Author: Karyn McLuskey

Those who spend their lives working in the courts have perhaps got used to the drama, emotions and melee of the environment. For others who visit less frequently, like me, it is a sobering encounter, and a chance to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Edinburgh Sheriff Court deals with around 13,000 criminal cases every year. Solicitors, sheriffs, court officers, social workers, witnesses, police officers, security staff, accused persons, complainers and usually pre-covid, journalists, family members and many more, make the court a discombobulating environment.

Perhaps a sign reading ‘All human life is here’ should hang over the entrance to our courts. There’s every emotion on display in a short four-hour period. It’s an alien environment for many, but for others a frequent destination.

Notable on my visit to the lower levels of the court was a particular drama which was probably unnoticed by many, but perhaps a regular occurrence.

A tall young man, let’s call him Joe, clearly under the influence of some substances, was asking all and sundry, if they had seen his lawyer. It was as if he had an exclusion zone around him, as everyone avoided his gaze, and swerved around him. As time went on he became more agitated and an ‘intervention’ was imminent.

At this moment a ‘courts officer’ appeared from Court 6. As he progressed along the corridor he cheerily greeted the solicitors, police officers and others waiting for court. As he reached Joe, he greeted him like all the others, held his gaze, asked him how he was and in an instant the unfolding scene changed.d.

The dignity and respect shown by this one court officer defused and changed a whole situation. Joe had taken methadone before arriving, was distressed because he couldn’t find his solicitor and had no charge on his phone.

He had turned up in the only clean tracksuit he had, and was keen to get his case heard and take whatever disposal was forthcoming.

The court officer, obviously busy, addressed each of Joe’s problems, made a call there and then, and told him to sit and wait till he returned. Efficient, warm, calm, measured, hugely professional – he never missed a beat. His interaction changed Joe and in turn, everyone else in that court area. Apologies emanated from Joe to all who would hear them.

Dignity and respect can change the most challenging of situations and I asked the solicitor I was with who the court officer was.

“I don’t know – we just know him as ‘Fast Eddie’,” the one who everyone goes to when they need help or advice. Eddie exemplified the ‘no wrong door’ principle. He didn’t say it wasn’t his job, he took the responsibility to make things better and not worse for someone who needed help.

A court is a venue for many very vulnerable people, regardless of the role they are playing – accused, complainer, witness – it’s a place for intervention and support, and can be a place where people admit to the broader challenges that bring them back. I need to perfect my human cloning techniques – we could all do with more Fast Eddies.

– Karyn McCluskey is chief executive of Community Justice Scotland

Author: Professor Alan Miller

In this blog – the fourth in our series of ‘Land &’ blogs – Alan Miller, Professor of Practice in Human Rights at Strathclyde University, explores the connection between ‘Land & human rights.’

The tide of history is lapping over Scotland’s land.

The ambitious and far-reaching Human Rights Bill due this parliamentary session is part of this tide and will help further advance land reform.

The Bill will be based upon the Report published in March by the Scottish Government’s National Taskforce for Human Rights Leadership.

This blog briefly outlines some of the context and content of the Taskforce Report as well as some of its potential implications for land reform.

Context

Three key drivers contributed to the Report’s recommendation of a new 21st century human rights framework for Scotland.

Firstly, the experience of Scotland’s human rights journey over 20 years of devolution pointed to the need of a new framework. This should include not only the civil and political rights of the Human Rights Act, which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), but the full range of internationally recognised rights including economic, social, cultural and environmental.

Secondly, Brexit gave an impetus to this need by weakening the existing framework.

Thirdly, Covid gave an urgency to a new human rights framework. The lack of economic and social resilience, the structural inequalities and the environmental crisis were laid bare by the pandemic.

The UN gave a call to place human rights at the centre of all efforts to “build back better”, to act with greater urgency to this message from nature as well as the underlying climate crisis and to take transformative steps to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Taskforce Report is necessarily ambitious in rising to these challenges.

Content

Scotland is now on the cusp of its biggest ever step in its human rights journey. The Bill and its implementation can be central to a just and sustainable post-pandemic recovery and become world-leading in doing so.

