THE DOOMED ISLAND
SIR,—Mr. Branagqn's letter has brought accuracy and an informed viewpoint to this correspondence. I spent years in the Uists, and I go there frequently still; I know hundreds of their people as personal friends; and I have a certain responsibility for them which makes it desirable to withhold my name. Mr. McLaren's letter, and all the stuff which he and his friends have written about this project, has annoyed me and many others whose knowledge of Hebridean problems is intimate and quite extensive.
From Harris (even from Lewis) to Barra the Outer Hebrides are, indeed, dying. Their youth has always been filtered off to the mainland, where the living standard so transcends that of the Islands that few return willingly. The able- bodied who remain are tied to infirm relatives, or to crofts which provide the supremely important house. They are plagued by lack of water, lack of electricity, bad roads and the roaring Minch. They can do no more than scrape a livelihood front the biggest crofts, and they constantly call for subsidiary employ- ment which, contrary to what Mr. McLaren says about seaweed and tweed, does not, for practical purposes, exist. They rear families to lose them at twelve or fifteen years of age.
It is, admittedly, pleasant to postulate a Scottish frontier, an unspoiled Never-Never- Land, where food and money and standards of living enter nobody's head because they are all singing Gaelic songs, or standing up for Charlie, or going respectably to church. If Mr. McLaren and company believe (and Sir Compton Mackenzie surely cannot) that the Uists are like this, their visits must indeed have been short, and they could not have gone far from Lochboisdale Hotel.
There will always be people to organise protests and petitions. In this case, extraneous elements have whipped together a few vocifer- ous South Uist people, and their noise seems louder because most Islanders detest publicity and din. From North Uist, as far as I know, has come only Mr. Branagan's letter.
A guided-missiles range is not the most desirable form of employment, and it is indeed tragic to see good land and perfect peace spoiled. 'These, however, do not maintain the Islanders, nor do shooters, fishers and—to quote the leading Highland newspaper on this subject—synthetic Highlanders.—Yours faith- fully,
UISTEACH
Stornoway, Isle of Lewis
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