Viewpoint / A Shetland moment
In this Viewpoint, the former Scottish Labour candidate and Shetland Charitable Trust reform campaigner Pete Hamilton offers a response to Jonathan Wills’ recent opinion piece, and provides some suggestions for increasing local control
SHETLAND’s ability to influence renewable energy developments, as addressed by Jonathan Wills in his Viewpoint piece Invasive Predators, (Shetland News, 18 September), will likely be revisited in next year’s Scottish parliamentary election.
It is necessary that some points be corrected. Additionally, Shetland might have more ability to achieve local control than is currently imagined.
Firstly, though, I will agree with Jonathan that John Scott’s letter, We Need to Speak Up (Shetland News, 15 September) was excellent. There should be no abdication of leadership by the council when it comes to determining and presenting local views on further renewables industrialisation in Shetland. At the point of decision on Viking, Jonathan was also right to press for a public inquiry. The lack of one meant that the project was never subjected to an appropriate level of scrutiny, and the consequences of that are deeply unfortunate.
However, Jonathan’s criticism of Sustainable Shetland’s tactics is misplaced. He must surely know that in comparable circumstances elsewhere, objectors denied a hearing have inevitably pursued any and every opportunity to challenge projects, ranging from judicial review to direct action on development sites.
For Shetland, the outcomes of the inadequate consent process are a divided community and a profound sense of injustice.
In Jonathan’s time as a councillor, the position of the leadership of Shetland Islands Council, and therefore at that time the position of Shetland Charitable Trust (SCT), was to completely ignore local views on the Viking wind farm. We were told that, if the majority were against it, it wouldn’t go ahead, but all too conveniently, no effort was made to determine the majority view.
The councillors were at that time also SCT trustees, but the SCT also included John Scott as Lord Lieutenant, and the head teacher of the Anderson High. The councillors were of a majority mind that economically they needed to find the next big thing, and that the Viking raid on Shetland Charitable Trust would necessarily be good for Shetland.
They asked themselves for, and granted themselves, a huge chunk of the people of Shetland’s charitable funds, over the heads of the beneficiaries. In passing, we might reflect on how Shetland’s economic history, often characterised as boom and bust, has fostered an unfortunate belief that we need one or two big things rather than the sustainable development of many smaller things.
Shetland’s Liberal Democrat MSP Tavish Scott was behind Viking from the start, and saw no problems with councillors dominating the trust, telling me in person in his constituency office “he had no skin in the game” of ensuring Shetland Charitable Trust was properly run or, therefore, that the Viking development would proceed cleanly.
That these public funds could more legitimately have been used to ensure no-one in Shetland was left in fuel poverty was of no concern.
Although I was not active in Sustainable Shetland, I’d previously seen enough public money disappeared by Shetland Development Trust, so it was myself, (and one nameless and unknown other), that raised the 2008 and 2009 complaints with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR).
With councillors running it, there were no checks and balances. That the conflicts of interest I objected to were not being properly managed is not just a matter of public record. OSCR now use the flawed framework developed by Shetland’s Liberal Democratic political establishment to warn about conflicts of interest, including it on their website as a case study of what to guard against.
The OSCR ruling was thus not at the behest of Sustainable Shetland supporters, as Jonathan claims, nor was it “bizarre”. Given the principles underlying charity law, it was inevitable.
My arguments were, for sure, driven by a recognition that conflicts of interest were thwarting local democracy, but I took pains to explain how direct elections for the trust would deliver social development. Shetland has long suffered from too few fingers in too many pies and therefore too few ideas getting seriously considered. This isn’t just a byproduct of laissez-faire Liberalism. It is one and the same thing.
Power is held in order to keep things as they are, so that the powerholders can benefit. I’d hold the trust is better run now than before, but that it would be run better still were trustees directly elected and motivated to explore different approaches for the best use of Shetland’s oil disturbance payments. The status quo, which the Lib Dems have held in place for far longer than is healthy, remains a check on genuine development. Economist Amartya Sen puts the argument well in Development as Freedom.
Jonathan argues that the SIC and SCT had a confluence of interest, not a conflict, in representing the public interest, and were not acting on behalf of private interests. Is he truly that naive? Has he learned nothing from Shetland Development Trust’s plundered millions and the various SLAP shenanigans? The reality is that private interests in Shetland had long since calculated that they stood to gain hugely from Viking Energy. Not just landowners (the SIC included) but contractors, hoteliers, hauliers, publicans, wholesalers and harbour operators all quickly calculated what would be gained from getting their snouts in the trough.