The new framework will include the incorporation of five UN treaties – providing economic, social and cultural rights to everyone and ensuring that women, children, disabled and ethnic minority people enjoy equal access – and will also include the right to a healthy environment.

There will be a range of innovative measures to both ensure the necessary accountability of the government and public authorities as well as to enable public participation so as to achieve the framework’s effective implementation.

The Bill is recommended to require future laws, policies and practices as well as budgetary decisions to give further effect to the framework rights. It therefore presents significant opportunities to advance land reform.

Human Rights Bill and land

The mutually reinforcing relationship between human rights and the protection of the environment has been clearly presented in the UN Framework on Principles on Human Rights and the Environment. The Taskforce Report recommended a right to a healthy environment to give effect to this.

Land is a national resource. Scotland’s Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement is already influenced by human rights and the explicit incorporation by the Bill of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) will serve to advance the Statement’s further development.

For example, there is expected to be an explicit duty on the Scottish Government and public authorities to apply through legislation, policy, practice and budgetary decisions the “maximum available resources” for the “progressive realisation” of the rights to an adequate standard of living, including to housing and food, and to health and the enjoyment of cultural life as well as to protect the natural environment. This clearly links to the economic and socially productive use of land.

Another key link between land and human rights lies in what will become an ever clearer understanding of the “public interest” to be interpreted and applied in the context of land reform by law, policy and decision-makers as well as by the courts.

Importantly, this will support solution-oriented dialogues and dispute resolutions involving interested parties on questions of land use and ownership.

When necessary however, courts will balance private landowner property rights with the public interest in determining any challenges to land reform. In interpreting the public interest at stake, due weight will be given to the will of Parliament and its incorporation of the ICESCR. Subsequent legislation giving further effect to the ICESCR will then provide further specificity and clarity to the courts and all interested parties.

Consequently, the “human rights” dimension of land reform should develop beyond the perceived “red card” of the private property right under the ECHR.

For example, a broader judicial approach is now being witnessed in climate change litigation around the world in the context of cases being successfully brought against governments and corporations regarding their inadequate climate change actions.

Courts are giving weight to the public interest through increasingly taking into account the will of national parliaments and international agreements and treaties such as the Paris Climate Agreement which defines the necessary emission reductions , the inter-generational equity required by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the responsibilities of business under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

This tide of change is now lapping over Scotland’s land and will profoundly affect its future use and ownership.

Alan Miller is Professor of Practice in Human Rights Law at the University of Strathclyde, an independent expert with the UNDP Crisis Bureau and served as Independent Co-Chair of the National Taskforce for Human Rights Leadership.

Author: Eileen Reid

Friday 30 July was a significant date for two seemingly unconnected reasons. First, it was reported that Scotland retains its European title as the country with the highest per capita death rate due to drug overdose. These deaths occur almost exclusively in working-class communities characterised by both acute and chronic deprivation. Second, it was 50 years ago last week that a powerful, cohesive working-class community, characterised by mutual support and solidarity, declared its intention to take over shipyards on the upper Clyde which were condemned to closure despite several orders on the books.

In 1971, Jimmy Reid gave his speech to the UCS shipyard workers at Fairfield yard, Govan, to inform them that the shop stewards had reached the decision that they would take over the yards in a ‘work-in’. It was a unique moment in organised working-class history, usually accompanied in its telling with the famous words: ‘And there will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism, there will be no bevying…’. Immediately following this imperative, issued with a flash in his eyes of humour and understanding, he continued: ‘Because the world is watching and it is our responsibility to conduct ourselves responsibly and with dignity and maturity. The shop stewards representing the workers are in control of these yards. Nobody and nothing will come in and nothing will go out, without our permission’. It was an audacious, courageous, and strategic statement of intent by these trade-unionists to save thousands of jobs and a major industry.

