Skye hotelier who hated tourism was an incomer who hated incomers

Iain Andrew Noble was born in Berlin on September 8, 1935, son of a British diplomat and Norwegian mother. His mother’s mother’s family had been Czech gypsy fiddlers.

On his father’s side, he boasted an Irish grandmother. Iain’s great-grandfather was Sir Andrew Noble, 1st Baronet of Ardmore and Ardardan Noble, parish of Cardross, county of Dumbarton. So he’d grow up to become 3rd Baronet.

Firstly, though, as baby Iain took his first breaths in Hitler’s capital – “I never actually met him!” – his father was working at the British Embassy in Mussolini’s Rome, where the infant took his first todding steps along the Appian Way.

After three years in Rome, the Nobles returned to their family home at Ardkinglas, by the shores of Loch Fyne. Ardkinglas had been home to Iain’s father and his two brothers, one of whom, Michael, became Tory Scottish Secretary under Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

In 1939, the Nobles sailed for the British Embassy at Shanghai. Iain’s schooling there was interrupted by the arrival of the Japanese, who put the family into an encampment for nine months, before they were exchanged for Japanese diplomats in the West.

His father then helped the war effort by working in Joint Intelligence. After the war, he was posted to Argentina, where Iain stayed for nine months, before being sent to Summer Fields private school in Oxford, then Eton and, in between national service in the Intelligence Corps, University College, Oxford, where he studied philosophy, politics and economics.

(Image: Steve Cox)

Living for the City
Despite this bad start, Noble secured employment as a City broker, then as a financial executive at the Scottish Council (Development and Industry). Here, he perceived an absence of merchant banking facilities in Scotland.

With Angus Grossart, he formed Noble Grossart merchant bank in 1969, “after”, as Grossart recalled, “a good drink of champagne”.

When Noble was bought out from the profitable venture, he used the proceeds to buy half the MacDonald Estates on Skye: 23,000 acres, mostly on the Sleat peninsula.

He developed several business interests on the island: fishing boats, farms, a wool mill, Hotel Eilean Iarmain and whisky company Pràban na Linne.

Although not a native Gaelic speaker, he had earlier started learning the language, and now used his lowly station to support it. 

This included insisting that Highland Region put up the first Gaelic road signs in Scotland.
In 1973, he founded Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, “the first Gaelic establishment of further education in Scotland since the Vikings burned down Columba’s abbey on Iona”. Beautifully situated, Sabhal Mòr looks across the sea to the mountains of Knoydart, where 500 Gaelic speakers were brutally evicted during the Clearances.

Despite running a hotel, Sir Iain said tourism reminded him of prostitution, “an easy way to earn a living, but not necessarily a very good one in the long run”. This “sacred cow” had damaged the Highlands, he told The Herald in 1989, producing “a low-wage seasonal economy with no career prospects for local people”.

Noble lamented the coming of incomers too, while conceding that by his own logic: “Perhaps I shouldn’t be in Skye either.”

Ghetto gripes
IN 2003, racial equality leaders and politicians condemned him after he called for the influx of English people to Skye to be halted. Worse still, he told a conference of the Edinburgh-based Scottish Countryside Alliance (SCA) that he did not want other foreigners “setting up ghettos” in Scotland.

Seeking to preserve Scotland’s genetic purity, he welcomed attempts by Scottish Natural Heritage to ensure trees were grown from local seeds, and urged the body to adopt the same policy when employing staff.

“It doesn’t mean I don’t like foreigners,” he explained. “I love them, all colours. I have many Indian friends and even one or two black ones. 

“But I don’t want them to settle and create ghettos in my patch of the country.”

Tony Andrews, SCA chief executive, said Sir Iain would not have been allowed to speak if his views had been known, adding: “He sounded like someone from the Nazi party of the 1930s.”

Charles Kennedy, Liberal Democrat leader and MP for Skye, described his remarks as ‘’offensive’’ and “not acceptable”, while lawyer and campaigner Aamer Anwar claimed Sir Iain was “a racist who should keep his comments to himself’’.

An SNP spokesman said his comments had “no place” in a modern, multicultural nation.

A Herald editorial about “Sir Iain’s ill-judged rant” said “the expression of such ugly views … will have set the notion of a tolerant Scotland back decades”. 

English incomers were “not ‘aliens’ destroying Scotland’s ancient civilisations but citizens who have much to offer and every right to be here. They are the face of modern Scotland. It is Sir Iain who is living in a shameful past”.

The Herald’s letters page erupted. English incomers complained of Noble’s “warped view of nationality”, and one Skye resident pointed out that the landowner sold properties to English people, and let a holiday cottage rather than provide “a suitable starter home for a young couple”.

But Sir Iain’s defenders claimed “it would be a great pity were they [the people Skye] to lose their identity amidst a sea of settlers”, and claimed: “This is certainly not racism.”

Skye’s the limit
It was tragic that such issues clouded Sir Iain’s real achievements in promoting Gaelic, providing local jobs, and straining every sinew to grow Skye’s economy. (Feel I haven’t helped here: too much research from headlines).

After a long illness, Sir Iain Noble OBE died at home on Skye on December 25, 2010, survived by his wife, Lady Lucilla.

In a Guardian obituary, Brian Wilson noted the ethnic eccentricities as “an unfortunate blot on Noble’s reputation since, while his views could be naive and idiosyncratic, he was no racialist”.

Sabhal Mòr Osaig remains testament to what Tam Dalyell called his “demonic energy”.
Better the devil you know, and islanders, while pointing out there’s more to being a Gael than speaking Gaelic, acknowledge that as landlords go he was at least different.

As one put it: “We didn’t have many precedents of landlords coming here and doing anything positive, never mind for the Gaelic language.”