It’s round about this time some patriotic soul sitting in his pants in his mum’s back room takes to social media to announce CalMac sailings have a 97% service and reliability rating and by comparison half the Staten Island ferries didn’t run at all last week, and that the Gebrovia to Narnia boat only sails every fifth Sunday in February! On behalf of islanders everywhere – thank you for your insight.
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In the good old days, it wasn’t reliability that hampered island travel but cost – and for a few years at least the need to navigate the road blocks and protests at the Skye Bridge meant making a departure from Uig was always more doubtful that other routes.
The eventual liberation of Skye from extortion was just one of a long list of injustices visited on the Gàidhealtachd over centuries; yet ironically this modern age of self-flagellation has not found any public leaders lying prostrate offering apologies for the sins of the past. It’s time that changed.
My own accidental act of protest happened some 30 years ago now. I had not long returned from an early trip home from Inverness and found myself having a meeting without biscuits with my then Deputy Chief Constable. I’m not saying he was angry but he bounced around his office like a ball-bearing in a pinball machine and was so red I thought he might have an aneurism.
As a fellow Hebridean himself, I’m sure the irony of chewing out a young compatriot in what for both of us was our second language was lost in the heat of the moment, but my bemusement at what had sparked such emotion was soon revealed. “You are a member of SKAT” (Skye and Kyle of Lochalsh Against Tolls) came the accusatory bellow? Being one who was naturally subservient to authority – even then – what a ding-dong we had.
It’s easy to look at the decline of the Highlands and Islands in purely post-devolution, constitutional terms, and it’s true some of the neglect visited on these rural communities in recent years would have made George Granville and Patrick Sellar, the infamous factor to George, 1st duke of Sutherland, proud.
Schools, hospitals, industry – all gone or going. Housing, transport, infrastructure – forget it. Little wonder the population is dying – the constant hoovering of resources while neglecting the people does that. That hasn’t suddenly happened since 2007 it’s just that now there is no hiding place.
No other part of this land faced a sustained form of ethnic cleansing with people forcibly displaced, homes razed, and livestock slaughtered as they were deemed of lesser worth than sheep. Nor seen its language and culture outlawed in a systematic drive to kill both stone dead. Centuries long exploitation of people and place for the personal gain of a few has been replaced by casual ambivalence but the patronising belief that others know what’s best for us teuchters is a strong as it ever was.
The student politic dominating policies of today may be less brutal than the savagery of the past but at its heart is the sense that people on the land are nothing more than an embuggerance to the unspoilt Highland idyll the city dwellers want to enjoy for a fortnight each year.
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It’s not a concern for the sustainability of a Highland or Hebridean way of life that drove the ill-fated bans on fishing and wood burning stoves, or the abandoning of the A9 upgrade. Nor indeed the closure of dozens of police stations as we are expected to swallow the line that this makes the service more responsive and attuned to community needs. If the service really believes that, it would apologise for sending 50 Glasgow polis to Camastianavaig in Skye in 1882 to bash heads in the Battle of the Braes as crofters took a stand against feudalism? That would be more meaningful than the performative nonsense of the recent past.
The historic exploitation of people and place was recently thrown into the spotlight as Sir Keir Starmer faced calls for reparations from Caribbean nations at the Commonwealth Head of Governments Meeting in Samoa. The anger at the injustice at the consequences of slavery are easy to understand, and inevitably bring concessions and investment as penance for the sins of yesteryear. Coinciding with the final week of Black History Month, the calls for reparations were that little bit harder to ignore and will only grow louder and louder.
The brutality of the Highland Clearances continued for 50 years after slavery was outlawed yet its effects barely merit a second of reflection or mention in our day to day lives. If Highlanders and Islanders are to ever rid themselves of the long pernicious tentacles of the clearances, to ensure future generations can call them home, we need to make life uncomfortable for those who benefitted from their exploitation, and demand reparations of our own.
Calum Steele is a former General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, and general secretary of the International Council of Police Representative Associations