‘But that was a long time ago’, we’re told; ‘we need to live in the present and think to the future’, we’re told. ‘Times have changed’, or so we’re told. Yet the world is now watching our wretched decline into one of the worst countries in the world for poverty-related drug addiction while at the same time claiming to be world leaders in progressive policies. Times have indeed changed.

Something of crucial significance has disappeared from our politics and culture. This was brought home to me at Jimmy’s (my dad’s) funeral 11 years ago: a funeral that didn’t just mourn the man, the friend, the comrade, but was a lament for a lost era. Emotions ran high not in self-pitying nostalgia, but for a time, a place, a community. An era of solidarity that is gone. So what was it about this unique struggle – nothing before or since can match it – that captured the imagination and spirit of an era?

Looking at the photos of the time, one magnificent shot stands out (see below, photographer unknown). A sea of upturned faces with bunnets, the shop stewards pacing what looks like a boxing ring, Jimmy talking. All men. Today, that would be a complaint. But in truth, women were heavily involved in that struggle. They may not be present in a world of appearances, which these days matter, but they were there alright. My mum, Isobel Dickie, Ann Airlie, my grandma and countless others were working-class feminists yet would never call themselves such. They were strong woman with agency, whose priority – same as the men – was economic and political equality. Their struggle was for the working class, of the working class, and by the working class. Fighting for social justice was a luxury, but a luxury that would eventually flow, they thought, from the eradication of socio-economic equality.

A strategic struggle, the UCS work-in was led by intelligent, thoughtful men and women. They realised early on that to win they had to build support from all walks of life, and they did. Across political parties, religions, families from all classes rich and poor, the solidarity was truly ecumenical. Even the local police were engaged and supportive. At that point in history, identity politics was but a glint in a French intellectual’s eye. Nowadays, that kind of solidarity displayed 50 years ago would likely be condemned. Standing ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with a member of another tribe is largely frowned upon in the present era where the binary nature of current politics is stifling and ugly.

The community as we understood it back then is no longer. Living in the present is to live in a society that has fragmented into neo-liberal silos of identity politics. This is characterised as progress. And it is progress of a kind. Equality legislation passed by the Blair/Brown Government gave certain characteristics legal protection. Class was to be included in the next parliament, but the Tories won the election, so it was not to be. A working class whose solid, cohesive communities were already brutally decimated in the Thatcher years, were uprooted and now unrecognised by the political classes as an identity worthy of protection.

Not a mile from our close, a family suffering from the devastating impact of poverty will go unnoticed unless their circumstances become so severe that some government-funded charity is helicoptered in to stage an intervention. These families have no extended, recognised over-arching community with which to identify. This kind of fragmentation of so-called ‘lived experience’ with its temporary solutions thought up by well-intentioned third sector folk, would not be described as ‘progress’ 50 years ago. No government in power in the UK represents or prioritises working-class interests. There are enlightened individuals, sure, but progress – particularly in Scotland – is measured mainly in terms of identity politics that excludes class.

Our current political ethos is dominated by appearances. And the working class do not ‘appear’ unless, for example, during the COVID-19 crisis, the value of our Amazon workers, supermarket workers, public transport workers, cleaners and many more is made manifest. Funny how the free market is rubbish at valuing jobs and their worth to society. Usually consigned to society’s dark undergrowth, the working-classes engine room emerged to remind us of their worth.

But they appear again in the perennial attainment gap; they appear in our shameful drug deaths; our problems with addiction; poverty-fuelled trauma filling our prisons; homelessness; the decline of our biggest city where precious services for the most deprived are cut and yet ‘People Make Glasgow’. Not all of them, to be sure.

It should be noted that Jimmy and some of his fellow shop stewards were committed to what was then called ‘home rule’. In later life, they joined the SNP and Jimmy himself would have argued passionately for a ‘Yes’ vote in the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence. He would be dismayed by the stalled progress of the working class over the last few decades, but, as an optimist, would hope that determining our own destiny would provide a remedy.

In the meantime, the poor will disappear again as we march progressively towards a promised Scottish panacea.

