DIARY MARY SOAMES ake an upside-down triangle with its apex
on Lairg, which is about 60 miles north of Inverness, its base stretching on the coast from Handa Island, with its grim cliffs thronged with sea birds — right- handed round Cape Wrath (the most north westerly point of Britain) and on eastwards to Bettyhill, where the river Naver runs out to sea — you have sketched in our family's happy holiday ground for 40 years. Our serious sportsmen of divers ages used to be deeply absorbed and content (no — fisher- men are never content, but they enjoy their discontent), while the nursery party spent glorious away-days on golden mile- long beaches, where gulls and oyster- catchers outnumber any human visitors even M the tourist season, and aquamarine waves nip your skin with cold; or mussell- ing in the estuaries at low tide; or picnick- ing by Pictish castles — sometimes sweat- ing hot, sometimes drenched — and oh! the midges! Cocoa brewed over a peat fire in the open, by the way, has a very special `hose'. Long car drives were enlivened with spirited renderings by the Soames Home Choir of songs sacred, folk and profane; the girls supplying piercing descants. '0 worship the King' has wonderfully emotive words for grand scenery and stormy skies: `His chariots of wrath the deep thunder clouds form / And dark is His path on the wings of the storm.' One choral round, sung to a whingey little tune, carried a stern lesson in reality, which I hope sank in: 'Why doesn't My goose sing as well as THY goose / When I paid for MY goose twice as much as THOU?' Nowadays our family party is smaller in number, and more staid: but leaving the men on the river, I still love to roam over this austerely beautiful and still remote land, which has fashioned its own people, and lays its hand upon them forever, wherever they may be. This last week, my husband, a son, and myself have been staying in Strathnaver. This time last year the Naver was low, and the salmon lay languidly in their airless pools. But this year the river is brimming: plenty of fish were coming up last week, we are told — but this week they are rather scarce (Oh dear . . . jam yesterday . . jam tomorrow . . . but . . . etc.) The fishing tenants, meeting on the roadside, compare notes rather warily — but some- body is always catching fish — somewhere. And when a fish is caught, it is gleaming silver, vigorous and fresh from the sea.
he river flows out broad beautiful loch which Lo ch onNaver a clear summer's day can look like an Italian lake, and wends its way for some 16 miles to the sea through a wide and fertile strath, where the crofters' sheep and lambs graze on the meadows which run to the river's edge between patches of heather and bracken - as peaceable a scene as can be imagined: but it was not always so. Strathnaver has bitter and cruel memories of the 19th- century clearances, when 'improvement' and progress in the guileless shape of the `Great Sheep' (the 'hardy Cheviot intro- duced into northern Scotland in the second half of the 18th century) turned even quite lackadaisical landlords (many of them absentee) into heartless tyrants. Whole tenant communities in the fertile glens, where they led hard, simple pastoral lives, were moved, often with utmost brutality, their primitive houses burned over their heads — to make way for sheep farming. The landlords for Strathnaver were the Marquess and Marchioness of Stafford (she was Countess of Sutherland in her own right, bringing vast acres in this part of Scotland to her husband: he was later created 1st Duke of Sutherland). The evictions were of course not carried out by the Staffords, but by their servants and agents, who become hated as few men can ever have been. The wretched families with their livestock and pitiful belongings were dumped on the barren coast, where little or no provision for them was made: many emigrated to Canada.
The clearances in Strathnaver took place between 1814-20, but the memory lingers on (carefully fuelled, one cannot but note, by the nationalist lobby). There is a museum at Farr Bay, near Bettyhill, in the former kirk, and the sites of some of the pre-clearance villages are carefully preserved. On the river bank opposite the site where Rossal once was, is a cairn in memory of Donald MacLeod, a stonema- son, who watched his native village burn- ing: he was both literate and articulate, and even after he had emigrated to Canada, for the rest of his life he championed the rights of his people through his writings, stre- nuously challenging attempts to whitewash the role of the Staffords. At Achanlochy, a few miles inland, I have wandered among the tufted grass and heather, where one can still make out the ground-plan of the houses and byres of the small community of nine families — all finally evicted in 1819. One day by the river, the fishing ghillie, Donald Mackay (this is Mackay country), told me his great-grandfather had been 'cleared' from Achanlochy: it brings it all very close.
Today Caithness and Sutherland is, happily, less fraught; but the 23-24,000 electorate of this constituency which en- compasses 21/2 million acres, has over the last 40 years consistently demonstrated a mild and rather endearing spirit of political perversity: 'Caithness and Sutherland goes against the trend,' I was told. And indeed a brief study of election results since the war bears out this statement. In 1945, the year of the great Labour landslide, their Liberal Member of Parliament for over 20 years, Sir Archibald Sinclair (later created 1st Viscount Thurso), was defeated by six votes by the Conservative candidate. The seat remained Conservative until 1959, when in the election which saw the Tories do the hat trick under the leadership of Harold Macmillan, the sitting Member here, Sir David Robertson, changed coats and stood as an Independent — despite this, winning the seat with an increased majority. In 1964, when Labour returned to power, Caithness and Sutherland opted to return to the Liberal fold, electing George Mackie (now Lord Mackie of Benshie) — the Conservative vote having been split by another Independent candi- date. Two years later, when Harold Wilson won a second term with an increased majority nationally, this constituency (un- usually) backed the winning side — but only just. The Labour candidate, Robert Maclennan, scraped home by 64 votes. He has represented Caithness and Sutherland ever since — but not under the same colours: Maclennan became one of the founding members of the Social Democra- tic Party, and when Margaret Thatcher swept the Conservative Party back to power again on her second lap in 1983 this constituency returned the SDP candidate, their popular Member already for 17 years, although now wearing a new political hat. In the last election, Caithness and Suther- land has re-affirmed its allegiance, and while SDP candidates were everywhere biting the dust, Mr Maclellan increased his majority. One is reminded of the story of the proud mother watching her son march by with his regiment, who exclaimed: 'Just look — they're all out of step except our Jock!' .
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