Westminster politicians have had eyes on the northern isles before

I WAS interested in the suggestion that Orkney might be seeking more autonomy whether or not Scotland becomes independent (“Orkney considers breaking free from UK and Scotland”, The Herald, January 2).

I personally believe that the more self-government, the better for all.

Certainly the Faroe Islands have always enjoyed much more autonomy than our own Northern Isles – in fact, more autonomy than Scotland itself.

It is little known that the main impetus for the 1970s Shetland Movement did not originate in Shetland itself, but in papers circulated to Cabinet ministers in Westminster, where civil servants suggested various ways of denying North Sea oil to a future independent Scottish state.

An under-secretary at the Department of Energy suggested as long ago as 1975 that the Northern Isles might be hived off from Scotland.

He wrote: “If Scotland and the Orkney and Shetland Islands are both regarded as states, separate from the rest of the United Kingdom, median lines can be drawn to divide the United Kingdom Continental Shelf between Orkney & Shetland/ Scotland and between Scotland/ England.”

The idea was that the islands would prefer to throw in their lot with London rather than Edinburgh.

Another suggested realigning the subsea border between Scotland and England, so that it ran north-east instead of east.

This proposal was of course carried out by the Westminster Fishing committee a couple of weeks before the first sitting of the Scottish Parliament.

The reasons given at the time for executing this change related only to fishing, and oil was not mentioned.

These and other secret plans by Westminster to control the oil were documented in an article by Magnus Linklater and George Rosie in a well-known London newspaper in 2009.

However, today the Orkney and Shetland campaigns for more selfgovernment are in no way associated with Unionism and are fully supportive of the Scottish Parliament. Mary McCabe, 25 Circus Drive, Glasgow.