Richard Bath: Island strife

Published on Saturday 20 June 2009 19:42

GAMEKEEPER Nigel Taylor and ghillie John Steele should be happy that the weather has changed, but cheerfulness is in short supply on Uist and Benbecula just now.

They should rejoice in the fact that after five weeks of ruinous sunshine a howling wind is once again buffeting the coast of their islands because these are the sort of moody conditions in which the snipe will take to the wing and the canny brown trout skulking in the thousands of lochans which pepper these islands will finally rise to the bait. But there's no rejoicing in Taylor's kitchen in the tiny hamlet of Howbeg as the two men debate the outlook on Scotland's westernmost fringe.

Nobody on the islands is concerned about the rainclouds that arrived last week. Instead, it's the squall of economic gloom which descended over the Uists and Benbecula at the same time that is dominating discussion on the islands. Unlike the dark clouds on the horizon, there's no silver lining to this storm, little chance that it will blow over any time soon.

As with virtually every other inhabitant of these islands, the sole topic of conversation between gamekeeper and the ghillie is the shock announcement by defence contractor QinetiQ that it is to drastically scale back its workforce at the rocket range it runs for the Ministry of Defence, the rocket range that was first sited here in 1957 because of the vast expanse of uninterrupted ocean but which was imposed in the teeth of fierce local opposition. The brief communication from the company says the plan is to move their headquarters to Aberporth in Wales and retain a skeleton staff on Uist and Benbecula while axing its contingent on St Kilda. It is only a proposal at the moment, stresses the company, but it has the feeling of a fait accompli.

With just 4,500 people living on North Uist, South Uist and Benbecula, 120 direct job cuts, which is one in six jobs on the islands and over 90 per cent of the best-paying jobs, will rip the heart out of the islands' fragile economy. At least as many jobs will go among the small businesses which rely on the 10 million pumped into the economy each year by the contractor. After a huge closure programme saw the MoD shed hundreds of jobs in the mid-nineties, and a drastic rationalisation programme by Marine Harvest three years ago saw the numbers employed in fish farming fall from 90 in the 1990s to less than 20 today, the rocket range is the last remaining big employer on the islands. Its loss, fear islanders, will send its teetering economy into a death spiral from which it will never recover.

"At first I thought it'd have no impact on me, my life or my family because I make my living off the land," says Steele, left, as he peers out of the window of the little house in the hamlet of Halveg at the radar station on the cliffs. "But then I began to think about it. It's the little things that we'll notice first. There's a bus which heads north to the (rocket] range every day which we all use: that will go. But the bigger things will soon become apparent too, like the fact that there are no more of the apprenticeships at the range which have helped keep the young on the island. My brother Fred did an engineering apprenticeship, which has provided him with a good trade. What will keep the young here now?"

Touring the islands speaking to locals, there's a remarkable consensus about what the job cuts, which will be phased in over four years, will mean. Small businesses will go bust, services such as the daily flights partly sustained by the coming and goings to the range will come under pressure, and property values will dip. But, worst of all, a high proportion of the people who lose jobs at the range will have to leave. Although some are incomers, most are locals with families, houses and roots in the community. One of the oldest populations in the islands will age yet further.

Howard Warner, below, is typical of those QinetiQ workers who will have their hand forced. The 41-year-old Welshman plans rocket trials and has worked on the island for almost eight years. He and his wife may know a life outside South Uist, but his two kids, aged nine and 12, have known little else. Warner says they're used to the barren beauty of the green moonscape dotted with a house here, a loch there, with its amazingly white beaches and icy blue seas. They may soon have to adapt to a monochrome life off the island.

"We love it here but like most people we'll have to leave because there simply aren't alternatives," he says. "My reaction to the news was pretty much the same as everyone else's, the standard mix of shock, horror, despondency and anger. But at least I'm in a better position than people who've never worked off the island."

Like virtually everyone on the islands (except Harvey MacLean-Ross of the Temple View Hotel, who reckoned he knew something was up when he recently had four high-powered Italians to stay for a month) Warner was aware there were ongoing reviews, but had no idea the sword of Damocles was in mid-air. He didn't suspect the closure, he says, because the rationale for operating the range at arm's length from Wales was never a compelling one. Nothing he has heard in the past week has made him think that the financial case for the changes has been satisfactorily made.

Warner isn't the only one who suspects an attempt to railroad the cuts through. Nor is he alone in suggesting the rationale behind the changes is flawed. "There was no consultation, no warnings, and despite the fact that QinetiQ rent land from us there was no indication of the scope of the proposed changes," says Huw Francis, left, the chief executive of Stras Uibhist, the community-run landowner on South Uist. "I'm deeply sceptical whether they can make the savings they want from this because it's a major systems integration and if you look at the MoD's track record on projects like this then they've often been late and overpriced.