As the new progressives issue their imperative to live in the present and look to the future, it would be instructive to remind them that there is no expiry date on fundamental, universal principles of equality and fairness. Back and as recently as 2010, the Labour Party stated that the persistent inequality of socio-economic status overarches the discrimination or disadvantage that can come from your gender, race or disability. We have made excellent progress on these three categories and rightly so, but it remains the case that class inequality which is ‘cumulative over an individual’s lifetime’ is still carried from one generation to the next.

Slogans issued such as ‘we must end poverty now’ underestimate the scale of the challenge. The men and women of 1971 understood that. They are worth listening to.

Author: Ben Webster , The Times

Grouse shooting brings social benefits because it allows mixing between shooters and the people who cater for them, a report has suggested.

The paper defends the sport against calls for it to be banned, saying that it also has economic and environmental benefits. The report, funded by the shooting industry, has been released before the grouse season opens on Thursday, the Glorious Twelfth of August, although a cold, wet spring means many moors have few birds to shoot.

The researchers say that driven grouse shooting, in which beaters drive birds towards shooters, involves “a wide range of individuals from a variety of backgrounds, not just guns but also beaters, pickers up, drivers, flankers, caterers, supporters and others, facilitating contact between individuals from different class backgrounds and maximising the potential for social impacts”.

The report by Northampton University was commissioned by the Uplands Partnership, which includes the Moorland Association representing landowners, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, the Countryside Alliance and the National Gamekeepers Association.

The three authors include Simon Denny, a retired professor and former army captain who is a keen shooter. They say that one of the main reasons people oppose grouse shooting may be because “it is associated with the rich enjoying themselves”, and insist that this is “a gross over-simplification”.

The report suggests that many people involved in grouse shooting are disadvantaged in the debate over the sport because unlike high-profile opponents such as Chris Packham, the author and broadcaster, they are often “not confident in using social media and communication media”.

The economic benefits of grouse shooting include supporting jobs in remote areas, with a survey of 15 estates in North Yorkshire, Northumberland, and Scotland showing that they had 80 gamekeepers and 175 other full-time staff.

One moor in the North York Moors National Park employs 50 beaters earning £50 a day, 20 times a year, while another ten people earn £100 picking up the dead birds. Grouse shooting also supports hotels and other businesses, with clients flying in on private jets, bringing wives and partners and spending “a vast amount of money”.

Management of grouse moors helps to control ticks, which pose a disease risk to humans and wildlife. Bracken, which can harbour ticks and smother sensitive habitats, is also reduced.

The report says that a detailed study has not been carried out into the economic impact of managing moors without shooting but its authors conclude: “It is unlikely that the alternative uses that are proposed by some groups for the moorlands would deliver the same positive economic impacts, at least for a number of generations.” They said that shooting was “an important part of a mosaic of income-generating activities that sustain upland communities”.

Mark Avery, a co-founder with Packham of Wild Justice, which wants driven grouse shooting to be banned, said that the report was “from an industry in denial”. He ridiculed the claim that the sport brought classes together, adding: “We’ll have a game of dominoes down the pub with the Duke of Westminster [a grouse moor owner] any time he likes.”

Report can be found here

How to get involved in COP26

1. Take Part in an Event

There are hundreds of events happening between now and COP26 and we are bringing them together on the Climate Fringe website. Have a browse, and get involved.  If you, or a group you are in, wish to organise an event you are welcome to become part of the Climate Fringe – upload your event and download a logo.

Find and event

2. Become Part of Climate Fringe Week

Each year at the end of September international leaders from business, government and civil society meet in New York for talks ahead of COP. This is a vital time to influence decision making, and the Climate Fringe will be encouraging organisations across Scotland to run activities, events and actions during the week of 18-26 September.  This also coincides with Great Big Green Week in England and Wales.  

More info

3. Host an Activist in your home.

At any COP climate conference, affordable accommodation in the city is scarce and very expensive. This is a huge obstacle for groups with less resources, for example those from Global South countries and young people.

The COP26 Homestay Network is a platform where those with a spare room or a sofa-bed within a commute of Glasgow can offer a place to stay for climate campaigners during COP.  It’s an amazing opportunity to have  direct link to COP while giving a genuine Scottish welcome to visitors.

