Chapter 2 - In The Beginning

The story is so fantastic that it's difficult to know where to start. It started several years before I moved back to the Stornoway, and my account is based on information from those who were there at the beginning.

It all started on a September evening in 1998. Blair's government had swept into power the year before. We had expected them to wipe away 17 years of Toryism, but by and large they just carried on with Tory policies.

I worked in local government at the time. We had laboured under something known as CCT - Compulsory Competitive Tendering, a Tory tool to effectively privatise as many local government services as possible, since 1989. We celebrated when Blair came to power, but did New Labour do anything about it? Did they hell!

It started with six guys sitting in the mezzanine area of the golf club lounge, enjoying a drink or two after an early evening round.

Donnie McLean had been known as "Pie" since 1971, when his namesake stormed the charts with American Pie. There were attempts to call him Vincent a few months later, and after that he was briefly known as Crackerjack, but Pie was the name that stuck.

Most people in Stornoway have nicknames. When two-thirds of the male population are called Donald, John, Ian, Murdo, or a combination of any two of the four (Donald John, John Ian, Murdo John, etc.) and three quarters are "Macs" (MacDonald and MacLeod being the most common), nicknames become essential. You got your nickname in school, and it stayed with you for life. And if you went back to the school as a teacher, you had the same nickname as a teacher that you had as a pupil. How did the pupils find out? From the parents, of course!

The only ones to escape nicknames were the ones with unusual names. That is, surnames that didn't begin with Mac. Like me. I was just "Flett". The only one in the school. There was one other Martin - Martin Twatt. He probably wished that he had a nickname, but he was just referred to by his surname as well.

Some nicknames were preposterous, yet they stuck. The new police inspector's son, Donald MacLeod, announced on his first day in school that he only had red pens in his pencil case. He was immediately christened "Red Pens", a nickname that stuck throughout his schooldays and was eventually shortened to "Pens". Jonathon McLean was "Geordie Aliphanti" for reasons that nobody could ever explain. He just was! I shared a classroom with Rasper, Caesar, Hen, Lanky, Niggles, Fanta, Pens, Chips, Rufus, Dokus, Dag, Titch, Hogel, Plopsy, and many, many more. We were taught by Cowboy, Barts, The Beetle, The Beetlecrusher, Habba, Johnny Rednose, Froggie, Frogey, Bulldog, Ghostie, Taz, Misery, Cicero, Harry Croup, Hoppa, Brown Owl and Boring, to name but a few.

Boring was a Primary 6 teacher and when she was giving someone the belt one day, he moved his hands at the vital moment and she whacked herself on the legs, then went behind the blackboard and sobbed uncontrollably for ten minutes as the class all giggled uncontrollably without the merest iota of sympathy for the poor woman's pain.

Chronicling Stornoway nicknames and their derivations is probably another very amusing book in it's own right. In my teenage years, the top footballers on the island were Norrie Eggs, Bobbans and Bloxy. You used to buy your paint in "Neilly Lazy's" and his daughter Christine was known to one and all as Chrissie Neilly Lazy. When I was growing up, one of my friends's father was known to one and all as "Skinny Fatty". But the best of them all was Peter Squeak. Peter Squeak's was a clothes shop next to what is now the Bank of Scotland in Cromwell Street. According to local legend, the owner had gone to London on holiday. When he got back, he regailed all and sundry with stories about his trip to the capital, and he described the view from the South Bank looking over towards the Houses of Parliament as being very picturesque. Well he tried to say picturesque, but what came out of his mouth sounded more like "Peter Squeak", and from that day on he was known as Peter Squeak.

I digress. Pie owned a local shop, what passed for a supermarket in the days before supermarkets chains found Stornoway, Sitting with him round the table were...

"You've been very quiet all day, Pie"

"It's that bloody boat. Well not the boat, but the feeling you get when it sails away and takes your kids off."

"Aye, but they'll be back in a couple of months."

"No. They'll be back sure enough, but leaving for university is the beginning of the end. Ten weeks away, four weeks at home, then ten weeks away again. That's the pattern for the next four years, and then what? The same as my other three before them.

