14 - Island perspectives

Summary

Small offshore islands are more prominent in Scotland than in any other part of the British Isles and the fact that they are particularly numerous off the north and west coasts has led to close parallels being drawn between Scotland and Scandinavian lands such as the Faeroes, Iceland and Norway. It is very difficult to decide how many islands there are altogether because they range in size from Lewis & Harris with some 200,000 ha down to the most insignificant dimensions. The census of 1861 recognised 787 islands and all but 31 lay in the Highland counties extending from Bute to Shetland. Even then only 185 of these islands were inhabited: in 1971 the figure was down to 105. The story of island depopulation is quite as emotive as the saga of the clearances and even though the details are too fragmentary to permit a comprehensive study of desertion going far back in time there is a sufficient number of well documented cases to reveal community failure and landlord oppression on a scale that disturbs the social conscience of any one who is orientated by the ethos of the welfare state. Yet sympathy for people who find it necessary to transfer to a new environment should not obscure the normality of this process, for a farmer who decides to farm an island by commuting from an external base, rather than by living permanently on the holding, is really behaving no differently from a mainland colleague who enlarges his holding by amalgamation and takes over a formerly separate holding where the farm house may then fall into disuse.