Sign up & find out more!

4. Contribute to the COP26 Glasgow Green Map

We are bringing together an open-source online map of community resources and sustainable and locally run businesses. We want to help COP delegates and activists find local, independent and sustainable places to eat, shops and visit that bring value into local communities and give a warm welcome to our city.

 Add to the Green Map

5. Involve your local community hall or faith space

SCCS and UK COP26 Coalition are creating a network of local venues  close to Glasgow that can support global civil society needs during COP and connect their communities to what is happening at COP.  If you are involved with a community hall, place of worship, non-profit co-working space, or even if you just have a spare meeting room, we want to connect you in to the network. 

More info

6. Volunteer in the Civil Society Spaces during COP26

The climate justice movement needs your help in Glasgow this November. The COP26 Coalition and Stop Climate Chaos Scotland are inviting you to be part of a team of volunteers supporting our work at the People’s Summit, Mass Mobilisation and Civil Society Hubs in Glasgow and online. We have a variety of roles available.

Make sure to apply by 13 August. You don’t need any particular skills or experiences, but you must be over 18 to volunteer. If you have any questions, email isobel@stopclimatechaos.scot.

Find out more & apply!

7. Bring COP26 to Your Community

We will be live streaming all sorts of content live from COP26 onto the Climate Fringe website and we are inviting communities to create mini COP events in their local venue to mix international events live, with discussing the things that matter to you.

Find out more

8. Help with Civil Society Organising for COP26

Stop Climate Chaos Scotland are working in partnership with the UK COP26 Coalition to bring together facilities and support for global civil society during COP26. This is being done through various working groups.

Join a working group

9. Support Global South activists getting to COP26

Those on the frontline of the climate crisis will face many obstacles even getting to Glasgow, including navigating the UK Home Office’s immigration system to obtain a visit visa.

It is of paramount importance that these people are at the centre of climate negotiations, and so the COP26 Coalition is fundraising to help this cause.

Please donate what you can through the Visa Support Crowdfunder.

and finally ….

The Climate Fringe is powered by Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, a coalition of over 60 civil society organisations campaigning together on climate issues for more than a decade. Our members are community groups, NGOs and charities, faith groups, student groups and trade unions and we welcome new members.  If your civil society organisation is interested in joining us you can see our campaign priorities for COP26 here and find out more about SCCS here.

This webpage from Creative Carbon Scotland gives a great overview of COP26 and the best ways of preparing and making plans. 

Author: Ship Yard Trust

The Ship Yard Trust has been working on this project since September 2017 and registered as a charity in Scotland since June 2018. We were delayed in launching by COVID-19 and anticipating the public are now looking to the future with some optimism hence the timing of our launch.​

The great industrial achievements of the River Clyde in engineering and shipbuilding are widely known not just in the United Kingdom, but around the world. Despite this, there is no single location on the Clyde where this world-class story can be told. 

The time has come to recognise the vision of those who established these industries, of the innovation central to their success and to the contribution made by hundreds of thousands of men and women over many decades who toiled through good times and bad times to manufacture remarkable products and make the name Clydebuilt synonymous with excellence.​

The Shipyard Trust has been formed to focus attention on these achievements, to recognise the contributions made by hundreds of thousands of people and engage with all parties necessary to formulate a strategy that permanently acknowledges this outstanding industrial heritage.

Please email contact@theshipyard.scot with your feedback, ideas and suggestions. Consulting with the public is essential to continue the project successfully.

​

Author: GetGrowing Scotland

“A garden is a solution that leads to other solutions.” Wendell Berry

GetGrowing Scotland is a new online network for communities and people growing food and other plants, and caring for and enjoying  nature in their local area.

The ‘great outdoors’ starts at home, from the patch of grass outside your door, the shared backgreen, to the unused land outside our schools and businesses. While woodland and park areas are designated as outdoor spaces, pockets of under utilised green space offer enormous potential. People and groups in communities across Scotland tend many such spaces, untapping their potential and using them to enjoy and benefit from a range of activities: growing and eating fresh food, learning about and connecting with nature, improving physical and mental health and wellbeing, tackling climate and environment issues, and making our neighbourhoods more beautiful, accessible and useful.