It is in the very nature of things in Shetland that those with a commercial orientation firmly expect their interests will be considered by those taking the decisions. Very often they are the same folk! Little wonder SCT and the SIC therefore never considered checking their view of the public interest with the public. That would have upset far too many cosy plans. What an actual Liberal, such as Jo Grimond, would have thought of all this is a matter for conjecture (though there is much we can glean from his writings), but he was a Liberal of a different era. Those that claim to be democrats often end up being no such thing.
Shetland’s Liberal Democratic establishment always had the opportunity to do things cleanly, reform Shetland Charitable Trust and give people a direct say in how they wanted their money invested – in Viking or otherwise. It actively chose to leave things murky.
OK, so what for the future?
I continue to believe that SCT trustees should be directly elected. The elections themselves would see folk coming up with ideas that could better their lives and those of their neighbours. Expanding participation is essential for the promotion of social justice. This would be giving folk mair control over their ain affairs, as the Shetland Movement always wanted.
More broadly, just because soon-to-be shoehorned in Lib Dem MSP Emma Macdonald lacks the ambition for Shetland to secure greater sway over, and greater gain, from future renewables expansion, doesn’t mean these are not possible. I grant you gaining another ZCC Act wouldn’t be easy, but a future Shetland Islands Council Act is conceivable.
What powers might it bestow? Perhaps local revenue could be generated by charging for licences to produce renewable energy. Perhaps it could enable the council to acquire land needed for renewable developments, possibly on the same basis as in the Community Land Act 1975. That act enabled local authorities to acquire land needed for development, then lease or re-sell it so that the gain in value accrued to the community. An act could give the council first option to purchase any land identified in any planning application made for a renewables development.
These currently are matters for Westminster, and if anything is to be done within the current Westminster parliament, it would require our MP, Alistair Carmichael, to pursue the case for legislation with the same hugely impressive conviction and persuasive power demonstrated by Jo Grimond.
He would need to be supported by a council leadership and council officials that were as courageous, dedicated and unswerving in their ambition as those of the 1970s: among others, George Blance, Edward Thomason, A I Tulloch and – most of all – Ian Clark. What are the prospects, now, of governance and advocacy of that quality? None whatsoever if political leadership lacks vision and ambition.
But these are also matters for consideration by the most promising political leaders Shetland has seen for some time, namely SNP candidate Hannah Mary Goodlad, and the Scottish Greens’ Alexander Armitage.
They share a concern to end poverty. Both promote an inclusive and outward looking idea of Shetland that is far from the repellent, exclusive, insular and backward-looking Viking blood, Aryan nonsense that is still too fashionable in some quarters. Shetland’s best future is secured by unlocking the potential of all its residents. Unlike with the Shetland Movement, who were petering out as this Peter rocked up on the Auld Rock, their concerns are more people led than business led. Their autonomy quest should foreground that.
Between them, and with others, Armitage and Goodlad might spot ways in which Shetland autonomy could address inequality and achieve sustainability. For example, it might be possible to find ways of enabling fishing and offshore renewables to co-exist. Those who criticise damage from large trawlers might welcome a revival of the inshore fleet, if this involved restricting access to small, potentially hydrogen powered, seine netters. Such boats could safely exploit areas of the sea destined to be reserved for wet renewables. That would see a fresh generation of local fisherfolk enter the industry, reversing the rush to a smaller number of ever more powerful whitefish boats. It could provide a genuinely sustainable catch, therefore high-end and high-premium, and as such would boost the reputation of the whole of Shetland’s food sector, from bakeries, crofts, farms to cafes and restaurants.
The trick for securing social and environmental sustainability is not to allow decision making to be dominated by existing stakeholders – Shetland has seen way too much of that – but rather to envisage the needs of those not generally allowed into in the room, including those from future generations. That development, properly thought through, carries a moral imperative, has been overlooked in Shetland. The haves have forgotten the have nots.
Can Armitage and Goodlad seize the opportunity and work together to develop a shared, socially responsible and sustainable autonomy agenda, addressing the concerns that are now so prominent? As folk increasingly wonder just what the Lib Dems have actually achieved in the last fifty years, this seems like the moment to do that.
