ALMOST a year after the islanders took control, members of the Commons Scottish Select Committee yesterday visited Eigg, an island community which has carved out a new future for itself.
However the committee's thoughts were also with a community to the north-west, Knoydart, whose fortunes seem to be in decline as Eigg's clearly rise.
The head teacher of Knoydart's Primary School yesterday telephoned her local MP to say that the power to the school was being seriously disrupted. The estate's hydro scheme has been damaged and successive estate owners have failed to secure its repair.
The estate denied this, but it served to fuel the local outrage felt at the sacking of the Knoydart Estate manager Ian Robertson, one of the first acts of the new owners.
Mr David Stewart (Labour - Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber) whose constituency embraces both communities, yesterday promised to take Knoydart's fight to the Governor of the Bank of Scotland.
The bank is the main creditor of Knoydart Peninsula Ltd and sanctioned its recent sale with reported liabilities of #1.4m there-by prejudicing any serious investment in Knoydart. There on the north shore of Loch Nevis the 70 people are still struggling to secure their future.
Like the Eigg islanders, they want to buy the estate, but are frustrated by the vagaries of a market that allows anyone to buy such communities. The community-led Knoydart Foundation had a bid of #800,000 refused.
The parliamentary visit to Eigg had been organised by Mr Stewart. He was very excited by Eigg's potential and was determined to work closely with local residents to improve the quality of life on the island and rebuild its infrastructure. The main priority was to upgrade the jetty facilities on the island as well as those on Muck, Canna and Rum and to provide a modern car ferry for the Small Isles.
Mr Stewart said that while Eigg provided a model example of community land ownership at work, the uncertain future for Knoydart Estate reinforced the need for radical land reform.
Mr Stewart said: ''The people of Knoydart have been let down by the existing legislation. They have the ability and the vision to promote sustainable development on the peninsula but are being prevented from doing so because of the current ownership of the estate. He added: ''That is an example of social and economic feudalism which is outdated as we approach the new millennium.''
Mr Stewart said he had been asked to visit Knoydart and he hoped to do so in a fortnight.
The chairman of the Knoydart Foundation Charlie King said: ''It is very good news that David Stewart will seek a meeting with the bank. The community has been trying unsuccessfully for some time to find out the bank's view of this matter.''
Meanwhile on Eigg the committee led by its chairman David Marshall, (Labour - Glasgow Shettleston) were shown the fruits of new investment since the islanders' successful purchase of the island for #1.5m last year.
A new visitor centre is nearing completion and a full-time development officer is in post.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article