18 West Highland Free Press | Friday 3 June 2011

beachd ! comment naidheachdan ! news

BRIAN WILSON Society punched well above its weight
in this period through its association

writes with the brilliant Professor John

The pictures of famous guests at
the National Hotel in Moscow
could scarcely be more eclectic.
Lenin through to Obama via
Prokoviev and Stalin, Peter
Ustinov, Pele and, er… David
Coulthard, to mention but a few.
But then location and history are
everything. It sits right across from
Red Square, has seen the fall of Tsars
and the rise of revolution. Now it is
part of a luxury French chain, exuding
capitalist charm, and if walls had ears
the National Hotel would be self-
financing out of the stories it could
tell.
This week its purpose, as far as we
were concerned, was more prosaic. It
was the appointed venue for Scottish
Development International’s latest
excellent effort to promote Scottish
textiles to the great Russian market.
Naturally, it was essential for Harris
Tweed Hebrides to be part of that
Erickson of Edinburgh University.
Erickson had written magisterial
tomes on Stalingrad and The Road to
Berlin. In so doing, he had won the
respect of the Kremlin for his
balanced scholarship. This made him
uniquely placed to bring together
high-ranking people from politics, the
military and civic society to discuss
the great issues of the day in a neutral
forum. Maybe history would have
unfolded in the same way anyway, but
I do believe that personal contacts of
that kind, by people who had kept the
door open to the Soviet Union, played
an under-estimated part in what
happened next — Gorbachev’s
decision to embrace glasnost and
perestroika, from which there would
be no turning back. The pressure for
change had become irresistible.
My next visit to Russia was in a
very different role. By the late 1990s,
Communism was a historical relic and
Russia was our new best friend. As
UK Trade Minister in 1999, I went to
St Petersburg to open the biggest-ever
British trade fair. Unfortunately, this
occurred on the very day that the
rouble collapsed and the last thing on
anyone’s mind was buying the proud
products of British manufacturing.
Almost literally, nobody came.
Indeed, British companies were
packing their bags to leave and
bemoaning the fact that they couldn’t
get paid in this corrupt society. Banks
were failing while vast sums of
money disappeared into Swiss bank
accounts. By general consent, the
whole country was a basket case
Portree Primary recently took part in their annual village clean-up. All pupils participated, from Sgoil Araich classes to P7. Pupils have taken part
which would take years to recover. in this worthy event for a number of years, and teachers were delighted that many classes reported back that the volume of litter found this year was
But not a bit of it. A few months later,
much less than in previous years.
Putin replaced the bucolic Yeltsin.
Doubtless on the principle of setting

Six new schools for Western Isles

initiative. We enjoyed the experience
and await results.
I couldn’t help reflecting on past
visits to Russia over a period of 30
years. It is impossible not to have a
a thief to catch a thief, he turned
things around with astonishing speed.
A couple of years later, I came back
to Moscow as Energy Minister,
mainly because we were desperate to

on track for August 2012 entry

few such thoughts since the scale of
change is so great. When I came here
first, Moscow was a city of bleakness,
black market and apprehension. Now,
to the passing stranger, it is a vibrant
city of youth and prosperity though
that is by no means the whole story.
I first visited in the early 1980s
through a fine organisation called the
Scotland-USSR Society. Its simple
purpose was to increase human
understanding across ideological
borders, with the inevitable
consequence that nobody involved
would then want to bomb the other lot
into nuclear oblivion. Nowadays,
when that prospect is on the back
tie up a stake in Russian gas for
generations to come. My counterpart
was a guy called Yusufov. I had lost
track of him but, strangely enough, he
turned up in the English-language
press this week. He is now a director
of Gazprom, his son has become
extraordinarily rich very quickly and
is trying to buy Moscow’s main
airport. My old friend Yusufov is
described as “Putin’s Abramovich”.
So the cast changes but corruption
continues as usual.
More recently, my visits have been
football-related. There is always a
dinner for directors on the evening
before European ties. When Celtic
The six new schools currently being
constructed in the Western Isles at a total
cost of over £50 million are on schedule to
be completed on time, members of
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar were told this
week.
The Western Isles Schools Project is being
undertaken by an arms-length company of the
council called Sgoiltean Ura. The construction
work was awarded to Northern Irish consortium
FMP, with a two-year time frame for delivery. All
of the schools are intended to be ready for entry
in August 2012.
There has been some anger in the
local construction industry over the award
of the contract to FMP, although a
percentage of the work has been sub-contracted to
local firms.
The insistence by the Scottish Government on
a 24-month period for the delivery of six new
buildings meant it was impossible for the island
companies to compete against much larger
mainland firms.
The six schools comprise four new primaries
— Bayble and West Side in Lewis and Daliburgh
and Balivanich in Uist — and comprehensive
renovations at two six-year secondaries, the
Nicolson Institute in Stornoway and Sir E Scott
School in Tarbert.
Education chair Morag Munro said it was
gratifying to see significant progress being made
on all the schools.