This movement is especially significant with the changes that COVID-19 has brought to our lives, highlighting the health benefits of access to nice outdoors spaces and fresh local food,  but also the inequality of access.  Access to decent nature spaces, alongside housing, health and education, is a basic requirement for a good quality of life. Public spaces that can be used for growing and nature activities are a local resource for wellbeing and socialising, community events and learning. Locally grown food and community led nature improvements foster community connection, creating spaces people feel safe and confident using. If spaces provide what local people want they will be better used. The individual and community benefits are immeasurable; the challenge is how everyone can access and benefit and ‘Get Growing’.

If you are a community group, local organisation, school or business in Scotland and want to start or improve a growing site for your community, we are here to help each other. 

If you are an individual growing or just staring out in your garden or allotment, and keen to share and learn, by growing your own you are part of growing in your community, making space and taking care of nature 

And if you are on an allotment waiting list don’t just wait GetGrowing! Contact your local community garden and see if they are looking for volunteers, it may suit you and gives you the opportunity to learn, contribute and grow.

Author: Point and Sandwick Trust

The Social Impact Report produced for PST by Impact Hub Inverness also revealed our six core-funded organisations, including Bethesda Care Home and Hospice and Western Isles Foyer, received £639,299 over that period. A further £756,722 went to 61 community-based organisations.

Point and Sandwick Trust’s investment has levered in more than £1million of other funding and a further £1.2million has been levered in by LED energy partner TIG in home energy grants and other improvements.

Our wind farm’s activity has created or sustained 32 full-time posts and 25 part-time ones, and enabled the establishment of private tree nursery businesses due to the extent of interest in the Outer Hebrides Croft Woodlands Project.

The findings are part of a wider report that examined all the social impacts of PST’s programme of grants and is available to read online in full at https://bit.ly/PSTsocialimpact

Consultants Polly Chapman and Brian Weaver of Impact Hub Inverness presented the findings of their report to the Point and Sandwick Trust board during November’s Annual General Meeting – an event held via Zoom, due to the pandemic.

The irony of presenting the report on the wind farm’s investments in the community was not lost on anyone attending the AGM, as there were also reports on the impact of the break in the subsea power cable from Skye to Harris in October, which has forced the wind farm to shut down.

It could be a year before the cable is replaced and 18 months before money is flowing through the PST organisation again. Until then, all grants to local charities and causes have been stopped, a situation that is mirrored among the other community renewables organisations on the islands.

PRIORITIES

Impact Hub Inverness also prepared a new business plan for Point and Sandwick Trust, setting out the spending priorities for the next five years, but the circumstances mean it has had to be suspended for the time being.

In referring to the business plan and the turbulence of 2020, consultant Brian Weaver said: “The plan was written before the cable was damaged. Not only had we not anticipated Covid, neither had we anticipated the interconnector issue.”

However, he told the board “the report stands” and “the charitable objectives are still relevant” because “the issues the community faces are still the same”. The Trust’s objectives are to improve the social, educational, cultural and environmental wellbeing of the people of the Western Isles with a focus on the Point and Sandwick communities.

Polly Chapman, chief executive of Impact Hub Inverness, highlighted the overall investment and additional monies levered in, as well as the fact that 90 per cent of Croft Woodland grant recipients also put in their own money to the planting projects.

“Well done, all of you,” she told board members. “You’ve had a big impact. It’s been really important and really valuable.”

Impact Hub had attempted to survey all grant recipients and received replies from 55 per cent, which the consultants said was “a really good” rate of responses for such surveys.

They also surveyed members of the community, to gain insights into community perception and to gauge local priorities for future investment choices.

Feedback included the clear message from grant recipients that the flexibility to grants from PST, which allows them to spend the money however they see fit, was highly valued.

