossil fuel reliance to renewables, we must now change the economic pattern. To deliver an economy that genuinely works for our environment, our places, and for all in Scotland, our communities must own their future. IDBMs offer a vehicle for them to do so. We have the evidence, the practice, the communities, the drive and the voice. We now demand action.