They do really well, get a good degree, you're really proud of them, but what can they do with a bloody degree on this bloody island. Bugger all, that's what. They get a good job on the mainland and you end up seeing them for two weeks in the summer."

"It's just the way things have always been," said Billy. "I mean, I haven't got any kids myself, but it must be hard. You really want your kids to do well, and if they do really well, you sort of lose them. But if they don't do well, they end up staying here, don't they?"

"Not all of them," said Alan. "There's always a few jobs here, but there's more chance of them staying at home."

"So what do you do," said Billy. "Does there come come a point where a parent thinks, 'Do I encourage them to do well, or do I steer them towards a job that keeps them here?'"

"It's never easy," said Pie, "But you've just got this instinct to help your kid to do their best. I mean, what's the alternative? Holding them back for your own benefit. The child just turns into an adult that realises what has happened and resents the parent for doing it.

Remember when Kenny Mac got his lad into the bank a few years ago instead of sending him to university? Within two years he was transferred to Inverness and he's never been back."

Then Louis said, "Isn't it a shame that there isn't work for them here."

Chapter One - Introduction

Everybody's got a favourite place. Where your mind takes you when you're asked to close your eyes, relax, and go to the place you most want to be in all the world.

And whenever I used to do that, I always ended up back in Stornoway. More often than not, it was on Gallows Hill, looking down over the inner harbour with the whole town laid out before me.

Or the fifth green, the highest point on the golf course, looking out over the town to Broad Bay. Or the mouth of the Creed, where the torrent of noise from the river in spate fades to a faint whisper and then complete silence. Or walking along the Low Road from the Creed mouth back towards the town, past Sober Island and Cuddy Point.

Or standing on the first tee on the golf course trying to control my nerves as I prepared to play the first shot of the 36 hole marathon that was the Western Isles Open.

Or on the ferry as it passed Arnish lighthouse, with the hairs on the back of my neck standing up as the home that I hadn't seen for a year or more drew ever closer.

So coming back to Stornoway was a bit of a no-brainer. My marriage had fizzled out ten years earlier; my kids had grown up and flown the nest; I had sold my business to a property developer and cleared all my debts; I had enough equity in my house in England to buy a better house in Stornoway and have some money left over. And part of my deal with the developer gave me an investment property in England that I could always go back to if I had been looking through rose tinted spectacles and modern day Stornoway was not the Stornoway I remembered from my childhood.

In the 60s and 70s, Stornoway was just a great place for a young lad to grow up in. And a world away from the present day.

Until I was nine, I lived on Seaview Terrace. The house must have been all of fifty yards from the local park, and in the summer a gang of us used to play there from breakfast time until eight o clock in the evening, with occasional visits home for dinner and tea. The main meal of the day was at what we now call lunch time, and "tea", a much lighter meal, was served at six o clock. There must have been some, but I have no recollections of rainy summer days. I got triple or quadruple the current recommended weekly exercise quotient for youngsters every day!

Hardly any of us had a TV, and home entertainment was a book or a board game or playing for hours with my beloved toy cars. My father used to buy me one every Saturday morning, and Uncle Billy used to give me car books. When I was five, I could name every car on the road. One day, my father announced that he was going to stop buying me a car and was going to to start giving me a "Saturday Sixpence" instead. The first time I got my Saturday Sixpence, I went into town and picked out TWO cars, only to find that the sixpence wasn't enough to buy even one of them! My first lesson in economic realities!

We all used to walk into town on a Saturday afternoon and stand outside Maciver and Dart's shop window and see the football results. And then we'd come home and stand outside a window in Seaforth Road to watch Dr Who through the glass on the one TV in the area.

From the age of five I walked to school. The best part of a mile there, a mile back at dinner time, a mile back to school in the afternoon, and then a mile home at the end of the day. In all weathers. In pitch dark in the middle of winter, in school-issue high viz bibs. And we thought absolutely nothing of it. It was just what you did.

Then, at the age of nine, the family moved from our rented home on Seaview Terrace to our new home in Coulregrein (pronounced cool grain), at the other end of the town. My father had spent most of his waking hours during the previous two years building the house with his own hands. When the bricklayer was on site, he was the brickie's assistant. Same with the joiner. And the plumber. And all the rest. I used to help out a bit, but probably just got in the way. I remember, to my father's chagrin, using the toilet as soon as it was connected up. He had wanted to "christen" it, but I got there first!

