IT IS a curious fact that all hopes for industrial activity on the west coast, linked to the oft-predicted boom in renewable energy, owe their existence to decisions taken half a century ago.

We hear endless girning about how we could be “more like Norway” or other northern European states but anyone suggesting we might invest in the same policies of decentralisation – taking serious numbers of jobs to where the people are (or were) – would now be looked on in Edinburgh as a crank.

It was not always so. The old Highlands and Islands Development Board, for example, understood that while tourism and technology are fine, to keep substantial numbers of people in peripheral parts of any country, you also need industry – and a philosophy of public investment to underpin it.

Blue collar jobs matter to these places. Allow people to work, acquire skills and earn a decent pay-packet and you have healthy communities and cultures; full schools and people to provide services to an ageing population. Force them to move out because there is no work and life drains away.

That process was spectacularly interrupted in the 1970s when the North Sea oil boom overspilled to the west coast. Deep water sites where concrete platforms could be built and then floated out to sea were suddenly in great demand.

It was a hugely speculative business which left its share of industrial dereliction but also two facilities which would otherwise never have existed – Arnish on Lewis and Kishorn in Wester Ross. In their heyday, both were transformational. There was work and there was life, which greatly outweighed the challenges created.

At its peak, Arnish employed close on 1000 people with lots of work for local businesses and apprenticeships for school-leavers. It was boom time – and then it passed. Ever since, Arnish has stuttered along under a succession of operators who saw it as a facility of convenience rather than commitment.

Gradually, the Arnish generation faded away. First they went to the North Sea and came back for their “three off”. When that became too much hassle, many moved family homes eastwards. North Sea work diversified into international travel – Taiwan, Azerbeijan, Angola, wherever there was offshore oil and gas.

For those who stayed or wished to return, the dream never quite died and reviving Arnish as a serious employer capable of delivering a regular flow of work for another generation of islanders remained the best hope for the economy – and, critically, allowing families to stay where they wanted to be.

In 2009, the prospects for Arnish became intertwined with those of BiFab which controlled two yards in Fife, at Burntisland and Methil. On taking over the Arnish lease, BiFab said it would allow them to “manufacture wave and tidal devices”, a market which remained entirely illusory.

Along with the rest of BiFab, hopes for an Arnish revival evaporated over the next decade as boasts about the “Saudi Arabia of renewables” turned to sand. New Canadian operators took over in 2018 and the whole thing went bust last year amidst bitter recriminations about the Scottish Government having allegedly failed to deliver what it promised.

It is against that background – shared largely, I’m sure, in Fife – that this week’s announcement from the BiFab administrators was greeted with a muted response. There was no photo opportunity for Ministers surrounded by cheering workers and distinctly cautious comments from trade unions and local authorities.

This was not to pre-judge the new operators, InfraStrata, who have effectively been sold the leases on the Methil yard (owned by Scottish Enterprise) and Arnish, while Burntisland has been left outside the deal. InfraStrata have paid the extremely modest sum of £850,000 so the BiFab creditors – notably Scottish taxpayers – are not going to see much of their money back.

Understandably, however, the long-suffering workers would like to know a lot more about InfraStrata before doffing their hard-hats. The yards are to operate under the name of Harland&Wolff leading to headlines about the Titanic, which given the recent history of these yards was not necessarily encouraging.

InfraStrata bought Harland&Wolff out of administration in late 2019. Eighteen months later they took over the Appledore shipyard in Devon which had been closed the previous year. With the BiFab acquisition, they now have four long-established facilities around the UK for a very modest initial investment.

This may represent a visionary strategy which will allow InfraStrata, whose background is in gas storage, to revive all four locations. Let us hope so. However, before public bodies – Highlands and Islands Enterprise in the case of Arnish – sign over the leases, one might reasonably hope for assurances that InfraStrata have firm prospects of work for the yards, as well as a shrewd eye for cheap deals and historic names.

As the Action for Arnish campaign group on Lewis said: “The company refers to future opportunities relating to offshore wind. That is welcome. However, that work will take time to materialise and we hope immediate prospects for the yard will depend on a more diverse portfolio of opportunities. There have to be safeguards against a repeat of BiFab”.

The likelihood is that InfraStrata’s plans will ultimately depend on the strength of commitment in terms of public policy and public investment. If the Scottish Government and its agencies decide to lease the yards to InfraStrata, they must also ensure that they are not simply creating another false dawn.

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