FLEXIBILITY

Polly said: “The six core groups who had that core funding really appreciated that flexibility. It gave them a lot of freedom to try things out that they might not normally do.” She stressed it was “really important” to continue to trust grant recipients, when normal service resumes, and to keep “giving them that freedom rather than tying them to specifics”.

General feedback, anonymised in the report, included comments about how “PST support has allowed us to improve our facilities significantly and its continued encouragement has given us confidence in the future of our organisation”.

Another comment read: “PST grant funding support has been invaluable to our organisation in respect of both sustaining existing service, staff posts and allowing us to grow and develop to enable us to provide targeted services for our service-user demographic.”

The Social Impact Report was warmly welcomed by Point and Sandwick Trust.

Development manager Calum MacDonald said: “This project has fulfilled every one of our hopes, dreams and aspirations when we were trying to get it started 10 years ago and the Social Impact Report is great confirmation of that.”

Chairman Norman Mackenzie said: “We were aware that our Trust was making a real difference to the social wellbeing of our community but it is really gratifying to learn the full extent of this impact through an independently-conducted impact study. When Impact Hub accepted this commission they made it clear they would deliver an honest report that detailed failures as well as successes. The report has to be read to understand the full extent in which the Trust has met its objectives over its first few years of operation.

“The report underlines the benefit that a wholly-owned community wind farm can bring to its stakeholders. As well as being able to direct all of the wind farm profit to the benefit of the community, without regard to private shareholders, we are able to operate with real flexibility and minimal bureaucracy and that allows grant recipients to use our support in a manner that best serves their purpose.”

When he was closing the AGM, the chairman had told board members and other stakeholders: “I hope you all go away tonight with the understanding that PST may be a wee bit down at the moment but we’ll be back fighting within the next 12 months.”

The Social Impact Report has revealed what that fighting form looks like, in terms of community investment.

Author: Karyn McLuskey

A friend recently found a lump, phoned her GP, was seen on the day and referred immediately. The GP explained about the pathway that deals with suspected cancers: a referral to a breast clinic with a date within a few weeks, the investigations that would be undertaken, the mammogram, the ultrasound, the examination by a specialist.

And so it came to pass, my friend awaited the appointment, turned up at the clinic, had a range of investigations, and thankfully learned there was no evidence of malignancy. Why do I tell you this?

Because she was reassured by the pathway: didn’t feel stigmatised, knew what to expect in relation to time-frames, understood the standards that had been set and what might happen after. She felt cared for, important to the professionals and knew the end goal was to seek to cure.

So why don’t we have a pathway for those in addiction? I know so many people who feel second best, accept being palmed off, stigmatised and have no expectation of the same standards of care. They, and their families, do not feel reassured. They feel desperate, and dismissed. Yet I wonder what the level of mortality is for those in the grip of addiction? Same as some cancers perhaps.

If we are to reduce the torment of those who are in addiction, we must embrace a paradigm shift.

What if, when you reached out for help with your addiction, you were seen by a GP the same day; they needed, wanted, to see you face to face. You were given immediate treatment for some of your symptoms and then started on the pathway to dedicated services: the referral done there and then.

You’re told that you will be seen within two weeks, you can expect this; you’ll have bloods taken, a full exam and be treated with dignity and respect. They’ll ask you about your broader health and well-being, your mental health, the trauma that’s usually present.

The goal will be to cure you, to restore your health and well-being, not treat it palliatively. There would be centres to support you, like the phenomenal Maggie’s units, which are warm, welcoming, holistic and provide you with the support you (and your family) need to manage your addiction and get to a better state of being.

You don’t feel stigmatised, you feel cared for, respected and worthy of that respect. Your family knows that you’re in good hands. They worry, who wouldn’t, but they know you are a priority.

Don’t read this and hit the target but miss the point. I know addiction is not cancer, I know there are not cells mutating and multiplying in organs around the body, causing addiction, but it is a progressive condition.

I know what good care looks like, and to me it looks like the cancer pathway. When deaths from drugs and trauma are in the press again, when we wring our hands and lament the loss of souls across Scotland think about what it feels like to beg for help, and feel like you are shouting into the void.