So the family home isn't just the house where we grew up. It's the house my father built, where no one but us has ever lived.

Coulregrein was a totally different world to Seaview Terrace. It was right on the edge of the town, and on a croft. I had moved from a semi-detached in a built up area to a detached house on a three acre plot. And we got a TV! A 19 inch Ultra Bermuda. It's strange how I can remember that, but couldn't tell you the brand of washing machine in my kitchen.

I have one particularly vivid memory of the day we moved. It was July 1965 and the Highland Games were being held in "The Glen", a natural amphitheatre on the edge of the Castle Grounds and only a few minutes' walk from the new home. There were races, strength events, piping and dancing competitions, tombolas, home bakery stalls, and a drinks tent. And it was outside the drinks tent that I saw my new next door neighbour, drunk as a skunk, demanding to know where to toilet was. And when no one was able to tell him, he just muttered a few obsenities, whipped out his apparatus and did what he had to do in the middle of a circle of amused men, bewildered Stornoway ladies who didn't know where to look, and giggling kids. Nothing like that had ever happened in Seaview Terrace!

Living within five minutes of the Castle Grounds completely changed my life. The Castle Grounds was a marvellous, magical place. The castle itself was built by Sir James Matheson between 1847 and 1854 for the then astronomical sum of £60,000. A further £49,000 was spent in transforming the rough grazing land that surrounded the castle into extensive woodlands and private gardens. This involved the clearance of tenants and the rerouting of public roads and was not popular at the time, but a wonderful legacy was created. Sir James, incidentally, had made his fortune through the Chinese opium trade and purchased the Isle of Lewis for £190,000 in 1844 when he returned to Scotland. The castle and estates remained in the Matheson family until 1918, when the island was sold to Lord Leverhulme. Five years later, and after investing £2 million in the island, Leverhulme gifted the castle and 64,000 acres of land, including the Castle Grounds, to the people of Stornoway and the Stornoway Trust was established to manage and maintain the land.

To a ten year old in 1966, the Castle Grounds was a giant adventure playground. Half a century later, it has lost none of its splendour. Without it, Stornoway would be just another port. With it, it becomes a magical place with a warren of paths and scenery to die for. You could go into the Castle Grounds every day for a month or more and not do the same walk twice. Some people do the same walk every day of their lives.

And the Castle Grounds is also home to Stornoway Golf Club. More than anywhere else, the golf club was where I spent my childhood and teenage years. For my eighth birthday, my Uncle Billy bought me a year's junior membership of the golf club for the princely sum of one guinea, and he continued to give the same present every year until I was 18. There was a moment of panic in about 1967 when the subs were increased to two guineas. How could Uncle Billy cope with 100% inflation? But of course he did. And throughout the late 60s and all of the 70s, most summer evenings were spent there.

There's an old South African tale about the man who left home and spent the next 40 years seeking his fortune, before eventually giving up and coming home, whereupon he discovered rough diamonds at the bottom of his garden. And looking back to what I had at the end of the 70s, maybe I walked away from the diamonds as well. But then what was I to do? Working as a dustman, or putting up fences, or delivering TVs, were great jobs for a student. But an honours graduate aspires to something more, and that something more was in short supply on the island.

In fairness to myself, I never made a conscious decision to leave. It just sort of happened. I did my postgraduate year in London, with the intention of returning home and working in the new sports centre. But at the end of the post-grad year, there were no jobs in the sports centre, unless you were a swimming coach or could fix a boiler. So I got a job to get some experience until a job came up, but the job never came and, before I knew it, I joined the ranks of the emigre Hebrideans who made a two week pilgrimage once a year to the land of their childhood.

In the summer of 1979, I was offered a job as an apprentice solicitor, and I often wonder what would have happened if I had taken up the offer. How would my life have panned out? But I turned it down. I was all examed-out! O Levels in 1972, Highers in 73 and 74, university exams 74 to 78, post-grad exams and a thesis in 79. For the best part of a decade, my whole life had been geared around exams. The prospect of another three years of studying and sitting exams was too much to bear, when I already had the qualifications to make me eminently employable.

