FEW of us are flying at present, so it is easy not to notice a bitter industrial dispute with significance that goes much deeper than the immediate issue at stake, which is the future of Air Traffic Control in the Highlands and Islands.

Since 2018, Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd – a wholly owned subsidiary of the Scottish Government – has been promoting plans to centralise the service in Inverness with around 50 quality jobs lost from island communities.

There has been intermittent industrial action while local authorities have condemned the scheme as an unnecessary “vanity project” on the part of HIAL. The arguments used in favour of it are based on cost and efficiency, rather than safety.

In each of the affected communities, the counter-argument is that safety and flexibility – crucial to every aspect of island transport – would be compromised while the economic damage would (as confirmed by a recent impact assessment commissioned by HIAL) be significant.

In a withering response to the plans, a retired air traffic controller in Orkney, Peter Henderson, noted: “What HIAL need to remember is that the airports belong to the communities they serve. Our communities”. That is a perspective which few in Edinburgh would begin to comprehend. The airports belong to HIAL and HIAL belongs to the Scottish Government. End of story – so do what you like!

Yesterday, the Prospect union which represents the air traffic controllers announced a ban on overtime and work to rule as the dispute re-escalated in the wake of the impact assessment. HIAL show no signs of backing down while the Scottish Government continues to support them.

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The political dimension was spelt out by the Labour candidate in the Western Isles, Shaun Fraser, who called on the Transport Secretary, Michael Matheson, to veto the plan in advance of the May elections in order to bring uncertainty to an end for the employees and their families.

It was, he said, "hypocritical to pay lip-service to island-proofing Scottish Government actions while overseeing the removal of jobs that are under ministerial responsibility. Words are meaningless when directly contradicted by actions".

That points to the wider argument. In the great scheme of things, the number of jobs is small and the islands’ loss will be Inverness’s gain. So what is there to worry about, says Edinburgh. From the perspective of the periphery, however, it just looks like yet another example of accountancy-driven centralisation.

There are very few public sector jobs of this quality in island or other peripheral communities. For many decades, the presence of airports has provided rare career opportunities for qualified people to stay or return. Taking these jobs away is seen to represent a mentality as well as causing damage in its own right.

We hear endlessly about the virtues of Norway and other Scandinavian countries with long coastlines but it would involve intellectual effort to actually learn lessons from them. Norway in particular has been devolving public sector jobs to peripheral communities for many years. There is absolutely no trace of such a policy in Scotland – in fact, quite the contrary.

Yet 100 well-paid jobs here, 50 there would be transformational for places that the life is currently being sucked out of. And why restrict that philosophy to the geographic periphery? There are plenty disadvantaged towns in the central belt which could benefit in the same way from decentralisation and relocation.

The UK Government has set about its own programme of job dispersal which at least recognises there is an issue to be addressed. The announcement of 1000 civil service jobs coming to Glasgow should be welcomed across the political spectrum without anguishing over motives.

I heard a nationalist commentator on radio being as sour as possible about this piece of good news. What would the quality of jobs be? What will be their longevity? Well, maybe she could take a look at East Kilbride to which the Overseas Development Agency decamped 40 years ago and has provided generations of Scots with good careers. Is anyone there complaining?

The only criticism of such measures should be that there have not been enough of them and, internally within Scotland, that they do not happen at all. Where is the Scottish equivalent of the Treasury partially relocating to Darlington? Could civil service jobs not, in the same way, be the lever for recovery in some of Scotland’s most depressed communities?

The same argument applies all the way down the geographical pyramid – Whitehall, Edinburgh, Inverness ...local communities. Decision-making should be at the most relevant level and the guiding principle of policy should be that related jobs and resources should be devolved in the same way.

Mountains of government bureaucracy are devoted to our most peripheral communities, particularly the islands. We are surrounded by environmental designations, crofting regulation, marine matters, publicly-owned ferries and airports and many more “government interests” – all of them, without exception, administered from afar.

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Any change to that state of affairs will only come through a transformation of a mindset seen to represent a disregard for all of that, rather than a couple of jobs grudgingly conceded here or there. The Air Traffic Control dispute confirms that the current orthodoxy points in exactly the opposite direction.

So even if you have never flown with Loganair to a Scottish island in your life, this is a much wider argument in which to take a side – devolution versus centralisation. It is, of course, one which many in Scotland prefer to ignore because it is one to be resolved within Scotland alone.