Ian Mitchell - Isles of the West: A Hebridean Voyage

ISLES OF THE WEST

... a Cobbet-like voyage of discovery into how arrogantly and unjustly the nature quangos run their protectorates in the Highlands and islands.

Neal Ascherson, Book of the Year, The Herald

... a complete delight, and a change from the usual kind of book about the Hebrides.

Chris Dillon, BBC Radio

... a fascinating and important book, which has completely altered my view of that part of the world... What, he asks, is a healthy relationship between people and land? To what extent is the love of nature misanthropic? They are harsh questions and in an explosive book with an anodyne title Mitchell attempts to answer them. His questions are, for me, a kind of revelation.

Adam Nicolson, The Sunday Telegraph

... a penetrating and astringent analysis of the state of play in the world of wildlife conservation. No punches are pulled.

Lord Barber of Tewkesbury, Country Illustrated

It is difficult to fault Mitchell on a single issue. Isles of the West is worth reading for its truths and its splendid evocation of island life.

Ruaridh Nicoll, The Herald

Ian Mitchell has cleverly let the Hebridean witnesses explain their exasperation and despair at the ruination of their islands by the militant conservationists.

Peter Clarke, New Statesman

Isles of the West is an important and fascinating study of present-day island life. It captures the allure of the locale as well as portraying the islanders with warmth, good humour and understanding.

Hugh Smith, Oban Times

a bracingly acerbic and enjoyable book, full of barbed surprises

Redmond OHanlon, Times Literary Supplement

This is a readable, entertaining and well-researched book... a penetrating and pertinent analysis. Anyone with an interest in the politics of conservation should read this book.

Jonathan Bulmer, Stornoway Gazzette

... an eye-opening description of land ownership in the Hebrides... beautifully written.

Matt Ridley, Daily Telegraph

I enjoyed this book, its clear lines of argument, its careful documentation, its little anecdotes and its touches of humour. I wonder if Mitchells sense of the ridiculous is not perhaps what differentiates him from those he criticises, even more than his obvious sympathy with crofters and the Gaelic way of life.

Jean Hunter, The Ileach

A controversial book, and those who enjoy open criticism of pure conservation will find it an enthralling read.

Colin Shedden, Shooting and Conservation

Ian Mitchell makes some telling points and I confess I found his book deliciously readable.

Peter Marren, British Wildlife

After this book the politics of land use and land ownership in western Scotland will never be the same again. It exposes the chasm between local people and the RSPB in a way which cannot be ignored by reformists in the Scottish parliament. Mitchell identifies the point never adequately answered: why should local communities in unchanging places be bound hand and foot by new environmental regulations curbing routine behaviour when it was their traditional management that created these environments in the first place? Mitchells sharp pen has caused a furore in Scotland.

Michael Wigan, The Field

This edition published in 2012 by

Birlinn Limited

West Newington House

10 Newington Street

Edinburgh EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

First published in 1999 by

Canongate Books Limited

Edinburgh

Reprinted 2001, 2004, 2006

Copyright Ian Mitchell 1999, 2001, 2004 and 2012

Photographs copyright Ian Mitchell

Ian Mitchell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978 1 84158 950 3

eBook ISBN 978 0 85790 188 0

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset in Adobe Garamond by Brinnoven, Livingston

Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, who loved the isles, the seas and the folk of the west, and who helped finance the purchase of Sylvia B.

INTRODUCTION TO THE FIFTH EDITION

It is extremely gratifying to know that this book has been consistently popular over the twelve years since it was first published. It is sixteen years since I made the trip described, and I now live 2,000 miles away from my starting point on the Isle of Islay and 400 miles from the nearest stretch of salt water. I live in a block of flats which has twice the population of the village of Lagavulin, in a district that has more people than all of the Highlands and Islands, and at the edge of a city whose numbers have increased in the last twenty years by nearly the total population of Scotland. These days I spend my summer weekends cycling through gaunt and silent forests rather than threading my way under sail through skerries and islets from which the wash of sea carries as persistently as the sound of the gulls and the thrum of the wind in the rigging.

But comparisons are invidious. There is just as much excitement in rolling through an empty winter snowscape on a 1,000-mile train journey, or descending through vineyards and citrus groves in shimmering heat to half-Asiatic shores, as there is in crossing the Minch in thick fog (see Chapter 7), or sounding for an anchorage off the Shiants under sail on a moonless night (Chapter 9), or emerging from the Sound of Sleat on a clear autumn morning and raising the great slab of Ardnamurchan Point low on the southern horizon, with the wind set fair for home (Chapter 13).

On those trains, and amongst those citrus groves, I hear a language which has much of the musical quality of the Gaelic, and which seems to me to reflect something of the sounds characteristic of nature in the area where it has evolved. Here, I see a comparable enthusiasm for wild nature, especially for hunting with gun, rod or bag. The latter holds berries in the spring, wildflowers in summer and mushrooms in the autumn. On high days and holidays, these people like to break the huge silence of the forests by using them in ways which the nature conservation bureaucracy has largely criminalized in Scotland (see Postscript). They make fires, cook shashlik, drink beer, play or make music, have sex, go swimming, fall asleep, walk, sit still or, in some places, build rickety little huts just as they used to do in the wilder parts of my own country until creeping suburbia created something called the environment in the 1960s and 70s.

The irony is that it was the appeal of wild land in which there was the freedom to do all these now unlawful things that brought the pious puritans of the nature conservation movement into those parts of Britain, where they now leave their socially destructive mark. In one sense, this book is a lament for a lost world, but in another sense it is an illustration of just how important it is to take action in defence of traditional freedoms. And the time to act is as much today as it might have been when the environmental movement was new and still trusted.

This book was the first to ask the fundamental question about bureaucratic conservationism: how much does it all cost, and is it worth it? That question is especially relevant today in the context of the world financial crisis. As resources are being reduced for health and education, it is doubly important that the budgets of bodies like Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), and all the charity-sector pilot fish that feed off it, be slashed.