And how would a lifetime on the island have been? I used to envy some of my contemporaries who remained on the island. But they envied me! I had seen and done things they would never get the chance to do, and held my own in the hurly burly of mainland life. I suppose wherever you stand the grass always seems greener on the other side.

Years later, when I visited Stornoway in November, the sun came out late one morning and a fabulous rainbow appeared. I rushed outside with my new digital camera and snapped a few pictures of it. It was weeks later, after the pictures had been downloaded and glanced at, that I decided to choose a new desktop picture and I went through all the pictures I'd taken a bit more carefully. And there was one of the rainbow. The end of the rainbow appeared to be in my bedroom, and I remembered the story about the diamonds. It wasn't, of course. The rainbow was way above the house, and part of it was reflected in my bedroom window, but the optical illusion was there.

But eventually, I made it back. The Stornoway I came back to was exactly the same and completely different. The geography is exactly the same. The golf course is still there; the Castle Grounds is unchanged except for storm damage and some bush clearance; the town centre, the roads, the houses, the beaches- all much the same.

And yet different. A new all-singing, all-dancing sports centre, complete with sports hall, swimming pool, climbing wall, gym, aerobics studio, cafe, sauna, steam, synthetic athletics track, grass pitch and two synthetic pitches, the like of which any town in the country would be proud of. A new, vastly improved ferry terminal. An £8 million theatre and art centre. Modernised hotels and pubs. And traffic lights! I remember the stir there was when a pelican crossing was installed on Cromwell Street. Now we have traffic lights, mini roundabouts, one way systems. And far more cars, and fewer parking spaces.

And fewer and fewer relatives as the years go by. Such is life, I suppose.

Funny, but I've started writing this account of the events of recent years on my laptop, sitting on the seat at the top of Gallows Hills. To get there I walked past the golf club, the castle, Cuddy Point and Sober Island. I looked out over Arnish lighthouse as I turned towards the Creed at the end of the Low Road. All of my favourite places.

The Declaration Of Independence (1287)

The 150 islands of the Outer Hebrides form a geographically and socially distinct archepelego which lies 40 miles off the north west coast of Scotland. The main island of Lewis & Harris is the third largest of the British Isles, behind the islands of Great Britain and Ireland.

Eleven Hebridean islands are populated: Lewis & Harris, North Uist, South Uist, Benbecula, Barra, Scalpay, Great Bernera, Grimsay, Berneray, Eriskay, Vatersay, Baleshore, Grimsay SE Benbecula, and Flodaigh.

The land mass of the archepelego is circa 1185 square miles (3000 square kilometres) and the distance from the most northernly point, the Butt of Lewis, to the southern tip of Mingulay is circa 125 miles (200 kilometres).

The population of the Outer Hebrides as per the most recent census is 26,502. 19,918 live on Lewis & Harris, with circa 8,000 of them living in Stornoway, the capital of the Outer Hebrides.

The Hebrides previously had a much larger population. The Highland Clearances of the 19th Century resulted in thousands of displaced islanders emigrating to the "new world", and many people of Hebridean descent are found in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA. Even after the clearances, the population of Lewis alone was in excess of 50,000 in the early years of the 20th Century.

The 20th Century was a century of progressive population decline. Many Hebrideans perished in the two world wars, traditional industries including fishing and tweed production declined, and more and more young people obtained qualifications that could not be used on the islands. By the end of the 20th Century, farming had substantially declined and the islands were no longer self sufficient in foodstuffs.

It is predicted that independence will result in a doubling of the population within five years and a total population of over 100,000 within 15 years.

There are currently twenty-nine independent member states of the United Nations that have a smaller land mass than the Outer Hebrides. These are listed in Appendix 1.

There are sixteen UN member states with populations of under 100,000. These are listed in Appendix 2.

Based on land mass, current population and predicted population levels, there is no logistical reason why the Outer Hebrides would not be a viable independent state.

