Island polities: local government, constitutional change and political identities in Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles, c. 1965-1990

Abstract

This thesis analyses the experiences of constitutional debates in Scotland’s island communities of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles between approximately 1965 and 1990. These debates consisted of local government reform, the attainment of special powers to control and benefit from oil developments in Orkney and Shetland, entry into the European Economic Community, proposals to establish a Scottish Assembly and the exploration of options for greater autonomy in the island groups. This thesis provides the first full historical study of attitudes and responses within the three archipelagos to this period of constitutional upheaval. It adopts a comparative approach between the island communities, rarely examined in relation to each other, to address the question of why they expressed divergent responses to these debates. All three island groups were granted unitary authorities operating outwith Scotland’s two-tier local government structure in 1974, while the referenda on maintaining European Economic Community membership in 1975 and establishing a Scottish Assembly in 1979 produced high levels of opposition in Shetland and the Western Isles and then Orkney and Shetland respectively. A central contention of the thesis is that islanders’ attitudes towards constitutional reform were influenced in varying ways by an ideology of ‘political insularism.’ This concept refers to the ideological belief that island communities possessed special social, economic and geographical conditions and that a differentiated policy approach, usually characterised by distinctive constitutional structures, was necessary to address their needs. Contestation between differing interpretations of political insularism, informed by an expansion of the islanders’ constitutional imaginations, comprised an important element of local experiences of constitutional debates in the period. This ideology was underpinned by varying degrees of political identities within the island communities. Orkney and Shetland’s existing political identities strengthened in response to external challenge and proposed constitutional reforms. In the Western Isles, a process of ‘region-building’ consolidated a nascent regional identity in the archipelago and set the foundations for a distinctive political identity to emerge. Within each of these constitutional debates, this thesis examines interactions between the islands’ representatives and governments of varying political hues, which resisted demands for special treatment. Nevertheless, in response to political and constitutional pressures, successive governments repeatedly acknowledged the islands’ interpretations of political insularism through multiple policy concessions. By making these concessions, this thesis argues that the government – reluctantly, and often unintentionally – set the precedents for what would become Scotland’s modern islands policy.