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Compton Mackenzie
THE Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Crofting Conditions published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office makes good reading for two reasons. One is the realistic, conscientious and intelligent way in which the ,mem- bers have tackled their task and the second is the lucidity of the style in which it has been presented.
The Commission has realised the urgency of the necessary steps to be taken if the Highlands and Islands of Scotland are not to become a desert within another fifty years; if these steps are not taken the guilt of murder will rest upon the soul of every politician and every government official that impeded effective and immediate action.
As long ago as 1896 a Fishery Act was placed upon the Statute Book by which a 13-mile limit was to be imposed instead of the 3-mile limit, after a meeting of the North Sea Convention. This would have meant closing the Minch and the Moray Firth to trawlers, and as it would have been supported ardently by such signatories as Norway and Denmark there is no doubt that the 13-mile limit would have been successfully imposed. This prospect alarmed the trawler interests; they were successful in blocking the reform and that Act of 1896 has never been put into operation. In consequence of such a disgraceful surrender to vested interests the inshore fishing of the Highlands and Islands has been destroyed. " In 1913, 785 boats fishing from Shetland landed 195,000 crans of herring valued at £325,000. In 1953 there were only 50 boats at work and these landed 15,570 crans valued at £42,000." This failure of a great industry is chiefly due to the ruin of inshore fishing and spawning beds by trawlers and seine-boats working inside even the inadequate 3-mile limit. The pro- tection offered by the government's fishery cruiser has been a farce; for five years the Sea League founded by John Lorne Campbell of Canna and myself fought for stern action against the trawlers, the crews of which, not content with destroying the inshore fishing, would land on the very islands themselves and shoot the sheep when it suited their stomachs. We could obtain no satisfaction from the authorities, and the destruction went on. Whitehall was apparently determined to make the Highlands and the Islands a distressed area : a distressed area is a happy hunting-ground for bureaucrats in plus-fours.
At this point I must pause before I am choked by indigna- tion to praise the statesmanship divorced from politics of the Right Honourable Thomas Johnston. To him belongs the credit of carrying through, in the face too often of ill-considered opposition in the Highlands, the great hydro-electric schethes which have been the outstanding contribution to Highland economy and amenity. Nevertheless, it must be emphasised, that electricity in remote crofts is not enough, if the ' hydro part of it be neglected. In other words electric cookers lose their value when the wife and daughters of a crofter have to walk a hundred yards or more to get the water for the kettle. If the women on the crofts are to be persuaded to resist the lure of urban convenience water must be piped to their houses. Only when this is done can the Highlands and islands hope to develop the tourist industry which is vital to their economic prosperity. The Commission is well aware districts again lack of water supplies directly affected live- stock management.
ji " The Commission regards the improvement of water sU plies as a matter of immediate urgency and recommends tha where large regional water schemes will take a number 0 years to mature, local improvement schemes should b encouraged."
I should prefer to substitute ' enforced ' for ' encouraged.' Now we come to the question of freights. To send a to of fertilisers from Inverness to Skye costs £5 Os. 9d.: to send' a ton of hay from Glasgow to Skye by sea costs £5 Os. 5d. is to send a ton of potatoes from Ardnamurchan in Argyll t Glasgow by road costs £6. ' Freights ' are pronounced b Gaelic speakers as ' frights,' and ' frights' expresses what the are. When the Socialist Government nationalised transpox an incomprehensible exception was made in favour of privat ownership for the shipping firm of MacBraynes. However, f view of the preposterous charges now made by British Rail, ways perhaps nationalisation would have turned out to b4 more expensive than private ownership. Inasmuch as th4 Post Office pays a yearly subsidy to MacBraynes for the mail it is obvious that two or three other Ministries will have tO get together and subsidise the transport of foodstuffs, fertilisers and the necessities of life. Present communicationa are much worse than they were before the First World war Thanks to clever propaganda the Forestry Commission h succeeded in persuading many people that its method of afforestation has been entirely beneficial.
I will quote from the Report: " Hitherto the Forestry Commission have done very little planting on the western and northern seaboard. . . . Unlike the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, the Commission has no statutory obligation to ' collaborate in the carrying out of any measures for the economic development and social improvement of the North of Scotland.' A former chairman said in express terms that its duty was to grow timber, and that it had no concern with land settlement."
The magnificent achievement of the late Duke of West- minster in the skilful afforestation of 2,500 acres in Western. Sutherland is a shattering rebuke to the laziness and timidity of the Forestry Commission which prefers to destroy good grazing, because it is easier to grow its dismal spruces on such ground, and is prepared to dim the beauty of the natural scene with its melancholy green oblongs because it is cheaper to plant in straight lines.
Weaving seems at last to be securely established in Lewis and Harris, but the growing industry was severely damaged by the doubling of the purchase tax in 1944 and until some influential Treasury official has been sentenced to spend a winter in a lonely croft and look after himself we cannot expect from Whitehall an intelligent grasp of the situation in the North.
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