The devastating impact of Donald Trump’s Scottish golf courses

In 2006, Ali­cia Bruce had just grad­u­at­ed from study­ing Pho­tog­ra­phy, Film, and Imag­ing at Edin­burgh Napi­er Uni­ver­si­ty, when a sto­ry in her local news­pa­per caught her atten­tion. A celebri­ty prop­er­ty tycoon from the USA, a cer­tain Don­ald Trump, had announced that he was plan­ning to build ​“the great­est golf course in the world” in Menie, Aberdeen­shire – a stone’s throw away from where she grew up and would play as a child.

“What real­ly shocked me was the fan­fare from the local press. They were rolling out the red car­pet for him,” Bruce recalls. ​“Many local res­i­dents were vil­i­fied, they were called ​‘peas­ants’ and ​‘pigs’ – they were thrust into the media against their will. I couldn’t quite believe what I was read­ing because it seemed like an emp­ty promise.”

With its lush green­ery, brush­ing the ocean loca­tion and mov­ing dunes, Menie was a par­tic­u­lar­ly beau­ti­ful and spe­cial patch of nature on the Scot­tish east coast. But it was also a Site of Spe­cial Sci­en­tif­ic Inter­est (SSSI) – the same des­ig­na­tion grant­ed to the Ama­zon Rain­for­est – and the idea that the area would be devel­oped was unthink­able to many who had lived in the area their whole lives.

“The local coun­cil reject­ed it, and then they were vil­i­fied for it,” alleges Bruce. ​“But the deci­sion was over­turned by then-First Min­is­ter Alex Salmond. He had met with Trump and then the build­ing start­ed a few years lat­er.” Salmond, who was also the MSP for Menie, would pre­dict the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of the course to ​“sub­stan­tial­ly out­weigh any envi­ron­men­tal impact”. Called the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Scot­land golf course, it stands today as an 18-hole, 500-hectare, mon­ey haem­or­rhag­ing scar on the for­mer nat­ur­al beau­ty hotspot.

See­ing the envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and now stripped of its con­ser­va­tion sta­tus, Bruce began trav­el­ling to the north­east coast to doc­u­ment its impact on Menie’s land­scape and locals – mak­ing por­traits of res­i­dents, who resist­ed in the face of com­pul­so­ry pur­chase orders for their homes and land and refused to pack up and leave. Now, ten years after the course first opened in 2013, those pic­tures are pre­sent­ed in her soon-to-be-pub­lished pho­to­book I Burn But I Am Not Con­sumed.

While a con­tro­ver­sial and poten­tial­ly crim­i­nal term as a Pres­i­dent of the USA has tak­en some of the orig­i­nal sheen off of Trump’s image in Scot­land, his impact in the local area remains. Fea­tur­ing inter­views with those in the area, most of whom have now become close friends with Bruce, the book’s pic­tures show a com­mu­ni­ty who not only have seen their access to local land heav­i­ly restrict­ed, but have been alleged­ly forced to deal with aggres­sion and intim­i­da­tion from Trump’s employees.

“There was a jour­nal­ist I know who was arrest­ed, and had DNA sam­ples tak­en and all of his equip­ment tak­en off him,” she claims. ​“Because he went to Trump’s office and asked why Mol­ly, Mike and Sheila’s water had been cut off.” Anoth­er friend, Rohan Beyts, was walk­ing on the dunes when she realised that he need­ed to go to the toi­let. Find­ing a qui­et spot to relieve him­self, she con­tin­ued onwards think­ing lit­tle of the moment until police turned up at her door three days lat­er to charge her under the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure (Scot­land) Act – she had been filmed uri­nat­ing by Trump employ­ees and a news­pa­per pho­tog­ra­ph­er. A judge would lat­er crit­i­cise Trump Scot­land, say­ing that the actions could be ​“viewed as voyeurism.”

There’s also a sub­ver­sive ele­ment to the por­traits, with Bruce hav­ing her sit­ters (she doesn’t like the term ​‘sub­jects’) recre­ate scenes and pos­es from clas­sic paint­ings includ­ing Grant Wood’s Amer­i­can Goth­ic. ​“Tra­di­tion­al­ly you would go into a gallery expect­ing to see the great and good on the wall and there’s this sort of cultism,” Bruce explains. ​“So what I want­ed to do was show these amaz­ing, remark­able peo­ple and put them at the cen­tre of attention.”

Per­haps the most pow­er­ful shot sees Susan Munro sit­ting on a sand dune, casu­al­ly smok­ing a cig­a­rette while re-enact­ing Archibald D. Reid’s paint­ing On the Bents (1873). ​“I was speak­ing to Susan and Sheila Forbes over lock­down, and we were speak­ing about how nice it would be to bring every­thing togeth­er in a book for them and then both of them died,” Bruce says. ​“So it’s a trib­ute to them.”

I Burn But I Am Not Con­sumed by Ali­cia Bruce is pub­lished by Day­light Books.

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