Stornoway is a world away from the British capital in London. Travelling overland to Stornoway from London involves a journey of 650 miles to the port of Ullapool, then a near three-hour ferry crossing. Stornoway is further from London than, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Vienna, and is less accessible to the London traveller than any Western European capital city.

Until 1266, the Outer Hebrides, then known as the Southern Islands, belonged to Norway and formed part of the Kingdom of Mann. The word "hebrides" is a Norse word meaning "islands at the edge of the sea". The islands were ceded to Scotland under the Treaty of Perth, which followed the Battle of Largs.

The Hebrides has its own distinct culture and language. 59% of the population are Gaelic speakers and it has little cultural affinity with either its rulers in the south east of England or its other, newer rulers in Edinburgh.

In a referendum carried out in the Outer Hebrides by the Electoral Reform Society, the matter was put to the electorate in the following way:

The Outer Hebrides should declare independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and become an independent state.

The options given were "Agree" and "Disagree".

It was determined, prior to the referendum, that a matter of this magnitude would not be pursued unless it had the overwhelming and unequivocal support of the Hebridean population.

It was therefore determined that if less than 75% of the electorate participated in the referendum, or if less than 75% of those voting agreed with the proposal, then the proposal would fall.

Methods of reflecting the wider views of emigrant Hebrideans, many of whom might wish to return, were carefully considered. However it was determined that it would be unduly difficult to properly identify and contact every person who might be considered a "Hebridean". That would in turn make it problematical to identify the number that equated to 75% of the electorate. Instead, through the Stornoway Gazette and all the national Scottish daily newspapers, the internet, and TV coverage, emigrant Hebrideans were invited to contact the office of the returning officer and express an opinion, which would not affect the vote, but would provide a means of garnering wider opinion.

The result of the referendum was as follows:

Out of a total electorate of 19,255, 17,522 votes were cast. This represents 91% of the total electorate.

Of those voting, 16,296 agreed with the proposal. This represents 93% of those voting.

The figure of 16,296 represents 84.6% of the total electorate. Many of those who did not vote were too infirm to do so; and a number of incomers to the island abstained on the basis that it should be left to native islanders and long term residents to determine a matter of such importance.

The overwhelming majority of the population of the Outer Hebrides is supportive of the proposal as set out in the referendum.

The result of the informal poll of emigrant Hebrideans, which has no legal standing, was that 96% of correspondents were in favour of independence.

The referendum came about because of decades of neglect by successive British governments. Per capita, the islands sacrificed more lives in two world wars than anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Their reward has been a lack of any meaningful investment, the decline of traditional industries and progressive population decline. Nothing has been done to address these issues, and nothing will be done until Hebrideans take matters into their own hands. It has long been evident that there are no votes in Hebridean investment, therefore it does not happen.

Even something as basic as a Road Equivalent Tariff (RET) on ferry services, which would allow Hebridean-based businesses to be more competitive and which would significantly boost the tourist trade, has been muted for more than 30 years and is still merely being talked about. And while the talking goes on, Hebrideans pay more fuel tax than anyone else in the UK, whilst having not a single dual carriageway on the islands, farless a motorway. This situation is highlighted here because it is symptomatic of everything that has been wrong with the relationship between Hebrideans and their rulers.

Whilst the UK has failed to invest in the Hebrides, its government has been prepared to sacrifice large areas of Lewis in particular to a massive wind farm which will, if built, scar the landscape of the West Side of Lewis forever. Whether this proposal was simply to allow the UK government to pay lip service to green energy initiatives; or whether it was the thin end of a wedge that would have ended up with one or more nuclear power stations in the Hebrides which could use the wind farm link to the national grid, is a matter of conjecture. But if the latter was the long term objective, it might explain why investment was never made to reverse the depopulation that has blighted the islands for several generations.

I, as the Convenor of Comhairle Nan Eilann Siar, on behalf of the people of the Outer Hebrides, hereby officially petition HM Government to grant independence to the Outer Hebrides 12 months to the day from this declaration; such time period being specified to enable such matters that will require to be undertaken in granting such request to be carried out properly but expeditiously. This will include the election of a Hebridean government that power shall be transferred to on the due date.