Author: Jim Hunter

Once it was taken for granted in the Highlands and Islands that the region’s landed estates, if put up for sale, would be bought by wealthy individuals.

Though they mightn’t live anywhere near their newly purchased properties, they would be free to do more or less as they liked with the thousands of acres they’d acquired.

That changed in 1992 when a group of Sutherland crofters – the Assynt Crofters Trust (ACT), they called themselves – did something never done before. When the estate on which they lived went on the market, they launched their own collective bid for it.

News of that bid’s eventual success was announced at a hastily convened public meeting by ACT chairman, the late Allan MacRae.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “It seems that we have won the land.”

Then came this comment: “My immediate thoughts are to wish that some of our forebears could be here to share this moment with us.”

Both in Assynt and in other Highlands and Islands communities that have since followed Assynt’s example, the case for putting local residents in control of the land around them has rested on the way that such control opens up developmental opportunities – housing provision, job creation, population growth – that wouldn’t otherwise be available.

But in the background there can be a further thought – one encapsulated in Allan MacRae’s wish that his and other Assynt folk’s ancestors could somehow be made aware of what ACT had accomplished.

The story of Rosal

As victims of the clearances that depopulated much of Sutherland, past generations, as Allan and his audience knew, would have thought it inconceivable that people like ACT’s crofting membership would one day be entirely independent of once all-powerful landlords and their factors.

In a Highlands and Islands context, then, community ownership, because of its capacity to overturn the old order of things across big areas of land, can look little short of revolutionary.

That will be all the more apparent if, as is presently under consideration, people living in the northern part of Sutherland take charge of a place that’s emblematic of the ease with which hundreds of long-established settlements were once swept away.

This place is Rosal. Once it was a thriving settlement in the upper part of Strathnaver, one of three long valleys – the others are Strathbrora and the Strath of Kildonan – reaching deep into Sutherland’s now largely deserted interior.

When the Sutherland Estate’s proprietors decreed in 1813 that Rosal and neighbouring townships should be turned into one big farm, Rosal families were doing well enough to organise their own bid for its tenancy.

The evictions Patrick Sellar masterminded in and around Rosal were accompanied by cruelties so glaring that he was charged with culpable homicide

Perhaps predictably, this bid – a pointer, in its way, to what would one day be achieved in Assynt – wasn’t accepted. Instead the farm went to estate factor Patrick Sellar.

The evictions Sellar then masterminded in and around Rosal were to achieve an enduring notoriety because they were accompanied by cruelties so glaring as to result in the factor being charged with culpable homicide.

Sellar, in the event, was found not guilty. Following futher and still more extensive clearances, he’d become sole tenant of almost all of Strathnaver, the strath’s former occupants having been moved to diminutive crofts on Sutherland’s north coast.

According to Sellar, this enforced displacement of people he called “aborigines” had been “humanely ordered” by his employers, the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland.

“It surely was a most benevolent action,” the factor explained, “to put these barbarous hordes into a position where they could better advance in civilisation.”

Rosal remains uninhabited. But the north coast successors of Patrick Sellar’s “barbarous hordes” are now being consulted about the possibility of bringing both Rosal and its surroundings into community ownership.

Central to this consultation is an online survey put together by the North Sutherland Community Forestry Trust, community councillors and others. “We want local people to be at the heart of how Rosal is managed and developed,” say the survey’s compilers.

Community ownership, it’s made clear, wouldn’t result in interference with Rosal’s extensive ruins, seen as something of a memorial to past sufferings. But consideration might be given at some stage to enabling people to set up home somewhere in Rosal’s vicinity.

How people respond to this latest community ownership initiative will be seen when survey findings are released next month. But nothing is more indicative of how the Highlands and Islands have moved on since the time of Patrick Sellar than the fact that Rosal’s future is currently being determined by people of a sort Sellar thought he’d excluded forever from Strathnaver.

Jim Hunter is a historian, award-winning author and Emeritus Professor of History at the University of the Highlands and Islands