Skye Pipe Band helped by

burner of international affairs, it is
easy to forget how omnipresent it was
for the Cold War generation.
My earliest visits were for the
unlikely purpose of speaking at Burns
played Spartak a few years back, it
was held in a casino. The speeches
pledging fair play and sporting
brotherhood were made to a
background of piped music and one-

Scottish Islands Fund

Suppers in Moscow and Leningrad.
Burns was widely celebrated in the
Soviet Union as the peasants’ poet and
the Scotland-USSR Society’s annual
highlight was to organise these events.
Such contacts were rare in these days
and it was a privilege to be part of
them, though they also lifted scales
from eyes. The Soviet Union was a
pretty depressing place to visit, far
less live in. But that did not make the
armed bandits while glamorous social
attractions hovered in the wings. As
we filed out like choirboys, I asked
Brian Quinn, the Celtic chairman, if it
was the first time he had made a
speech in a casino. Brian replied
sternly: “It’s the first time I’ve been in Scotland’s Islands Fund has centenary of the birth of Sorley On 1st October, Fèis Chanaidh island. The event will comprise
a casino.” Brother Walfrid would have grant-aided a number of Maclean and the 125th anniversary takes place — a day of cultural musical sessions, instrument
approved. community projects in Skye, of the passing of the 1886 Crofting events involving the Canna playing, storytelling and Gaelic
Since then, they have closed the Raasay and the Small Act. community and visitors to the language teaching.
casinos. I’m not sure why, though Isles — the first of which takes

Hundreds to take part in

people our enemies.
Since the start of the nuclear era, a
fractious balance had been maintained
through the doctrine of Mutually
Assured Destruction — MAD. As
when they did the same thing in
Azerbaijan it was because the only
way to keep the President’s son out of
casinos was to close them all down.
The President’s son, needless to say,
place in Portree this coming
weekend.
The fund has helped the Isle of
Skye Pipe Band with the cost of

this year’s Highland Cross

long as neither side thought it could
survive a nuclear war, neither was
likely to start one. In the early 1980s
a dangerous shift took place. Cruise
missiles offered the alluring prospect
for nuclear hawks of targeting silos
and thereby disabling the enemy. And,
under Ronald Reagan, the Americans
embarked on their Star Wars
programme.
Its official name was the Strategic
Defence Initiative and the theory was
that a shield could be created to
protect the USA from nuclear attack.
By comparison, MAD seemed sane.
But the concept of a “winnable”
nuclear war brought a whole new
urgency to the debate. Rational
discussions between east and west
were essential and not just at the level
of high politics. The Scotland-USSR
is now the President and he doesn’t
need casinos.
I doubt if the casual visitor has any
better chance of understanding what
goes on in this society than he did in
Communist times or indeed Tsarist
ones. All I can report is that most of
the people look as happy and
prosperous as anywhere else, so not
all the money can have been stolen
and a lot of them are having a much
better time than their parents ever
expected. I suppose that is about as
much as you can really ask for in the
space of a couple of decades.
And let’s not forget the big picture.
It must be a symbol of progress that
instead of threatening them with the
Armageddon of nuclear war, which is
where I started my Russian journey,
we now try to sell them Harris Tweed.
staging a two-day festival to mark
their 50th anniversary and enabling
them to invite participation by other
bands from different islands to help
celebrate achieving this milestone in
the band’s history.
Peter MacDonald of the Skye
Pipe Band said: “The grant secured
from Scotland’s Islands Fund
helped to enhance the programme
for the anniversary weekend so that
it will be one of the highlights in
Skye’s calendar of events during
2011.”
Other projects which have been
assisted by Scotland’s Islands Fund
in Skye and Raasay include musical
events based around the new village
hall on Raasay, a series of talks by
the Islands Book Trust, conferences
and related events to celebrate the
The 29th Highland Cross is to be
held later this month, with 720
people taking part in the 50-mile
duathalon from Kintail to
Beauly.
On Saturday 18th June
participants will set off from Kintail
to walk or run 20 miles over the
1,000-foot-high pass behind the Five
Sisters of Kintail to Glen Affric.
There they will collect their bicycles
and cycle the 30 miles to Beauly, all
the while raising funds for five
charities.
The most athletic entrants will be
attempting to beat the course record
of three hours, 13 minutes and 31
seconds, which was set by expatriate
Highlander Dr Keith Murray of New
Zealand or the female record of three
hours 48 minutes and nine seconds
set by Angela Mudge in 2007.
Highland Cross organising
secretary and co-founder Calum
Munro said: “This is a fantastic
community effort designed to
generate the maximum benefit for
causes in the north of Scotland. The
participants desperately want to take
part and they do a wonderful
fundraising job every year.
“However, without the
commercial sponsors such as Hawco,
R & F Campbell, MacCallum
Haulage and PDG Helicopters and
the co-operation and support of the
Highland and Islands Fire and
Rescue Service, Forestry
Commission, North Affric Estate and
the National Trust for Scotland and
our army of volunteers, Highland
Cross could not take place.”
The charities benefiting this year
are Children’s Hospice Association
Scotland, Highland Blindcraft, IML
(Highland), Lochaber Action on
Disability and the Shirlie Project.