WELCOME TO SNP’S FANTASY ISLAND!
There’s no crime, no poverty, no Tories and not a single dissenting referendum voice...
THERE is a little piece of Scotl and which has been ruled exclusively by the SNP for the best part of four decades – almost entirely without complaint. There is no poverty or crime, no arguments over policy, no appetite for change.
Because, most fundamentally of all, perhaps, there are no people.
Welcome to Eilean Mor MacCormick, the tiny speck of land in the Sound of Jura off the West Coast that has belonged of the Scottish National Party ever since a farmer left it to them in 1978.
The welcome i s, of course, figurative because, unless you are one of the volunteers who visit the island every July or among the archaeologists keen to dig into its history, you are highly unlikely either to visit or to find anyone to welcome you there at all.
No one appears to know exactly when or why the last inhabitant left the tiny inner Hebrides island a few miles off the Argyll coastline, although it can be confirmed their departure had nothing to do with the SNP’s regime there.
Not since the mid-1800s has anyone made their home on the largely featureless crag – and that is well before SNP- supporting farmer Walter Paterson Neill bequeathed it to the party, along with his Keills farm on the mainland south of Tayvallich, in Argyll.
At the time, it was the biggest donation ever made to the party, worth a total of £256,000.
While the party sold the farm and financed political campaigns for years to come with the proceeds, it decided to hang on to the island, thereby retaining in perpetuity complete control of at least a little bit of the country.
SNP councillor Kenny McLean, a member of the island trust, said: ‘We have an annual visitors’ day, usually in July, and some take their tents as there is no accommodation even.
‘It’s a lovely island steeped in history for us to look after carefully and we are very grateful to the farmer for giving it to us. How many other political parties won a very nice bit of their country after all?’
Precious few, to be sure. In fact, until Euro Millions jackpot winners Colin and Christine Weir started lavishing millions on the cause for separatism, farmer Neill’s generosity was practically without parallel.
After the official handover, party elder statesman William Wolfe was made the official ‘custodian and guardian’.
If the gift were to be seen as a precursor to the party’s conquest of the mainland, it was indeed a small beginning.
The island measures just half a mile north to south and little over a quarter of a mile east to west and its highest point is only around 70ft above sea level.
Yet there is much history with which to acquaint ourselves.
Two tales from the more recent annals indicate that, even without human inhabitants, running a tiny offshore kingdom is not necessarily plain sailing.
There was the time in 1998 when animal inspectors found up to 20 dead sheep on the island following a tip-off that the flock was being neglected.
It was, of course, easy to see how the whistleblower may have gained that impression, given there was no one on the island to tend them.
A team of vets and officials from the Scottish Office and the SSPCA discovered the carcasses and found another 100 animals in a poor condition.
It turned out the flock had not been dipped or had their fleeces cut in two years, leaving them susceptible to infections and diseases.
Further investigation revealed the SNP had allowed farmer Gordon Murray, a former provost of Cumbernauld and a veteran SNP councillor to graze his sheep there for a peppercorn rent.
The inspectors told him to remove them immediately or face prosecution. There followed a somewhat comical sheep chase.
Mr Murray explained later: ‘These are extremely wild animals and although a number of experienced people tried to get them all off, it was difficult. If there are one or two still left they will be collected.’
Two years earlier there was another brush with controversy when the British Army arrived at the island to make a safe landing point, unaware that the land they were improving was the SNP’s property.
FOR centuries, the rocks which had lain beneath the bay of the island had made l anding a treacherous experience for sailors. So Mr Wolfe approached the Royal Engineers to blast away the underwater impediments and to t r eat t he j ob as an army exercise.
He neglected to mention that the island belonged to a political party.
Mr Wolfe said at the time: ‘People have fallen in the water, getting stuck between the boat and the rocky shore.’
And so Royal Engineer diving and explosive experts 59 Commando Squadron began drilling holes in the rocks and packing them with explosives to form a safe landing area – just as they might do on a military operation.
A spokesman for the Army in Scotland said: ‘The project has so far existed only as a tiny flag in the Royal Engineers’ operations room map at Army headquarters, Scotland.’
But, when the forces arrived at the island at the mouth of Loch Sween to carry out the work, they found a Saltire flying there.
If the soldiers believed they had been hoodwinked, they put a brave face on it.
‘Mr Wolfe did not state that the island was owned by a political party,’ said the army spokesman.
‘From our point of view, it is perfect for our training needs and is an ideal opportunity for us to help the local community in attracting visitors.’ The Commandos’ time was given free of charge.
The pre-history of the island – before SNP rule – is equally colourful. Among its visitors are Vikings, Lords of the Isles, smugglers, medieval pilgrims and even John Paul Jones. Not the one who played bass with Led Zeppelin, but his namesake, the Scot who became the founder of the US Navy.
Winnie Ewing, the SNP matriarch, has also journeyed across the water to witness at first hand the few ancient relics that testify to human life having once lived here.
Among the oldest are the John V chapel, dating back to 1100, which may have been built on the site of an earlier structure. It was refurbished in the middle of the 1300s on the authority of John, 5th Chief of Clan Donald and first Lord of the Isles. More recently it has been used an ale house and an illicit still.
Then there i s the Mariota Cross, which dates from around 1400, built as a monument to Mariota, the wife of Donald, the second Lord of the Isles.
And, perhaps most interestingly of all, there is the 10ft deep cave, thought to have been used by St Cormac, a disciple of St Columba, in the 8th century. Inside it are two incised carvings of early Christian design.
To date, history records no visit to the SNP property by one Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond. But there is time yet.
Could it be here, perhaps, to the ragged cave on Eilean Mor MacCormick, that Mr Salmond retreats in defeat after September 18?
King Robert the Bruce tried a similar thing in a cave on the isle of Arran, with agreeable results.