"There are small savings and high risks in these proposals. The MoD reckons it'll save 50 million over 17 years, but in the context of a 5 billion contract that's negligible even if it happens. And then you have to look at the costs of addressing the impact on those communities. If you're not working for QinetiQ, then you're not working, so a lot of people will leave with their kids and partners, putting an extra burden on the state to care for the elderly. Those that stay may well end up on benefits. When the pits were closed down it cost a lot more than 50m to sort out the mining communities, and that's the sort of impact we're talking about here."

Pastoral considerations are uppermost in the mind of Father Michael MacDonald, the priest for St Michael's, Ardkenneth and St Mary's Bornish. Virtually every house in his parish has one, and often two, QinetiQ workers. "If this goes through then the impact upon the community could be devastating, and in the short-term there would be real hardship," he says. "We would have lost secure jobs and the promotional structure that can keep enterprising young people here. But I won't allow myself to be overly pessimistic because these are only proposals and we will challenge them as we did ten years ago when we won by coming together as a community."

The islanders have until the end of the consultation period on 29 July to put in objections, and know that taking on the MoD and QinetiQ – which is part of the Carlyle Group, an American conglomerate which turned over 1.5bn last year and created 525 jobs in the US on the back of soaring arms sales – will not be an easy task. Yet ten years ago Fr Michael was just one of a group which successfully watered down an MoD proposal to close the Uist and Benbecula sites completely and transfer all the jobs to Aberporth. In the end, many service personnel left the island but the civilian rocket range jobs were saved.

"There are many parallels between what happened back then and what's happening now," says Mary Bremner, who led the islanders into battle last time. "We had no notice and no time to prepare but we put up a real fight. We went down to Westminster and met the MoD and MPs, and managed to get a meeting with Jonathan Aitken, the Minister of Defence. He was very sympathetic and knew the islands well, which was crucial. We need to be as forceful this time as we were then, pointing out very strongly that you can't simply pull the rug from under young people's feet in a recession because once they go they won't come back."

Virtually everyone on Uist and Benbecula had a tale of how they would be affected.

Alan Graham, left, who for 21 years has run the Orasay Inn, depends for much of his winter trade on the defence contractors. Tourism keeps him busy in summer, but the MoD and Marine Harvest cuts have hit business and where once he had eight full-time staff and as many part-timers, he now only opens for meals at set times and if the cuts go through he may switch to residents only, which could mean a staff of just himself and wife Isobel. "It's a bleak picture but I'm trying to stay positive," he says. "I'm 56 and I'd hoped to have wound down and moved on to something else by now. We will adapt, though – we have no choice but to survive."

Not everyone would be sorry to see the ranges go. As I was talking to Graham, a Gaelic-speaking fisherman arrived with a point of view he claims is widespread. "No one ever asked the English army to come here," he said. "They've eroded my culture and my language and it'll never come back, the damage has been done. There have been maybe 200 builders on the islands who've lost their jobs in the past year – why don't you talk about them rather than the people with feather-bedded government jobs earning 50,000 or 60,000 for pushing a few buttons. The range has never done anything for me, let it go."

Such views were, however, as far from the mainstream as the claim by crofter Angus MacDonald, left, that Stras Uibhist's decision to press ahead with three wind turbines against QinetiQ's wishes precipitated the crisis. Mostly the islanders are bemused, scared, angry and resigned. There's even a nice vein of gallows humour that surfaced when I picked up my hire car. With the rain lashing down, I got to talking about the cuts with Catherine, the relentlessly cheerful girl who delivered my keys. The jobs cuts were, I suggested, an ill wind. "Nah," she replied, looking at the pouring rain, "more like us being pissed on from a great height."

Courting controversy with success

QinetiQ is a technology-based private defence contractor, formed in 2001 when the state-owned DERA – Defence Evaluation and Research Agency – was split up and privatised. A highly successful FTSE 250 company, QinetiQ has almost 14,000 employees in Europe and North America.

The company is, however, highly controversial. The Ministry of Defence initially held a substantial stake, but when the company was floated on the London Stock Exchange in February 2006, the profits made by QinetiQ's parent company, the giant American private equity firm the Carlyle Group, drew severe criticism from the National Audit Office. Carlyle Group bought a third of the business for 42m which grew in value to 372m in less than four years and ten of the company's senior managers gained 107.5m on a total investment of 540,000 in the company's shares.