Orkney and Shetland belong to the people who live here
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Version 0 of 1. Hanging among whisky memorabilia and stormy seascapes in Kirkwall's Lynnfield Hotel is a remarkable framed document: an elegantly scribed missive addressed to the king of Norway and queen of Denmark, asking them to intercede with the British government, "to safeguard our laws, rights and traditions … until such time as our constitutional status is resolved". The laws, rights and traditions requiring protection belong to the Orkney and Shetland Islands. And Orkney and Shetland belong to … well, no one is quite sure. This document, the Declaration of Wyre, is no medieval relic: it was drawn up 30 years ago at a time of planned expansion at Dounreay nuclear power station a few miles south of Kirkwall on the north coast of Scotland. Islanders felt threatened by the presence of this hotbed of radioactive experimentation so close to their fields, fishing grounds and homes. They believed that far-distant London, 700 miles south, was less likely to protect them from careless nuclear expansion than Oslo, a mere 500 miles to the east. So John Goodlad of Shetland and Margaret Flaws of the Orkney island of Wyre led the drafting of this declaration: a clear statement of the northern isles' claim to recognition, subsequently endorsed by the signatures of scores of representative islanders. A supplication to Scandinavian royals might not seem to indicate a fierce assertion of island autonomy. But the declaration of Wyre was in fact a tactical intervention that galvanised the efforts of the Orkney and Shetland movements, two protean organisations – sometimes pressure groups, sometimes political parties – embodying a grassroots desire for the islands' people to have greater control over their own affairs. The drive for island self-governance has grabbed headlines this week in places as unlikely as USA Today and the Guardian, after the launching of a petition on the Scottish parliament's website urging it to hold three separate referendums in Shetland, Orkney, and the Western Isles, asking whether their respective populations would prefer their island group to become an independent country, to stay in Scotland, or (in the event of a yes vote in the referendum in September) leave Scotland and stay with the remainder of the UK. No one here seems sure whether this is a serious suggestion or a move by Better Together supporters to undermine yes momentum by conjuring a vision of a future Scotland fragmenting into ever smaller micro-nations. The latter seems more likely, but if that is the case then it's a dangerous hand for the petitioners to play: they should be careful what they wish for. Because their call is really just the latest iteration of a desire for island autonomy that has bubbled under since at least the Treaty of Breda in 1667 (which was supposed to establish whether Orkney and Shetland were part of the UK, but didn't) and, further back still, the pawning of the two island groups to Scotland by Norway in 1468 and 1469 (as security against a marriage dowry between a Norwegian princess and a Scottish king). If the border between Scotland and England deserved the name Debatable Lands for centuries, the same is true for Orkney and Shetland: these are the Debatable Islands. In 1984, the UK government's Montgomery committee concluded not only that "opportunities should be taken whenever possible to consolidate, develop and extend the powers of island councils", but, more remarkably, "acts of parliament should include a position to vary the application to the islands areas". And while the petitioners were posting on the Scottish government's website, an undoubtedly serious and much more realisable political move was well under way, built on Montgomery's principles. In June 2013, the councils of Orkney, Shetland and Na h-Eileanan Siar (the Western Isles) launched the Our Islands, Our Future campaign, an ambitious, radical and coherent plan for greater powers to be invested in the islands, supporting them in overcoming their special difficulties and maximizing the reaping of their special potential. Notably, the campaign has earned respect and endorsement from both the London and Edinburgh administrations. "The law of peripheral neglect," wrote Leopold Kohr, "states that concern for remote districts diminishes with the square of the distance from the seat of power." The square of the distance from Edinburgh to Orkney is much smaller than the one from London, but it's still considerable. And many islanders are nervous about Holyrood noticing them: at least London tends to leave us alone, they say. As one north isles man put it to me: "The choice at the referendum in September is between being ignored by London and discriminated against by Edinburgh." The SNP government has failed to make the most of its positive contributions to the northern isles (£60m for new schools in Orkney, for instance) while allowing its opponents to capitalise on its poorer decisions (different subsidies for travel to different island groups, with the divide appearing to match whether or not the islands vote SNP). The persistence of the notion of greater island autonomy may be more important than who's in power in Edinburgh or London; after all, the SNP is in government now, but that won't last forever – especially if there's a Yes vote in September and all the parties have to reshape themselves to succeed in the new landscape created by the people of Scotland. From the headline-grabbing but mischievous to the bureaucratic but revolutionary, political, cultural, linguistic and even legal expressions of autonomy keep piling up: the islands of Scotland remain stubbornly different from the rest of the UK (and, for that matter, from the rest of Scotland). As long-time isles MP and Liberal grandee Jo Grimond wrote: "Devolution suggests that power is centred at the top, that is, in Westminster, and some of it has to be handed down. But in the view of myself and many other people, power inheres in the people themselves and their basic communities." So despite what the Declaration of Wyre says, it is clear who the islands of Orkney and Shetland belong to. They belong to the people who live here. |